16 | NOVEMBER 21 • 2019 

continued from page 14
educators through on-the-bus lessons. “We 
want students to take pride in learning 
how the Jewish community in Michigan 
came to be, and how Jewish values brought 
from the Old World shaped our history 
and the identity we still carry today.”
During the tour, teachers met with 
actors dressed in period costumes. At 
his campsite along the Detroit River 
at William G. Milliken State Park, 
pioneer Ezekiel Solomon spoke about 
his adventures delivering supplies to the 
British during the French and Indian Wars 
in the 1700s. At the Eastern Market, Sylvia, 
a young teen from the early 20th century, 
was the first of her family to be sent to 
America from her shtetl in Russia in hopes 
to earn enough for the rest of her family 
to make the passage. There, she sold the 
teachers apples for a penny. 
Teachers were then treated to a kosher 
hot dog lunch at the site of the old 
Tiger Stadium, where they ran the bases 
now used by the Police Athletic League 
and were told stories by a young Hank 
Greenberg who had to choose between 
playing in the World Series in 1934 or 
observing Yom Kippur. 
Sitting side by side at an outdoor picnic 
table making beeswax Shabbat candles 
were Robbie Terman, archivist for the 
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, 
and Jeanne Weiner, JHSM volunteer and a 
project adviser for the trip and workbook. 
“It’
s unusual for kids to be interested 
in history,” Weiner said. “But when they 
get older, they wish they had talked 
and interviewed their grandparents and 
parents about what life was like for them. 

We hope this trip will inspire our Jewish 
students to engage and go back to discover 
their family history.”
At their last stop, educators learned 
about the history of the community’
s 
Jewish congregations — from the first 
founded in 1850 to their migration to 
the suburbs in recent times — as they 
examined the decaying architecture of the 
sanctuary of the Beth El Transformation 
Center on Woodward Avenue. Educator 
Linda Shapiro marveled at the ornate 
ceiling full of Jewish symbolism, Hebrew 
texts from the Torah and murals depicting 
moments in Jewish history, just as she 
did when she attended pre-confirmation 
classes there.Rabbi Arianna Gordon, 
director of the Tyner Religious school at 
Temple Israel, said about 100 sixth-graders 

will participate in the trip this year. 
“We appreciate the enhancements 
JHSM has made to build family and 
multigenerational connections into 
the curriculum,” she said. “Now, when 
kids come to Detroit with parents and 
grandparents, they can better appreciate 
its vibrant past and how, as Jews, we are 
connected to that past as well as the city’
s 
future.” 

The program, supported by grant seed money the 

first three years, has been free to area synagogues. 

With the seed money gone, JHSM is seeking sup-

porters to sustain the program. The JHSM board 

decided the program can no longer be offered free 

starting Jan. 1. To help fund Traveling Trunk, contact 

JHSM Executive Director Catherine Cangany at 

(248) 432-5403 or ccangany@michjewishhistory.org. 
 

Jews in the D

LEFT: JHSM supporters Michael 
and Donna Maddin, JHSM 
Executive Director Catherine 
Cangany, JHSM educator Tova 
Schreiber who played a 1910s 
Eastern Market peddler during 
the tour, JHSM supporters Shari 
and Stan Finsilver, and JHSM 
Traveling Trunk curriculum 
designer and docent Cheryl Blau.
BOTTOM: “Sylvia” selling apples 
at the Eastern Market.

