Synagogue Listings . .
fillip
an
d
9
The Shul brings
Sunday morning services
to nearly completed
synagogue building.
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
Top: The outside of the Shul.
Above: Praying in the new building — Elliot Baum of Franklin, Sam Blumenstein of West
Bloomfield, Avi Gruber of Farmington Hills, Michael Lundin, 13, and Steve Goldin, both of West
Bloomfield.
he early morning ritual of a rabbi and two rab-
binical students who would meet for quiet
prayer and breakfast at the temporary location of
the Shul-Chabad Lubavitch has expanded into a
semi-monthly event for the community in the Shul's nearly
completed building in West Bloomfield.
Focus of the occasional Sunday morning program,
which includes a bagels and lox breakfast and recitation of
portions of. the Shacharit (morning) service, is putting on
tefillin — a pair of small leather boxes containing parch-
ment scrolls with excerpts from the Torah. Tefillin are
strapped to a person's arm and head during morning
prayers.
When the group moved to the new facility — still under
construction, but expected to open by the High Holidays
— the program's name was changed from merely "The
Tefillin Club" to "Tefillin in Hard Hats."
"The purpose is to come together to put on tefillin,"
said Itty Shemtov, who directs the Shul with her husband,
Rabbi Kasriel Shemtov. "Some of the men come to learn
how to put them on for the first time ever. Some are re-
learning, having not worn them since their bar mitzvah."
Several participants have attended a few times without
their own pair, sharing with others, and then purchased a
set.
"Some shlep out those they haven't used in 20 years,"
Itty Shemtov said. "One man brought in his grandfather's
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