moments
Jewish Contributions to Humanity
#4 in a series
JAN. 7
Ozeran
Jonathan and Abby (Goldstein) Ozeran of Chicago, Ill.,
are thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter, Ella
Madelyn. Sharing in their joy are Bubbie and Zaydie,
Francine and Ira Ozeran of West Bloomfield; Nana and
Pop, Anna and Gary Lichtenstein of Highland Park, Ill.; and
Gigi and Papa, Susie and Michael Goldstein of Chicago.
Ella is named in loving memory of cherished great-grand-
parents (E)velyn Goldstein, (L)eonard Goldstein, (L)ena
Obar, (A)dam Obar, and Muriel and Morris Smith.
Maxwell Philip
Victor (Meir Peleh)
of Huntington
Woods will be called
to the Torah as a bar
mitzvah on Saturday,
Feb. 3, at
Congregation
Victor
Shaarey Zedek, in
Southfield. Joining in
his celebration will be his parents,
Rachel and Hugh Victor, older sister
Sydney and proud grandparents Joyce
and Saul Rubenstein. Max is also the
grandson of the late Janet and Robert
Victor.
Max is a student at Norup
International School in Oak Park. As
part of his mitzvah projects, he volun-
teered with PeerCorps Detroit, where
he was involved in gardening, summer
camps with youth from Detroit and
occasional mural painting.
Smith 70th
A
rt and Dotty Smith of West
Bloomfield were married
Jan. 27, 1948, at Adat Shalom
in Detroit. Arthur was a certified
public accountant. Dotty was a spe-
cial education teacher who began
her teaching career in Dearborn.
They have two children, Mindy and
Fredric Smith, and four grandchil-
dren, Jenny Crakes, Alec and Hunter
Ramsay-Smith, and Isaac Smith.
The couple will celebrate their 70th
wedding anniversary with friends
and family at a luncheon. •
Wartel-Weiss
K
aryn and Danny Wartel,
and Andi and Mark Weiss
are thrilled to announce
the engagement of their children
Elyse Wartel and Scott Weiss.
Grandparents are the late
Jeannette and the late Ruben
Wartel, and the late Lois and the
late Arthur Felinski, Rose and
Mark Hechler, and the late Betty
and the late Sidney Weiss.
A 2019 wedding is planned. •
Mollie Elisabeth
Weiner will chant
from the Torah as
she becomes a bat
mitzvah at Temple
Israel in West
Bloomfield on
Friday, Feb. 2. She
Weiner
will be joined in cel-
ebration by proud
parents, Kara and A.J. Weiner, and
brother Charlie. She is the loving
granddaughter of Annette and the late
Lee Friedman, and Karen and Jerry
Weiner.
Mollie is a student at West Hills
Middle School in Bloomfield Hills.
For her most meaningful mitzvah
project, she volunteered at Temple
Israel, where she assisted in providing
the meals for the residents of South
Oakland Shelter.
How Jewish Health
Care Reformers
Raised the Bar for
Medical Treatment.
ABRAHAM FLEXNER (1866-1959) b . Louisville, Kentucky.
The academic reformer.
Abraham Flexner was an unlikely candidate
to be one of the greatest reformers of American
medicine. After all, he wasn’t a doctor and had
no medical training. And yet, his proposal to re-
form health education created the medical school
system that remains with us today. A high school
teacher and principal, Flexner first made waves in
1908 when he published a book critical of Ameri-
can universities—particularly their penchant to
prioritize research over schooling and their prefer-
ence for large lectures instead of intimate class-
room settings. That book, “The American Col-
lege,” received the attention of the president of the
Carnegie Foundation, Henry Pritchett, who then
commissioned Flexner to write the “Flexner Re-
port,” a 1910 analysis of American medical train-
ing. His report called on schools to raise the bar on
admission and graduation standards, follow mainstream scientific and medical theories, take
control of clinical training in hospitals, and to be subjected to stronger state medical licensing
regulations. In the 25 years following the publication of his report, more than half of America’s
medical schools, including a number of the handful that existed for black students, closed or
merged—he wanted to cut the annual number of medical school graduates from 4,400 to
2,200. His impact on American education continued in 1930 when he helped found the Insti-
tute for Advanced Study, a postdoctoral research center in Princeton.
LILLIAN WALD (1867-1940) b. Cincinnati, Ohio.
Raised among the wealthy, she toiled among the needy.
Raised in relative wealth, Lillian Wald chose to live a life dedicated to those who lived in
poverty—and in the process she helped create lasting in-
stitutions in America that fulfilled and still fulfill her vision of
supporting the needy. After training as a nurse in New York,
Wald eschewed the traditional hospital path to instead set
up shop on the Lower East Side, where donors supported
her mission of providing free medical care for poor com-
munities that had few medical resources. The term “public
health nurse” was first used in connection with her clinic.
Her nurse shop—which added dozens of staff—became
the Henry Street Settlement, which exists today and annu-
ally aids about 50,000 low-income New York residents, with
health care being but one of its many social services. In ad-
dition to this local triumph, Wald partnered Henry Street with
a major insurance company, which inspired countless other
insurance companies to embark on social service projects.
She was also a founding member of the NAACP, and hosted the group’s founding meeting
at Henry Street. A female leader at a time when few women held leadership roles in America,
Wald was a relentless activist in concretely improving the lives of the working poor. She was
also a co-founder in the early 1900’s of the National Child Labor Committee, a group that was
chartered by Congress in 1907 and, to this day, exposes and fights cases of child labor in the
United States.
Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel
jn
February 1 • 2018
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