New Chabad Center
New Jersey Jewish News 11/30/04
Chabad establishes permanent center in Monroe Township by Marilyn Silverstein NJJN Middlesex Correspondent In a handsome colonial house at the intersection of Gravel Hill and Union Valley roads in Monroe Township, with a horse farm on one side and cornfields on the other, the first permanent home of the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe is taking shape. Inside, a photograph of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, peers down from the family room wall onto boxes waiting to be unpacked. Nearby, a long table stretches from the dining room into the living room in anticipation of festive Shabbat meals. And in the basement downstairs, dozens of boxes of books fill the spaces that one day will house a library, an Israel center, and the region’s first Holocaust resource center. “Everything is upside down, but — slow but sure,” said Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky, codirector of the center with his wife, Chanie, as he and his friend, Leonard Posnock of Monroe, showed a guest around the new center. “My vision is, this three-acre lot should be a warm home where anybody in the community could feel they’re welcome for whatever way they want to practice their Judaism — monthly Shabbat services, Shabbat dinners, lectures, reading up on Jewish history, counseling,” the rabbi said. “It’s a place to celebrate Jewish identity, a place you can consider part of the community, a place that will be the in place for people to come and enjoy themselves, Jewishly and socially.” The Zaklikovskys have been planting the seeds for the permanent center since 2002 — first commuting to the area and then, in the fall of 2003, moving into rented space in Monroe and reaching out to the community of some 6,000 Jews there. Their center, one of 42 New Jersey affiliates of the Morristown-based Rabbinical College of America-Lubavitch, offers monthly Shabbat services, holiday services and celebrations, lunch-and-learn courses, weekly classes on Torah and Kabala, and women’s groups. The center is un
