WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
Mikey Skoczylas, a graduate of Akiva
Hebrew Day School, which in August
2016 was renamed Farber Hebrew
Day School to honor donors William
and Audrey Farber, has special
memories. The Southfield resident
remembers not only being a student
when the school moved into the
former Beth Achim building in 1999,
but also when his own children
started classes there.
Seeing his kids participate in the
same programs he once did “was more
sentimental because they have some
of the same teachers I did,” he said.
“My siddur party was with Morah
Chana Greenfield, and my son Aron
just had his in the shul in our old
building,” said Skoczylas, whose
wife, Ariella, is also an Akiva alumna
and a current Farber middle school
and high school Judaic studies
teacher. “I remember community-
wide concerts on Chanukah
and Yom HaAtzmaut [Israel
Independence Day] fondly.”
Skoczylas, who is a Farber vice
president, sees the move of the
school as exciting. “While the shul is
very beautiful, a small school never
really needed a 500-person sanctu-
ary,” he said. “The new space will
present the school with much more
opportunity to accomplish its mis-
sion of educating the Jewish leaders
of tomorrow.”
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WHAT’S IMPORTANT
The synagogue’s place is not what is
most significant, but rather the con-
tinuity of tradition.
Yoskowitz maintains, “We Jews
are more bound by time than by
space. Whatever happens to the
sanctuary that once was part of Beth
Achim will not erase the many good
memories and associations that we
who were privileged to share the
sacred space retain.”
Those memories include wed-
ding days, like mine, that stay in
our hearts no matter where we take
them.
The memories of a lifecycle event, a
school milestone or a spiritual prayer
remain inside us, not in the space
where they were first celebrated.
But sometimes, if we’re lucky, we
get unexpected reminders in places
we never imagined.
Nearly 42 years after standing
under the chuppah, beneath the
stained glass skylight in the Beth
Achim sanctuary, I am met by that
same striking ensemble piece, now
beautifully portrayed as the cen-
terpiece artwork of the new Farber
building’s front lobby, colorfully
greeting me each time I enter my
grandchildren’s school. •
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on 33 beautiful years together and
are truly blessed with our son, family
and friends.”
Also married under the same
stained glass skylight were Larry
Gunsberg of Northville and his for-
mer wife Leanie of Farmington Hills.
“We had ‘dueling clergy’: Rabbi
Stanley Rosenbaum and Cantor
Louis Klein from Congregation B’nai
Moshe, and Rabbi Arm and Cantor
Shimansky from Beth Achim,” he
said of the 1985 wedding. “It was
Super Bowl Sunday and someone
brought a portable, battery-operated
TV and my brother-in-law who lives
in San Francisco, whose team played
that day, danced wearing a San
Francisco 49ers hat.”
Among the last of the Beth Achim
celebrations was the 1996 bat mitz-
vah of Lindsay Mall of Farmington
Hills. “It was my first ‘big gig,’” she
said. “I stood and sang in front of
the massive congregation, next to
the amazing stained glass windows.
I always felt so safe in the presence
of the Beth Achim congregation,
like they were all my grandparents
and parents, so proud to see me up
there. But that’s how it always felt at
Beth Achim, like family,” said Mall,
whose grandfather Sidney Silverman
was a founding member and presi-
dent of the synagogue and strategic
in its design and construction.
“I had the run of the place as a
child. The shul always had so many
spaces, doors and secret passage-
ways. And I knew them all. It was
like my own private mansion,” she
said.
In 1998, Beth Achim merged
with Adat Shalom Synagogue in
Farmington Hills. Former Beth
Achim Rabbi Herbert Yoskowitz,
who went on to serve at Adat
Shalom, remembers “the people
who sat on the pulpit like Cantor
Shimansky, who chanted the service
from his heart and not just from the
siddur or machzor, and Reverend
Joseph Baras, who was as fine a
Torah reader as I ever heard.
“In that sanctuary sat two out-
standing rabbis, Rabbi Ben Gorrelick
and Rabbi Arm, who inspired and
taught for many years,” he added.
jn
March 9 • 2017
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