Emily Kimmel
and her dad,
Robert, talked
sports with
Lillian Willis.

•

. 1144#

-

Alarkou'h
and Rachel Kay,
dance to the music.

Story by SHELLI DORFMAN

Photos by KRISTA HUSA

Janet Pont led the crowd
in Chanukah songs.

° hanukah music was playing,
a menorah was burning and
the scent of frying latkes was
unmistakably in the air for a
few hours last Sunday at the
Bloomfield Hills Care Center. But
overriding all the sensory experiences
was an emotional one, as 60 children
and adults of Congregation Shaarey
Zedek danced and sang and talked
with the residents of the nursing home
that they have "adopted."
The party was the first such event
organized by the Jewish Community
Chaplaincy Program to link a congre-
gation and a non-Jewish nursing
home. The program helps Jewish resi-
dents stay connected to the communi-
ty and introduces staff and non-Jewish
residents to religious customs.
The party was a time to build
friendships. That's what Emily
Kimmel did as she talked away the

12/11

1998

22 Detroit Jewish News

Shaarey Zedek congregants make
a special holiday visit to a nursing home.

afternoon with Lillian Willis, whom
she called her adoptive grandmother.
Emily said they talked about sports,
"mostly baseball and football."
Emily's father, Robert, says that his
daughter "wanted to do something
different for her mitzvah project" and
regularly visits Willis, whose biological
grandchildren live far away.
Sunday's visit was the culmination
of efforts that started months earlier.
Shaarey Zedek Rabbi Joseph Krakoff
had learned of the program at a
Michigan Board of Rabbis meeting last
summer, and he enthusiastically turned
it over to his Religious School
Administrator Tobye Bello. As mitzvah
projects coordinator, she diligently per-
suaded congregants to make regular
visits to Jewish residents of the nursing
care center a family mitzvah project.
Before visiting, the congregants met
with Jewish Community Outreach
Director Sheyna Wexelberg-Clouser

and Shirley Jarcaig, coordinator of the
chaplaincy program, which is under
the auspices of Jewish Home and
Aging Services. They let congregants
sit in wheelchairs and use walkers and
heavy eyeglasses so that they would
understand better the lives of the resi-
dents they were going to meet. Before
coming to the nursing home, the
Shaarey Zedek group met in the
morning to make gift baskets of snack
items, paper, dreidels and teddy bears
imprinted with "I care about you.
During breaks between the food and
the music, children sat and talked with
more than a dozen residents in the cen-
ter's lounge. A photographer took pic-
tures of each resident surrounded by
the visitors, to go into frames that the
children made and presented Sunday to
residents.
For Linda Markowitz, a congregant
who came with her daughters Amanda
and Rachel, the parry included a

"

serendipitous discovery of an old
friend, Beatrice Goldstone.
Amanda and Rachel entertained
Goldstone with a song from Fiddler on
the Roof and then Markowitz struck up
a conversation with the older woman,
quickly finding out that Goldstone's
son Ronald is "my parents' best friend
in the whole world." She added that
they had spent time together, years
before, in Goldstone's son's home.
Markowitz made plans with Goldstone
to continue their visits.
As the party drew to a close, some
of the children refused to leave until
they had visited all of the bed-bound
patients who couldn't share in the fes-
tivities directly.
The feeling was mirrored by one
resident, who had come to the parry
reluctantly but was the last to leave.
As she went through the door, she said
quietly, "I had a good time. I'm so
glad I came.-

