looking back: the 1980s
SPONSORED BY: DORFMAN CHAPEL
THE ECONOMIC CRISIS and rising in-
flation, along with foreign policy turmoil
and rising crime, led many Americans
to welcome the new conservatism
characterized by President Ronald
Reagan.
The public first learned of the crack
epidemic and a disease called “AIDS”
while the Cold War with the Soviet
Union began to thaw, leading to a new
openness that resulted in the toppling
of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunifi-
cation of Germany and the disintegra-
tion of the USSR.
The Jewish News continued its
coverage of events in Israel, which
by 1980, had endured four wars and
routine terrorist attacks by the Palestin-
ian Liberation Organization and other
radical Palestinian groups. In 1987,
riots broke out in the Gaza Strip and
quickly spread across the country after
a civilian Israeli truck driver accidental-
ly crashed into a refugee camp, killing
four. The violence came to be known as
the First Intifada and lasted for years.
During the 1980s, Metro Detroiters
would celebrate a World Series win
by the Detroit Tigers in 1984 and
back-to-back NBA championships by
the Detroit Pistons, who were owned
by Jewish businessman and philan-
thropist William Davidson and played at
the state-of-the-art Palace of Auburn
Hills he owned with associates Robert
Sosnick and David Hermelin.
Philip Slomovitz ended his long
tenure at the helm of the Jewish News
when he sold it in March of 1984 to a
group headed by Baltimore
Jewish Times owner Charles A.
Buerger. Arthur Horwitz was recruited
from the Baltimore Sun in 1986 to run
the operations of the Jewish News.
The paper held onto its Zionist roots
while dramatically increasing coverage
of local news and events. Among the
stories it reported were the construc-
tion of the I-696 Expressway that
threatened to cleave the Oak Park-
Southfield Jewish community in two,
the exit of the Jewish Federation and
Jewish Community Council from Detroit
to Bloomfield Township and the 1987
200,000-strong Freedom Sunday rally
in Washington for Soviet Jewry that
included planeloads of Detroiters. •
32
July 18 • 2017
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