Congregation to Honor Rabbi's 25 Years at Temple Israel

Paul Yedwab came to West Bloomfield as a newly-ordained East Coast rabbi who grew up in New Jersey, attended college 35 miles from home and studied theology in Lower Manhattan. Now, he's pure Michigan and being celebrated for 25 years of guidance, inspiration and commitment to .

Rabbi Yedwab and his wife Wendy will be honored Nov. 19 with a tribute dinner at the temple, where he is one of five rabbis.

Community service, stability and long job tenure are family traditions.

The second-generation rabbi was raised in Lakewood, NJ, where his father Stanley led a temple for 39 years before retiring in 1998. His mother Myra was a Jewish educator and prominent civil rights and Soviet Jewry activist. The younger Rabbi Yedwab officiated at her 2006 funeral.      

• Making Michigan home: Yedwab was 29 when he arrived a few months after graduating in 1986 from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which educates rabbis for the Reform branch of Judaism. He also earned a political science degree from Princeton. Yedwab and his wife, who met at a Jewish teen camp in New York, have raised two daughters and a son in Metro Detroit. Ariella is a University of Michigan junior, Jesse graduated this year from the and started at Michigan State. Zoe, 15, attends .
• Achievements: He engaged teens and young adults with Shabbat Unplugged services featuring acoustic guitars and Friday night prayers on PowerPoint slides instead of a book. His six books include two Hebrew language primers and a 2001 paperback, Sex in the Texts, that discusses examples of traditional Jewish perspectives on sexuality, love and marriage.
  Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed him to a seven-member State Ethics Board, where he still serves. It reviews misconduct complaints against civil service workers and executive branch government appointees.
  Yedwab also is a board member of the Fresh Air Society, Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and the Jewish National Fund. He is a founding advisory board member of Forgotten Harvest and past president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis.
  
  Last May he was among guests invited to meet President Obama at a Jewish American Heritage Month event in the White House. The rabbi brought his younger daughter, who also shook Obama's hand. Two days later, the rabbi received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from his religious studies alma mater.

• Rabbi says: "Even though we are the largest congregation in the country, we live in a spread-out suburb of a city that is shrinking. This makes for some demographic challenges. We always feel that we have to make better programs and reach out to unaffiliated Jews and draw them in," he told the Oakland Business Review in 2008.
  
  Temple Israel has more than 12,000 members from 3,400 families. In an undated blog post, he says of members: "It is difficult to imagine serving people who are more loving, more caring, more empathic, more committed to their Jewish faith."

• Anniversary event: This month's tribute, promoted with a Woodstock-style poster, is being called Yedstock — though the music-embracing rabbi was just 12 at the time of the legendary 1969 rock festival in New York. Tickets are $118 per person, which includes a temple donation. Tickets can be reserved with a mail-in form.