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From David-Horodok To Hillel

M

arching with this year's Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit's graduates were five stu-
dents not only looking ahead, but — in terms of
the Old-Country roots they shared — already
the generation of the future.
Among the students attired in blue caps
and gowns at the June 11 graduation were
Danniell Nadiv, Samantha Superstine, Adam
Pogoda, Benjamin Friedman and. Jesse Gross,
the great-grandchildren of neighbors who
grew up in the Russian shtetl (village) of
David-Horodok, in what is now Belarus.
Three grads, Danniell, Samantha and
Adam share another link, says Danniell's
SHELLI
mom, Shelley Nadiv of Huntington Woods:
LIEBMAN
Both Hillel classmates' great-grandfathers
DORFMAN
were themselves classmates in David-
Staff Writer
Horodok under the same rabbi, Rabbi
Avraham Tzvi HaCohain Kutnick.
Danniell, in fact, is related to the rabbi;
her great-grandfather, was his son.
Danniell's 88-year-old great-grandmother, Bessie Kutnick of
West Bloomfield, remembers her husband and Samantha's
great-grandfather when they were fellow students in David-
Horodok. "When they learned together, they were youngsters,
under the age of 13," she says.
In addition to the graduates and their siblings, 13 other fami-
lies currently involved at Hillel, as parents, students or staff,
have roots in David-Horodok. This year's Hillel ad book includ-
ed a full-page photo of 35 of them, with a caption describing,
"the importance of maintaining Jewish heritage from generation
to generation."
The David-Horodoker Organization has been around since
the 1920s when a group of some 35 Detroiters, who emigrated
from the small town, bonded together to help one another
adjust to American life and to help those who remained in their
native town. The group now boasts 500 member families.
Bessie Kutnick also found it significant that "the group is still
together." She also sees it as remarkable "that so many years
later, the great-grandchildren ended up in the same school." ❑

GRAPLIEWZ

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he Hebrew words tze dakah and mitzvah are
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Yiddish Limericks

A lawyer advised, "You'll regret it.
With verbal agreements, you'll sweat it."
He said, "Gring tsu zogen
Is soon shvare tszi trogen.*
If it's not in writing, forget it."

— Martha Jo Fleischmann

(idiomatic) easy to promise; hard to fulfill.

"I'm not particularly aware of other Jewish leaders
being shy about expressing their values and concerns,
nor would I expect them to be. I say what I think and
say what I believe.",
— Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement's
Union of American Hebrew Congregations, in a JTA
story about how he doesn't shy from controversy

"There is a moving significance of convening in
Spain. Five hundred years after the expulsion, here we
are again."
— Great Britain's Diana Lazarus, chair of the European
Council of Jewish Communities' General Assembly, held
in Toledo, Spain.

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6/22
2001