SKOKIE, Ill. — On Monday afternoon, Lori Lippitz and her little band of well-wishers pulled into the parking lot of the school they once thought of as theirs. They came bearing gift baskets — fruit, flowers, nuts, pencils, rulers — and a card that said, "We wish for you and your children many years of love, learning and laughter in the home that is now yours." They also came with some trepidation. How would it feel to walk back into their old Jewish school, which this August had reopened as a Muslim school? What had happened to their prayer room? Would the mosaic that told the biblical story of Genesis still be on the wall? For 34 years, beginning in 1978, the old brick building on Gross Point Road in Skokie had housed Solomon Schechter Day School, which was as much a spiritual haven as a school. "When it closed," said Lippitz, whose daughter was a student there, "we felt that something important had ended in our lives." But demographics shape destinies, and as some of Skokie's Jewish residents moved to other suburbs ...      Read more