Jewish Couple Trying to Bring Solano County Community Together

If you build it, they will come. Even if “it” is a Chabad Jewish Community Center in Solano County.

That’s how Chaim and Aidel Zaklos of Vacaville say they see it. The couple are, at 27 and 30, the founders of a Chabad organization in a county not well known for a large Jewish population.

“We’re proud to be part of the joy of it,” Chaim Zaklos said. “Judaism celebrated with such joy and enthusiasm, it’s contagious.”

After less than two years, Chabad of Solano County has grown to nearly 200 families. And the couple meets new people every week, they said.

The reception the East Coast transplants received, from both Jews and non-Jews of Solano County, has warmed their hearts, they said.

“We did our homework, came out and met with members of the Jewish community, and many people told us there really were no Jews in Solano County,” Detroit native Chaim Zaklos said. “Our menorah lighting in downtown Vacaville is attended by Jews and non-Jews, including public officials, and one of the merchants there offered to turn his surveillance camera on the menorah in case of vandalism.”

The couple, the parents of an infant and a toddler, said they met in the traditional orthodox Jewish way — through a mutual acquaintance acting as matchmaker — and always knew their mission would be to minister to Jews somewhere where it was especially needed.

Despite a 100-year-old Jewish congregation and Jewish-centered Touro University, both in Vallejo, Solano County fit the bill.

“There are many unaffiliated Jews in the county, which is situated between two major population centers — the state capitol and the Bay Area — whose needs are not being met,” Chaim Zaklos said. “We found there are many more Jews here than most people think. And 98 percent of them still aren’t being catered to.”

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement was born in Eastern Europe 250 years ago with its modern incarnation dating to the early 1940s in the United States, according to the organization’s website.

Today, 4,000 full-time emissary families direct more than 3,300 institutions with a wide array of programs and services worldwide, it says.

Lubavitch means “city of brotherly love” and “Chabad” is an acronym for the Hebrew words “chachmah,” meaning wisdom, “binah,” meaning comprehension and “da’at,” meaning knowledge, the website notes. The movement’s philosophy teaches understanding and recognition of the Creator, the role and purpose of Creation, and the importance and unique mission of each creature, it says.

Chaim Zaklos studied in New York, Israel and Montreal, traveled to Ukraine, Estonia and Croatia and lead services, seminars and outreach in a half dozen U.S. locations before coming to Vacaville.

Aidel Zaklos, originally from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, NY, graduated high school with honors, earned a teaching certification and has spent years teaching, mentoring and directing at elementary schools.

The couple stressed the Chabad way is a true partnership between husband and wife, and say they constantly seek to find ways to better serve the needs of the Jewish and the larger community.

Besides weekly Sabbath meals, holiday services, lectures and programs, the couple has started a Hebrew school, a Jewish children’s library, a summer day camp and a youth night-life program. Many events are held in their home or a local hotel with which they have an arrangement, but they hope to find a building somewhere in Solano County in which to create a permanent community center, they said.

“I believe the community will really grow exponentially when there’s a physical location they can call their own,” Rabbi Zaklos said. “A place they can point to and say, that’s my place, that’s my community. There are a lot of exciting things still to come, with God’s help and with the help of the rest of the community.”