A new, two minute-plus video produced by Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and released Thursday afternoon, provides a brief glimpse into the history of Detroit's Jewish community, starting with Hastings Street in the 1880s , which was known as "Little Jerusalem," all the way up until today.
The remnants of the Jewish life have long vanished on Hastings Street, but the memories have not, as the video entitled "Hastings Street," shows. Yiddish was the language of choice back then. And there were plenty kosher butcher shops and synagogues. The video includes some cool archival photos of the Street and the people.
Jews eventually migrated from the neighborhood, and according to an online article by Francis Grunow, Hastings Street became the "heart of Detroit's 'Paradise Valley,' an African-American community that thrived from the 1920s through the 1950s. The neighborhood extended from Jefferson Ave. to Warren with Hastings Street serving as its commercial spine."
The Jewish Federation video shows a sampling of the Jewish folks active today in Detroit in business and in community organizations, like Ben Falik, a founder of "Summer in the City," Anna Kohn of the Downtown Synagogue and Yisrael Pinson of the Chabad of Greater Downtown Detroit.
The video shows the Avalon Bakery and entrepreneurs from such businesses as Chalkfly, an office supply business, and Rebuild Nation, an advertising agency. Dan Gilbert, who is Jewish, is not in the video, but there is a quick peek at the Compuware building, where Quicken Loans headquarters is based.
For full disclosure, the video also includes a snippet of me, Allan Lengel, a co-founder of Deadline Detroit.
-- Allan Lengel
