9/9/23
Newsletter #453
The Crack of Dawn
Sarah Silverman said in her newest stand-up routine that she grew up in a small, east coast town where she and her family were the only Jews. She said that her grandfather, who was a hard ass, used to regularly kick the shit out of her father when he was a kid. Her father would then go to school and, being the only Jew, would get the shit kicked out of him by the other boys, being called “Sheeny, Yid and Kike.” She added, “That was back when America was great.”
It was a different situation here in Detroit, which has a relatively large Jewish population. A “relatively large” Jewish population means that Jews make up 1% of Michigan’s population. There are 70,000 Jews spread out among 10,000,000 Michiganders (our cute joke here is that males here are Michiganders, females are Michigeese, then for Jews comes mishegoss, which in Yiddish means craziness). The Detroit Jewish News states, “Metro Detroit has the 26th largest Jewish community in America, down from No. 21 in 2005, similar in size to Dallas and Las Vegas. While 80 percent of the Jewish community remains in its core area: West Bloomfield, Bloomfield Hills, Oak Park, Farmington Hills, Southfield and Huntington Woods.” I live in Bloomfield Township, which is Bloomfield Hills mailing.
However, Jews, just like their brother and sister Semites, the Arabs, are tribal by nature and stick together. 80% of the Jews in Michigan live within five miles of where I now sit. Given that statistic, I honestly don’t know how many people live in my neighborhood – a couple of hundred, I guess – but there are two Jews: me, and crazy Bob Levine, who lives across the street. Bob believes that people come in through his skylight at night and steal his olive oil. He even called the police and blamed it on Tom, who also lives across the street, the other way. Tom lives in his parents’ garage with an arsenal of weapons, maybe 8 rifles and 4 pistols, and is our neighborhood’s most fervent Trump supporter. During the 2020 election, Tom put Trump signs in every vacant lot. Even still, I don’t think he stole Bob Levine’s olive oil.
I’ve personally found that people outside of Michigan are quite surprised to learn that Michigan has the highest population of Middle-Easterners outside of the Middle-East. There are nearly half a million Arabs in the Detroit Metro Area. It’s almost like, if it’s safe for Jews, then blacks and Arabs follow soon thereafter.
The first recorded Jew in Detroit was Chapman Abraham, a fur trader from Montreal. To sell his furs, in 1762 he traveled all the way south to Detroit, where he settled and lived until his death in 1783. Other Jews, seeing that he wasn’t hanged, began to move in around him.
Let’s digress. Since the Jews were forcibly evicted from Israel by the Romans in 70 AD, they have wandered around the world in what’s known as the “diaspora” — they dispersed themselves around the world. Except that the Jews were such a conquered people that term, “diaspora,” had already been used, and came into use 800 years earlier when the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians. To wrangle the Babylonion-ized Jews back to Israel and Judaism, King David had the rabbis begin writing the tales down so they could be passed around. These were the beginnings of the Old Testament Bible.
For most Jews, diaspora refers to the time after the Romans conquered Israel, soon after the time of Jesus. Jews spread out around the world, basically into every nook and cranny. And this is how 0.02% of the human population, 15 million people, got dispersed among the eight billion. But since Jews are so outspoken, with a tendency to be smart, they are noticed. I remember in my youth a friend saying, “The less they know about us, the better,” which I found an oddly old-world paranoia in a such a young person.
Jews couldn’t own houses, land or live in most of Detroit. Detroit's first Jewish Neighborhood, west of downtown, was Hastings Street (1880–1910), which then became Black Bottom (1910-1930). That’s how Detroit works. Jews settle somewhere where they manage to not get kicked out, then they sell the houses to the black people and the Jews move into bigger houses, in areas called the suburbs.
During all of this, there was this guy named Henry Ford. He was from Dearborn, which is next to Detroit, and is where most of those immigrant Arabs now live. Coincidence? You tell me.
Henry Ford was the richest, loudest (with his own newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, and a weekly column), most-famous, industrialist the world, who also happened to be the most outspoken Antisemite in the world. In Germany in 1923, in their first office in Munich, the leader of the National Socialists, known as the Nazis, the 34-year-old Adolf Hitler, had an 8x10 photograph of Henry Ford on the wall. This is true, go ahead and check. Henry Ford took a trip to Europe in 1923. While he was there, he visited Munich and stopped in at Nazi headquarters, a storefront at that time. Henry Ford met his adoring fan Adolf Hitler and signed his photograph for him. It might very well be the shot I have here, which was his official photo – it was his headshot. He looks nice to me.
One of Ford’s best friends was the architect, Albert Kahn, who was Jewish and born in Prussian Germany. Albert Kahn is the architect of Detroit and designed over 900 buildings here. Albert Kahn designed Ford’s first plant, a former Cadillac factory, then designed and built his Highland Park plant in 1904, then his enormous River Rouge plant in 1908.
Kahn also designed and built the fantastic buildings on Belle Isle here in Detroit. The Belle Isle Aquarium, designed and built in 1904, is the oldest aquarium in America. Next to it is the Belle Isle Conservatory, also from 1904, and it’s fantastic. They’re both fantastic. President Teddy Roosevelt visited soon after the facilities opened. These were the marvels of technology, science and progressive thinking of their day.
So, what was up with that? Henry Ford and Albert Kahn were lifelong friends? Did Ford not know Kahn was Jewish, or did Kahn not care about Ford just happened to hate the Jews? Who was zooming who?
The blue gels have arrived.
Another day is upon us.