Southfield At 50

ON THE COVER

Yeshivat Akiva in its former
Lathrup Village location in

,

Lathrup Elementary School
in 1998.

Educating Southfield

A glimpse back and
a look ahead at
the city's Jewish-
based schools.

Shelli Liebman Dorfman

Senior Writer

T

he 1963 announcement that
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah pur-
chased land on Lincoln Road
for its growing student enrollment was
the beginning of the relocation of Jewish-
based day schools to the city of Southfield.
The school's boys' division would be built
on a site previously owned by Yeshivat

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April 24 * 2008

Chachmey Lublin whose classes had been
run out of a house at one end of the prop-
erty.
The students joined those already in
Southfield classrooms at the after-school
religious school program at Congregation
Shaarey Zedek, which moved to the city
in 1962. Yeshiva currently has 700 nurs-
ery through 12th-grade students — and
countless adults in educational programs
— attending classes in their three loca-
tions, including about 400 at the syna-
gogue building in Southfield.
Other students came soon after, with
United Hebrew Schools opening a
branch at Glenn Schoenhals Elementary
School just down the street from the
Yeshiva in 1964.
The next year, Temple Israel, which
was then in Detroit and is now in West
Bloomfield, opened a branch of its reli-

gious school at Brace-Lederle school on
Nine Mile and James Couzens.
Also in 1965, the Yeshiva began to hold
classes for its boys' division in the new
Daniel A. Laven building and Julius and
Alice Rotenberg high school on Lincoln.
The girls' division of the school is in Oak
Park. In 1967, late brothers Wolf and
Isadore Cohen, past presidents and among
the school's founders, received the Golden
Torah Award at the Yeshiva's first major
dinner.
In 1968, Sophie and Sigmund Rohlik
contributed $100,000 for construction of
a United Hebrew Schools building to be
built on 12 Mile Road. The building was
dedicated in 1970 and classes were held
there until 1993, when United Hebrew
Schools was phased out and students were
placed in congregational schools.
In 1969, the Yeshiva established the

Mesifta program for 35 ninth- and 10th-
grade boys to receive intensive study of
Gemara (Talmud). The next year, the
Yeshiva opened a dormitory for high
school students. In 1985, through an ami-
cable separation, the boys high school and
other programs became a separate entity,
Yeshiva Gedolah Ateres Mordechai in
Oak Park.

Big Changes
In 1991, Gary Torgow became president of
the school, retaining that position today.
In 1992, after 12 years as administrative
director, Rabbi E.B. "Bunny" Freedman
— current executive director of Jewish
Hospice and Chaplaincy Network in West
Bloomfield — left the Yeshiva.
Also that year, the school was refur-
bished and expanded to include a new
office complex and gymnasium, and the