Harmony & Dissonance

Harmony & Dissonance
Author: Sidney M. Bolkosky
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 1991
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814319338

Analyzing one of the most vital and significant Jewish populations in the United States, Harmony and Dissonance chronicles the intellectual, cultural, and social history of the Jews of Detroit from 1914 to 1967. Sidney Bolkosky has drawn upon resources from religious and secular Jewish institutions in Detroit and supplemented them with information and interpretations from numerous oral testimonies to place this material in the context of the city of Detroit and its unique economic and social history. Thus the book includes discussions of the effects of Detroit events on the Jewish population, from Henry Ford's promise of a five dollar per day wage to the Detroit riots of 1943 and 1967. The author contends that the peculiar history of Detroit plays a determining role in the history of its Jews. Organized chronologically, Harmony and Dissonance examines the historically shifting dynamics among Jewish groups and individuals, addressing such controversial topics as assimilation, intermarriage, religious conflicts, anti-Semitism, and East European versus German Jewish identities. In pursuing the central thesis of the problematic search for Jewish identity, which runs throughout the book and ties the work together, the author has also explored the multifaceted nature of the Jewish population of Detroit, its landsmanshaften, German Jews, "establishment" organizations and their antagonists, cultural forces, and numerous Yiddish groups. This focus on identity is sharpened as the author perceives two events increasingly directing Jewish life and thought--the Holocaust and its aftermath and the founding of the state of Israel. How those events influenced the attitudes and behavior of Detroit's Jews contributes to what one Detroit patriarch called "the Detroit difference."

Hank Greenberg

Hank Greenberg
Author: John Rosengren
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2014-03-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0451416023

Baseball during the Great Depression of the 1930s galvanized communities and provided a struggling country with heroes. Jewish player Hank Greenberg gave the people of Detroit—and America—a reason to be proud. But America was facing more than economic hardship. Hitler’s agenda heightened the persecution of Jews abroad while anti-Semitism intensified political and social tensions in the U.S. The six-foot-four-inch Greenberg, the nation’s most prominent Jew, became not only an iconic ball player, but also an important and sometimes controversial symbol of Jewish identity and the American immigrant experience. Throughout his twelve-year baseball career and four years of military service, he heard cheers wherever he went along with anti-Semitic taunts. The abuse drove him to legendary feats that put him in the company of the greatest sluggers of the day, including Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Lou Gehrig. Hank’s iconic status made his personal dilemmas with religion versus team and ambition versus duty national debates. Hank Greenberg is an intimate account of his life—a story of integrity and triumph over adversity and a portrait of one of the greatest baseball players and most important Jews of the twentieth century. INCLUDES PHOTOS

The Jews of Detroit

The Jews of Detroit
Author: Robert A. Rockaway
Publisher:
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN:

Robert Rockaway's study begins with the arrival of the first Jews in Detroit, when the city was a remote frontier outpost. He chronicles the immigration of the German Jews beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, followed by the influx of Jews from Eastern Europe. His narrative concludes on the eve of World War I, by which time the community had developed its basic social structure. It had survived the turbulent years of immigration and the process of Americanization, and had succeeded in establishing several congregations, charitable organizations, and social and cultural foundations. Rockaway relates the story of Detroit's Jews to the larger context of American ethnicity and immigration. He compares the Jewish economic and social evolution with that of other Detroit ethnic groups and of other American Jewish communities. Thus, the arrival of the German Jews is presented as part of the broader wave of immigration from Germany, where Jews were suffering increasingly restrictive social and economic sanctions. Upon their arrival in Detroit, the German Jews quickly established themselves and moved into the mainstream of the city's life. Transitions for the Eastern European Jews were not as easy. They were divided among themselves due to ethnic differences, disagreements about rituals, as well as personal idiosyncracies. In addition, class, cultural, and religious differences separated the German Jews from the Eastern Europeans. Many, victims of pogroms, arrived destitute and, consequently, put great strains on the established Jewish community as it tried to support the new immigrants. The large number of new Jewish immigrants also stirred anti-Semitic feelings in the city, making assimilation more difficult. During the period under study, Detroit's Jews suffered almost total exclusion in the social sphere, despite significant gains in the economic and civic arenas. Detroit's social elite remained almost totally Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Nevertheless, through work and unflagging determination, they rose to solid economic status. At the same time, they maintained their identity while participating in Detroit's civic, political, and cultural life.

