Celebrating a Century of Spiritual and Community Commitment

More than 30 persons representing 100 years of faith, love and community building were honored Saturday by their extended family at Congregation B’nai Moshe.

Though many are in different stages of life and come from different backgrounds, they stood together in the sanctuary during the Sabbath morning’s prayer service reveling in their one common bond: they all share the honor of exchanging marriage vows under the same chuppah, and before the same clergy and congregation.

The touching ceremony honoring those who could physically make it to the synagogue just south of Maple Road at Drake — and the many, many more that couldn’t — coincides with the congregation’s centennial celebration.

Many events are planned throughout the year to celebrate the congregation’s founding by a handful of Jewish immigrants from Hungary in 1911. But recognizing the couples that were married at any of the synagogue’s three locations over time was essential, said Annette Kaufman, coordinator of the anniversary celebration.

“It’s important that we have those families who married here and raised their families here, often for multiple generations,” she said. “They are like the glue that helps bind us together. The continuity that is so crucial to who we are.”

Deep Roots

The traditions started in a home near Hastings Street in Detroit, which was the epicenter of Jewish life in Detroit at the turn of 20th Century. The congregation grew large enough to build the first synagogue along Garfield Street in 1917, which also housed Sunday school programs that regularly served more than 100 area children, the congregation’s archives show.

As the Jewish population migrated to the city’s northwest side, the congregation sold the Garfield Street building and built a new home on Dexter Boulevard at Lawrence Avenue just before the 1929 stock market crash.

With the explosion of suburban development around Detroit in the late 1950s, B’nai Moshe’s leadership sold the Dexter building and constructed a new home that opened in 1960 in Oak Park. About 30 years later, the synagogue moved to West Bloomfield and operated out of the Jewish Community Center until the current building opened in 1992. It now serves more than 400 members from around metro Detroit who regularly attend services, study Torah and Jewish values, and participate in community-wide events.

Much like the anniversary Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebration organized last month, Kaufman said she was extremely pleased to have married couples representing each of the three most recent locations and who came  together at one time. She asked them to gather on the bimah below signs representing the buildings they were married in and lead the congregation in Ein Keloheinu.

Surrounded by ‘family’ 

They sang in Hebrew and concluded the service. Long-time member Ida Schwartz said she couldn’t have been more proud. She was surrounded  by a handful of family members that represented three generations of married couples in the congregation. Each married at one of the different synagogue locations.

“All the memories, 75 years of memories all came rushing back, and it was wonderful,” the “90-something” matriarch from West Bloomfield said afterward. She married her late husband, David, at the Dexter Avenue location in 1936.

On behalf of the family, her brother-in-law Harry Schwartz and wife, Pauline, joined  two dozen honorees who performed special ceremonial roles during the Sabbath service.

“It’s really quite an honor. An accomplishment for us but the whole synagogue as well,” said Harry, 88, who helped open the door to the Ark that houses sacred Torah scrolls in the sanctuary. He and Pauline, now of Farmington Hills, married at Dexter Avenue in 1946.

Rena Tepman, who married her late husband, Jerry, at the Oak Park location in 1961, said she was glad to honor the buildings that fostered a sense of Jewish identity and community over the years. But she noted that Saturday’s event, and the entire centennial celebration, is rightly focused on the people.

“This is a family,” she said, speaking of the entire congregation. “I don’t care about what building it’s in, it’s the people you get to know and the family you make inside that keeps us all together and connected.”

honoring the 100th anniversary, which includes a dinner/dance, is planned for May 20-22.