Pho tos by Lonny Goldsmith

A Hospital
With Tiddishkeit

Former patients at Sinai Hospital
remember the personal touches.

LONNY GOLDSMITH
Staff Writer

B

ess Adaskin remembers once
when she was a patient at
Sinai Hospital seven-and-a-
half years ago, and a young
medical student makina rounds tried
to cover her feet with ablanket.
b
The student thought he was help-
ing, but the senior doctor supervising
the rounds stopped him. "The doctor
remembered that I didn't like my feet
to be covered," said Adaskin.
"For at least the last 15 years, I've had
to go in once per year and always had
the best care," she said. "When I went,
people remembered me, and it makes
you feel like they cared about you.
Adaskin is one of the many Jewish
Apartments and Services residents who
used Sinai Hospital over the 46 years it
has been open and who are dismayed

Lonny Goldsmith can be reached at
(248) 354-6060, ext. 263, or by e-mail
at: lgoldsmith@thtjewishnews.com

at the pending closing of the only Jewish
hospital in Detroit. Sylvia Halliburton,
who lives at the Prentis Jewish
Apartment building in Oak Park with
Adaskin, remembers Sinai as a "historical
place because my children and grandchil-
dren have had attention there," she said.
When Sinai opened in 1953,
Jewish doctors were having trouble
finding jobs at secular hospitals. They
flocked to Sinai, and the patients
thought it made all the difference.
Clara Alzfon, a resident at Teitel
Apartments in Oak Park, remembers
Seymour Adelson of Sinai as being
the most wonderful doctor," she
said. "Whenever he came in, he knew
all the right questions to ask. That's
the most important thing."
Lillian Goldman and Sonia
Pittman both worked at the hospital
as volunteers.
"It will seem awfully strange not
being there," said Goldman, a Prentis
resident who volunteers in the Sinai
Guild office.
Pittman, a 19-year resident of

From top:

Molly and Karl Berg were both treated at
Sinai.

Alexander Weiss raised money for the hos-
pital.

Elsie Bogorad and Fannie May recall their
Sinai memories.

Hechtman Apartments resident Eileen
Silverman

2/26
1999

12 Detroit Jewish News

Prentis, had to make a long trip to get
to Sinai Hospital — walking over a mile
from her apartment building on 10
Mile Road, east of Greenfield, to take a
bus leaving from Providence Hospital,
on Nine Mile near Greenfield.
"I had a lot of fun and enjoyed it a
lot," Pittman said, recalling her six-year
stint as a volunteer where she assisted
people in their wheelchairs to appoint-
ments and acted as a Russian transla-
tor. "It was a wonderful feeling because
people were so gracious to me."
At Hechtman Apartments in West
Bloomfield, some residents' memories
had to do with their stomachs.
"I remember they had the most
wonderful kosher food there,
Lorraine Nesselson said.
Added Fannie May, "It was so deli-
cious."
Eileen Silverman remembers her
roommate at Sinai who didn't like the
regular food the hospital had to offer.
"I had ordered kosher meals and
the person in the room with me com---\
plained about the food," she said. "I
let her taste my food and she started
to ask to get kosher meals, too."
May was one of the first patients
to go to Sinai, at the insistence of her
doctor.
"Dr. Meyers told me to go to a
Jewish hospital," she said. "We called
the floor above us the Gold Coast
because all the rich people were there."
Teitel resident Alma Hochman
doesn't remember the doctor who
performed an operation for cancer on
her 20 years ago, but remembers a
pleasant stay there.
"I was there for four weeks and peo-
ple were very good to me," the 93-year-
old said. "I can't ever say they weren't."
Hechtman resident Elsie Bogorad's
first memory of Sinai is of the Jewish
symbols that covered the hospital.
"My first time there, I saw win-
dows with the Jewish emblems and I
thought it was Yiddishkeit," she said.
"It was good for us as Jews because it
gave us a feeling of prestige." 7

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