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Our Collecting Memories project gathers personal recollections of greater West Bloomfield history to become part of our digital collection. We invite you to share your local Jewish history stories.
Summering on Local Lakes
Beginning in the 1910s, many thousands of Jewish day-trippers and vacationers flocked annually to Greater West Bloomfield, a popular tourist destination. Like non-Jews of means, they came to escape Detroit’s heat and grime.
Jewish residents summered on all area lakes. Many—including the Purple Gang, Detroit’s notorious Jewish mobsters—rented or bought on Cass Lake, which did not have discriminatory deed restrictions. Keego Harbor catered to religious dietary needs, offering a Kosher butcher shop and several delis. Jewish-owned United Dairies began milk delivery service in 1934.
Surging Antisemitism
Barred from joining area country clubs, the Jewish community opened West Bloomfield’s first Jewish club in 1925: Knollwood. Tam-O-Shanter, formed around the same time, became Jewish-owned in the late 1940s.
After two Purple Gang members were murdered in 1933, the Cass Lake Improvement Association urged residents to “keep out ‘undesirables,’” a Nazi euphemism for Jewish people. More than 80 percent of property owners supported restricting Jews. In 1938, Pine Lake’s Rotunda Inn refused to serve Jewish customers, insisting, “our clientele demands that we accommodate Gentiles [non-Jews] only.”
Detroit Jewish Chronicle, August 19, 1938
Deed restrictions for the Cruice Shores subdivision excluded many groups, including Jewish people, until at least 1960
Lake Improvement Association
In October 1941, nineteen working-class families affiliated with Der Arbeter Ring or Workers’ Circle (a secular mutual-aid society promoting social and economic justice and Yiddish culture), collectively acquired 26 partially low-lying acres on Pleasant Lake. The first structures were Arbeter Ring camp cabins. 2026 marks the LIA’s 85th anniversary.
Lake Improvement Association, Labor Day 1943
Building Year-Round Community
By the 1930s, many landholders were Jewish, including attorney Irwin I. Cohn (Pine Lake), clothier Harry Suffrin (Morris Lake), and architect Albert Kahn (Walnut Lake). By the late 1950s, property developers Asher N. Tilchin and Stanley Aaron sold lots in the West Bloomfield Hills subdivision on Maple Road. Early Jewish buyers migrated from northwest Detroit, motivated by upward social mobility and White flight.
Albert Kahn’s home on Walnut Lake, 1924
Community infrastructure also expanded. The first synagogue building (now Congregation Beth Ahm, founded in Detroit, 1892) opened in 1971. Temple Kol Ami (founded in Bloomfield Hills, 1966) followed suit in 1975. The J (Jewish Community Center), at Maple and Drake roads, opened in 1974 and became the “central address” for Jewish cultural, educational, and athletic experiences. By 1989, West Bloomfield was home to 17,300 Jews.
Today
West Bloomfield is more than 30% Jewish. Jewish residents have served as government officials, environmentalists, business owners, activists, healthcare professionals, and more.
The township is home to ten synagogues representing Judaism’s three major branches: Reform (3), Conservative (3), and Orthodox (4), including Michigan’s only Sephardic (Spanish-Portuguese) congregation, Keter Torah.
West Bloomfield is also home to Temple Israel, the nation’s largest Reform congregation. On March 12, 2026, Temple Israel was rammed and set ablaze by a gunman, the only fatality. More than 100 of the 600 first responders on site were treated for smoke inhalation. All 150 students and staff in the synagogue’s preschool were evacuated safely, most to the Chaldean country club, Shenandoah. Of the antisemitic terrorism, Rabbi Jennifer Lader remarked, “We were horrified, but not surprised.”
Acknowledgments
Greater West Bloomfield Historical Society has developed this content in collaboration with Jewish Historical Society of Michigan. The project has been made possible in part by a grant from America250MI.
The Diverse History Project is an intiative of Greater West Bloomfield Historical Society to develop a more diverse and inclusive collection of our local history.