A Place for God, Torah and Community

What does an active, healthy synagogue look like? It can manifest itself in many ways, but at Chabad of University City, the clues are unequivocal. For this Chabad center and its members, it looks like congregants who are passionate about Torah, about learning, about God and about Judaism. It looks like a schedule chock full of classes and other learning opportunities, and of twice-daily minyanim that very rarely go unmade.

Chabad of UC bills itself as one of the most active Jewish organizations in San Diego, and short of finding a way to accurately measure the synagogue’s “activity” against other local Jewish organizations’, the statement seems to be fairly accurate.

“The synagogue is multi-faceted,” says Rabbi Moishe Leider, who’s been at the helm of Chabad of UC since 1986. “We’re known in the city for a lot of stuff. For classes, for services. We’re very active. If people need a place to go to say Kaddish, if they need a minyan, usually they know they can count on us. … People come to the synagogue when they move into the community because they know that. It’s not just [on] Saturday. They know that if you’re interested in participating, learning, attending services and getting involved within a Chabad framework, this is very often the place for you.”

According to the rabbi, Chabad of UC holds classes almost every day, including those from the famous Jewish Learning Institute adult and teen curricula. Torah, Talmud and Hebrew studies also are frequent. Rebbetzin Sura Leider also teaches women’s classes, and they offer private study, too. On Shabbat, there is children’s programming, and the center also holds frequent special events. In late October, about 100 congregants spent a Sunday at the synagogue for “A Day with Rabbi Manis Friedman,” one of the Chabad movement’s most foremost speakers. Described by Rabbi Leider as a Chabad Yom Limmud, the day included three lectures by Rabbi Friedman and lunch.

“The people who came really loved it,” Rabbi Leider says. “And it’s an important thing. It’s a day of learning. Set aside your affairs, come here and sit and listen to some Torah. It really was beautiful.”

According to Rabbi Leider, the congregation at Chabad of UC has grown to about 175 families, and with congregants of all Jewish denominations or no affiliation at all, from every age demographic, and from both Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities (the synagogue also has a Sephardic minyan that meets upstairs) because it offers them stability.

“If you’re going to come to synagogue if there’s not going to be anybody there, then that’s pretty discouraging,” he explains. “So you want to make sure you know that if you need to go to daven, there are going to be people there, and that it’s going to be a crowd. It’s a place where things are happening, and people know that.”

The synagogue is also a warm, welcoming place, and though it does have a membership, it also has a very open-door policy for anyone who’d like to attend.

“When people come here, we welcome them,” Rabbi Leider says. “We’re friendly, and we make a point of it. It’s very important that people be welcomed. Show them what the Siddur is. Some people need help with pages [and figuring out] where we are. Some people need tefillin. We have tefillin here that we can lend them and show them how to put it on. We can help them through the service. We’ve had people who started coming out of nowhere and they became regulars. They were never Orthodox, never part of a community, but they started to come and they enjoy coming. It’s a good feeling.”

Though the crux of the synagogue is unquestionably about God and about Torah, the spirit of a warm community, and the opportunity for socializing in a Jewish environment (and always with lots of food, the rabbi emphasizes), plays an important role in bringing people back again and again.