Spiritual Seekers Find a Home at Hip, Center in Montreal

If you’re young, hip, Jewish and living in Montreal, you might know Rabbi Yisroel Bernath.

He’s the 27-year-old Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi who makes a point of getting around town and connecting with the mostly young, unaffiliated Jews who call the trendy Monkland Village area home. Since opening in November 2008, his Chabad of NDG – a reference to the neighborhood’s official name on Montreal’s West End – has been packing them in, leading locals to speak in terms of a spiritual revival taking place.

Among them, 29-year-old Pascale Gozlan credits Bernath and his Chabad House with providing the spiritual outlet she was looking for.

“I started working and living my life, and that’s when I started feeling the need for something more fulfilling,” says the Montreal native, who was raised in a traditional Jewish home, but attended a private secular high school.

She dabbled in meditation, but eventually heard from a friend about Bernath’s Kabbalah class. One session, she says, and she was hooked.

“The nicest thing it did for me was show me how much spirituality is in Judaism,” explains Gozlan. “I find that a lot of people look for spirituality in [other places] and look at Judaism as just laws, but there’s so much spirituality, and that’s what I was looking for.”

But it’s not just content that impresses Gozlan, who attends three classes at the center each week. It’s the whole atmosphere.

“[We’re] learning in a spiritual setting where everybody is very connected. I find it attracts people who have depth to them,” says Gozlan.

“This is not just a place to go,” echoes Bernath, who arrived in the Canadian city years ago with his wife Sara to run a program at a community day school. “People are very interested and quick. It’s a place of meaning and growth.”

After moving to Montreal, the Bernaths saw a need for organized outreach among young Jews in what he calls the “crossroads” age, somewhere between graduate school and full-time careers. They started out with students at Concordia University’s Loyola campus and in the nearby hangout of Monkland Village. From their Chabad House, Yisroel Bernath still retains the title as the university’s official Jewish chaplain.

Located on a prime piece of real estate on Monkland Avenue in the heart of a village teeming with boutiques, cafes and lots of young professionals, the Chabad House features a kosher, vegan, organic establishment of its own upstairs, Café Harvard.

The Bernaths hold weekly Shabbat meals at the center, as well as regular weekday activities. This past Passover, both of their public Seders were filled to capacity with around 70 attendees.

Article Continued (chabad.org)