1990-2000

Founded in 1953 to combat discrimination
against - Jewish doctors, Sinai Hospital merged
with Grace Hospital in 1999. The Detroit
Medical Center bought Sinai in 1997 for

C

C

$65 million, which was used to establish the
Jewish Fund.

• 1990-2000: The decade began in

crisis: Iraqi Scud missiles, prompting a

need for gas masks, threatened the

lives of Israelis during the 1991

Persian Gulf Way: As the missiles fell

on the Jewish state, a major Allied

Michigan's mammoth adult missions to Israel are consistently the largest such endeavi**i
the nation. These folks from Michicran Miracle Mission I in 1993 were among a group

Jewish Campaign fund-raising event

1,200. Jane Sherman co-chaired t e mission with David Hermelin, shown at right
his wife, Doreen.

began at Shaarey Zedek. Televisions

were placed in the foyer and as CNN

reported the scene in Israel, people

wept in Detroit. David Gad-Harf;

director of the Jewish Community

Council, spoke of how the community

seemed to come together in times of

crisis — a bittersweet observation. In

1995, the assassination of Prime

Minister Yitzhak Rabin shocked

American Jewry and initiated a flurry

of reconsiderations of Jewish identity.

Those reconsiderations sent some

Detroiters into depressive mindsets,

wondering how a fellow Jew could

have committed such an act. A memo-

Max Fisher, Detroit's elder states-

man and philanthropist, celebrated
his 90th birthday in 1998.

rial service for Rabin occurred at Adat

Shalom in Detroit; Jews felt as if they

had "lost a beloved grandfather,"

1■1

noted Beverly Yost, community liaison

at the Community Council. With the

dissolution of the Soviet Union in the

early '90s, Russian Jewish emigres

The well-attended
Fest '98 celebrated
50th anniversary wit
walk from the Jewic 4
Community Center in

flocked to Israel and the U.S.

Unschooled in religion themselves, the

newcomers found a rising tide of

"spirituality" among many Jews they

encountered as religious sensitivities

intensified.

Iqo

4.,

A%

12/31
1999

14

I

Oak Park to the Detth
Zoo and an evening a

Detroit philanthropist and business leader William
Davidson stands at the site of the Second Temple
Period Archeological. Park in Jerusalem's Old City
that bears his name.