metro
Jewish Detroit
Expert to explore Jewish
connections to the Motor City.
Yaffa Klugerman
Special to the Jewish News
J
ews lived in Detroit, most left it, and now many are trying to
revitalize it. What lies behind these contradictory decisions
to live, to leave and even, perhaps, to return?
Lila Corwin Berman will discuss the answer to these and many
other questions about Jews and urbanization during the Jean &
Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies' 25th annual David W. Belin
Lecture in American Jewish Affairs at the University of Michigan.
The talk, "The Jewish Romance with the
Modern City: Loving, Leaving, and Reforming,"
will take place on Thursday, March 12, at 7 p.m. at
Forum Hall, Palmer Commons, at 100 Washtenaw
Ave. in Ann Arbor. The event begins with a recep-
tion at 6:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Corwin Berman holds Temple University's
Murray Friedman Chair of American History as
associate professor in the Department of History
Lila Corwin
and Director of the Feinstein Center for American
Berman
Jewish History. She is the author of the award-
winning Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and
the Creation of an American Public Identity.
Her talk will focus on themes explored in her forthcoming book,
Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit,
slated for publication in April. The book examines the role that urban-
ism played in crafting American Jewish identity. It argues, she says,
"that instead of abandoning urbanism when Jews left the cities, they
actually refashioned it into a different political, economic and cultural
identity:'
The lecture represents her effort to explore Jews' connection to cit-
ies in the modern period. Detroit will figure prominently because,
as Corwin Berman notes, it provides the paradigmatic example of a
"white flight" city, where much of the white community abandoned
the city and decamped to the suburbs within a very short period.
But there were other reasons she chose to concentrate on the Motor
City
"I married into a family that's from Detroit:' she said. "So there was
a sense that this was a city that I wanted to learn more about because I
had a [personal] connection to it."
Her research of Detroit also began with being in the right place
at the right time. Corwin Berman was a fellow during the Frankel
Institute's inaugural year in 2007-2008 when she realized that she
wanted to write about the journey from city to suburb, and what that
meant for Jews' political, economic, religious and cultural conscious-
ness.
"There was an element of serendipity:' she said, "that I happened to
be close to Detroit when I was starting this project:'
Ultimately, Corwin Berman hopes that her lecture will help people
better understand Jews' relationship with cities.
"It's not just based on nostalgia," she remarked. "It's really framed by
legal structures and economic policies, some of which had very racist
origins ... [People] need to grapple with how these policies created
decades of white disinvestment from cities, and how they need to be
changed in order to create a different kind of base to the American
public in cities."
Writers' Workshop Author
To Launch His First Novel
Author Erwin Posner will launch his
new book, A3 — a Mystery of Intrigue,
at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 8, at the Jewish
Community Center in Oak Park. He
will donate profits from the sale of his
mystery to benefit the JCC Writer's
Workshop.
Posner is a regular attendee at the
workshop, which is led by Robert
Palmer. Posner, a Southfield pharmacist,
will talk about how to self-publish your
work on a modest budget. This is his
first novel. Palmer, founder of the Raven
Writing Studios in Farmington Hills,
will discuss "discovering the writer that
is inside you" by using techniques he
developed using a stepped workshop
method.
Posner's book is the third in a series
of stories he has written called the
"Kiddush Club" series. The new book
takes the reader to Russia, Cambodia
and the capitals of major cities across the
globe. The problems that evolve need to
be dealt with by cabinet members in the
U.S. executive branch, the FBI, CIA and
by the National Security Adviser.
The event is free.
❑
Hillel Day School's Annual Dinner
2015 DREAM MAKER AWARD HONOREES
THE AUDREY AND WILLIAM FARBER FAMILY
2015 RABBI
COB SEG A ( "I) A
If A
D
'• N1
2015 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARDEES
Ifl
Y SAFRAN
DR. CHARLIE SCHWARTZ
HILLEL
DAY SCHOOL
Mind and soul. Better together.
For more information contact
Amy Schlussel at aschlussel©hillelday.org or 248.539.148
00000
18
March 5 • 2015