Left: Rabbi Avraham
Cohen and Selwyn Isakow
enjoy the session.

Middle left: Kalman
Sherizen, Steven Fischer,
Yossi Young and Howard
Sherizen discuss the Torah.

Below: Judith Friedman
and Sonia Miyerov at
Partners in Torah.

Bottom left: Galina
Yerozich and Temma
Freedman learn Torah
together.

Bottom right: Rabbi
Yehuda Moller speaks to an
attentive Bernard Mindell.

SHELLI DORFMAN

Editorial Assistant

he parking lot outside the
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah
Milton and Lois Shiffman
boys building in
Southfield is packed but quiet.
Inside, the halls are empty, the class-
room lights are off, but the sound
coming from the cafeteria is a roar.
At long tables sit 22 pairs of men and
at separate tables, eight pairs of women.
Some are seated across from one anoth-
er, some side by side. Their style of dress
varies. There are men in kippot (skull-
caps) and others in baseball caps. The
women are in ponytails or wearing
sheitls (wigs worn by religious married
women). All of the people are here for a
shared purpose; half have come to learn
Torah and half are here to teach it.
At a side table, along a wall,
Oaldand County Circuit Judge Alice
Gilbert of West Bloomfield opens her
Ch. urnash (Five Books of Moses) and
faces her teaching mentor Goldie
Silverstein. For nearly a year and a
half, the women have met weekly
alongside as many as 100 other teach-
ing mentors and study partners. They
have been paired up through the
Partners in Torah program for these
Tuesday evening sessions.
Gilbert says the relationship of the
two women doesn't stop at the Ethics
of 01.11" Fathers and the study of
mitzvot, their current topics. She
recently visited Silverstein's Southfield
home for Shabbat. Silverstein, in turn,
spent an afternoon with the judge in

(

/2
1999

14 Detroit Jewish News

