Jewish Contributions to Humanity

#1 in a series

These Jewish
Scientists Gave
America Its
Military Edge.

RESPECTING THE SPACE

Ralph Zuckman had long been inter-
ested in cemeteries, and he had an
uncle who supervised the Beth Yehudah
Cemetery, when he came to Clover Hill
15 years ago. A co-founder of the Jewish
Cemetery Association of North America
and its first chair, as well as president
of the Michigan Cemetery Association,
he views his role as “steering people
through very difficult times. We’re just
here to try to help.”
“Everyone grieves differently,”
Zuckman notes, and he has pretty
much seen it all. Like the High
Holiday liturgy that cites how God
decides who should die by water and
who by fire, who by famine and who
by thirst, the way people respond
to death also is a kind of poem.
Zuckman has seen mourners who,
despite terrible injustices, find com-
passion, and those whose hardness
never waivers; those who remain
stoic and those who are “tormented
by death.”
Clover Hill is both beautiful and
solemn, a place Zuckman calls “holy
ground, and when you come here it’s
like walking into a synagogue. Every
grave here is treated with respect.
Dignity is of utmost importance.”
The cemetery has been designed
in such a way that there is no view
of unending headstones that all look
alike. Instead, some stones face a bit
to the left or to the right. There are
graves near a pond or in the nature
section. Some headstones are flat and
some stand high.
Many of Clover Hill’s most famous
figures are at the front, and some
have impressive family sections that
are difficult to miss. Max Fisher is
here, as is Eugene Applebaum and
A. Alfred Taubman. Rabbi Adler’s
headstone looks like an open book,
and former Shaarey Zedek Rabbi

Irwin Groner’s grave is topped by a
large black star. Another, older sec-
tion is home to some of the men who
helped establish the cemetery and
early members of Shaarey Zedek:
Isaac Saulson, who started the
Chevra Kadishah (burial society),
Cantor Abraham Minkowsky, sex-
ton Meyer Smith and D.W. Simon,
Detroit’s first Jewish city councilman.
In another area is Franklin Adell,
whose headstone is a tall, black
obelisk; he was the co-founder, with
his son, of The Word, the largest
African-American religious net-
work in the world. Officiators at his
funeral included Rabbi Harold Loss,
Cantor Harold Orbach, the Rev. Jesse
Jackson and Aretha Franklin. Not
too far down from Adell is where
Bill Davidson lies buried. Though
extraordinary in life, he opted for a
modest headstone. Davidson’s one
request, Zuckman says, was to be
buried near his parents.
When the day ends, the cemetery
entryway is closed and the dead lie
together behind the large fence that
encloses and protects them. The
streets empty of traffic; lights go off
in homes and in businesses. Dark
descends, and the wind sings its
quiet song.
“Ever since the days of Abraham
and Sarah, the Jewish people have
ensured that their loved ones are
properly taken care of in death as in
life,” Rabbi Starr says. “By choosing
Clover Hill Park Cemetery, one con-
tinues in that loving tradition that
dates all the way back to the Torah
itself. May those who have entered
the gateway of the grave be granted
peace and rest in life eternal and may
we — through righteous living and
charitable deeds — do all that we can
to honor their memories in the land
of the living.” •

NIELS BOHR (1885-1962).
b. Copenhagen, Denmark. d. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Atoms for the Allies. Atoms for peace.
There is perhaps no one that deserves more credit
than Niels Bohr for contributing to our current under-
standing of the individual atom. In 1922, he received
the Nobel Prize for discovering the theory of the atom,
which matched with scientists’ observations of its
structure and behavior. After establishing the Institute
for Theoretical Physics in 1917 in Denmark (it’s now
known as the Niels Bohr Institute), Bohr constantly
improved upon his knowledge of the physical world,
making contributions to the theoretical field of quantum
physics, and researching the atomic nucleus and the
mechanism of nuclear fission. In August 1939, Bohr
published a paper that identified the Uranium-235 iso-
tope as being ideal for nuclear fission, a key discovery in the march to the development
of nuclear weapons. The following day Germany invaded
Poland, beginning World War II. Even after the Germans oc-
cupied Denmark in 1940, Bohr continued working in Copen-
hagen for three more years, until he got word that the Nazis
discovered his Jewish lineage, at which point he escaped to
Sweden, and then England, and then the United States. In
America, Bohr joined the Manhattan Project, the team of sci-
entists furiously working to make sure the U.S. developed the
atomic bomb before Germany.

HYMAN RICKOVER (1900-1986).

b. Makow Mazowiecki, Poland. d. Arlington, Virginia.
The nuclear visionary.
One of the longest serving sailors in U.S. Naval history (63 years), Hyman Rickover
forever changed the global maritime environment and
helped America maintain strategic naval dominance
during the Cold War. Known as the “Father of the
Nuclear Navy”, Hyman Rickover was born in 1900 as
“Chaim”, moved with his family to America as a child,
and at 18 enrolled in the Naval Academy in Annapolis
to study engineering, retiring from the service in 1982,
only four years before his
death. One of eight Naval
representatives working in
1946 on a nuclear project
at Oak Ridge National Lab-
oratory, Rickover was an
early proponent of nuclear
powered vessels—the admiral oversaw the 1954 construction
of the USS Nautilus, the first ever nuclear-powered submarine.
Rickover’s vision of a nuclear-powered Navy helped create a
maritime force able to protect shipping lanes without the con-
stant need to refuel with either coal or oil.

Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel

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April 5 • 2018

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