The first synagogue in Quebec west of the Island of Montreal has officially opened in St. Lazare, where the Jewish population has been growing.
The Chabad Centre for Jewish Life, serving principally St. Lazare, Hudson and Vaudreuil, is located in a large former house on the main street of Chemin Ste. Angélique that the community has purchased.
Chabad Rabbi Nachum Labkowski and his wife Malki have been ministering to the Jewish community in the area since 2010, from their home in St. Lazare, renting space elsewhere when needed.
The new centre, a 15-minute walk from their home, has a total space of 2,400 square feet, said Rabbi Labkowski, including a main hall that can seat 70 to 80 people. There is also now space for the Sunday Hebrew school for children and adult classes, as well as a kitchen, office space, library and lounge.
The property has been under renovation for a year, and the house was completely gutted, he said. Due to its prominent location, the city required that the four walls of the façade be maintained.
The total cost of the project is $600,000, he said, of which about two-thirds has been raised. The centre has no formal membership; its mailing list is 250 families.
“But that in no way reflects the total Jewish population, which is probably two or three times that.”
The centre is the only synagogue between Dollard des Ormeaux and Ottawa; the historic Congregation Beth-El in Cornwall, Ont., closed in 2006.
Rabbi Labkowski, who is originally from the small French town of Brunoy, southeast of Paris, said he has seen considerable growth in the Jewish population in the five years he has lived in St. Lazare.
Many of those moving in lately are young families, especially from Dollard.
“They are looking for the lifestyle they had when they were growing up in Dollard 20 or 25 years ago,” he said, “with more space and very community oriented. There are lots of activities for families here. It’s a wonderful place to live.”
Their housing dollar also goes further off-island. He now has some families living as far out as Rigaud.
They are also aware of at least two Russian families who settled in the area, after living in Israel.
He and Malki, who is a native of Rochester, N.Y., have four children aged 7 to 2. The school-aged are driven into Montreal to a Jewish school every day, but he said they have plenty of Jewish friends in their neighbourhood.
The couple came here after living in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they married in 2007. He had previously served in Ivory Coast and Brazil, as well as France.
Full Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services took place in the new centre this year, and Rabbi Labkowski plans to offer Shabbat services twice a month.
The centre’s stated mission is to provide “a place where every Jew can explore his/her heritage through learning in a warm, non-judgmental atmosphere.”
The establishment of a permanent Jewish house of worship in the area, which today is located in what is known as the MRC (Municipalité Régionale de Comté) de Vaudreuil-Soulanges, is especially gratifying for Elaine Steinberg.
A Montrealer, she has lived in the area for more than 40 years. In recent years, she has been researching its Jewish history, which she found dates back to 1820. She has found no evidence of a rabbinical presence before about 25 years ago.
“While it is true that the Chabad centre is the first off the west of the island, Rabbi Labkowski is not the first Chabad rabbi to teach [here]. In the early 1990s, Rabbi Moishe New [now director of the Montreal Torah Centre in Hampstead] taught in my house. We were six to eight people,” she said.
From 1974 into the ’80s, Steinberg, who raised two children, said no rabbi came to tend to the small number of Jews in the area, who tended to be unknown to one another.
After that, with more Jewish families moving in, Jewish holiday events began to be organized, although she is not aware of any rabbi leading them.
The connection with Rabbi New remains strong, and he and his wife Nechama attended the St. Lazare centre’s dedication on Oct. 18.
