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Moving Memories

Farber’s new building brings
reflections and treasures
from the former
Beth Achim sanctuary.

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

F

or Farber Hebrew Day School staff and students
— four of my grandchildren included — the final
days before the long-awaited move to their new
building were spent bustling with excitement.
For me, the countdown chronicled in daily Farber
emails was a reminder that not only would the former
school facility soon be gone, but along with it, the
expansive area — used most recently by students and
community members for prayer and programming
— that was once the sanctuary of Congregation Beth
Achim, site of cherished milestone events and spiritual
religious services.

12

March 9 • 2017

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On a recent winter afternoon, alone in the room, I
made a final stroll through the space where 40-plus
years ago, my husband, Michael, and I stood under the
stunning stained glass skylight as it was pounded with
the heaviest of late spring rains, becoming one of the
many hundreds of couples to be married in the shul.
Three children and 10 grandchildren later, this last
visit was a quick escape from the school’s gym dur-
ing a brief break between the basketball games of our
two eldest grandchildren. They, and their two younger
siblings, are Farber students whose school events and
programs have brought us back to the sanctuary on
countless occasions.
My memories that day are blurred, combined
images. I look back and picture my beloved late Aunt
Faye wiping a tear from her eye as I walked toward my
future husband. At the same time, I can still see the
face of the woman who sat in front of me decades later
in that same room, having turned around thinking the
loud burp that came from our infant grandson I was
holding might have originated with me!
Standing at the start of the aisle, I thought of the
words my dad said to me as he and my mom led me to
my new life. And I remember the wedding guest who

leaned over from her seat as we walked back down the
aisle after the ceremony and whispered, “Don’t worry
about the rain; it’s good luck. It rained at my wedding,
and I’ve been married more than 20 years!” At the time
that sounded like a very long marriage.
Days after my stroll, the room is vacant; the walls
are bare and Farber children’s voices are chanting
prayers from a new space, having moved this past
week to the school’s first newly constructed building
in its 54-year existence, on land just to the west of the
former one in Southfield.

HERE COME THE STUDENTS

When Farber students left school for February break,
the building was, in essence, intact. When they arrived
back on the final day of the month, the fruits of the
immense labor of many was met in awe.
For our 13-year-old granddaughter, Shira Schon,
praying in the sanctuary at Farber was among her
final memories of the former school building, with
the morning service among her very first in the new
one. “Our class was part of the final group to be in the
room, for Minchah, on the last day, and part of the first
group to use the new shul, for Shacharit, on that first

