FOCUS
Life on the
The Jews of Windsor enjoy the best
that Canada and the U.S have to offer.
AMY J. MEHLER
Staff Writer
tense silence followed
13-year-old bar mitz-
vah Leonard Epstein
last. Shabbat, as he ap-
proached the bimah of Con-
gregation Shaar Hashoma-
yim, the second oldest syna-
gogue in Windsor, Ontario.
The congregation waited
anxiously, curious to see
how Leonard, a recent Soviet
immigrant, would perform
this age-old Jewish rite of
male passage: His parents,
Lilly and Sam, sat ramrod
straight against the back of
their seats, a little unsure of
what was to follow.
Leonard, who speaks
halting English, reached
into the pocket of his new,
double-breasted suit, pulled
out a slightly crumpled piece
of paper and carefully
The Windsor Jewish Community Center:
A Jewish Federation and JCC rolled into one.
46
FRIDAY, MAY 10, 1991
smoothed it out beside the
open Torah scroll.
Using an English
transliteration he learned at
the Shaar's afternoon Heb-
rew school, he shyly chanted
aloud the blessings before
and after reading the Torah.
When he finished, Leonard
stood next to the Ba' al
Koreh, the Torah reader,
and waited until the Haf-
torah was completed.
Leonard, who is learning
English at Victoria Avenue
School in Windsor, did a lot
more than learn elementary
Hebrew and rudiments of
Jewish customs in prepara-
tion for his bar mitzvah.
Last year, with the help of
members of the Windsor
Jewish community, Leonard
underwent a halachic cir-
cumcision.
Because Soviet law for-
bade Jews to perform the
mitzvah of brit milah, the
removal of a male's foreskin
when he is eight days old,
Leonard never had one per-
formed. Instead, his brit took
place 12 years later at the
Hotel Due Hospital in Wind-
sor, with his parents, Rabbi
Yosil Rosenszveig of Shaar
Hashomayim, a professional
mohel, and a supervising
doctor attending.
"It wasn't anything we
pushed on Leonard or his
family," said Jacob Rosen-
thal, a member of the Shaar
who works regularly with
the Soviet Jews of Windsor.
"It was suggested to them,
and they immediately
agreed. They waited years to
enter fully into Jewish life,
and in a community like
Windsor, there was nothing
to stop them."
The Epsteins are one of 40
Soviet Jewish families in
Windsor. They are also
among the newest immi-
grant population to settle in
Windsor — a city of 194,000
that was founded by myriads
of ethnic groups and nation-
alities.
Because of Canada's
relatively lenient immigra-
tion policies, thousands of
Eastern Europeans, Asians,
Indians, Italians and South
Americans often turned to
Canada instead of applying
for visas to the United
States.
Jews, who've historically
fled persecution, were no ex-
ception. Canadian Jewry,
which numbers about
300,000, ranks seventh
among a national population
that supports Roman
Catholic, United Church,
Anglican, Baptist and Pres-
byterian denominations.
While the majority of Jews
in Canada are concentrated
in cities such as Toronto,
Montreal and Winnipeg,
Windsor's 2,000 Jews live in
a community that dates back
to the turn of the 19th cen-
tury. Some of Windsor's
earliest immigrants — Jews
and Christians — wound up
in Windsor because they
thought they could sneak
across the border into
Detroit and gain immediate
— if illegal — access into the
United States, according to
Rabbi Jonathan Plaut, a
former Windsor resident
who's researching the histo-
ry of the Jews of Windsor.
American transplant:
Rabbi Howard Folb of Temple
Beth El.
Rabbi Plaut, a former
rabbi of Temple Beth El, the
only reform temple in Wind-
sor, discovered that the first
Jew came to Windsor in
1790.
Moses David, whose family
was in the banking business
in Montreal, arrived in
Windsor — then called
Sandwich — when he was 24
years old.
Rabbi Plaut located Mr.
David's grave in 1979 and
thought its historical
significance would benefit
the Jewish community if it
were moved from his family
plot to the cemetery near the
Shaar.
Moses David is described
as "the black sheep of the
family," according to Rabbi
Plaut, a reform rabbi in San
Jose, Calif.
"He (Moses David) came to
the area as the family