After 28 years, Rabbi Sholom Raichik is proud to announce the recent completion of Chabad Lubavitch of Upper Montgomery County’s campus.
The Gaithersburg campus, composed of four properties, was a long time coming.
In the summer of 1990, Raichik and his wife, Chana Raichik, launched Chabad of Upper Montgomery County in their Montgomery Village home. The two rented an office space for services and other community activities.
The Raichiks noticed an influx of young Jewish families to the Gaithersburg area, so in 1997, they purchased a property on Darnestown Road: the current Chabad house. Though small, the house was used for activities while the Raichiks planned to build a permanent home, according to the Chabad of Upper Montgomery County’s website.
That facility opened in 2002, housing a synagogue, classrooms, offices, a social area, a kitchen and a guest suite for overnight and Shabbat guests. Rabbi Raichik purchased the adjacent house for his family to be next door to the synagogue, having sold the Montgomery Village home in 2000.
He hoped to further renovate the facility and purchase the two houses behind the existing property for a nursery school and early grades of a primary school.
In 2024, one of the two adjacent houses went on sale. The Raichiks’ son, Rabbi Mendel Raichik, and his wife, sold their home and bought the house, building a teen lounge in the basement. Then, the final house went on the market.
“We just now completed the purchase of the last property on this area,” Rabbi Sholom Raichik told Washington Jewish Week.
According to the website, “With the purchase of the home, Chabad will have all four lots. We will have free access to the entire space, will be able to fence in for security, expand in the future and much more.”
Raichik’s goal is to turn that fourth house into a Shabbat home for guests, others who wish to be close to the synagogue and families of patients at the nearby Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. It will also be available to rent as a “kosher Airbnb.”
“That is what the house is most suited for,” Raichik said. “It’s a house with a bunch of bedrooms, so it’s perfect for housing people.”
Raichik said he looks forward to this new chapter of the local Chabad: “We’re excited about what the future can be and the possibilities that are out there.”
“Every step is about expanding; you know, ‘What can we do now?’ There are opportunities out there. We seek to make use of those opportunities,” Raichik said.
Community members raised more than $191,000 for this initiative, titled “Chabad Campus Completion,” exceeding the original fundraising goal of $180,000.
The initial goal was intended to cover the down payment of the most recently-acquired house.
“Once we hit the goal, then there’s renovations that have to be done to the house too,” Raichik said. “There’s going to be ongoing expenses involved as well. There’s repairs that are necessary. We have to outfit the house and make it a very welcoming place for anybody who comes.”
Just down the road, Raichik added a “high-end sensory room” to the barn repurposed as Chabad’s Simcha Educational Center for toddlers and children. All of this physical expansion mirrors the growth of the local Chabad community: “It definitely has grown and our activities have expanded.”
Larger events might see anywhere from 200 to 250 attendees, Raichik said.
He attributes that growth to the “Chabad attitude,” which is to “reach out, be available to everybody and make a welcoming place that everybody can call their Jewish home.” Raichik said he hopes to see even more increased membership and participation in the coming months.
“When we first came [to the location on Darnestown Road], we always thought, ‘What would happen if we had the whole property?’” he added. “[This is] definitely a completion of a vision that we had back then.
“But we’re not in the business of owning property. We’re in the business of servicing the local Jewish community and being a home for everybody for all things Jewish. What we want to see is that the growth in the geographical part of it should bring a growth as well in the participation and the numbers; that’s ultimately the goal here.”
