When Tomer Ben-Gal and Dana Vorisek, who spend their summers in Monterey, were looking for a place to hold their son Lucien's bar mitzvah service, friends recommended the Arts Center.

Tomer and Dana were moved by the historic building, which had morphed from church to synagogue to arts center. The family agreed that the Center would be the right place for the coming-of-age ceremony when a boy or girl turns 13 and becomes a Jewish adult, assuming responsibility for their own actions.

And so the afternoon of August 22 was set as the first bar mitzvah to be held there since the building's many decades as a synagogue which ended 30 years ago.

The space was transformed with the room rearranged with seats for family and friends facing the Torah Ark at the top of the balcony. The Ark is where the sacred Torah scrolls were kept.

From that balcony, Lucien read from a Torah at the service conducted by Cantorial Soloists Robert Fire and his wife, Pat Fire, from Sheffield. A reception was held afterwards in the downstairs Gallery.

"We are honored to have made use of the Sandisfield Arts Center for a purpose embedded in the building's history - marking an important milestone in a young person's life," said Tomer and Dana. Lucien was struck by the historic significance of the event. "I feel very privileged to have read from a Holocaust Torah," he said.