Opinion
Oh Those Mumford Years!
A
t some point in the
not-too-distant
future, if all goes
according to plan, a wreck-
ing ball will swing through
the blue facade of Mumford
High School on Wyoming
Avenue and an important
institution in the history of
Jewish Detroit will crumble to
the ground. A new Mumford,
budgeted to cost $55 million,
will rise on the same site, but
it will not be the same.
Of course, it hasn't been the same for
a while. The student body, now almost
entirely African-American, at one time
was black and Jewish — and nothing else.
I sometimes tell people that, until I got
to college, I thought all Christians were
black. I wasn't particularly ignorant; that
was just a logical conclusion from my
experience in the Mumford class of 1966.
A look at the yearbooks of that era reveals
page after page of black faces interspersed
with equal numbers of Rosenthals,
Sternbergs and Schwartzes.
"Our class was probably 50 percent
Jewish, 49.9 percent black and three
Catholics who got lost on their way to U.
of D. High," recalls attorney Steve Fishman,
another 1966 graduate.
Despite what we might have thought at
the time, the Jewish nature of Mumford
was no accident of fate or housing pat-
terns. During the 1950s, Detroit school
authorities responded to a growing black
population by gerrymandering district
lines to keep some schools all white and
make others all black.
They also manipulated the Jewish-gen-
tile balance. An official effort was made,
a federal judge noted in a 1970 court case
(Bradley v. Milliken), to separate Jews and
gentiles within the system, the effect of
which was that Jewish youngsters
went to Mumford High School
and gentile youngsters went to
Cooley." Later, as the city's black
population continued to increase,
black students were funneled to
Mumford while Ford High School
was "kept white as a matter of
basic policy."
Adding insult to insult,
Mumford was largely internally
segregated, with the "college prep"
classes mostly white and the
"business" and "general" classes
mostly black.
We Jewish kids had no idea how this
had all been arranged, but the result
was that we found ourselves in a cocoon
with our own kind. We were (mostly)
the grandchildren of immigrants from
Eastern Europe. Our fathers had served
in World War II and now were small busi-
nessmen or professionals. Our mothers
were (mostly) housewives.
We sat side by side in Mumford class-
rooms, joined AZA and BBG and USY,
and attended one another's bar mitzvahs
(bat mitzvahs were almost unknown)
at Temple Israel and Shaarey Zedek and
a dozen other synagogues, all of them in
Detroit. We prepared for the bar mitzvah
parties by taking dance lessons at Joe
Cornell's studio a block from Mumford and
stopped on the way home for a nickel pickle
plucked from the barrel at Mrs. Grunt's
market.
"Most of my friends from religious
school were also at Mumford," recalls
David Syme (Mumford '66), whose late
father, M. Robert Syme, was a rabbi at
Temple Israel.
David, who is now a concert pianist,
actually found this all a bit too much. "I
wanted to erase the constraints of being a
sheltered rabbi's son in a sheltered Jewish
community," he says.
In reaction, in his 20s
he joined a rock band
in Arizona and briefly
moved to Hazard, Ky.,
where he played "Amazing
Grace" in Baptist churches
every Sunday.
Others embraced
the Jewishness of it all,
including David's older
brother Daniel (Mumford
'63), who is now the
rabbi at Temple Beth El
in Bloomfield Township,
and a girl named Doris
Seligson (Mumford '67),
who, when she was 13,
told her rabbi at Beth
Aaron in Detroit that she
Mumford High's heyday as a school with a high Jewish
wanted to be a rabbi, too.
enrollment peaked in the 1960s.
"He told me',' she says,
"(The best you can do,
school, a whole culture of high-achieving.
honey, is marry one."'
And we were raised with good consciences; a
Doris accepted that at the time, but her
lot of us are still involved with social causes:"
interest in joining a helping profession
One such cause is Mumford itself. A
grew when, as a member of Mumford's
Mumford alumni association that is largely
Future Teachers Club, she mentored teen-
age Jewish refugees from Romania. During devoted to raising scholarship money for
current students has already received some
the Six-Day War in 1967, she skipped
support from Jewish alumni. It is eager to
classes to hole up in the office of the
hear from more (and can be found at the
school's literary magazine, where she and
Web site mumfordhsdetroitalumni.org ).
her fellow editors listened to radio news
In reaching out, it is drawing on a large
from the Middle East.
reservoir of goodwill. "Mumford was the
Eventually, history caught up with Doris
best time of my life says Steve Fishman,
as well; now known as Dorit Edut, she
who was a star player on the school's bas-
proved her own rabbi wrong and became
ketball team. "It was the most fun I ever
one herself.
had. Taking the bus down to the Motown
One positive aspect of Jewish culture
Revue, going to Top Hat for 12 cent ham-
that permeated Mumford was its empha-
burgers ... the years 1963 to 1966 were
sis on achievement. "It was a great school
the best time in the history of Detroit to
academically," says Gilda Zalenko Jacobs,
be a kid." E
who graduated in 1966 and is now a state
senator from Huntington Woods.
Ed Zuckerman lives in Manhattan Beach, Calif.
"There was a premium on doing well in
ing of "rational" and "pragmatic" in this
case is really "cowardly" and that is the
real underlying philosophy of the "left."
This fear has nothing to do with rational-
ity; but in order to win votes it is packaged
as pragmatism.
The only thing that stands in the way of
the coward's success is the competition of
the rationally courageous nationalist who
exposes the coward's underlying inclination.
In order to eliminate the competition, the
so-called "rationalists" dehumanize nation-
alists and make them out to be nothing but
irrational zealous monkeys with beards.
The jury is still out on which direction
will save Israel — appeasement or bold
independence. However, as a society, we
should not stand for the systematic dele-
gitimization of the nationalist perspective.
Moreover, those who believe in a more
autonomous Israel should vehemently
oppose being branded as irrational.
Nationalism is rationalism; and in
-
Rationalist from page 25
promise of a "New Middle East" has been
unraveled and replaced by a tightening
noose of angry radicalism, not to mention
that nuclear-tipped madman in Iran ...
Indeed, the current political genuflect-
generation has pushed us down a 40-year
slippery slope in which we have lost land,
prestige and deterrence. Yet leading pro-
prostration politicians shamelessly pro-
claim that pragmatism is on their side.
So why do "rationalists" promote bend-
ing to international whims time and time
again despite consistent failures? Maybe
it is not so much rationality that guides
these people as it is fear. Maybe the mean-
26 July 15 •2010
this pressing time, it is the pragmatic
direction forward. El
Yishai Fleisher is a lecturer, show host, analyst
and columnist. He is founder of Kumah, serves
as director of Israel National Radio (Arutz
Sheva) and is the host of the "Yishai and
Friends" radio program.
Yishai Fleisher will speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, July 22, at Young Israel of Oak
Park, 15140 W.10 Mile. Part of his month-long "Eye on Zion" U.S. speaking
tour (eyeonzion.com ). Dinner with speaker, 5:30 p.m. at YIOP. Cost $18;
reservations (248) 967-3655. Information: Mark Segel myalesegel@comcast.
net , (248) 208-2773. Sponsored locally: Ann Newman. Organizer: Yocheved
Seidman of Israel's Manhigut Yehudit. Co-sponsors announced at event.