18 | OCTOBER 17 • 2019 

continued from page 17
Jews in the D

Shabbat dinners. With eight 
children (aged 1 to 18), he 
appreciates how easy it is to 
get from his house to the 
Orthodox day schools. 

Mendel Polter 
stepped in to 
become the 
rabbi of the 
Woodward 
Avenue Shul 
when founding rabbi 
Chanoch Hadar moved into 
a more administrative role. 
His wife, Kaila, works with 
him to help grow the com-
munity. Part of a four-gener-
ation Detroit family, Polter, 
29, grew up in Oak Park and 
earned a bachelor’
s degree 
and rabbinic ordination at 
the Central Yeshiva Tomchei 
Tmimim in Brooklyn. 
The family, which includes 
a 3-year-old son, moved from 
New York in 2017. Though 
their home on Woodward is 
technically in Royal Oak, it 
feels like part of Huntington 
Woods, where they are among 
many young Jewish families. 
“It’
s unique in atmosphere,
” he 
said. “Everyone feels like one 
big family, very interconnected 
and supportive of each other.
”

Simcha Tolwin, 
45, grew up in 
Israel and Detroit 
and moved to 
Huntington 
Woods in 2007 
to start Aish HaTorah, just 
across the Coolidge Highway 
border in Oak Park. He and 
his wife, Estie, who works 
with him, have six children 
ranging from young adults 
(one recently married) to the 
youngest in first grade. 
Tolwin was ordained at Aish 
HaTorah in Jerusalem and 
also has a master’
s in clinical 
counseling from Bellevue 

University in Omaha, Neb. 
He gets frequent requests 
from neighbors to help put up 
mezzuzot, and a neighbor who 
liked to engage him in debate 
asked him to do his funeral. 
He got an usual request when 
a neighbor asked him to keep 
their curtains open on Friday 
evenings so they could watch 
the family’
s Shabbat dinners. 
He likes the “shtetl” feeling of 
the community. “Everyone 
knows what everyone is doing 
so it’
s easy to make an impact 
because people talk!” he said. 

Ari Witkin and 
his wife, Liz, are 
celebrating the 
birth of their first 
child, Hadar 
Yonah, born in 
August, just a few months 
after they moved to 
Huntington Woods from 
Philadelphia. All he knew of 
the Detroit area was West 
Bloomfield, where his in-laws, 
Steve and Janice Traison live, 
he said. The Witkins started 
house-hunting after he accept-
ed the position of director of 
leadership development for 
the Jewish Federation of 
Metropolitan Detroit, and they 
liked Huntington Woods 
immediately. 
They especially appreciate 
the city ordinance that allows 
them to keep three chickens 
in their backyard. Witkin, 32, 
grew up in Minneapolis, grad-
uated from Goucher College 
in Maryland and was ordained 
at the Reconstructionist 
Rabbinical College. He also 
has a master’
s from the 
University of Pennsylvania in 
nonprofit leadership. The fam-
ily is still “shul shopping,
” but 
he says they’
ve gotten a very 
warm welcome from all the 
congregations in the area. 

36 Under 36 
Nominations 
Now Open

Do you know someone making an 
impact in the community you can 
nominate for this special honor?

Th
 e Well, an organization building inclusive Jewish 
community in Metro Detroit for the under-40 crowd, 
and the Jewish News are once again partnering on “36 
Under 36” to recognize doers, activists, entrepreneurs, 
philanthropists, community organizers and other 
young Jewish professionals reshaping and broadening 
Metro Detroit’
s Jewish community. 
“In short,” Rabbi Dan Horwitz of Th
 e Well said, 
“we are looking for the people who give of themselves 
to the community in robust — and often thankless 
— ways. In essence, the kinds of people we admire 
and aspire to be, whose accomplishments we want to 
celebrate and who we want the world to know make 
their home in Metro Detroit.”
Nominations are due by 
Oct. 30. A special group of 
nine volunteer judges (none 
of whom are affi
 liated with 
Th
 e Well or the JN) will be 
reviewing submissions and 
choosing the 36 winners. 
Honorees will receive free 
three-year subscriptions to 
the JN and be featured in a 
February 2020 issue. 

To nominate someone,
 log on to tiny.cc/36under36.

thirty
six

UNDER
36

M. POLTER FACEBOOK
S. TOLWIN FACEBOOK

