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"LUMINOUS!
A - FINE PICTURE."
R. Corliss, TIME MAGAZINE
- D. Sterna. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"A HAUNTING
DEPICTION
of life inside an
ultra-Orthodox
community."
- D. Sontag, NEW YORK TIMES
"A RALLYING
CRY OF RE VOLT
_
same year, Temple Beth El's Leopold
Whinier became the first Detroit
rabbi to address a Christian congrega-
tion in their own church. The chil-
dren of Beth El members
attended public schools.
Members of the congregation
were no longer German Jews
living in America; they were
Americans who happened to be
Jewish.
Temple Beth El members
and Detroit's Jews generally
became more active in civic life
around the time of the Civil
War. Rabbi Adler had cam-
paigned actively for abolition, and-
several Beth El members fought for
the Union, including cemetery war-
den Emanuel Wodic. In 1898, when
Rabbi Louis Grossman left Detroit,
Mayor William C. Maybury gave a
public farewell reception in the rabbi's
honor.
As they became more involved in
civic undertakings, Beth El members
also worked for such secular philan-
thropic organizations as the Protestant
Orphan Asylum. Increasingly, howev-
er, Jewish aid societies were established.
(Frequently, Beth El members supported
and led these efforts. The men of Beth
El could afford it and the ladies had the
time, to paraphrase local Jewish histori-
an Robert Rockaway, author of The
Jews of Detroit.
-In 1882, the Hebrew Ladies Sewing
,., o ciety was formed at Temple Beth El;
'n 1891, Beth El women organized
hat is now the National Council of
ewish Women/Detroit chapter. Both
roups assisted Jewish immigrants.
In 1893, Beth El began a "Sunday
School" in the afternoons for those who
c ould not afford to pay for their chil-
dren's religious education, or for those •
who belonged to congregations where
no religious instruction was offered.
Despite these efforts, many of the
newer immigrants felt no kinship with
the better-established and more "exclu-
"If there is antisemitism in the world;
then let it not bring upon us the per-
verse reaction of self-contempt and of
the rejection of the best
at our disposal through
indifference or flight. Let
us fight the anti-
semite...Let us keep our
own house in order as a
Jewish community and
in our dealings with our
non-Jewish neighbor. Let
the three ideals of
Judaism — learning,
character and piety — shine in our
social and business relationships so
that we may be the bearers and the
exemplars of the best in our Jewish
heritage. In an unstable world, we Jews
in America, we Jews in Detroit, have a
great challenge and a great opportuni-
ty. Let us make the most of our privi-
leges as Americans and as Jews."
Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer, 1945
sive" German Jewish community. The
Jews of Temple Beth El had moved
from their immigrant roots to being as
close to the American mainstream as
Jews could be. The new rabbi Beth El
hired in 1898 best exemplified this.
The Franklin Years
Rabbi Leo M. Franklin inherited 136
congregants when the Viennese-born
Rabbi Grossman resigned from Beth El.
(The Jewish population of Detroit was
about 10,000 then.) Franklin preached
_ his inaugural sermon on Jan. 27, 1899.
In 1900, a semicentennial was orga-
nized and a history of the congregation,
written by Franklin, was printed. On
April 3, 1901, the temple purchased the
site for the first of three buildings it
would build. Now the Bonstelle
Theatre of Wayne State University, the
"Eliot Street" building was designed by
Albert Kahn, a Temple member and
noted architect.
As another first, in 1904, Rabbi
Franklin abolished the selling of seats in
the new sanctuary. Now members
could sit wherever they chose. Temple
Beth El was the first congregation in
the United States to institute this inno-
vation. Well into the 1920s, Rabbi
Franklin received mail from other con-
gregations asking how the "seating
experiment" was going. For Rabbi
Franklin, it was a symbol of American
democracy in the synagogue. As he
insisted, there should be no rich man's
seat and no poor mans seat before the
Almighty.
In another effort for "religious
democracy," Rabbi Franklin helped
organize Detroit's first
Interdenominational Thanksgiving
Service at the Detroit Opera House in
1902. He also was instrumental in
founding the Detroit Roundtable, an
interfaith clergy organization now
known as the Interfaith Roundtable of
the National Conference of
Community and Justice.
Much of this was Rabbi Franklin's
way of defining Reform Judaism as ser-
vice to any community, education
about Judaism to other communities
and faith within his own four walls. By
1919, Rabbi Franklin was president of
the Central Conference of American
Rabbis, helping to shape American
Reform Judaism on the national scene.
When the new building opened, ser-
vices for congregants expanded. Many
of the auxiliaries and programs of the
present-day Temple Beth El originated
in this era. Rabbi Franklin sought to
make the temple central to the lives of
its members, a constant theme for Beth
El's 20th-century rabbis. While atten-
dance at services increased, it was not a
high proportion of the total member-
ship. In 1910, when the congregation
celebrated its 60th anniversary, its 422
members made it one of the largest in
the city.
that comes across
loud and clear."
- LE MONDE
"BEAUTIFUL!
A highly polished
look at the plight of
women within
Orthodox Judaism."
- S. Schwartz, TIME OUT NEW YORK
"DEVASTATING •
Carries a sharp sting
and an enduring chill"
- Jessica Winter, VILLAGE VOICE
A FILM BY
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