By Carol Weisfeld, Alan Schenk and Betty Schenk
The Reconstructionist Congregation of Detroit is celebrating its 25th year, during a Partnership Shabbat this week, June 6, 2026. As you know, RCD is located within the Downtown Synagogue, where its historic objects are housed and out of which RCD leads joint Shabbat services with IADS once every other month. This week’s service will be led by Alan and Betty Schenk, Rabbi Ariana Silverman, Cantorial Assistant Mara Abramson, and others. The week’s d’var Torah will discuss RCD's congregational history.
RCD grew out of Congregation T’chiyah, which itself grew out of a 1975 small group of mainly Detroit Jewish families who were focused on family and egalitarian principles in Jewish worship and festivals. Initiated by Detroit City Council President Carl Levin and Detroit businessman Toby Citrin, they and other interested Jewish families, with the invitation of Father John Nader of Old Saint Mary’s Church, established the unaffiliated Congregation T’chiyah in Greektown. Moving into the church’s school building that educated Mayor Coleman Young and others, the fledging congregation purchased the furnishings from the soon to be demolished Mogain Abraham former Detroit synagogue scheduled for demolition and borrowed a historic ark and torah. T’chiyah incorporated many of its guiding principles from Reconstructionism, so it was not surprising that in the mid 1980’s T’chiyah affiliated with the Reconstructionist movement. A debate between its commitment to a physical presence in Detroit and the lure of more members in the suburbs led to a split between the suburban T’chiyah and the Detroit RCD. Before the split, when both T’chiyah and the Downtown Synagogue held High Holiday services in the suburbs, some members of T’chiyah conducted some High Holiday services in the Weisfeld family’s home in Detroit in order to maintain the unbroken link of Jews davening the High Holidays in the City of Detroit for over 175 years.
After Kiddush and lunch, Carol Weisfeld will lead a half-hour walking tour of the Capitol Park area and streets surrounding 1457 Griswold. We’ll reach even farther into the past...into the 1850's, when an amazing group of young Jewish families lived on these very streets. They, too, wanted to live their lives as Jews, but maybe not the same way that they had lived in Europe. Where did they live? What did they do for work? How did they fit in? Where did they make synagogues? You'll be astonished at how many stories live in the spaces around us as we carry on our Jewish traditions. Please wear your comfortable shoes!