Jewish Detroit

Jewish Detroit
Author: Irwin J. Cohen
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738519968

In 1762, Chapman Abraham became the first Jew to set foot in Detroit, and the Jewish community has played a significant role in Detroit's history ever since. Sarah and Isaac Cozens formed the Beth El Society in 1850, when the census showed 51 Jewish adults living in Detroit. The cholera epidemic of 1854 claimed the life of the rabbi of Detroit's only Jewish congregation. But the community continued to grow, and to serve. Two-hundred and ten Jewish soldiers from Michigan served in the Civil War-more than one per family. Jewish Detroit chronicles in photographs the history of this remarkable community in Detroit, from its growth within the city to its migration to the suburbs, from its battles against anti-Semitism at the hands of Henry Ford and others to celebrating its own heroes like Hank Greenberg, the all-star first baseman of the Detroit Tigers.

Witch of Delray, The: Rose Veres & Detroit’s Infamous 1930s Murder Mystery

Witch of Delray, The: Rose Veres & Detroit’s Infamous 1930s Murder Mystery
Author: Karen Dybis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467137545

Detroit was full of stark contrasts in 1931. Political scandals, rumrunners and mobs lurked in the shadows of the city's soaring architecture and industrious population. As the Great Depression began to take hold, tensions grew, spilling over into the investigation of a mysterious murder at the boardinghouse of Hungarian immigrant Rose Veres. Amid accusations of witchcraft, Rose and her son Bill were convicted of the brutal killing and suspected in a dozen more. Their cries of innocence went unheeded--until one lawyer, determined to seek justice, took on the case. Author Karen Dybis follows the twists and turns of this shocking story, revealing the truth of Detroit's own Hex Woman.

Hank Greenberg

Hank Greenberg
Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2011-03-29
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0300175140

Profiles the Jewish-American baseball player who, in 1934, risked his chance to beat Babe Ruth's home run record by sitting out a game on Yom Kippur, and describes his impact on Jewish-American history.

Oak Park

Oak Park
Author: Gerald E. Naftaly
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0738593885

When Oak Park became a city in 1945, the community was not much different from the village that was carved out of Royal Oak Township 18 years earlier. Its population had barely increased, and there was just one paved road connecting Oak Park to Detroit; however, big changes were coming. Thousands of veterans returned home after World War II, started families, and bought homes with the assistance of the GI Bill. By 1950, Oak Park was recognized as Detroit's first northwest suburb. The residential character of the community was attractive to families, and in 1956 Oak Park was the nation's fastest-growing city. By 1976, the city's demographics were dramatically changing. In the 1980s, media stories focused on its extraordinary ethnic diversity within a population of 31,000. When the I-696 Freeway opened in 1990, what had once been a tiny rural village became the center of the region's network of expressways. Through all the changes, the family quality of Oak Park has endured, as illustrated by seven decades of photographs and personal recollections.

Grand River and Joy

Grand River and Joy
Author: Susan Messer
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2009-06-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0472022105

"With unsparing candor, Susan Messer thrusts us into a time when racial tensions sundered friends and neighbors and turned families upside down. The confrontations in Grand River and Joy are complex, challenging, bitterly funny, and---painful though it is to acknowledge it---spot-on accurate." ---Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Half a Heart "Grand River and Joy is a rare novel of insight and inspiration. It's impossible not to like a book this well-written and meaningful---not to mention as historically significant, humorous, and meditative." ---Laura Kasischke, author of The Life Before Her Eyes and Be Mine Halloween morning 1966, Harry Levine arrives at his wholesale shoe warehouse to find an ethnic slur soaped on the front window. As he scavenges around the sprawling warehouse basement, looking for the supplies he needs to clean the window, he makes more unsettling discoveries: a stash of Black Power literature; marijuana; a new phone line running off his own; and a makeshift living room, arranged by Alvin, the teenaged tenant who lives with his father, Curtis, above the warehouse. Accustomed to sloughing off fears about Detroit's troubled inner-city neighborhood, Harry dismisses the soaped window as a Halloween prank and gradually dismantles “Alvin's lounge” in a silent conversation with the teenaged tenant. Still, these events and discoveries draw him more deeply into the frustrations and fissures permeating his city in the months leading up to the Detroit riots. Grand River and Joy, named after a landmark intersection in Detroit, follows Harry through the intersections of his life and the history of his city. It's a work of fiction set in a world that is anything but fictional, a novel about the intersections between races, classes and religions exploding in the long, hot summers of Detroit in the 1960s. Grand River and Joy is a powerful and moving exploration of one of the most difficult chapters of Michigan history. Susan Messer's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Glimmer Train Stories, North American Review, and Colorado Review. She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in prose, an Illinois Arts Council literary award for creative nonfiction, and a prize in the Jewish Cultural Writing Competition of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture. Cover photograph copyright © Bill Rauhauser and Rauhauser Photographic Trust