Chabad Moves to New Home in Berkeley

The oldest Chabad House in northern California, Chabad of Berkeley, has moved into a new home after three years in a leased building. It is sharing its new temporary home with the local chapter of the Friendship Circle.

J Weekly, a San Francisco-based Jewish newspaper, quotes Shliach Rabbi Yehuda Ferris as saying that Chabad of the east Bay, founded in 1972, has outgrown its previous location. “We were bursting at the seams,” he said. “We need to purchase a place so we can serve the widest possible community.”

Ferris says he loves “the million-dollar view” at Friendship Circle’s office, near Berkeley’s famed Gourmet Gulch. “We’re holding classes there, holiday programs, Shabbat services and prayer sessions,” he said. “But we’re looking to purchase.”

Chabad of the East Bay had been leasing the bottom floor of a building at 2730 Telegraph Ave., near the Rose Garden Inn, since 2011. For 21 years before that, it was located in a humble house on College Avenue in Berkeley, between the U.C. Berkeley campus and the Elmwood district.