Chabad Takes Over Former Church

Janice Arnold – Canadian Jewish News

MONTREAL — Churches have bought former synagogues in Montreal, but this may be the first time that a Jewish congregation has purchased a Christian house of worship – at least, in recent history.

That’s what happened during the High Holidays: Chabad of NDG moved into the former St. Columba’s Anglican Church at 4020 Hingston Ave.

The synagogue/community centre was located in trendy Monkland Village for five years, led by the charismatic young Rabbi Yisroel Bernath.

“We were bursting at the seams,” he said. “Whenever we had an event for more than 100 people, we had to rent a space.”

The former church has actually been bought by a group of Jewish developers, he said, and Chabad of NDG has agreed to pay them back over the next 18 months.

Chabad will only be using the building adjacent to the sanctuary, which includes a hall, lounge, kitchen and stage – a total of about 5,000 square feet, Rabbi Bernath said. Nevertheless, it retains distinctive ecclesiastical leaded windows and still has a cross near the entrance.

The sanctuary is being kept by the developers whose plans for it remain unclear.

A daycare, the CPE Communautaire Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, occupies the storey above the new Chabad. It’s been there for more than 25 years, said Rabbi Bernath, and will be allowed to remain for the time being, but eventually Chabad hopes to have that space, too.

Chabad of NDG had been located in three, progressively larger, rented premises on Monkland Avenue. For the last two years, it operated out of a 2,000-square-foot place near Harvard Avenue.

Rabbi Bernath described the offer to buy the old church – it goes back about a century – as “an amazing opportunity”, if a little scary because it means a capital campaign will have to be conducted.

The building may also need repairs.

The deal was closed “literally three hours before Rosh Hashanah,” he said. “It was an interesting way to start the new year.”

The move took place the evening of Simchat Torah with a parade of the Torahs along Monkland to Hingston, just north of Sherbrooke Street, where there was dancing on the normally quiet residential street.

In addition to much more space, the new location has the advantage of being closer to the Loyola campus of Concordia University, where Rabbi Bernath is the Jewish chaplain.

Rabbi Bernath credits the late Charlotte Silcoff with being instrumental in making the match between Chabad and the church.

Silcoff, who died in July and most recently worked for Chabad of the Town (of Mount Royal), helped the NDG Chabad get established in Monkland Village.

About two years ago, Rabbi Bernath said, she proposed to him the idea that there might be a church in NDG that wanted to sell due to declining membership. She approached a number of them to see if they were interested.

“The negotiations [with St. Columba’s] lasted about six months, and, although she was very sick, she was very involved,” said Rabbi Bernath.

Chabad of NDG has no formal membership, but it serves between 300-400 students, and another 1,000 young adults, he said. It also hopes to attract other members of the Jewish community of all ages living in the neighbourhood.

“We will certainly be expanding our programming, which has been an issue until now because we didn’t know where to put everybody,” Rabbi Bernath, who has earned the moniker “Montreal’s Hip Rabbi,” said. “Our new home allows us to do what we want to do.”