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.” Fox Run in Novi is cleverly designed to provide you with maximum space and minimum worry. Our apartment homes are the epitome of affordable one-level living—with convenient amenities and services just steps from your door. Linen Bath W/D Walk-In Closet Bedroom 12’1” x 13’0” 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. • Living Area 12’10” x 21’1” Bedroom 12’0” x 10’6” DW Kitchen 11’9” x 8’5” The Fairmont Large two bedroom Call 1-800-917-8169 to request a FREE brochure and a copy of Fox Run Living. More on the history of Farber Hebrew Day School can be read at thejewishnews.com. Novi FoxRunNovi.com 11948477 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 17