Co m u nit
Mazel Toy!
Act
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SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
T
hirteen-year-old actor Harley
Adams of New York learned
some unexpected lines and
stood on the most unlikely
stage April 10 when a group of Detroiters
planned an impromptu bar mitzvah cere-
mony for him.
In town to play Edgar, "The Little Boy"
in the SFX Theatrical Group Inc. produc-
tion of Ragtime at the Fisher Theatre in
Detroit, Harley abandoned plans for his
bar mitzvah when he began to tour with
the play.
While in Detroit, Harley and some 20
fellow cast members donated time and tal-
ent April 2 performing for the Michigan
Jewish AIDS Coalition's "Celebrating Life"
fundraising concert at Temple Israel.
At a pre-concert dinner, Harley was
seated with Randy Topper, program assis-
tant for the Educating Our Community
about Homosexuality through Outreach
program of Southfield-based MJAC.
"He told me he was turning 13 (on
April 14), and that he was upset that he
could not celebrate his bar mitzvah at a
synagogue because he was on tour,"
Topper says.
During the concert, Sheldon Craig, an
actor with the Ragtime company, came on
stage. "He said, 'Sometimes things get left
behind in a traveling school boy's life,'"
remembers Harley's mother, Rahael
Adams. An announcement was then made
that members of MJAC were planning a
bar mitzvah service for Harley for the next
week.
4/20
2001
48
'it
"It was a total surprise," Harley says.
During the days that followed, plans
were made for a service at Congregation
Shaarey Zedek and a post-service brunch
at the Southfield home of Dr. Burton
Fogelman, president of MJAC.
Traveling As Jews
Harley, who had barely begun studying for
his bar mitzvah when he started play
rehearsals, met several times with Topper
to review the Ashrei and the Haftorah
blessings.
During the service, in the Southfield
synagogue's chapel, Harley wore the tallit
sent to him by his grandparents, Eli and
Sarah Elias, who live in London, where
Harley and his sister Alison, 11, were
born.
Harley, whose parents are divorced,
usually travels with just his mom, but this
trip Alison, a professional jazz, tap and
ballet dancer, decided to come along. She
and her mother had the honor of opening
the ark at Harley's bar mi tz vah service.
Clockwise
from top left..
Alison, Harley
and Rahael
Adams
Rabbi Joseph
Krakoff and
Cantor Chaim
Najman with
Harley Adams.
Fellow cast
member
Charles Wollin,
13, with
Harley Adams
after they each
were called to
the Torah.