Emerald Food Servic ,e,,s Arts 15 Life Catering & Banquet Services Since 1988 In association with the are proud to announce the opening of the new Banquet & Event Center For The Love of Levi's Jeans' global popularity is apparent in crowds at Levi Strauss' birthplace. Bar and Bat Mitzvah's Wedding Receptions Bridal & Baby Showers Graduations Corporate Events RUTH E. GRUBER Jewish Telegraphic Agency T Reservations now being taken through 2004 This is a smoke and Liquorfree environment Call for details 248.689.2494 www.Emeraldfood.com tc9, .• t as s csa.t . • 749170 • WISHING OUR WONDERFUL FRIENDS & FAMILY A HEALTHY AND HAPPY SWEET NEW YEAR! L'SHANAH TOVAH 123 W. MAPLE BIRMINGHAM MON.-SAT. 10-6 THURS. 10-8 SUN. 12-5 248.203.1222 Give a gilt get a gift! Order a new gift subscription to the Jewish News for family or friends and get the New 1003/2004 REP tall (48) 351-5114. JN Sourcebook DETROITIEWISHHE54.5 JN GET YOUR ADVERTISING INTO Buttenheim, Germany his year marks a century and a half since a young German Jewish immigrant named Levi Strauss settled in San Francisco, became an American citizen and opened a dry goods store. It also marks 130 years since Strauss and an associate, Jacob Davis, took out a joint patent for "riveted waist- overalls" — heavy-duty work pants reinforced with metal rivets at the cor- ners of pockets, the base of the fly and other stress points. Today, we call their invention c,• jeans. A century after his death, Levi Strauss is a household name around the world. His invention has evolved from work trousers to fashion icon, becoming a symbol of freedom, youth, independence, pioneering spir- it and sometimes more than that. It all started in Buttenheim, Germany, a sleepy market town in northern Bavaria near Bamberg, where Levi Strauss was born on Feb. 26, 1829. Today, in the blue-trimmed, half- timbered house where he was born and raised, a museum honors Levi and what the museum calls "the most famous pair of trousers in the history of mankind." Opened in 2000, the Levi Strauss Museum, which has won several awards, is subtitled "Jeans and Cult." In less than three years it has attracted some 30,000 visitors from as far away as China to an out-of-the- way village of just 3,000. The only other attractions here are a pair of breweries, a baroque church and a rundown manor house. "We are very surprised at the num- ber of foreign visitors we get," said the museum's director, Tanja Roppelt. "Two days after we opened, we already had visitors from Japan. There is nothing else in Buttenheim, so if people come here they are com- ing for this museum." The popularity of the museum bears vivid witness to the way jeans have conquered the world, Roppelt said. GEAR 10/ 3 2003 call us to advertise 78 248.354.6060 "I would say that 95 percent of our visitors are wearing jeans," she said. "Most of them come because they have worn jeans all their lives and want to see how they came into exis- tence, how it all began." Pretty much no one in Buttenheim had any inkling that Strauss had been born here until 20 years ago, when a woman in Milwaukee organ- izing a festival about German immi- grants wrote to the former mayor asking for information. Local officials searching through Jewish birth and death records and emigration documents discovered that looms out of an alleyway to mark the entrance, and a big Levi's shop stands a few yards down the street. The museum uses audio-guide headsets, videos and wall panel dis- plays to recount the history of jeans and how they are made and marketed. It also includes a room full of glass cases exhibiting vintage Levi's dating back decades. Just as importantly, however, the museum traces the personal story of Levi Strauss himself, using an audio narration that presents much of the story as if seen through Strauss' own eyes. It tells the fascinating and little- — Portrait of Levi Strauss at the entrance to the Levi Strauss Museum in Buttenheim, Germany Strauss indeed had been born and lived his childhood in one of the old- est houses still standing in the village. Town authorities purchased the dilapidated building, which dates from 1687, and eventually restored it as close to its original form as possi- ble. A huge portrait of Strauss now known tale of 19th-century rural Jewish life in Bavaria as well as the epic saga of immigration to the United States. Jews settled in Buttenheim in the 17th century. A synagogue was built there around 1740, and by 1810 Jews made up one-fifth of Buttenheim's