jews d

in
the

75th Anniversary

A

Eric Lefkofsky

s part of honoring 75 years of community
coverage, the Jewish News looked back at
some of the people who got their start
right here in Michigan. Today, they’re leaders
and innovators based around the country and
beyond who cherish their roots and the lessons
they carry with them from home.
Some know Detroit from its heyday; others
speak fondly of Midwest connections that forever
link them to a place of great familiarity, commu-
nity and Faygo pop. Many are involved in the con-
versation about rebuilding the city, and all are
cheering on efforts for a revitalized Detroit.
We set out to chat with Michiganders who’ve
gone on to do great things. People we contacted
for these profiles made themselves available in a
flash and with a smile to talk about their home-
town connections. They told stories about read-
ing the JN to stay up to date on community news
and about family members who never miss an
issue. And all that says something special about
what we’ve built over these past decades.

Notable
Detroiters

They still love the D … and the JN.

KAREN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ERIC LEFKOFSKY

Larry Brilliant

74

July 18 • 2017

jn

When Eric Lefkofsky thinks about sports teams,
the first ones to come to mind are the Detroit
Tigers, the Lions and the Pistons.
“That’s how I grew up,” says Lefkofsky, who lived
in the Detroit suburbs, graduated from Southfield-
Lathrup High School and headed to University
of Michigan for undergrad and law school. “It’ll
always be my hometown, and I’ll always have a
special connection to it.”
Lefkofsky remains tied to Temple Israel as well,
despite the fact he left Metro Detroit almost 25
years ago. “I have countless memories as a result of
belonging to Temple Israel,” he says. “I remain close
with Rabbi Loss and Rabbi Yedwab. So, it was a
great part of my childhood and I take that with me.”
He moved to Wisconsin in 1994 and then, in
1996, to Chicago, where he currently resides.
Michigan is still a frequent destination for
Lefkofsky, who has family in Metro Detroit and
comes to town for visits with relatives and friends,
celebrations and meetings.
As for other must-visits in the D, Lefkofsky, co-

founder and CEO of cancer-care-focused technol-
ogy company Tempus, co-founder and chairman
of Groupon, and founding partner of venture fund
Lightbank, says a Coney is high on his list.
Living in Chicago, he meets lots of people from
Michigan. “There’s an incredible sense of connec-
tion; you instantaneously have a bond with these
folks and it’s great,” Lefkofsky says.

LARRY BRILLIANT

Dr. Larry Brilliant fondly recalls growing up in
Detroit. “It was a very wonderful community;
anytime you’d walk into somebody’s house in
the Jewish community, they’d be reading the
newspaper,” he recalls.
At Mumford High School, students learned
about current affairs and history. “We were
taught it was OK to study history and try to
practice tikkun olam, which was the phrase
you’d hear over and over again — heal the
broken world, that was the job of every Jew, to
heal the word and help make the world a better
place — and Detroit was full of that idea.”
When he was a freshman at Mumford, he and
a group of other Jewish kids took buses to the
Central Methodist Church on Woodward, where
they joined the NAACP. He was later a sopho-
more at U-M in Ann Arbor when Martin Luther
King Jr. came to campus.
“These were the times of the Poor People’s
March and the anti-war movement, the civil
rights movement,” he says. “He spoke like
nobody I’d ever heard before.”
Brilliant left Detroit in 1969, when he gradu-
ated from Wayne State’s medical school. He
married his wife, who he met at a BBYO dance
when she was 15 and he was 16, and drove a van
with her to New York and then San Francisco.
Now a doctor and epidemiologist, his adven-
tures have taken him to Alcatraz, the prison off
San Francisco Bay, where he went to live with
a group of protesting Native Americans. He
delivered a baby where there was no water and
no electricity. The experience led to his playing
a young doctor in a Warner Brothers movie,
Medicine Ball Caravan, for which he traveled
extensively.
He has lived in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and India.
He studied in a Himalayan ashram and was
sent by his guru to work for the United Nations
on eradicating smallpox. Brilliant returned
to Detroit in 1977, where he got his master’s
degree in public health from U-M.
Brilliant is the acting chair of the Skoll Global
Threats Fund; co-founder of Seva, an interna-
tional, nonprofit health foundation, and of The
Well, a prototypic online community started in
1985 and still going; and former head of Google.
org. He has also taught at U-M.
While today he lives across the country in San
Francisco, Brilliant says he’s proud of the renais-
sance happening in Detroit. He was a student
representative to the first Detroit Renaissance
Committee started by Henry Ford II, he recalls.
“I’m sad it took so long and Detroit was in so
much pain for so long, but it really seems like
the time when Detroit is coming back, and I’m
just thrilled.”

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