6 | JANUARY 25 • 2024 J
N

1942 - 2024

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week

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DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
32255 Northwestern Hwy. Suite 205,
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thejewishnews.com

 
 
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The Detroit Jewish 
News Foundation

| Board of Directors:
 Chair: Gary Torgow
 Vice President: David Kramer 
 Secretary: Robin Axelrod
 Treasurer: Max Berlin
 Board members: Michael J. Eizelman 
 Larry Jackier, Jeffrey Schlussel, 
 Mark Zausmer
 
 
 Executive Director:
 Marni Raitt 
 Senior Advisor to the Board: 
 Mark Davidoff
 Alene and Graham Landau Archivist Chair: 
 Mike Smith
 Founding President & Publisher Emeritus: 
 Arthur Horwitz
 Founding Publisher 
 Philip Slomovitz, of blessed memory

 

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 Director of Editorial: 
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Contributing Writers:
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Suzanne Chessler, Shari S. Cohen, 
Louis Finkelman, Samantha Foon, 
Yevgeniya Gazman, Stacy Gittleman, 
Esther Allweiss Ingber, Barbara Lewis, 
Jennifer Lovy, Rabbi Jason Miller, 
Alan Muskovitz, Karen Schwartz, 
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twins’ brit milah and baby 
naming. The faux front page 
I made about my family’s 
first trip to Israel in 1993. 
The 80th birthday card my 
daughter drew for my dad.
That bill from my bat 
mitzvah, which says the 
party lasted past 2 a.m., and 
that newspaper clip about 
Cantor Zim, who by the 
way sang “Yiddishe Mama” 
to my grandmothers at that 
epic party. The film he flew 
to Budapest for was War and 
Love (1985), which told the 
story of Jacek Eisner and 
other Jewish kids who sur-
vived the Warsaw ghetto.
Zim played the famous 
cantor and lyric tenor Moshe 
Koussevitzky, a special honor 
since it was Koussevitzky 
who taught Zim how to lead 
services, which Zim is still 
doing, in his 80s, as cantor of 

Congregation Gesher Shalom 
in Fort Lee, N.J.
“I probably would never 
have visited Budapest, but the 
Danube River was beautiful 
to see, and to film the movie 
in a synagogue, a historical 
house of worship, made the 
trip more appealing,” Zim 
texted me after I sent him 
a picture of the old Yiddish 
clipping the other day. “Part 
of my fee was to train teenag-
ers from the Khodahy School, 
all non-Jewish but they were 
supernal. One 16-year-old 
sang a prayer that I used to 
sing at weddings in NYC, and 
it was something that Eisner 
sang as a child in Warsaw.”
The actor Tony Curtis and 
the makeup mogul Estee 
Lauder gave $20 million to 
restore that synagogue on 
Budapest’s Dohány Street.
“Unfortunately, the movie 

did not get good reviews,” 
Zim said. “But, for me, it was 
a true memorable experience.”
Then there are the prolific 
broken-English writings of 
my great-grandfather’s broth-
er, Israel Dantowitz — we 
called him Uncle Srul — 
chronicling various family 
simchahs, holidays and indi-
vidual life stories.
“I remember a lot of things 
from my childhood,” reads 
one titled All Our Love and 
dated 1974. “We was very 
happy when we were young 
children. When Saturday 
came we [were] sitting togeth-
er by the Shabos table with 
our father and mother and 
celebrate the Shabos.”
Of my great-grandfather, 
who Uncle Srul called Yeshie: 
“He came to Boston, he start-
ed working on men’s pants, he 
got a shop in Boston. He was 

doing very good. Then he got 
married. He also was writing 
good letters home.”
I was named after Yeshie 
— Yitzchok Yehoshua, as the 
will is signed, Isaac Joshua in 
English. The way my dad told 
the story is that he’d hoped to 
have a boy to carry his zayde’s 
exact name, but that after I 
was born, the third of three 
girls, my mom said she was 
done, and so he had to impro-
vise. “Jodi” instead of “Joshua” 
made enough sense, but the 
Hebrew name required a little 
more improvisation.
Dad said he asked his rabbi 
for help, and the rabbi asked 
if Zayde had a nickname. 
“Shi’ah,” Dad said, a kind of 
slurred Yiddish version of 
Yehoshua. And so I got the 
Hebrew name Shira, which 
means song.
Maybe that’s why finding 

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