This Week

Special Report

Light At The End Of The Chuppah

Sunrise, sunset ... light up the candles — and the wedding went on.

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN

StaffWriter

W

hat began with a bride
in tears, a groom stuck
near an inoperable
17th-floor hotel eleva-
tor and a mother's secret that the
upcoming wedding dinner may be
uncooked chicken became a memory
of community support and loyal
friendship for two newly combined
families.
"It was very hard to think my
daughter was not going to have a nor-
mal wedding," Chaya Leah Rothstein
of Oak Park said of the Thursday
evening, Aug. 14, affair during the
power outage.
Seeing no alternative but to make
the best of things, she said she looked
around and decided, "We have a chas-
san [groom], a kallah [bride] and 10
men [for a minyan] and we're going
to have a chassinah [wedding] ," she
said.
Rothstein remembered turning to
her daughter, Tova Tzipporah, and
telling her, "Eli [Gobioff] is not cry-
ing. He's smiling away and can't wait
to put the ring on your finger."

At that point, things didn't get
any easier or cooler or much
brighter, but it didn't matter
quite as much.
Even as Rothstein's husband,
Rabbi Binyomin Rothstein of the
Vaad Harabonim, whispered to
her that he heard the caterer had
arrived with raw chicken and no
place to cook it, she looked for-
ward to guests arriving.
With most of the groom's fami-
ly and friends coming from his
hometown of Monsey, N.Y. —
including his parents Rabbi
Yitzchok and Tziril Gobioff-
and other New York-area towns,
they luckily arrived in Detroit
just before the power outage.
Some of the in-towners weren't
Mr. And Mrs. Eli Gobioff
able to make it, not wanting to
leave their children alone at
time I saw another face, I said, 'God
home in the dark.
Still, 250 of the 325 expected guests bless you for coming.'"
did come, some solving the problem
by bringing their kids along. "My
Pitching In
daughter's friends — in the heat and
Although thankful the hors d'oeuvres
with no electricity for hair dryers —
were supposed to be served cold,
all came in beautiful ponytails,"
Rothstein was not pleased that only
Rothstein said. "I was so happy for
one member of the catering wait staff
every single person who came. Every

was able to show up.
"The next thing I knew, I saw
egg salad and vegetarian chopped
liver being served by my son and
the groom's brothers," she said.
"Then I saw that they had deco-
rated them with faces made from
green peppers. It was beautiful
seeing them work together to
make the chassinah better for
their brother and sister."
A generator had been turned
on, but only provided dim light
and no air conditioning. Luckily,
the bandleader had a battery
backup system.
In the ballroom of the Ramada
Inn in Southfield, the florist was
adding extra candles to center-
pieces.
"I was so glad my sister got to
see how gorgeous the ballroom
looked before the power went out,"
said Chava Rothstein, 13, sister of the
bride.
Dinner became a buffet meal heated
on warming candles. Caterer Phil
Tewel of Jewel Kosher Caterers of Oak
Park had cooked the chicken in gas
ovens in his Dovid Ben Nuchim syna-
gogue-based kitchen.

TALES from page 17

A Brief Reprieve

Israeli Teens Make Do

ivestock that should have been brought to
slaughter at the kosher Cornbelt Beef, Veal
and Lamb Corporation in Detroit on
Monday stayed back on the farm for one more day.
With kosher slaughter requiring a humane ele-
ment even until the second of slaughter, animals
could not be brought to the slaughterhouse because
there was no water for them to drink after last
week's power outage.
A day's production was about the only thing lost
at Cornbelt, with sides of beef from all six of its
refrigeration coolers and vacuum-sealed boxed beef
and lamb products all staying safe and continuing to
be USDA-approved.
Cornbelt President Sam Flatt said he may look into
a power generation system, but his current refrigera-
tors served him well, with items staying within
approved temperature limits even without power.
"The only thing in the entire plant I lost was a
pound of cottage cheese from my own personal
refrigerator," he said.

T

L

— SheIli Liebman Doi fman

8/22

2003

18

he Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit had a dilemma when the power
went out Thursday after-

noon.
About 75 Israeli teens, fresh
from a few weeks at Camp Maas
in Ortonville, were looking for-
ward to a weekend with their
host families, who had picked
them up about 20 minutes before
the blackout hit.
Techner
Concern was they wouldn't
make their connecting flight to
New York if the outage proved lengthy.
Federation staff members contracted three buses
to take them to the New York airport Saturday
evening, if necessary, said Amy Neistein, Israeli
camper program coordinator.
David Techner had planned a trip Thursday to the
Somerset Collection in Troy for his two tired Israeli
campers, but the traffic forced them to return to
Techner's Birmingham home. After a 17-hour "nap,"

they headed to Birch Run Outlet Mall north of
Flint, which had power, then came back for a
Shabbat dinner by candlelight. The lights were on
when they woke up on Saturday morning.
No buses were needed, and the campers were
dropped off 7 a.m. Sunday, as originally planned.

— Harry Kirsbaum

Vandals Strike In Dark

ix last week's power outage, a 12-inch
swastika and the University of Michigan
Hillel and you've got a story of anti-
Semitism that has made it around the world. But
the ongoing investigation by the Ann Arbor Police
Department has found Hillel was only one of three
buildings that experienced similar vandalism some-
time during Friday night.
Police reported that Ann Arbor's Memorial
Christian Church and the St. Mary's Student Parish
also were defaced. As at Hillel, the vandalism con-
sisted mostly of obscene graffiti and drawings. The
swastika was found only on the Hillel Building,
however.

Ed