My love affair with Detroit began at an early age. My grandparents left in the late 60s when their friends and family were doing the same, but I could tell even as a kid that my grandpa’s heart never truly left Detroit. Me? I was born in Detroit (Sinai Hospital two years after the sale to DMC) and raised in West Bloomfield.

Growing up, I had two distinct experiences of Detroit. One was my thirty-second love affair with the downtown architecture, getting to experience the tall buildings from the time that we emerged from underneath Cobo on the Lodge until we ducked back underground into the tunnel, always en route to Toronto. The other was with my grandpa, going downtown to get coneys at Lafayette (I would get fries), then stopping at shops all over downtown where his friends still operated small businesses.

After that, he’d say, Let’s take the scenic route home. And instead of getting back on the highway, we’d weave through his old neighborhood, sometimes knocking on the front door of his old house on Ohio St, just north of Marygrove, to see if anyone was home. (I never got to meet the homeowner with him, but he and my mom did get a tour once upon a time).

These experiences were complemented with pictures, articles, stories, anecdotes, and dreams of city life that simply weren’t comprehensible as a kid growing up in the early 2000s. 

High school is when I started developing my own relationship with Detroit. Something that wasn’t just in history books or photo albums, but something that was relevant, exciting, and meaningful to me. Participating in programs like Summer in the City, being a PeerCorps mentor with Repair the World, and visiting the Downtown Synagogue with USY all gave me unique experiences of Detroit life in the early and mid-2010s. 

Then I got called up to the big leagues — as a ballboy for the Tigers. I found myself downtown on dozens of spring and summer nights. And, though these experiences came in bits and pieces, they were formidable enough that I needed to experience the real thing.

So, when it came time to choose where I’d go to school, the choice was relatively straightforward; I had no idea what I wanted to study, but I knew exactly where I wanted to live — even if I couldn’t get there on the Dexter bus. 

Becoming a Detroit resident felt like an advocacy project from the very start. I was being questioned left and right about whether it was safe to live on campus, and deemed insane for biking back from Comerica Park after midnight. But it was a thrill. Everything about it felt exactly as I wanted it to.

Early into my freshman year at Wayne State, ideas of the urban shtetl I had so often heard about started to creep into my mind. As I got involved with Hillel of Metro Detroit, and re-started Wayne’s AEPi chapter, I quickly started courting many of my commuting friends to live on or near campus. And it worked. About two years later, more than half of those students were living somewhere around Wayne State. I started to feel like a centralized Jewish community in Detroit was not only possible, but within reach. 

Then COVID came and just about everyone moved back in with their parents.

In 2022, my wife and I were approached about becoming a “pod” in partnership with Moishe House. We spent about a year trying to re-engage in the same ways we had as students — hosting Shabbat dinners, creating intimate events, and being forthcoming with people about our agenda of growing Jewish Detroit. As it turns out, having a hyperlocal mission doesn’t always align with the priorities of an international organization.

And so, finally, after nearly six years of different approaches, Mezuzah was born.

Mezuzah (mezuzahdetroit.org) is prioritizing and mobilizing Jewish life in Detroit, with a vision dedicated to creating a walkable, equitable, and vibrant Jewish community in our neighborhood and supporting Jewish Detroit citywide.

More on that soon.