To Life!

SPIRITUALITY

Passionate
About Prayer

Adat Shalom celebrates Cantor Vieder's enduring role.

Kimberly Lifton
Special to the Jewish News

hen Mark Schostak took
his son, Josh, to Adat
Shalom Synagogue last
winter for one of his final bar
mitzvah lessons with Cantor
Larry Vieder, he assumed he
would drop him off and
pick him up when the les-
son was done.
His plans changed
when he tried to leave
the cantor emeritus'
office.
"No, Mark. Sit down:'
Cantor Vieder said
firmly in his thick
Czechoslavakian accent.
Without hesitation,
Schostak took a seat.
"Josh was shocked:'
Schostak recalled. "He told me
later that he never saw me
respond so quickly before. I
explained that out of respect to
Cantor Vieder, because of who he is
and what he represents, I did what he
asked me to. You don't say no to Cantor
Vieder."
Tough, but just as loving, Cantor Vieder,
82, has been teaching Adat Shalom mem-
bers for 45 years that their voices are
extensions of the heart. In that time, he
has helped many learn how to pray with
meaning — the same way he learned to
pray.
"My job is to reach out to the heart of
the worshipper;' Cantor Vieder explained.
Earlier this week, at a tribute dinner, the
Farmington Hills synagogue paid homage
to Cantor Vieder as a teacher, role model
and inspiration to many generations of
Adat Shalom families. The synagogue
unveiled the new Cantor Larry Vieder
foyer, an honor made possible by the
Schostak Family Foundation.

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18

A Hard Life

Officially, the cantor has been retired for
more than a decade. But that status has
not kept him away from his home away
from home — Adat Shalom Synagogue.
For the eight months a year, he lives in
Michigan, he goes to Adat Shalom every
day. He saves his relaxation time for the
winter months, when he and wife Gitta
retreat to South Florida.
"What can I say about Larry?" Gitta
said, smiling like a newlywed. "I love him,
and I adore him. We are always together,
and I can't imagine not being with him."
Their life together in Detroit is far dif-
ferent from their separate lives in Prague
after World War II. The families of both
were wiped out during the Holocaust, and
each was still ridden with pain when they
met. Cantor Vieder lost everyone — two
sisters, four brothers and his parents. Gitta
and her sister, Nina (now Adler), were the
only survivors in their family.
A mutual friend fixed them up. She was
pretty and gentle; he was handsome "and
very thin:' Gitta said. He owned a general
store several hundred miles away from
where they met. They each wanted to
rebuild their families. He knew dating
would be difficult.
After their first meeting, he invited Gitta
to escort him to a wedding. He told her he
liked her, and that he was too busy with
work to travel often to see her. Would she
marry him, he asked?
She would like to marry him, she said.
But she could not leave her sister — they
only had each other.
"I'll take her, too:' he said. "I was glad
she had a sister. She had nobody, and I had
nobody. Now we had a family."
Three weeks after their first meeting,
the Vieders were married. It was April 14,
1946. He was 23 and she was 20.
Cantor Vieder wrote their ketubah and
chanted the sheva brachot during a wed-
ding ceremony with just two witnesses,
Nina and a friend. Nina lived with them in
a small Czechoslovakian resort town after

November 3 2005

„TN