metro

Revival from page 8

Park, "there is more Jewish unity; people
get along even with different folks. In the
same shul, you can find Jews from different
backgrounds:'
The Greenbergs have four children, ages
1-6. The oldest has begun studies at Yeshiva
Beth Yehudah.
"The school has academic strength, like
many other schools, but even more impor-
tant, it teaches that midos [ethical character
traits] come first:'
His son's teachers know every child and
are aware of the stressful lives of their
pupils. So teachers expect students to do
their homework, but show forgiveness for
students' academic challenges and validate
students who have responsibilities at home.
Dovid said they could have lived any-
where, and they chose Oak Park as a good
place to raise a family.
"People are influenced by their environ-
ment:' he said. "If your neighbors are into
jewelry, cars, fancy houses, it is a challenge
to raise your children not to have the values
of their neighbors:'
He finds that people here are, by and
large, more wholesome, into family and
Torah values.

Rabbi Mendel and Rikkel Shusterman and their children, Chaya Mushka and Shneur

"Huntington Woods has families of committed
Jews in about our same life situation ..."

— Dr. Joseph Sanders

Formerly Of Brooklyn

The new Harry and Wanda Zekelman
Campus of the Chabad Lubavitch Ohel
Yosef Yitzchak on 10 Mile Road greatly
expands the presence of the Chabad Yeshiva
in Oak Park.
As the school expanded, adding students
from across the country and across the
world, it also needed to add teachers and
administrators. Rabbi Mendel Shusterman
came from Brooklyn in 2013 to serve as
mashgiah/menahel (spiritual supervisor) of
the Yeshivah.
Shusterman explains his position this
way: He is responsible for knowing every
one of the students, for monitoring their
day-to-day progress, for seeing to their
well-being, their attitude and their satisfac-
tion. The rabbis who teach Torah to the
students have a more academic relationship
with them.
Shusterman grew up in Johannesburg,
South Africa. His wife, Rikkel, grew up in
Columbia, Md., where her parents serve as
the Chabad emissaries. The Shustermans
have two young children, a boy and a girl.
When he completed his studies in Crown
Heights, Brooklyn, Mendel considered
various opportunities in Jewish education
before choosing Oak Park, which he is still
getting to know.
"Unfortunately, I have not had the oppor-
tunity to really get to know the community:'
he says with a laugh. "The yeshivah is a
seven-day-a-week responsibility I am there
every day."
Even so, he says, "People are friendly.
Make eye contact with a person you do not
know, and he is likely to say 'Hi!' and ask
your name. That is a bit of a shock to some-
one coming from Brooklyn."

10

August 14 • 2014

Joining Relatives

Dr. Joseph and Leah Sanders came to the
Detroit suburbs to find a job.
Last year, when Sanders, a native of
Queens, N.Y., finished his training in anes-
thesiology and his cardiac anesthesiology
fellowship at Montefiore Medical Center
(Albert Einstein College of Medicine) in the
Bronx, he considered posts around the coun-
try, but only in places with robust Jewish
communities. The best offer came from
Henry Ford Hospital, where he now serves as
senior staff cardiac anesthesiologist.
Leah grew up in Crown Heights in
Brooklyn, earned her master's degree in physi-
cal therapy at the College of Staten Island, and
worked as a physical therapist in Westchester,
all in New York. She had a particularly sweet
reason to welcome the move to Metro Detroit:
her sister, Miriam, had just married a life-
long Detroiter and moved to Oak Park.
The Sanders have settled in Huntington
Woods, just a few blocks from Miriam and
her husband, Ted Rodgers.
They have two sons, Moshe, 3, and
Nathan, born on June 14.
"Huntington Woods has families of com-
mitted Jews in about our same life situa-
tion — young professionals with young
children:' Sanders says. "We have a natural
community there:'
Leah adds that she has found "nice, hon-
est, good people here, people who go out of
their way to help you."
She notes that the Rodgers family, her
brother-in-law's relatives, "always think about
us and have included us from the start:'
The Sanders family has connected to

Congregation Or Chadash, Aish HaTorah
and Young Israel of Oak Park. Their son,
Moshe, attends Gan Shalom, the early child-
hood center at Congregation Beth Shalom.

Recruiting New Families

If our area is, as Matthew Williams puts it,
"ripe for a Jewish revival; these families
illustrate some of the key factors: an afford-
able cost of living with Jewish amenities,
employment opportunities in the general
economy, in Jewish institutions or in por-
table Internet jobs, and the chain effect
of moving to live near relatives who have
moved to Metro Detroit.
The local Jewish schools also work to
attract newcomers.
"Akiva partners with the area Young Israel
congregations — an effort led by Howard
and Michal Korman of Young Israel of
Southfield — to publicize our school in the
Modern Orthodox national community
through the Orthodox Union's Community
Fair and informal avenues:' says Jordana
Wolfson, chief administrative officer of
Akiva Hebrew Day School in Southfield.
Wolfson says the Kormans have helped
60 families, with 90 children, move into the
neighborhood of Young Israel of Southfield.
"We try to connect personally with
families who we have heard are interested
in moving to Metro Detroit or have a fam-
ily connection and may consider moving
here Wolfson says. "We also intake several
calls a year from families looking for a solid
Modern Orthodox community and share
information and materials about our school
so they are informed about our strong pre-

K-12 grade Zionist, Modern Orthodox col-
lege preparatory program.
"Another avenue for bringing people to
the area is the national searches we under-
take for key administration and teaching
positions in the school. This coming school
year we have one administrator and his fam-
ily, and two teachers and their families mov-
ing to the area for jobs in our school. We try
to retain the teachers and administrators we
hire long term so they make Detroit their
home by offering a competitive salary and
opportunities for advancement:'
Rabbi Yitzchok Grossbard, dean of Yeshiva
Beth Yehudah, says, "Over the past few years,
we have had the pleasure of meeting with
dozens of young couples who were attracted
to our community because, as they have
heard from their friends and relatives, Detroit
is a wonderful place to live and raise a family.
"These young families are particularly
pleased with the education their children are
receiving in our local Jewish day schools and
notice and appreciate that we do whatever
we can to meet each child's individual and
specific needs:'

Attraction Of Oak Park

Mayor pro-tem of Oak Park Paul Levine
identifies several factors contributing to an
influx of observant Jews to his city. "Many
people just want to live
in a safe, clean and well-
managed city:' he says.
"And, we have an eruv."
For decades, Levine
says, Jewish commu-
nities in Detroit had
moved en masse every
few years, abandoning
Paul Levine
Jewish institutions in
the old neighborhood
and rebuilding them all in the new one;
but Jews have stayed in Oak Park. In fact,
Levine observes that "the last 30 years has
seen an exponential growth of Orthodox
Jews in Oak Park:'
He attributes this to "extraordinarily
stable demographics and the strong com-
mitment of Jewish Oak Parkers, which has
helped maintain Oak Park's vitality and
positioned us for economic growth:'
He also credits the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit's Neighborhood
Project, which has kept Jewish communal
institutions in place.
More than 20 years ago, the Federation
took a series of concrete steps to shore up
these institutions by expanding the Oak
Park Jewish Community Center, provid-
ing down-payment aid to home buyers in
the target area and assisting with the Beth
Jacob School's move to Oak Park.
Levine sees those decisions as the begin-
ning of the dynamic that now has resulted
in the most densely Jewish neighborhood
in the history of the Detroit area.
"Even Dexter-Davison [neighborhood of
Detroit] after the war did not have such a
large percentage of Jews:' he says.

❑