According to Lord Chesterfield, history is “a useless heap of facts.” So, chances are it may not have been your favorite subject in school. However, had you attended two recent programs your appreciation of history would have changed.

The first was the marvelous documentary film, 100 Voices. If you did not see it, I urge you to do so if it comes around again. Knowing it was about a large group of cantors who went to Poland, I was prepared for a dark, grim story about pogroms and constant hardships for Jews who lived there.

But I was completely mistaken. What I saw was, for the most part, the celebration of a great period in Jewish history. True, that era ended with the tragedy of the Holocaust, but the movie focused on a vibrant Jewish culture that flourished for a long time before the war. It gave me a completely different perspective on Poland.

Most surprising was the fact that in Poland - a country now almost devoid of Jews - there is an annual festival celebrating Jewish culture. It is primarily due to the work of one man who is not even Jewish and throughout most of whose childhood knew nothing about Jews. Now, he organizes an event that draws thousands of people to experience Poland’s Jewish heritage.

Even though I arrived at the theater after nearly all the seats were taken and wound up sitting in the second row, I left feeling uplifted and with a totally new perspective on that country.

The second history program was, of course, our bus tour of Jewish Detroit. Thanks to the great work of Susan Friedman, her crew of helpers, and the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan, I found a new perspective on a part of my history that is much closer to home - but, as it turns out, is nearly as foreign to me as life in Poland.

My parents married in 1949 and moved to a house in Detroit – but away from the compact Jewish neighborhoods like Dexter. Then, when I was three years old, we were off to Oak Park. I always assumed that living and growing up in the old neighborhoods was, for the most part, the same as living and growing up in Oak Park. Thanks to the narration of the guides on our bus and the stories told by other bus riders, I learned otherwise.

While people who lived in Detroit’s Jewish neighborhoods may not have realized it at the time, their communities had many great benefits that those who grew up in the suburbs lacked. As a nearly life-long suburbanite, I look at Detroit and see it primarily though a post-1967 lens. But, I now understand why there’s still so much nostalgia for the old neighborhoods and great memories of the days gone-by.