The year was 1906
It was the hub, the center, the place to learn and play, the first Jewish communal building and forerunner of our Jewish Community Community Center today.
This was the Jewish Institute on Vernor Highway, first headquarters of United Jewish Charities and Hebrew Free Loan. Among its administrative offices, the building was home to a dungaree factory and a free clinic. It played host to the neighborhood, the throngs of New Americans who gathered there to learn English, to join gardening and debating clubs, to partake in social opportunities of all kinds.
Since its founding in 1926 . . .
The Jewish Community Center has been the hub of Jewish life in Metropolitan Detroit. Originally called the Jewish Center Association, created as a place for Jewish boys and girls to gather, learn and play, its first home was a modest facility on East Philadelphia in Detroit. The Center relocated several times to meet the growing Jewish community’s needs until it settled at its current facilities in Oak Park and West Bloomfield.
May 26, 2013, Sunday in the Park at Oak Park
This is Jewish Detroit at work. Building. Planting seeds. Growing. Volunteers of all ages and skills were on the scene on a Sunday in May to construct a grand new playground, central to the Community Recreational Park at the Jimmy Prentis Morris Jewish Community Center in Oak Park.
