NEW YORK (JTA) — Alvin Kushner, the former executive director of what is now the the JCRC of Metropolitan Detroit, has died.
Kushner, who led what was formerly known as the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit from 1974 to 1988, died Monday. He was 87.
His tenure with the Jewish Community Council, where he started in the 1960s, was marked by the Soviet Jewry struggle, the persecution of Jews in countries such as Syria and Ethiopia, and wars in the Middle East, as well as the explosion of Holocaust education initiatives starting in the late 1970s.
Kushner had come to Michigan with his wife, Ruth, from New York in the 1950s to work for the USO at the Selfridge Air Base.
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