Hospital On The Cusp

Stafff-Writer

A

s community leaders broke
ground for Sinai Hospital,
one of the last Jewish hos-
pitals built in the United
States, some of the foundations for its
ultimate demise were also being laid.
It was 1951, and employment
discrimination against Jewish physi-
cians was drawing to a close. The
expressways, which would lead Jews
and other middle-class whites out of
Detroit and into the suburbs, were
under construction.
Sinai Hospital, which opened its
doors in 1953, came at the tail end
of the American Jewish hospital era.
Purchased in 1997 by the now-
ailing Detroit Medical Center, it is
expected to close in the coming
months and merge with neighboring
Grace Hospital. Only five percent of
its patients are now Jewish and the
hospital has seen an exodus of
Jewish doctors in recent years.
And the vast majority of
American Jewish hospitals have gone
the same way. While names like
"Mount Sinai" and "Beth Israel" may
still appear on the signs and letter-
heads, only a handful of American
hospitals are Jewish-owned.
While 64 independent American
Jewish hospitals existed as recently as
1966, the overwhelming majority have
been sold to large non-profit corpora-
tions and health care networks.
The history of American Jewish hos-
pitals begins over a century before Sinai's
groundbreaking. The first American
Jewish hospitals opened in the mid-19th
century, in Philadelphia and Cincinnati.
"Those were founded because, at
that time, hospitals in America were
all religious, and Jews knew that in a
Christian hospital they might be mis-
sionized," said Jonathan Sarna, Braun
Professor of American Jewish History
at Brandeis University. "There was
also a sense that, 'Other religions have
them, why shouldn't we?'"
Sarna noted that in the early 20th
century, many communities even had
two Jewish hospitals: one for German
Jews and one for East European Jews.
In their heyday in the first half of this

character of Jewish — and all reli-
gious — hospitals, said Sarna.
In recent years, with many non-
t Jewish hospitals now offering kosher
meals and Jewish pastoral care,
fewer Jews feel the need to go to a
Jewish hospital.
The past 10 years have sounded
I the death knell for the Jewish hospital.
"As the whole world of American
5
5 medicine is transformed by man-
1 aged care, we have seen the closing,
merging and sale of Jewish hospitals
across the country" Sarna said, not-
z ing that most — like Sinai — are in
the city and far from the core Jewish
•=1 community, which began moving to
the suburbs in the 1950s.
Just as Detroit's Jewish communi-
communi-
created
The
Jewish
Fund,
a num-
ty
ber of other communities, such as
Cleveland, have also established char-
itable foundations with proceeds
from the sale of their Jewish hospital.
"What's fascinating is that most of
these hospitals have been unmourned
and there hasn't been an outcry from
the community," said Sarna. "It's been
a long time since someone said, 'Our
money should go into the Jewish hospi-
tal and curing diseases.' That's no longer
seen as the venue for any religious
group's dollars. Instead, we now see
health care as something for government
or insurance companies to handle."
Dr. Conrad Giles, president of the
Council of Jewish Federations and an
ophthalmologist practicing in the
Detroit area, is one person not
mourning the closing of Sinai or its
Jewish counterparts elsewhere.
"Communities have recognized the
fact that the original need for Jewish
hospitals no longer exists and therefore
have attenuated their formal associa-
tions," he said. "Funding of Jewish hos-
pitals by federations has dropped pre-
cipitously over the past decade as
requirements for things like Jewish edu-
cation and Jewish culture have become
the focal point for Jewish philanthropy.
"There's a need for efficient, appropri-
ate use of resources both in the general
and philanthropic community," added
Giles. "If we can free dollars to be used
for services elsewhere, we shouldn't keep
investments in an institution just because
historically it was important." ❑

r, E

JULIE WIENER

-

1-, T

Demographic and cultural shi s lessened the
need for Sinai from its earliest days.

Jews and should it have two kitchens
century, Jewish hospitals "were often
or serve only kosher food.
the pride of the community," said
Ultimately, it was the issue of
Sarna. "A tremendous amount of
employment discrimination against
Jewish communal dollars went in and
Jewish doctors — a factor influencing
people felt this was how the commu-
the growth of Jewish hospitals in other
nity demonstrated its values."
cities as well — that spurred the
Survey
of
the
Jewish
In a 1923
founding of Sinai. In his
Community of
book, Bolkosky describes
undertaken
Above:
Nate
Shapero,
Max
Detroit
the "final straw in 1944
Osnos, Rabbi Abraham
by the National
when
a Jewish oral sur-
Hershman of Congregation
Bureau of Jewish
geon,
enraged at not
Shaarey Zedek and Sam
Social Research,
being
able to treat his
Rubiner,
at
the
Sinai
Hospital
Detroit was
ailing
patient at local
groundbreaking
in
1951.
described as having
hospitals,
helped launch
the "distinction of
the
final
campaign
for
being the only first
the hospital, under Jewish Welfare
class city in the United States today
Federation (now Jewish Federation of
without a Jewish hospital."
Metropolitan Detroit) auspices.
According to University of
But shortly after Sinai's doors
Michigan-Dearborn Professor Sidney
opened,
its chief raison d'etre ended.
Bolkosky, in his book Harmony and
According
to Encyclopedia Judaica,
Dissonance: Voices of Jewish Identity in
medical
discrimination
declined "after
"a
hospital
under
Detroit, 1914-1967,
about 1950" and American Jewish
Jewish auspices and all that it encom-
hospitals, "many of which by then had
passed ... became the longest-lived,
only 10 percent to 25 percent Jewish
contentiously palpable point of con-
patients, tended to be rationalized
tention in Detroit Jewry's history."
once again, this time as a Jewish ser-
At the heart of the debates that
vice
to the community at large."
dragged on for almost 50 years: would
In
the 1960s, government programs
such a hospital be too separatist, was it
like Medicare and Medicaid altered the
a pet project simply of the Orthodox

2/26
1995

Detroit Jewish News

9

