Cover Story
an
Scott Kaufman's
quest is involving
the uninvolved
through travel to Israel.
Mission
we look at four
n ewish Detroiters
o have stepped up to
' ership, four of many
willing to devote
y, four who have
erence in their
avors.
of Detroit's Jewish
ornes down to who's
`Hineni,' I'm going to
obert Aronson, chief
icer of the Jewish
etropolitan Detroit.
man (this page),
rn oltz (page 93),
s (page
94) ) and . Gary
94) have said,
it stories kick off an
icIN feature on this
of Jewish leaders.
Kepi Guten Cohen,
development editor
4/26
2002
92
HARRY KIRS BAUM
Staff Writer
e wasn't always as seriously involved
in the Jewish community as he is
now, but a trip to Israel a dozen years
ago gave him a cause.
Scott Kaufman, 35, of Huntington Woods
works hard — and in his own way — to pump
up other young Jewish adults to get involved in
the community through trips to Israel. He wants
them to be as moved to action as he was.
Kaufman remembers taking his first trip to
Israel in 1990, mainly because it sounded like
summer camp. And the former counselor at
Camp Seagull in Charlevoix was all over that.
After spending a month backpacking on his
own through Eastern Europe, including a visit to
Auschwitz, the German death camp, he joined
25 other Detroiters on a United Jewish Appeal
singles' mission in Tel Aviv.
On the fourth or fifth day of the trip, he was
at a mission party in a disco at 11 p.m. when the
DJ announced that everybody should board the
buses. A group of Russian refugees were arriving
to their new homeland, and mission-goers were
going to greet them. When the bus dropped off
the refugees on the tarmac, Kaufman went off to
observe on his own.
"The images were very much like what I had
just seen at Auschwitz," he said. "They were
dressed the same, and from the same cities."
In his mind's eye, the sight of these immigrants
getting on the tram to the airport terminal for a
fresh start in Israel contrasted sharply with the
thought of Jews getting off the trains to their
deaths in Auschwitz.
"It was a very powerful image," he said. "It was
at that moment, when 'We were slaves in the
land of Egypt,' became more than just words."
When he returned to Detroit, Kaufman, the
University of Michigan graduate with "a Joe
DiMaggio streak of bad attendance," began to
concentrate on his real estate development career.
An early venture was helping to start up Joe
Dumars Fieldhouse, a league-sports and enter-
tainment complex in Shelby Township, of which
he now is a general partner.
Increasing Involvement
Kaufman didn't come from a home with a long
history of involvement with the Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. His parents
didn't become active until the late 1980s, when
they went with friends on a mission to Israel and
Russia. "Growing up, it wasn't a big part of our
house," he said.
,In 1995, Kaufmar? went on a UJA Young
Adult Mission and took some friends. Watching
their reaction to the sights, sounds and emotions
of Israel moved Kaufman all over again, only this
time he found the time to act. On his return, he
began to heavily promote missions to Israel.
"I felt like it's the most effective tool we have
to connect young Jewish people," he said. "We
didn't live through the galvanizing moments like
the war for independence or the Six-Day War."
To be more effective, he wrote up a business
plan for his goal of getting young adults to
Israel.
"Make it cool and hip and market it," he said.
"We used to get 20 people a year from Detroit
on the average. My goal was 200."
On his own time, he spoke in Phoenix, Las
Vegas and Kansas City, exporting his model to