This past summer, we had our third, successful, bus group vacation to learn about Jewish life in other cities. The first year we went to Toronto, two years ago to Chicago and this past year we traveled to Pittsburgh. The trips have been fulfilling as vacations and also as an opportunity to increase our understanding of Jewish life in North America. It has been a wonderful way of increasing friendships and camaraderie among members of our congregation, as well. By now, I hope you have heard the rumblings that Ilana and I will be leading a pilgrimage to Israel with members of the synagogue, their friends and family on October 26, 2008. Information about this trip should be arriving in your homes, soon.

Many of you may not know that for the last number of years, the congregation has also arranged for an annual bus tour of old Jewish Detroit. Even though I am a native Detroiter, I spent the majority of my adult life away from this community and was very grateful for the chance to hear about places that I barely remembered as a child. While I was roving the internet, I came across a Web Page dealing with this very subject, called the Lost Synagogues of Detroit at shtetlhood.com/index.html.

It begins with a welcome to the website asking those who come across these pages to share their own memories of the buildings that are displayed in picture and word.

Beautiful, poignant and largely forgotten, the former synagogues of Detroit outline once closely knit neighborhoods from the days when Detroit was a conglomerate of vibrant immigrant and ethnic communities, of a time when families walked to their places of worship which stood in the midst of their neighborhoods. Today almost all the synagogues of Detroit are Christian houses of worship for Detroit's Afro American community. This is a story of two communities and two faiths, told by those who worshipped and continue to worship in these houses of prayer.

As I browsed the site I came upon the page with B’nai Moshe. I began to read some of the comments form people about our building on Dexter.

I went here from around 1937 till the early 40's and then again as a member of Boy Scout Troop 23 (Nate Trager's troop). Most of the time the kids would hang out in the basement while their parents and grand-parents would be davening upstairs. However, there were times I had to sit next to my Zaida who would always be showing me the current place we were reading in the sidder (I do that with my family today!) even though I could read Hebrew since I was five.

My cousins lived on Lawrence about a block from the shul so I hung out there most of the high holidays. Fedora hats, new suits (at Rice & Ashe downtown) and other things are still in my memories of the Dexter experience. I went to MacCollough, Rosevelt and Winterhalter (yes, all three - we moved a lot during the late depression years) then Durfee and Cass Tech, and attended Hebrew School at MacCollough, Rose Tzadik Cohen (on Lawton when it was first built in 37 or 38), the UHS on Tuxedo, and then the Yeshiva on Dexter and Cortland. - Mitch R

In early 1950s, a group of girls walked from the Sturtevant/Petosky area to B'nai Moshe for Saturday services. They had the best Kiddush afterward us girls decided since Rock & Rye pop was served! - Diane

Looking a little further down the page you will see a message from Dr. Melvin Friedman. If you or your family were members of one of these old neighborhood Detroit synagogues, you will be delighted to share your thoughts and to hear from others of the history and special connection to their lives in these forgotten Jewish houses of worship that continue to live through the worshippers of a different faith.