continued from page 13

14 | SEPTEMBER 21 • 2023 

OUR COMMUNITY
ON THE COVER

HOW IT STARTED
Mark grew up in the Jewish com-
munity in Oak Park. His family 
were members of Congregation 
Shaarey Zedek, where he became a 
bar mitzvah. “I was surrounded by 
the Jewish community. I didn’t have 
to really think about being Jewish. 
It was just there all the time,” he 
said.
He attended Oak Park High 
School, where he met his wife, 
Margie. They married in 1981. For 
their honeymoon, they went to 
Europe for seven weeks and then to 
Israel for three weeks. “We literally 
had a book called Europe on $20 a 
Day,” he said with a laugh. “We each 
had a backpack and Eurailed across 
Europe, but our Israel experience 
was the capstone of an amazing 
experience.”
Mark earned a B.S. in business 
Administration from Wayne 
State University and a master’s 
degree in management from the 
Kellogg School of Management at 
Northwestern University. He began 
his career in public accounting with 
Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. and 
then moved into the health care 
sector, first at Henry Ford Health 
and then at the Sisters of Mercy. 
He said he had no deep affiliations 
with any of our local Jewish agen-
cies. “We weren’t really knowledge-
able about Federation,” he said.
By the time he was 33, he was the 
CFO for Mercy’s Long-Term Care 
Unit, the largest nonprofit provid-
er of long-term care in Michigan. 
That’s when Federation came call-
ing.
“I answered the phone, and this 
deep voice introduced himself as 
Bob Naftaly, and he said, ‘I under-
stand you’re a Jewish kid who 
knows something about nursing 
homes.
’”
Naftaly, an officer of Federation at 
that time, was working to improve 
conditions at Borman Hall and 
Prentis Manor, facilities owned by 
Jewish Home and Aging Services, a 

Bob Aronson, 
Mark Davidoff and 
Benjamin Netanyahu

Then U.K. Prime 
Minister Tony Blair and 
Mark Davidoff at the 
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah 
dinner in 2018

continued on page 16

