GROWTH FROM WITHIN sizes the area’s strong Orthodox inframoved here, the [number of ] classes structure and relatively inexpensive have increased,” says Yechieli. “Each day school tuition—around $8,500 for grade added an additional class this elementary school. school year.” To accommodate its Over the past few years, dozens of growing student body, the school is in young families have moved to Souththe process of building a new high field, says Ariella Shaffren, twentyschool and preschool. seven, a former Teaneck resiStephen J. Savitsky dent who moved to the neighborhood “Whenever my family comes to just over a year visit, they’re amazed that you could ago. “We’re all stop at a four-way stop sign and people in the same actually let you go if you are the first boat; we’re one there,” she says. “They’re not going young, we’re to just mow you down. Okay, you can’t moving to a get sushi at two in the morning or ten new commuat night, and we have only one pizza nity with no exshop, but these things become much tended family, less of a focus. There’s a simplicity in Ariella and Dani Shaffren moved to Southfield in 2012 and but we really bought a seven-bedroom home for under $100,000. The couple day-to-day life here.” feel a part of is pictured here with their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Koby. Detroit’s newcomers, some of things,” says Photo courtesy of the Shaffrens whom were accustomed to having a vaShaffren, who riety of day schools and shuls, discovserves as Young Israel ered that out-of-town doesn’t of Southfield’s sisterhood president. To prove the shul is serious about necessarily mean out of options. The “People have really taken us in.” building the community, Young Israel Oak Park/Southfield communities As the population expands, so do of Southfield offers families considerboast a number of day schools, three the schools. Yeshivas Darchei Torah in ing moving to town a $7,500 five-year kollels and a myriad of synagogues Southfield, which runs from preinterest-free loan toward purchasing serving approximately 1,000 families. a home or making renovations. school to twelfth grade, went from a “We’ve got a great product here in “We want to show people that we student population of 330 in 2008 to Southfield,” says Rabbi Yechiel Morris, want them to be here,” says Rabbi 373 in 2013. rabbi of the Young Israel of Southfield Morris, who sent representatives “My kids are in preschool in for the past eleven years. He emphato the most recent OU Emerging Yeshiva Beth Yehudah; since we Communities Fair. Confident that the community will continue to grow, the shul recently added another youth room, a majestic beit midrash and an outdoor deck and playground. “We got together and said, ‘we can make this happen,’” says Rabbi Morris. A significant number of frum students move to the Detroit area to attend college at nearby University of Michigan, Wayne State University, Oakland University or Michigan State University; upon graduation, instead of heading back East, many decide to settle in Detroit. “You make connections, relationships with the rav, the shul and the Torah center,” says Gabi Ahavas Olam outgrew its current shul space and plans Grossbard, forty, president of Ahavas to move to a new building in the spring of 2014. Olam Weingarden Torah Center of Shuls and communities must grow organically; in other words, the local Orthodox population must consistently reach out to the unaffiliated as well as to Reform and Conservative Jews. Kiruv is a core component in growing an Orthodox community.
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