Alvin Kushner, the former executive director of what is now the the JCRC of Metropolitan Detroit, has died. Kushner, who led what was formerly known as the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit from 1974 to 1988, died Monday. He was 87. His tenure with the Jewish Community Council, where he started in the 1960s,…
The FBI warned the head of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit that his name was on a the hit list of a convicted killer and neo-Nazi sympathizer. Scott Kaufman, CEO of the Detroit federation, was told last week that his name was on a list in a notebook kept by a Toledo man who…
A sign on the overpass of an abandoned automotive plant in Detroit reads in German “Work will make you Free,” evoking images of the sign on the gate of Auschwitz. The red letters on white pieces of paper in the windows of the overpass at the Packard Automotive Plant reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” the Detroit…
When I returned to Detroit from Adamah, the Jewish Environmental Fellowship in 2008, I had only two things on my mind: food and Jews. Having grown up in the Detroit suburbs, I had never before grown my own food. Coming of age in a secular family that belonged to a large Reform congregation, I had…
Growing up Jewish in the suburbs of Chicago, I always harbored a bagel inferiority complex. The bagels I found at the grocery store and in the various bagel chains that sprouted in the 1980s and ’90s felt like impostors — swollen and tasteless and slathered with, of all ridiculous things, blueberry cream cheese. The bagels…
Don’t look for Vice President Joe Biden in Washington on Sunday. He’ll be in Detroit, possibly adding to his long and memorable list of gaffes as he speaks at the annual fundraising dinner for an area Orthodox day school. Biden will also be stumping for Debbie Stabenow, the Democratic junior senator from Michigan, while in…
I’ve been basking in the glory of a vibrant Jewish food community since moving to Detroit in 2009. From bountiful shabbat potlucks, heated debates about the role of urban agriculture, and teaching Jewish “Farm to Fork” curricula in suburban Jewish institutions, my friends and I have been busy. Despite of all the excitement, there has…
Kenneth Feinberg, the man who helped make peace between the Jewish Agency for Israel and Nefesh B’Nefesh, is apparently a top contender to become the nation’s “car czar.” If appointed, Feinberg would oversee the restructuring of the troubled American automobile industry. Earlier this year, the Washington-based lawyer who headed up the federal September 11th Victims…
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