A sidebar with Robert Kaplow.

Byline: Thomas Franz

Southfield attorney Robert D. Kaplow was recently recognized by the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan (JHSM) with the Leonard N. Simons Lifetime Achievement Award.

The JHSM has been around since 1959, and Kaplow is just the fourth person to be given the lifetime award.

Kaplow, an estate planning and corporate tax attorney with Maddin, Hauser, Roth & Heller PC, spoke with Michigan Lawyers Weekly about his involvement with JHSM as well as his legal practice.

What kind of honor is it to be just the fourth recipient of this award?

It's certainly an honor and quite surprising it's only been given out four times. In all honesty, I don't know if I deserved it but I certainly appreciate the award and its significance.

You were once president of the JHSM, what are you most proud of what you were able to accomplish?

I'm very proud of the growth of JHSM. When I first came on the board, it was a small board and we were meeting in someone's living room. Now, we have a board of 17 members and an advisory board of more than 30 members.

One of the great things about this organization is that the past presidents are still involved and still have a vote. Many of the past presidents actively participate in meetings. It's not one of those organizations where you serve your time and then float away into the sunset. It speaks a lot for the quality of work the JHSM is doing that the past presidents are so interested in continuing.

How have the group's school tours developed since you helped to start those?

Our programs have grown substantially.

With the tours, we take students mostly from Jewish schools and take them into downtown Detroit and show them their history starting in 1762 when the first Jewish settler came to Detroit from Montreal.

Our goal really is to celebrate Jewish culture and the experiences of Jews in Michigan. We go into the classrooms of Jewish schools, and the kids learn about what it was like growing up and what it was like to be a Jew in Detroit in the old days.

You helped found the JHSM Heritage Foundation, what kind of need was there to create the foundation?

We are not part of the Jewish Federation that people can contribute to and then they parcel out money to groups, so we had to have our own fundraising and much of our own income was based on annual memberships and then a small amount to attend various functions.

Over the years, we felt the need to build up an endowment to support JHSM, so now we have a...

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