JERRY ZOLYNSKY
OUR COMMUNITY
Cherna and Eugene Kowalsky.
Lasting Gifts
Loving patriarch, 85, carves yads for great-grandsons’ future bar mitzvahs. SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
E
ugene Kowalsky has celebrated important firsts in his life that reach beyond family milestones. Kowalsky was in the first graduating class at Detroit’s Mumford High School, and his marriage to Cherna Bodzin is noted among the first wedding ceremonies performed at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, the city where he and his wife have resided for most of their 58 years together. Now, Kowalsky shares what he considers some important artistic lasts in his life that also reach beyond family milestones and into religious observation. The retired Detroit science teacher and school administrator, who is 85 and battling cancer and macular degeneration, has been carving yads (pointers for Torah reading) for one grandson and three great-grandsons to use and show during congregational
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celebrations of each one’s bar mitzvah. Anticipating possible times when he might not be present as each is called to read Torah, the couple soon will be traveling to visit family in Israel so yads can be presented in person to the boys descending from his daughter, one of three Kowalsky children raised in Michigan. The youngest great-grandson about to receive a yad is 5 years old so the ritual object has been made smaller for practice as the boy readies to recite the parshah (Torah section) that will be his bar mitzvah reading according to the youngster’s birth date. “My wife and I are both interested in Judaic art,” said Kowalsky, whose home-displayed collection includes a papercut of Jerusalem, lithograph of a shofar and several versions of the Birkat HaBayit (Blessing
for the Home). “My wife has done beautiful needlepoint, and she is the backbone for making tallis and tefillin bags as well as challah covers for our children.” Kowalsky’s interest in art began when he was a student at Guest Elementary School in Detroit. After modeling objects out of clay, he turned to soap carvings and kept up with that into attendance at Wayne State University, where he met his wife at a gathering hosted by the Hillel chapter. While working part time at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Kowalsky was asked to display his carvings as a component in a series showcasing imaginative projects created by employees. In addition to his miniature replicas of animals, he sculpted hearts planned for his then wife-to-be. “Ten years ago, we started spending winters in Boca Raton, and I joined a wood-
