Chabad rabbi opens his house

The small house is easy to miss. Set back a bit from a residential avenue, its driveway providing access to a front yard partly shielded by plant life, the redwood-paneled abode seems an unlikely place for a religious outreach center.

But that’s what it is. Chabad-Lubavitch, a branch of the Hasidic Jewish movement, has sent a young family to Chico to set up a place for fellowship and learning.

For now, that place is 526 West Fourth Avenue. It’s a rental home with a vaulted ceiling, open kitchen and a dining area that flows into a comfortable living room. A full yet tidy bookcase lines one long wall of the “great room"; a couch and soft chairs rest on the other side, at an angle from the sliding glass window to the back.

This is where Rabbi Mendy Zwiebel lives, along with his wife, Chana, and 8-month-old daughter Mushka. It’s also where he works. The private residence is open to the public, doubling as the Chabad Jewish Center for Chico State and the North Valley.

“People shouldn’t feel uncomfortable stopping by at any time,” said Chana, after placing a plate of fresh cookies on the dining room table. “Everyone is always welcome.”

The Zwiebels find themselves in a city with a relatively small yet strong Jewish community with roots reaching back to Gold Rush days. Chico features a synagogue (Congregation Beth Israel), a community group (Chico Havurah) and an on-campus organization (Hillel).

Now there is a fourth group in town, with a mission that intersects with the others.

“We want to be a home away from home for Jewish students,” the rabbi said. As part of the Chabad on Campus program, students are the main priority. Still, he said, he and Chana want to “touch as many Jews as possible, even Jews who feel uncomfortable being affiliated” with a temple or sect. So as they learn about their new community, they will see what needs they can fill.

Does that make them competition or a complement to the established groups?

“I can see how people can view it as conflicting, but I don’t see it that way at all,” said Bryan Rowes, director of Chico Hillel and an instructor at Congregation Beth Israel. “They’ll provide more orthodox religious programs, a more orthodox style of prayer than we’ll provide.

“Chabad is more traditional; Hillel isn’t,” he added. “I’m not coming from any ideology or specific practice because I’m trying to appeal to Jewish people as a collective.”

Rabbi Julie Hilton Danan of Congregation Beth Israel also casts a wide net. She, like Rowes, warmly welcomed the Zwiebels into the community. She met her husband at a Chabad house in Texas, and her children have visited Chabad houses in Europe and Cyprus. A four-year resident of Chico, she sees CBI as a “town synagogue in a way"—non-denominational and “trying to serve a diverse population.”

“We are engaged in outreach, too,” Danan said. CBI has received a $10,000 grant from the Synagogue Transformation and Renewal program and will use that money for events such as a film festival, a musical, new Sabbath programs and a renewal weekend to connect with Jews beyond the 100 families who belong to the temple.

Chico Havurah, meanwhile, is a Reconstructionist Judaism group that began in 2003. Without a fixed site, members have held services and classes at their homes as well as at the Congregational Church. They, like other organizations, make use of the Internet as a unifying tool for their community.

The Zwibels do not want to step on others’ toes. They made sure, for instance, to avoid overlapping with the other groups’ events when they scheduled their public menorah lighting for Dec. 21. “We make sure we don’t have conflicting programs,” Chana said. “There’s no reason to.”

“We’re not focusing on ones who have been touched,” her husband said. “We’re not here to branch off or grab anyone away.”

Mendy Zwiebel, 25, grew up in Morristown, N.J., but might as well call Brooklyn his hometown, since he spent weekends with family in the epicenter of the Chabad movement. He also spent time in France and Los Angeles before getting ordained in Brooklyn in 2004.

There he met Chana, 23. They married in 2005. This summer, they learned they were coming to Chico and took a trip to this place they’d never visited. Chana used Craigslist to find their home; they set up the public space quickly and planned to make their first forays onto the Chico State campus this week to pass out menorahs.

“We hope to grow,” Chana said. “We hope to have Shabbat dinner with 40 to 50 students…. [But] we’re not measuring success by how big our house is or how many people come. It’s by doing one mitzvah [good deed] and every individual who has been touched.”