Jewish Contributions to Humanity
#46 in
in a a series
series
#57
BARBARA LEWIS
New
Girls’
School
These Two
Jews Taught Us
About Movement
and Morality.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah begins building
project on old B’nai Moshe site .
BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Y
eshiva Beth Yehudah, Detroit’s
largest Jewish day school with
1,063 students, according to
Jtewish Federation figures, has begun
construction of a new elementary and
middle school building for girls in Oak
Park.
The new facility will replace the
existing Bais Yaakov School for girls
on 10 Mile Road at Church, which was
originally built for Congregation B’nai
Moshe in 1959.
After B’nai Moshe moved to West
Bloomfield in 1990, United Jewish
Charities, the forerunner of the United
Jewish Foundation (UJF), bought the
property from B’nai Moshe for $1.6
million and leased it to Yeshiva Beth
Yehudah (YBY) for an undetermined
number of years “with all rights and
responsibilities of ownership.”
Bais Yaakov renovated the build-
ing and 400 girls, from kindergarten
through high school, started classes
there in 1991. Administrators say they
anticipate enrollment of 500 girls in
the elementary and middle school in
grades K-8.
The high school girls and the pre-
school program moved to a separate
newly constructed building on the west
side of Church Road in 2013.
In October 2017, the United Jewish
Foundation transferred the property
deed to YBY for $50,000.
Oak Park’s Planning Commission
approved the site plan for the 4.28-acre
property at its Nov. 12 meeting. Build-
ing demolition began the next day.
During construction, the Bais
Yaakov students will attend classes
at the Glenn Schoenhals school, a
former Southfield public elementary
school on Lincoln Road that closed
in 2016. Yeshiva Beth Yehudah used
the Schoenhals
Demolition has
facility to house its begun on the old
boys’ school during B’nai Moshe
building in Oak
construction of
Park that housed
its new building,
Bais Yaakov School.
which opened in
September 2017.
The first floor of the building will
be 53,333 square feet (an increase
from the current 45,875 square feet).
The building will stretch from 10 Mile
Road to I-696. The addition of a sec-
ond story of about 35,000 square feet
will bring the total square footage to
approximately 90,000.
The building will include 24 class-
rooms, two cafeterias (one for ele-
mentary and one for middle school),
a gymnasium, a library, computer labs
and a science lab. Eighty-six parking
spaces will be constructed along the
Church Road side of the building.
The site plan also says Yeshiva Beth
Yehudah may build a third-floor addi-
tion after five to 10 years.
A security guard at the site said con-
struction was slightly behind schedule
because the demolition crew, Adama
Demolition Company of Detroit, had
to dispose of some contaminants dis-
covered after they started work. The
construction contractor is the George
W. Auch Company of Pontiac.
The UJF was happy to learn about
the building. “While the UJF no longer
owns the site, we are very excited about
the upcoming project and the effect it
will have on the school. YBY is truly
a great institution in the community,”
said Steven Ingber, Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit COO.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah’s adminis-
trators did not respond to requests
for additional information about the
project. ■
Moshe Feldenkrais
Lawrence Kohlberg
MOSHE FELDENKRAIS (1904-1984). b. Slavuta, Ukraine. d. Tel Aviv, Israel.
Founder of the Feldenkrais Method.
Born in Ukraine and raised in Belarus, at twelve Moshe Pinchas Feldenkrais moved
with his family to Palestine, where he worked in housing construction. Following his
high school graduation, Feldenkrais began training in self-defense and martial arts,
and moved to Paris to study engineering and physics. While there, he met the founder
of Judo, Kano Jigoro, obtained a black belt, and helped found France’s first Judo
club. With the outbreak of World War II, Feldenkrais escaped to Britain before the Nazi
invasion of France. There, he served in the military and trained servicemen in self-
defense. On slippery submarine decks, Feldenkrais aggravated a prior knee injury. But
he refused to operate, and instead explored self-rehabilitation and pain management
techniques using his extensive knowledge of science, biology, psychology, and
kinesiology. After his successful self-rehabilitation, Feldenkrais, who moved back to
Israel, trained a small number of specialists in the art of the “method of movement,”
which eventually became known as the Feldenkrais Method. Today, there are more
than 6,000 Feldenkrais practitioners worldwide, and hundreds of thousands of people
have studied Feldenkrais’s techniques to help improve, not only their movement,
posture, but even their vision.
LAWRENCE KOHLBERG (1927-1987). b. Bronxville, New York. d. Winthrop,
Massachusetts. Morality, he said, must be nurtured and taught.
Does a person’s moral conscience develop over time in a somewhat predictable
manner? This is the question Lawrence Kohlberg set out to answer while studying for
his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Before beginning his studies Kohlberg served as
a Merchant Marine during World War II and helped the Haganah Jewish defense force
smuggle Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine. Fascinated by Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget’s work on child development, Kohlberg interviewed 72 lower- and middle-
class boys, asking each whether it would be okay for a poor man to steal medicine for
his dying wife. The children’s responses led Kohlberg to develop his six stages of moral
development, in which moral reasoning evolves from “blind egoism” in which only self-
interest is recognized (Stage 1) to the view that universal ethical principles and empathy
inform moral reasoning (Stage 6). Central to Kohlberg’s theory on moral development
is the vital place of adult role models in children’s lives. Children, Kohlberg said, want
to become competent within their environment, whether that’s their home, their school,
or even their society, and so they look to older people as a guide for how to become
competent. Among teachers Kohlberg is known for his work on moral education, and
how schools can help develop morality within students by use of historical role models,
moral dilemma discussions, and “just communities,” in which schools operate more
democratically and less hierarchically.
Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel
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November 22 • 2018
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