3 Comments

1. 

   Admin on May 9, 2012 at 2:58 pm

   By: Ralph Zuckerman – Executive Director Clover Hill Park Cemetery

   A Brief History of Beth Olam Cemtery:
   Beth Olam was opened in 1848 with the last burial in 1948. The cemetery was established by multiple synagogues of Detroit. In the late 1970’s GM began buying land to construct a plant. The cemetery was in the middle of the proposed area. GM felt they could relocate the graves thinking the cemetery was abandoned. Congregation Shaarey Zedek was the last synagogue around that was involved with the Cemetery and protested disturbing the “Admat Kodesh”. GM and Shaarey Zedek came to an agreement to preserve the cemetery with open visitation twice a year and for special occasions (tours of old Jewish Detroit). For security reasons GM is unable to accommodate individual visitation requests as the Cemetery is locked. The grounds of the cemetery are maintained to preserve the historic nature of the grounds.

2. 

   Rosh Haqohol on May 9, 2012 at 3:04 pm

   http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/lyakhovichi/rabbonim.htm
   Rabbi Moshe/Morris Gitlin – rabbi in Windsor Ontario; first formal rabbi of Congregation Shaarey Zedek of Windsor Ontario in 1904. Moshe Gitlin was a bookbinder in his daily life in Lyakhovichi but memories of him leading his group of Hasids in Lyakhovichi survive from the 1890s. An anecdote of this famously quiet, slow to speak Hasid, being celebrated by other members of his congregation in a raucous Simcha Torah event of the 1890s, was mentioned in the memoir in our Biography section Lyakhovichi, pre-1914 aka “My Devastated Shtetl”. When the Windsor Ontario congregation succeeded in acquiring a building for a synagogue, they pushed to get a real rabbi, not just a Torah reader, and they offered the position to Rabbi Gitlin who was from Lyakhovichi and who had received smicha in Pinsk. Moshe Gitlin and his wife and children arrived in Canada ready to lead the community here as they had done in their little shteible in Lyakhovichi. But the Windsor community was not as cohesive. According to a history of the community, the disputes among members were so raucous that the police were often called to break things up, and the court news was full of fights, charges, and slanders, from one member of the community against another. Eventually quiet Morris Gitlin decided this was not for him. He had been making his living in Windsor as rabbi, shochet and bodek (kosher slaughterer and inspector), and religious teacher. He moved with his family to Detroit, just across the border, and earned his living with the last two professions there. Source – “The Jews of Windsor Ontario”; the immigration records of Morris and of his wife, “My Devastated Shtetl by Avrom Lev, the property records of Lyakhovichi;

3. 

   Rosh Haqohol on May 9, 2012 at 3:05 pm

   And more here: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/lyakhovichi/EmigrantAssociations2.htm