Northbrook’s newest synagogue celebrated its new home Sunday morning with a procession from its rented space on the edge of the village’s Sky Harbor business park to its recently finished building in a residential neighborhood to the south.
In a traditional celebration of a synagogue move, members carried the Torah scrolls, the prize possessions of any congregation, at the head of a parade to their new home.
Darchei Noam of Glenbrook has been a faith home-building years in the making. The modern orthodox congregation is a split-off, according to members, from Adas Yehuda V’Shoshana/Northbrook Community Synagogue, a 22-year-old group which now also includes members of Northbrook Congregation Ezra Habonim and Maine Township Jewish Congregation of Des Plaines. That temple completed its new home on Jasper court, just northeast of Willow and Lander roads, in 2000.
After being formed, about eight years later, the new Darchei Noam congregation, with members in Northbrook and Glenview, started renting space at the Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook’s home at 2095 Landwehr Road, about six blocks away. In 2012, with the donation of a house lot in a unincorporated territory just outside Northbrook, Darchei Noam began planning a synagogue in earnest, and got the land annexed to Northbrook.
Some neighbors said they resented the construction of a temple relatively close to houses, and controversy ensued, starting in the fall of 2013, and continuing until the following spring, when the congregation acceded to a string of demands from neighbors.
They included limiting the occupancy of the building to 240 and a promise not to build a sidewalk leading through the property to the next street south, to discourage overflow parking there. Parking lot lights are to be turned off within an hour of an evening’s use at night, instead of being lit all night.
The temple is now ready for services for more than 60 families, temple President David Dobkin said.
Sunday, a rented fire truck carried a band playing for the marching members, who carried a chuppah, a canopy usually used in a marriage ceremony. Just as a chuppah represents a new home to be built by a couple after their wedding, for Darchei Noam, it represented a new home for an entire faith community.
“Our congregation has grown, and it’s nice to have our own space,” Dobkin said. “It’s a very diverse and committed group of people that attend our functions, and we’re glad to have a place, our own home.”
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