History of the Jews in Metro Detroit
[1] The Jewish community includes Ashkenazi, Hasidic, and Sephardic origin Jews who follow those traditions.
The religious movements represented include common versions of Conservative, Orthodox, Reform Judaism.
[2] Early Jewish settlement in Detroit was limited and almost entirely transitory, consisting primarily of German-born fur traders who occasionally passed through the city.
[3]: 3 He was followed by dry goods traders Ezekiel and Levi Solomon who, though both captured by Ottawa forces during Pontiac's Rebellion, would eventually find themselves supporting opposite sides of the American Revolutionary War.
[3]: 4-6 As instability and economic hardship impacted Europe before, during, and after the Revolutions of 1848, tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from German lands, primarily young men, arrived in the United States.
[3]: 35 As Northern industry swelled to supply the Union Army during the American Civil War, a number of these German-Jewish immigrants became economically successful, with the Sykes, Heavenrich, Butzel, and Heineman families successfully contracting their textile firms to supply uniforms for Union forces.
[citation needed] In the 1920s and early 1930s, during the Prohibition Era, the Jewish Purple Gang operated alcohol smuggling and committed acts of violence in Detroit.
"[5] According to historian Lila Corwin Berman, although not as populated as the Lower East Side, Jewish Hastings Street still struck reports as overcrowded and teeming with foreignness and a "queer" Yiddish dialect.
By 1937, 71,000 Jews lived in Detroit, which made it the sixth most populated Jewish city in the United States.
According to Capeci, "Prominent Jewish Detroit's had supported the Urban League, genuinely but paternalistically concerned more with improving the welfare of black than raising their status.
In 1963 Rabbi Sherwin Wine, located in Metro Detroit, founded the Humanistic Judaism movement.
[5] In 1966, Rabbi Morris Adler of Congregation Shaarey Zedek was shot while leading a service on the bima, and later succumbed to his wounds.
According to Berman, "Most, however, expressed optimism that the suburbs would become a newer, better location for American and Jewish life than the city had been.
"[6] Stiefel wrote that by the 1970s the exodus of Jews from the City of Detroit to the suburbs had increased from a "trickle" to a "deluge.
[2] In the 1980s many Russian Jews arrived in Metro Detroit because of the Soviet Union's 1988 relaxation of travel restrictions and the processes of its dissolution.
[1] The Metro Detroit Jewish community helped thousands of these Soviet Jews travel to Michigan.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah Farber Hebrew Day School-Yeshivat Akiva Yeshivas Darchei Torah Michigan Jewish Institute (closed since 2016) had its U.S. administrative office in Southfield and its primary campus in West Bloomfield Township.
The German Jews, who predominately lived north of Downtown Detroit, usually worshiped at Reform Temple Beth El.
Russian and Eastern European Jews tended to worship at lower east side Jewish district Orthodox synagogues.
It was operated by Hungarian Jews and it was Detroit's first Orthodox Judaism synagogue that was west of Woodward Avenue.
