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.