Every time the ferry from the mainland rounded a bend and I would catch my first sight of Mackinac Island, covered with foliage, and topped with the white-framed Grand Hotel, the island’s landmark, I would feel as though I was about to enter the fabled Shangri La.
It has been my escape from the noise and traffic of Milwaukee for more than nine years.
Here motor vehicles have been banned from the island since the late 19th century. The only modes of transportation are horse drawn vehicles (including 24 hour horse drawn taxis) and bicycles. The island, on Lake Huron in Michigan, is eight miles in circumference, and boasts the only U.S. Highway which bans cars.
It’s a great place to unwind and to picture yourself in a quieter more gentle world.
The downtown is only two blocks deep, and one- to three-story buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries line these streets.
History played a part here as well. The first action of the War of 1812 was enacted at the fort on a hill facing the waterfront.
The posh Grand Hotel, built in 1887, is one of the largest summer hotels in the world and one of only seven white-framed hotels left in the United States.
To get a real feel for going back in time, the Grand has a “Somewhere in Time” weekend where guests dress in outfits from about 1912 to commemorate the “Somewhere in Time” movie with Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour.
So I felt that the island had everything I could hope for in a getaway vacation. Much to my surprise it had even more.
There was a Jewish presence on the island and Jewish celebrations of the Sabbath and Rosh HaShanah.
I had seen that there were several historic churches on the island and I wondered if there were any Jewish people here.
The Grand’s concierge/historian told me to my surprise that there were yearly Rosh HaShanah services and that three had been held at the Grand.
He gave me the name of the organizer of the services, Dr. A. Robert Spitzer, 59, soon to be of Stevens Point, who has a home on the island. I then met Spitzer, and some of his family in the parlor of the Grand and learned about his one man efforts to bring Jews together for not only Rosh HaShanah, but for Sabbath services as well.
Spitzer, a neurosurgeon, was educated in Jewish day schools in Manhattan, and has a strong feeling and love for Judaism. He has the same strong feelings for Mackinac.
As he put it, “I feel every day here is Shabbat.” He wants to bring as many Jews to the island to vacation as he can.
He organized his first Rosh HaShanah services at the Grand Hotel in 2009. The Grand provided the worshipers a private room. Spitzer said about 30 families attended that first service.
The first rabbi was Alon Tolwin, who was raised in Milwaukee. A kosher caterer brought in food. A Torah scroll was borrowed for the services. For the third Rosh HaShanah, a Torah scroll was purchased.
Spitzer’s father Morris (a cousin of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel) donated half of the money for the island’s Torah scroll. Spitzer flew it to Mackinac in his Beech Baron airplane.
The scroll was then transported in style with Spitzer holding it and Rabbi David Shepherd, who was then going to lead the services, and his son, riding in a horse-drawn carriage from Mission Point, at the east end of the island, to the Grand Hotel where the dedication of the scroll was held.
Rosh HaShanah was not Spitzer’s first Jewish event on the island. He held his daughter Rachel’s bat mitzvah celebration on the island and an eclectic array of guests attended, he said: “There were Chabad people, conservative people, Christians, and native Americans.”
He also organized weekly Shabbat services on the island in a social hall donated by Trinity Church, across from the fort. Those at the services were mainly tourists.
Spitzer said that there were a few Jewish people living on the island, mostly summer residents, though there is one year-round resident.
He said that the island’s earliest known Jewish inhabitant was fur trader Ezikiel Solomon who was captured from the fort by Indians, and then escaped from them. Spitzer said that Solomon’s descendants came yearly to reunite at the island.
Spitzer said he discovered the island in the 1980s, and he and his family started to vacation there yearly. Then he bought a condo on the island and about 10 years ago bought a house there. He gets around the island in warm weather like everyone else, with a bicycle.
Because he is moving to Stevens Point this summer, it has been difficult for him to organize this year’s Rosh HaShanah services, so he is still not sure that that there will be services on Mackinac this month. But as soon as he is settled, he fully intends to organize them for next year, he said.
Spitzer has plans for organized Jewish life on Mackinac. He intends to retire to the island in five years and “to develop Jewish programs there.”
“I can appreciate and enjoy Yidishkeit and I hope to revive Jewish activities and to make Mackinac a destination for Jewish people and to make it a makom Shabbat [Sabbath place],” he said.
Arlene Becker Zarmi of Shorewood is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 40 publications nationwide. She was also the producer and host of a travel TV show for Viacom, and is a Jewish genre and portrait artist.
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