In Loving Memory
Community celebrates
the completion of a new
Torah, while memorializing
the victims of 9-11.
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
E
stie Greenberg of Walled Lake felt
"mixed emotions" Sept. 11 watching
the completion of aTorah that was
scribed in memory of victims of the
terror attacks exactly two years earlier.
"It is -so exciting when a new
Torah is brought into the syna-
gogue," she said of the Torah
dedicated by members of the
Shul-Chabad Lubavitch. "But
there is such a seriousness when I
think about why the Torah came
about."
Many who attended the Sept.
11 event at the Jewish
Community Center in West
Bloomfield watched with emo-
tion as scribe Rabbi Levi Kagan
of Oak Park guided participants
in the honor of completing letters
of the Torah. They later joined in
as the Torah was carried under a chuppah
(canopy) and marched amid singing, dancing
and celebration to the ark at the nearby Shul.
"I was so happy for the Torah, but I still feel
so sad for those who died," said Sara Gourarie,
14, of Oak Park.
"I really feel connected to the Torah, because
9-11 wasn't so long ago, and I remember it,"
said Devorah Levine, 13, of Oak Park.
Much of the cost of the Torah was under-
written by Elliot and Denise Baum, Sam and
Arlene Blumenstein, Howard and Robin
Schwartz and Jack and Charlene Wolfe, all of
West Bloomfield, and their families.
For Greenberg, the mood of the day was
inspired by both her feelings as an American
and as a Jew "I started my day with a drive past
a fire station where a sign was hanging that said,
"Remember 9-11, lest we forget," she said.
At the end of the day, being a part of the
dedication of the new Torah in memory of
those lost in terror attacks, brought for her
another connection.
IN LOVING MEMORY on page 54
Remembering 941,
Morning service marks
second anniversary.
HARRY KIRS BAUM
Staff Writer
ome 45 people sat in chairs —
hile others stopped to listen on
their way to the Fitness Center — as
candles were lit and the shofar was
blown on the two-year anniversary of
9-11, commemorated at the Jewish
Community Center in West
Bloomfield.
"When the enemies of civilization
attempt to cast the world into dark-
ness, the most potent response is to
bring light into the darkness," said
Rabbi Kasriel Shemtov of the Shul
Chabad-Lubavitch in West
Bloomfield.
"God said, let there be light."'
The ceremony began with a
REMEMBERING 9-11 on page 54
Top left: With scribe Rabbi Levi Kagan of Oak Park are Rob, Lori and 10-year-old Dana
Silverstein of Huntington Woods,. Sierra, 7, Beth and Cheyenne Stone, 9; fill Silverstein, 13, of
Huntington Woods and Ina Katz of West Bloomfield.
Above: Hannah Stein, 5, of Farmington Hills concentrates on coloring a poster at the 9-11 Torah corn-
pletion ceremony.
J1N7
9/19
2003
53