At the Loneliest Corner of Detroit, I Find the Loneliest Jewish Cemetery in the World
Will Young People of the Jewish Faith Find a Promised Land in the City of Detroit
Thursday, February 16th, 2023 at 11:30 AM
East English Village
Detroit, Michigan
Last night, I was pretty determined to find a bus route home from Hamtramck, Michigan. I enjoy Hamtramck because the enclave has a creative culture that keeps growing. Planet Ant has morphed from a black box theater to an entertainment complex with four venues. Planet Ant might be compared to Second City or even Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
Hamtramck offers wonderful art destinations, including Hatch Art Gallery, Public Pool, Disco Walls and the upper gallery at New Dodge Lounge. It is easy enough to reach Hamtramck by day. Getting home by bus presents a challenge at night.
I made the trip to Hamtramck to listen to Tony Muggs, rock star and writer, read from his book Autobiograffitti at Book Suey Bookstore at Caniff and Joseph Campau. It’s a great story written by a Detroit rock artist who almost died from a stroke in his late twenties. Muggs counts as the second local author honored by a reading at Book Suey. The bookstore honored bartender and Bukowski styled author Jimmy Doom first. With over one thousand subscribers, Doom might be the leading Detroit artist on Substack.
I want to save myself a fifteen-to-twenty-dollar Uber ride home. I would rather spend my money in Hamtramck, buying a PBR at New Dodge Lounge or a round of tacos at Dos Locos Tacos. On Fat Tuesday, I hope to buy a dozen Pączki to share next Tuesday. I want to make the trip to Hamtramck more often, but working my way home on the Detroit Department of Transportation must be accomplished first. I can pay twenty-two dollars plus change for a DART weekly pass. One ride back from Hamtramck can consume that amount.
Plus, I love checking out spaces such as the loft on the New Dodge Lounge. Upstairs, Andrea Slomczenski has opened a show explaining Polish sayings, illustrating the phrases with an action portrait. Slomczenski will be back in action with a pop-up of Polish Paczki nibbling cats for the Paczki Day celebration. The New Dodge Lounge will open at Seven AM, a great time to catch the midnight shift peeps who like to have a little PBR with a morning coffee.
I did find a route. The Perfect Pilgrim Bus 38 travels east though Hamtramck, making a pickup at Caniff and Campau at 8:06 PM. Google made me transfer at Van Dyke and Grinell, literally the loneliest corner in the city. The Vanguard Van Dyke Bus 5 picks up on the northeast corner, a stop where a defunct gas station looms in the background. The station across the street seems to be open, selling gas, but the light from inside seems about to go out. I walked around the lot of the closed gas station, hoping to be a moving target if a drive-by shootist opened fire. It’s really that creepy of an intersection. However, the drizzle of traffic made me wonder if I really was standing on Van Dyke, a major street leading out of the city.
That’s when I spotted the retaining wall of B'nai David Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery of more than 1300 graves. The last internment took place in 1975. Most of the synagogues of Detroit moved to Southfield and West Bloomfield. The synagogues established cemeteries closer to the suburban congregations. The Friends of B’nai David Cemetery work together to keep the cemetery secure and well-maintained, passing the hat to afford the lawnmowers, weed whackers and gas.
I once drove all over the city, reporting to training centers operated by the UAW / Chrysler Joint Training Committee. I taught every subject from shop math to quality control to Excel and Electronic Publishing. I discovered the B’nai David Cemetery while driving to Chrysler Detroit Axle on Lynch Road. Many of the building on Lynch Road exist, but Stellantis no longer produces parts at that location. Many of the buildings have been knocked flat. The wrecking ball keeps erasing the buildings where I have practiced my career. I was looking at steam shovel ready industrial land. Just like Chicago, Detroit wrecks and rebuilds.
I walked the cemetery a few times after leaving the plant. The cemetery gate barred no visitors in those days. I noticed these picture orbs embedded in the granite of headstones. A few had been removed by thieves, leaving a disturbing round hole in the marker. I marveled at these orbs, preserving black and white photographs of the deceased. One woman reminded me of the portrait of Anne Frank, whose Amsterdam journal inspired the play “The Diary of Anne Frank”. Soon, I want to return to the cemetery and photograph the embedded orbs. I read that the gates now open only for the high holy days.
The Van Dyke bus came, taking me away from this lonely street corner.
Maybe the cemetery will return to life again. At the Durfee Innovation Center, a group of Jewish friends gathered in January to eat well, worship and wish one another Shalom Shabbat. A traveling group has made the rounds of the city, and might find a promised land in Detroit.
