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Remembering Sinai

Archivist is compiling
a historical account
of Detroits
Jewish hospital.

HARRY KI RS BAU M
StaffWriter

example, the board of trustees minutes
and notes will be one series, every-
thing relating to the Shapero School
of Nursing is another. Old pho-
tographs — because they require dif-
ferent storing conditions — are the
third.
Arranging some of the series won't
take long, she said. The Sinai board
minutes are already in order, but "in
any collection, you always get down to
the last 12 pieces of paper, and you
go, 'I know it's really interesting and I
know we should keep it, but what do
I call it and where do I put it?'"
Several items in the collection
already have caught her eye.

dence were interesting to her because
they show the decisions that were
made, including the decision to build
Sinai Hospital.
"I saw letters from the 1920s from
the Hebrew Hospital Association say-
ing the North End clinic wasn't big
enough anymore, and should we build
a hospital and where should we build
it?," she said.
For now, Christein is storing the
collection in her third-floor office in
the Max M. Fisher Federation
Building in Bloomfield Township.
Once the collection is catalogued, it
will be stored permanently in the
Walter P. Reuther Library Archives of

eidi Christein's cart wasn't
big enough to handle all
the boxes taken from the
basement of the research
building at Sinai Hospital, so she
cruised up to the old ER and grabbed
a couple of old
hospital gurneys.
With the help
of two other peo-
ple, whatever was
worth saving from
Sinai — from old
correspondence
and photographs,
to old nurses' uni-
forms — was
piled onto the
gurneys, wheeled
through the hos-
pital, loaded into
a van and carted
away.
It took two
trips, said
Christein, director
of the Leonard N.
Simons Jewish
Community
Archives of the
Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan
Detroit, but she
Heidi Christein looks at a lantern slide from the former Sinai Hospital.
finally had what
she wanted: a
Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne
Most interesting were the pho-
record of the birth and death of a
State University, though not everyone
tographs,
especially
the
lantern
slides
Jewish hospital.
will be able to view the collection.
—
photographs
etched
in
glass
—
The Sinai Hospital Collection's
Going through the archives is not
which
she
views
through
a
dusty
pro-
"pretty substantial" size is about 200
like using a public library, but any
jector
from
the
1920s
that
can
only
be
linear feet, the way archives are mea-
qualified researcher who is interviewed
turned on for a few minutes at a time.
sured, said Christein. Already working
can have access, Christein said.
"The slides, which include teaching
on several other collections, she will
"The folks at the Reuther are pretty
photos of someone's lungs, are historic
begin in earnest at the beginning of
good
about it," she said. "They just
artifacts in and of themselves,"
the year.
don't
want
people asking for some-
Christein said.
The hospital materials will be
thing as a way of killing time." P
The
board
minutes
and
correspon-
arranged in several series, she said. For

From the pages of the Jewish News
for this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.

1989
"Lubavitch City," a year-round
post office, opened in Kalkaska
on the same site as Camp Gan
Israel/Esther Allan.
Adele W. Staller was elected
president of the Jewish Historical
Society of Michigan.

1979
Rabbi Linda Joy Holtzman, a grad-
uate of the Reconstructionist
school, became the first presiding
female rabbi as she accepted a post
at Congregation Beth Israel in
Pennsylvania.
Curtis DeLoye, head of the
Jewish News composing room,
helped the Detroit Printers baseball
team defend their championship,
defeating Pittsburgh, 14-9; DeLoye
made a key sacrifice fly in the
eighth.

1969
Cantor Harold Orbach of Temple
Israel will be the tenor soloist in a
new cantata written by Dave
Brubeck when it premieres at the
Rockdale Temple in Cincinnati.
A fire that might have been
caused by Arab terrorist arsonists
damaged the synagogue in down-
town Budapest.

1959
Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi and
the Detroit Committee for Bar-Ilan
University moved their offices from
Dexter Blvd. to 17596 Wyoming.
A surprise 60th birthday party
was held for Dr. Samuel B. Danto
at his Huntington Woods home;
guests included members of
Perfection Lodge, of which he is a
past master and treasurer.

1949
The Jewish War Veterans posts and
auxiliaries planned a Boblo boat
moonlight cruise.
Belle Moskovitz, chief pharmacist
at Children's Hospital of Michigan
in Detroit, will represent the hospi-
tal at the American Hospital
Association Institute in Chicago.

— Compiled by Seymour Manello

8/27
1 999

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Detroit Jewish News

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