Chabad UF Expands to Accommodate Growing ‘Family’

Hundreds of members of the local Jewish community gathered on a dirt lot Sunday where soon a 23,000-square-foot Jewish student center will stand.

In its 12th year in Gainesville, the Tabacinic Lubavitch-Chabad Jewish Student and Community Center is expanding from its former home in a single-family house five blocks north of the University of Florida campus to a facility on the same site complete with a synagogue, a library, kosher kitchen, a library and a fitness room.

Rabbi Berl Goldman and his wife, Chanie, the directors at the center, got a standing ovation before they made brief remarks laying out their vision for when the center is completed next spring.

Chanie Goldman told an old joke about a lumber company that caught fire and the owner offered $500,000 to anyone who could put it out.

A number of crews tried, but no one could as the flames were too hot. Then, a group of men in an old fire truck approached and drove right up to the building and extinguished the flames.

When asked what was the first thing they would do with the reward money, they said: Get new brakes.

“With your help, this beautiful new building will be the new brakes,” she said.

Current and former UF students who have worshipped at the center, at 2021 NW Fifth Ave., said the facility and the Goldmans were blessings as they ventured into college life.

“My favorite thing Rabbi Goldman says is, ‘We’re not Reform, we’re not Orthodox, we’re not Conservative. We’re Jewish. We are all one family,” said Aviela Weltman, a UF student from Jacksonville who said she found a family in the Goldmans and other students at the Chabad.

“I’m very excited for the new building,’’ Weltman said, “but with or without it, I’d already found my home here.”

Israel Kopel was a few weeks from graduating from UF in 2000 when he met Rabbi Goldman.

Kopel told the crowd at Sunday’s groundbreaking that he was driving when he saw a sign for the fledgling Chabad’s barbecue.

As he walked up, he was struck by Goldman’s beard and black hat and clothing. He was used to seeing men dressed traditionally in Miami but not in Gainesville.

Goldman welcomed him and asked if he could get him something to eat. Kopel said he was salivating but still asked, “Is it kosher?”

“For the first time in Gainesville, I felt like I was at home,” Kopel said.

Now, hundreds of students go to the center for guidance and fellowship.

At Sunday’s groundbreaking, Rabbi Ovadia Goldman, Berl Goldman’s older brother and a Chabad rabbi in Oklahoma City, said his brother’s center was setting a healthy physical and spiritual foundation with the new project, one built on the cornerstone of “unconditional love.”

“They set the gold standard for effective work with students on campus,” Ovadia Goldman said of his brother and sister-in-law.

UF President Bernie Machen spoke about the important role faith plays in campus dialogue and in some students’ personal growth during their college experience.

“Many students understandably need the support and comfort of their faiths,” Machen said. “You’re a home away from home, and when this building is complete what a home you will have.”

In the meantime, Goldman encouraged students to continue visiting the center’s current location — a series of trailers on the site — on Fridays for Shabbat, or Sabbath, services and meals.