Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yitzchok Teichtel addresses attendees of the new Genesis Center for Jewish Life’s groundbreaking in Nashville, Tenn.
Nashville Officials Lay Cornerstone of Long-Awaited Jewish Center
Religious and political leaders marked the long-awaited expansion of a Nashville, Tenn., Jewish center by laying a cornerstone that once was part of a German synagogue destroyed during World War II.
The pre-Rosh Hashanah groundbreaking of the future Genesis Campus for Jewish Life brought together Mayor Karl Dean, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, Chabad-Lubavitch of Tennessee executive director Rabbi Levi Klein, Jewish communal officials, area rabbis and 200 supporters of Chabad of Nashville. The new center’s directors, Rabbi Yitzchok and Esther Teichtel – who have operated from a small storefront in a local shopping center for a decade – said that hopefully, the same group would ring in the next New Year at the property.
“We’ve been in a temporary place in the shopping strip for too long,” said Tali Ramon, who with her husband Boaz is among the building’s main benefactors. “Even through our previous place was still very warm and inviting, for me, synagogue is a spiritual place that’s best away from shops.”
Situated on nine acres of land, the 14,000-square-foot Genesis Campus will include a social hall, kosher Internet café, ritual bath, youth classrooms, Judaic library, guest suites, sanctuary, meditation courtyard and a commercial kosher kitchen.
In his address to attendees, Cooper cast the building of the center in light of spring floods that devastated Nashville. The center is a symbol of the city’s efforts to rebuild, he said.
The congressman and the mayor laid the German stone as part of the new center’s foundation, while the Ramons similarly placed a stone from Israel. Yitzchok Teichtel said that the two stones represented Jewish life’s past and future.
