looking back

From the DJN
Davidson
Digital Archive

The Free Employment Service was started by the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in 1926 and began as an
employment bureau for Jewish girls and women (it later extended services to men). When the YWHA became part
of the Jewish Community Center in 1933, the service was carried over. The service became so popular during the
Depression that, in 1935, a full-time employee, Miss Anna Rose Hersh, was hired to run the office. Here, people
wait to speak to Miss Hersh, August 1936. •

T

he front page of the
July 4, 2003, issue of
the JN featured only
one big image, that of Rabbi
Sherwin Wine. And I was
intrigued, especially because
once I dove inside that issue,
I found a lengthy five-page
story on the founder of
Humanistic Judaism.
Mike Smith
I knew that Wine founded
Detroit Jewish News
a branch of Judaism and
Foundation Archivist
that he was rabbi at the
Birmingham Temple, but
that was about it. The story about Wine in the
JN is really comprehensive, to say nothing of
the 1,469 other pages in the Davidson Digital
Archives that are cited from a search using his
name. The article was published when Wine
retired in 2003, which was also the 40th anni-
versary of Humanistic Judaism.
Wine was born and raised in a Conservative
Jewish home in Detroit and, as a child, attend-
ed services at Congregation Shaarey Zedek.
“My father observed Shabbat and I went to
services because he went — and I loved being
with him …” Wine graduated from Detroit’s
Central High and then earned bachelor’s
and master’s degrees from the University of
Michigan (where his personal papers reside
at the Bentley Historical Library). Wine also
stated, “I grew up in intensely anti-Semitic
times” and “I was very much aware of my
Jewish identity.”
Wine became a most controversial rabbi.
By all accounts, he was a deep thinker and,
whether one liked his ideas or not, Wine was a
respected figure in Metro Detroit. Humanistic
Judaism now has branches around the world,
and the Birmingham Temple is still operating
at the same location since 1971.
The history of Sherwin Wine, like those of
many other renowned rabbis from Detroit,
such as Morris Adler or Leo M. Franklin,
deserve more than a few words in this column.
You’ll find plenty more to read on Wine and
many other rabbis, temples and congregations
in the Davidson Digital Archives. •

Want to learn more?
Go to the DJN Foundation archives,
available for free at www.djnfoundation.org.

Courtesy Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives

50

June 28 • 2018

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