metro »
continued from page 14
police offi cers have a
common concern: They
both have more reason
to fear for their lives than
most of the rest of us.”
— Jeremy Salinger
continued from page 14
John Hardwick
“Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘The ultimate mea-
sure of a man is not where he stands in moments
of comfort and convenience, but where he stands
at times of challenge and controversy,’” Greenstein
said. “We need our politicians to be leaders and not
pander by immediately blaming the police as racists
when there is an altercation.”
Others feel better communication is key.
Martina said people need to “listen deeply to one
another and build empathy. Otherwise, the fear and
frustration between communities of color and law
enforcement will simply escalate.”
Schwartz said, “All Americans
have a moral imperative to speak
out and demand an end to any
abuse of fellow citizens. Jews in
particular stood with African
Americans during the 1960s civil
rights struggle and should do so
today.”
Dr. Richard Krugel, presi-
Jonathan
dent of the Jewish Community
Schwartz
Relations Council, said, “We are
a people who are sadly all too familiar with the ugly
consequences of prejudice and discrimination. This
cannot be the new normal for
the America we love. The Jewish
community is compelled to act
out of respect for the dignity of
all human life and pledge to work
to improve race relations, sup-
port police-community relations
and to combat the rising levels of
violence in our society.”
Richard Krugel
Gamalski said, “We need to
listen to and raise up the expe-
riences of people of color. We need to talk to our
parents, grandparents, children and congregations
about racism and violence and to urge one another
towards compassionate action.”
Brenda Naomi Rosenberg
of Bloomfield Hills, who
describes herself as an “agent
for change,” said, “We are at a
critical moment in history. We
can turn our sadness and grief
into action. We can choose to
self-destruct or create new dis-
course and be in the presence
Brenda
of the best of our humanity.”
Rosenberg
*
16 July 28 • 2016
article quotes community members
expressing outrage over the decision to
move the Jewish Federation and Jewish
Community Council from 163 Madison
in Detroit to Maple and Telegraph in
Bloomfield Township.
“From my point of view, it sends a
bad message to the Detroit commu-
nity, and it’s a bad move,” said Stanley
Winkelman, the late owner of the for-
mer Winkelman’s clothing store chain.
“It’s very important that the community
takes extra efforts to strengthen black-
Jewish relationships so that the physical
move when it comes will be irrelevant.”
According to Horwitz, “The
Federation move was largely the result
of these agencies going where their
donors and volunteers had moved 20
years earlier. Yet, the optics were of a
community leaving Detroit in its rear-
view mirror.
“Sinai Hospital remained the Jewish
community’s most visible presence
in Detroit, with the vast majority of
its patient census comprising African
Americans from the city’s Northwest
quadrant,” Horwitz says. “However,
Sinai endured significant financial
problems and, by the mid-1990s, was
sold to the Detroit Medical Center,
which attached the Sinai brand to its
Grace and Huron Valley hospitals and
took the wrecking ball to the hospital
facility.”
The
Intersection
Project
REPAIR THE WORLD
Ben Falik, co-founder of the nonprofit
group Summer in
the City who now
serves as manager of
Detroit service initia-
tives for the Jewish
social action group
Repair the World, is
among those work-
ing hard to build new
bridges. Since 2002,
Ben Falik
he has been bring-
ing together diverse
groups of young volunteers to perform
community service projects in Detroit
in a respectful and inclusive way.
“I think that at the community level
the relationship between the Jewish and
black communities is not robust,” Falik
says. “There are some strong individual
relationships and some projects that
bring us together, but I don’t think we
JOHN HARDWICK
matter. Both blacks and
hoodlums who were bent on stealing,
pillaging, looting business houses and
resorting to arson … The looting and
destruction of property were not aimed
at Jewish businesses, it was agreed. But
in the path of the fire and bombing,
looters succeeded in wiping out many
small firms their Jewish owners had
spent years building up.”
In the 12th Street area alone, 79
Jewish businesses
were reduced to 39
almost overnight.
Martin Herman
watched it all unfold
but never left the city.
He came to Detroit
in 1962 to work at
WSU as an assistant
Martin Herman
professor in Monteith
College’s Division of
Humanistic Studies.
He has lived in the same house near
Curtis and Warrington for 50 years.
“I understand why people left, and I
don’t bear a grudge; I don’t have a chip
on my shoulder,” says the longtime
member of the Isaac Agree Downtown
Synagogue (IADS), the only free-stand-
ing synagogue remaining in Detroit.
“They made their choice, and I made
my choice. I stayed partly because of
principle, partly because it was conve-
nient for me to get to work; I am very
committed to the city.”
Karen “Chava” Knox is an African
American/Jewish Detroiter and presi-
dent of Eden Gardens
Block Club, which
created a thriving
community garden
in collaboration with
IADS. She grew up in
Detroit, moved out of
state for several years,
and returned home to
Chava Knox
the city’s East Side.
“We have open
conversations about
race and other issues in Detroit, but
I think it has a long way to go,” Knox
says. “A lot of blacks say the Jews left
us. They feel like after the ’67 riot, Jews
left Detroit and abandoned blacks, and
I think that’s where a lot of the resent-
ment comes from.”
Today, there is not much of a Jewish
institutional presence remaining in the
city. An Aug. 31, 1990, Jewish News
JOHN HARDWICK
“The lives of all people
are at the place of engagement, solidar-
ity and support that we want to be. I’m
not entirely sure why.
“There is a lot of good energy and
a lot of anecdotal work going on, but
I think if 1967, as we understand it,
tells us anything, it’s how little differ-
ent groups of people understood each
other’s experiences.”
He believes if we are going to grow
together, we need to open up and try
to understand each other’s experiences
as ancestral Detroiters — a sentiment
echoed by Flowers and others.
“There is a great racial divide in
America,” Flowers says. “There is some-
thing called white privilege which is
different than white racism. Our Jewish
brothers and sisters are the recipients
of white privilege without realizing it.
They are able to move and gravitate and
go far in society because of the color of
their skin — they’ve been able to suc-
ceed in part because they’re white.”
“My message to our Jewish broth-
ers and sisters is make your presence
known in the inner city,” he continues.
“Don’t just come for the symphony and
leave. Get involved with education,
creating jobs, economic development
— take the time to hire some African
American people. Don’t just talk about
it from afar. Work in terms of hands-on
experiences.”
Summer in the City provides the
type of hands-on involvement Flowers
describes. The program attracts approx-
imately 200 volunteers per day over
eight weeks, bringing together church-
es, schools, block clubs, city agencies
and others to landscape, clean up city
parks, create green spaces, construct
murals and more.
“I’m optimistic,” Falik says. “I think
what Repair the World does is a great
point of entry to get people together.
We really push for serving with oth-
ers; doing with rather than doing for
is a totally different and critical value
proposition.
“Solidarity is not inherent to service.
We have to go further than that and
look critically at our own narratives
and experiences and really try to chart
a path forward. I would say we’ve got
miles to go before we sleep.”
*
Nearly 50 years after a police raid at 12th and Clairmount streets ignited violence and car-
nage, the Detroit Journalism Cooperative, which includes the Detroit Jewish News, is exploring
whether conditions that produced the civil unrest have improved for Detroit residents in a
series of stories called “The Intersection.” Look for future stories from the JN on this project
throughout 2016. To see all the stories done by our partner media agencies, go to www.
detroitjournalism.org.