A Chabad House for a Growing Family

New York Times

03-03-2025

In 2019, Rabbi Yanky Bell was on one of his annual pilgrimages to the Ohel, the resting place of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson in Queens, New York, when he realized it was going to take him a while to write his petition.
Usually, Rabbi Bell's formal requests include blessings, spiritual guidance and inspiration from people back in El Cerrito, Calif., the small city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay where he and his wife, Shternie, run a Chabad House. (Rabbi Schneerson, who died in 1994, was the founder of the Chabad movement, a sect of Hasidic Judaism.)
But this time, Rabbi Bell came with a strong ask of his own: His family needed a new place to live and serve.
'We'd been looking for six or seven months,' said Mrs. Bell, 31. 'I'd already looked at about 20 to 30 houses.'
It wasn't just that their family was expanding — their second son had just been born. Their community was growing, too. 'When we had services,' Mrs. Bell said, 'we had people inside, outside, people everywhere.'
They needed enough indoor space to accommodate an office for the rabbi and child care for at least 10 children — theirs and their supporters' kids — and to hold classes, meetings and other events. Outside, they needed space to build a sukkah, the temporary hut central to Sukkot, which celebrates harvests and gratitude.
For Rabbi Bell, 33, it was a complicated petition. 'It took me about two hours to write,' he said. 'We really needed a blessing.'
Just as he finished and was leaving the Ohel, his wife called. 'This house had just come up on Craigslist,' she said. 'And it was a dream house.'
The four-bedroom, two-bath home — two stories, with 1,700 square feet on each — would provide privacy upstairs for the family and lots of open space, indoor and outdoors, for their community events. The first floor, a converted garage and basement that extended the length of the house, could serve as a meeting room, a space for workshops and a study area.
'It's always hilly in El Cerrito,' said Rabbi Bell, 'but this place was really flat.' (El Cerrito means 'the little hill in Spanish.')
The house not only had an ample and level backyard with artificial turf, but the lot next door was included in the rent and had trees and other greenery that serve as a play area and meditation space.
But the $5,000 monthly rent was considerably more than they'd paid at any of their previous rentals. 'We didn't have that many supporters yet,' Mrs. Bell said. 'So we had to ask: This is what we're looking for, but is it affordable?'
Yanky Bell, 33, and Shternie Bell, 31
Occupations: He is a Rabbi; she is co-director, education and program coordinator
The mission: 'Most other very religious groups are also very insular,' Rabbi Bell said. 'The work we do, and the work the other 5,000 Chabad families do around the world, is the opposite of insular. We want people to feel loved, to feel seen.'
On future hopes: 'I'd love to see us have a place that combines nature, wellness, and Jewish learning,' Mrs. Bell said. 'To bring it all together so we have more of a connection to the earth, to nature, to animals and growing things.'
Before they moved to the Bay Area in late 2016, the couple had considered less expensive regions like north Florida and the Seattle suburbs to launch their own Chabad House.
'I remember I zoomed in on Google maps and put in 'Chabad' to see where there were no Chabads,' Rabbi Bell said. 'We looked at places with large Jewish populations that were underserved.'
About 350,000 Jews live in the Bay Area. When they asked a rabbi in Berkeley for guidance, he suggested El Cerrito — a city of about 25,000 just north of Berkeley, with steep inclines and panoramic views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.
Chabad runs on fund-raising from supporters, so the Bells, though young and scrappy, had a shoestring budget. Because neither is native to the Bay Area — Rabbi Bell is originally from England and Mrs. Bell is from Canada — they had to develop relationships, and raise money, from scratch.
'El Cerrito was the first place we came,' Rabbi Bell said. 'We spent two days walking around the plaza and asking people if they knew any Jews. Someone sent us to a mechanic who said he was Jewish but not religious.'
Unlike many Orthodox Jewish denominations, Chabad's mission is to reach out to all Jews, so strict observance isn't an issue. 'We help Jewish people connect joyously with their heritage,' said the rabbi.
After they moved into the house (the rent has since risen to $4,515 a month), the Bells' first event at Chabad of El Cerrito was for Hanukkah. They'd sent out a mailer and were stunned when more than 120 people showed up.
'There was a lot of excitement, but not all of that translates right away,' said Mrs. Bell. 'But we just kept doing it.'
They ran workshops on how to make challah, worked with a local Home Depot to teach children how to make menorahs, gave a family seminar on how to make and blow the shofar (the ram's horn used during Rosh Hashana services), taught online classes, held women's events and study groups, and hosted celebrations and religious services. The yard now houses a coop for a trio chickens the Bells recently acquired.
Even the nonobservant mechanic eventually came to their events and ended up becoming a friend.
'It's very typical of Chabad to run all these things out of the home,' Mrs. Bell said. 'It's Chabad House for a reason. Emotionally and psychologically, it should feel like a home, like a loving space. It should feel like what home feels like. This reflects our larger goal, to make this world a home for the divine by revealing the divinity in every person and everything.'
Though there is no official or formal membership in Chabad, the Bells said they now distribute matzos for Passover to more than 450 families in the area. Services draw more than 50 people each week.
'As we get older, maturity allows us to go deeper, to be more intentional,' Mrs. Bell said. 'So many people tell us they're not religious. But it's not required. It takes a while sometimes for people to believe us.'