When thinking of Jewish neighborhoods in New York, Harlem may not be the first to come to mind. Yet the area is celebrating the opening of its second Chabad center—Chabad of Hamilton Heights—founded this past spring by Rabbi Yehuda and Chani Shmotkin.
“The neighborhood is evolving so fast,” says local resident Leslie Dweck. “Great food and new coffee shops popping up are wonderful, but none of it is as special or important as building a nice community uptown where people can connect to each other, to their roots, and deepen their connection to Judaism,” she said describing the Shmotkins’ fledgling Chabad center.
Chabad first took root in Harlem in 2005, when Rabbi Shaya Gansbourg realized that it had a burgeoning Jewish population with almost no Jewish infrastructure. Working together with Rabbi Shlomo Kugel of Chabad of the West Side, Gansbourg and his wife, Goldie, founded what professor Jeffrey S. Gurock, the Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, called “the revival of Judaism in Upper Manhattan.”
After the rabbi passed away in 2013 at the age of 57, his work was taken on by his children, Rabbi Yossel and Mushka Gansbourg.
Shmotkin, who was raised in Milwaukee, Wis., says he and his wife, who is from Montreal, will be focusing on serving students at the nearby City College of New York, in addition to local residents.
Immediately after the new center was made official just before Passover, the rabbi says he “grabbed some boxes of matzah and began walking the streets of the neighborhood looking for people who needed some for the holiday. Someone asked me, ‘Rabbi, what are you doing here?’ I told him about our efforts in the neighborhood, and he offered to host some events in his home. Thank G‑d, we’ve had some very successful programs there.”
Besides holiday programs—a “Chanukah on Ice” show is in the works—the Shmotkins have been distributing challahs to neighbors and hold a weekly “lunch-and-learn” session that attracts as many as 40 CCNY students.
And as soon as they can find a suitable apartment, the Shmotkins plan to continue to unfold what Dweck describes as “a beautiful mission.”
Remembering Jewish Harlem My late father, A. Elihu Michelson wrote a piece entitled, I remember Jewish Harlem, that was included in a book on Jewish folklore by David Max Eichorn. In it he mentions that Harlem was a Jewish neighborhood with a vibrant community including the Hungarian Synagogue where Yossele Rosenblatt was cantor for music on shabbatot before the beginning of the new Hebrew months. Boys into their teens studied at the Uptown Talmud Torah and on shabbat afternoons had programs at which in season they chanted Psalms beginning with barchi nafshi (ps 104) together after minha. My grandfather had a shoe store on 125th street that had the distinction of being closed on Shabbat and Jewish holy days.