Firmly Rooted
In The City

David Gad-Harf of the Jewish
Community Council.

JULIE WIENER STAFF WRITER

Elaine and Eugene Driker
never left Detroit.

sidering facilitating a rela-
tionship between JCC staff
and Considine staff, perhaps
to create joint programming.
All the task force's projects
are in cooperation with exist-
ing community organizations
in the city.
'We don't want to reinvent
the wheel," explains Driker.
"We just want to be at the
table. We want to be part of
the process, because the Jew-
ish community has not been
part of the process for essen-
tially 30 years."
Despite her "cautious op-
timism" about revived Jewish
interest in Detroit, Dryker rec-
ognizes that the Jewish com-
munity is unlikely to resettle
south of Eight Mile.
"I'm seeing a trickle [of
Jews moving into Detroit], but
it's still significantly ham-
pered by a school system
that's not optimum, a percep-
tion of crime, and the lack of
knowledge of the kinds of
housing stock in the city." Per-
haps the greatest obstacle is
the fact that virtually all of
Detroit's Jewish institutions
have relocated to the suburbs.
For Driker, the important
part of the task force's work is
that Jews and blacks do more
than just converse.
`Tm sort of tired of just sit-
ting in rooms talking to peo-
ple and saying, let's be friends.
I think [Jewish and black re-
lationship building] has got to
happen in boardrooms,
through civic organizations
and at the grassroots level. We
have to be out at the blitz
build with our sleeves rolled
up ... not just be involved in
what I call touchy-feely
stuff." ❑

Revising Strategy

JULIE EDGAR SENIOR WRITER

David Gad-Harf came to Michigan
to lead the Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit
nine years ago — well after the
smoke had cleared from the riots
of 1967.
Yet, it became immediately
clear to him that they are a stark
reference point for Jews.
"It was a psychological turning
point," Gad-Harf said of the week-
long disturbance. "But it wasn't as
if everybody was happy and living
in the city until '67. All of the worst
fears of everyone came to the sur-
face."
He pointed out that although
many Jews left the city with oth-
er whites for greener pastures long
before the eruption, it is the Jew-
ish community that has struggled
with the issue of black-Jewish re-
lations and not vice-versa.
"It is higher on our agenda than
on the African-American agenda.
African-Ameri-
can leaders
have said it's so
low on their
agenda it's not
even on their
radar," Gad-
Harf said.
"Jews tend to
have a sense of
obligation to
minority com-
munities, and
yes, a sense of
guilt."
Yet,
he
added, "We
don't yearn for
those days of

PHOTO BY GLENN TRIEST

While others in the Jewish
community were struggling to
finance mortgages on large
houses in Farmington Hills
and West Bloomfield, Elaine
Driker and her husband, Eu-
gene, were purchasing a spa-
cious stucco home with
hardwood floors at a rock-bot-
tom price.
Why the bargain? Their
home sits on a peaceful, tree-
lined street less than a mile
south of Eight Mile Road, and
it was purchased at a time
when most middle-class
whites desperately wanted to
get to the other side of the bor-
der.
Seeing her friends leave
only strengthened Driker's re-
solve to stay in the city.
'We've lived in this gener-
al vicinity for 32 years and
raised our children here," she
said. "There were some mo-
ments of questioning and dis-
tress, but in retrospect I think
we did the right thing."
Determined to contribute
to Detroit somehow, Driker
went back to school at the age
of 40 to study urban planning.
Today she directs the Detroit
Orientation Institute at
Wayne State University and
is active in the Detroit Initia-
tive Task Force, a Jewish
Community Council program
that involves Jews in the re-
vitalization of the city.
With over 25 members —
all with some connection to
Detroit — the project is final-
ly starting to move forward,
says Driker, who co-chairs the
task force with attorney and
real estate developer Gary
Torgow.
"It was a slow go," said
Driker. "You don't just walk
into a room and say 'Hey, I'm
here, I want to be on your
team.' You have to rebuild
trust and rebuild relation-
ships."
The task force is focusing
efforts on business develop-
ment and partnerships,
health care and recreation.
One effort is to help rehabili-
tate several Detroit recreation
centers, two of which are for-
mer Jewish Community Cen-
ters. The Considine Center on
Woodward was Detroit's first
JCC, and the task force is con-

linking arms and singing We
Shall Overcome.' The Jewish Com-
munity Council goes into it with
less a romanticized image of the
good old days, but rather, what is
in the best interest of the Jewish
community and the greater met-
ropolitan community."
Plus, he added, "the Jewish
community, likewise, feels its our
own responsibility to deal with
[Jewish] continuity."
The black community is not
monolithic, and blacks today oc-
cupy positions of power in every
sphere of society. And over the past
decade, it has been preoccupied
with internal struggles like youth
crime and the weakening of fam-
ily and the public schools. Joining
forces to fight for civil liberties or
to battle institutional racism is no
longer the paradigm for a black-
Jewish relationship. Today, the
emphasis is on mainstream ac-
tivism. Welfare reform and hate
groups are two issues that unite
all ethnic communities rather than
the grander struggles of the past,
Gad-Harf pointed out.
Yet, there are hurdles that go
beyond different agendas. While
the black community is not unit-
ed behind a single leader or a sin-
gle issue, black nationalist
sentiment that is tinged with anti-
Semitism has seeped into the mix.
The JCCouncil has encountered
it in Afrocentric charter schools,
for example, and it has tried to
counter it with brochures that
challenge the myths of Jewish in-
volvement in the slave trade and
in the spread of AIDS in the black

community — staples of
the black nationalist rant.
"But it's hard to deal
with issues when we're not
on the scene, when we don't
live in the city," Gad-Harf
acknowledged.
Nevertheless, he is opti-
mistic about the future of
black-Jewish relations,
even if they've evolved lit-
tle in the past 30 years.
Today, with a "-new tone
coming from city hall" —
Mayor Dennis Archer's
open-arms attitude toward
suburban investment in
Detroit — the Jewish com-
munity is warming up to
the city again.
A few weeks ago, hun-
dreds of suburbanites,
many of them Jewish,
helped build homes in the
city and in Pontiac under
the aegis of Habitat for Hu-
manity. Gad-Harf also pointed to
the efforts of Marcy Feldman of
Huntington Woods, who, along
with a black schoolmate from her
elementary school days in Detroit,
initiated a class reunion and
formed a foundation to assist the
school.
For its part, the Council is
bridge-building by bringing Jews
and blacks together in new ways.
Not quite a year ago, it sent five
black students from Cass Tech and
Northern high schools to Israel.
This year, he same students and
their families will host Israeli stu-
dents in their homes and the
Council will send another group of
students to Israel.
"The kids are the best and the
brightest in their schools, and they
are likely to be the future leaders
in Detroit. These are experiences
they will never forget," Gad-Hart
said.
Last year, the Council respond-
ed to a rash of church burnings by
working in tandem with ministers
and the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored Peo-
ple (NAACP) to raise money for re-
building.
Another recent Council project
is the Detroit Initiative Task Force,
which is designed to foster the re-
lationship between the black and
Jewish communities. Thus fan the
Council has channeled funds into
the Considine recreational center
in Detroit, once a Jewish Com-
munity Center, and is initiated
links between entrepreneurs
through the Booker T. Washing-
ton Institute.
"This goes beyond the realm of
dialoguing. We're trying to focus
on projects that are in the best in-
terest of both communities. It
doesn't have a patronizing quali-
ty," Gad-Harf said. ❑