Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Maryland Hillel Center Could Open in Fall 2025
On Sept. 8, more than 200 people attended Maryland Hillel’s groundbreaking celebration for its new building in College Park, marking the start of an estimated 14 months of construction.
The two-story building, nearly 40,000 square feet, will include student leadership suites, an a cappella studio, a newly created center on Israel education and antisemitism awareness, a kosher dining area, café, rental catering spaces, study areas, classrooms and more, according to a Sept. 6 press release by Maryland Hillel.
The Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Maryland Hillel Center is located on Yale Ave. between University of Maryland’s Fraternity Row and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. Previously a parking lot, this site housed the university’s police headquarters and was used for Hillel services in the 1970s, according to The Diamondback, UMD’s student newspaper.
“It is exhilarating to be able to finally move this from the theoretical into reality,” Maryland Hillel’s Executive Director Ari Israel told the Washington Jewish Week. “Our community has been blessed with growth [over] the past 20 years, and we’ve been busting at the seams to have a space that will accommodate our microcosm of community and [the new Hillel building] will be a great opportunity for the next generation of Jewish Terps.”
Israel said the current Hillel building on Mowatt Lane is too small to maintain all of Maryland Hillel’s programs.
“We’re seeing, some weeks, 600, 700 people on a Friday night [as] part of our social and religious community,” Israel said. “We’re standing-room and sitting-room only, and we currently don’t have any dedicated student leadership space.”
He added that the 13 staff members at Maryland Hillel share “tight, confined” office spaces, and that the kitchen was built in 1981 to accommodate about 75 meals per day. They now serve “well over 300” daily meals.
Israel said the current Hillel building does not have enough religious space for multiple denomination services, a problem the new, larger building will solve.
The Maryland Hillel community aims to raise $8 million more for the Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Maryland Hillel Center by the end of August 2025 — it has raised $15 million as of August 2024.
The new building will also include a center for Israel education and antisemitism awareness, according to the plan. This learning center will offer informal educational opportunities, classes and guest speakers to help Jewish students at UMD learn about their heritage and how Israel fits in.
The programs within the center for Israel education are an effort to connect with UMD’s campus as a whole, not just its Jewish students, Israel said.
“It’s not an academic pursuit,” Israel said, noting that there is a separate school for Israel studies at UMD. “There is an academic department, but really more of an educational and allyship and awareness and advocacy and training [department].”
The other aspect of the new center is antisemitism awareness, which Israel said was necessary due to “some isolated [antisemitic] incidents” on UMD’s campus. He said the goal of the center is to eradicate hate and bias in any form: “One antisemitic incident is one too many.”
The College Park City Council approved the site plan for a new cultural site center on Nov. 14, 2023, the next step in a project that has been in progress for more than five years.
UMD and Hillel are doing a “land swap” for the site of the new cultural center, exchanging the parking lot space for the current Hillel location, Maryland Hillel’s Finance and Operations Director Shawn Laing told The Diamondback. He said the new building could open by fall 2025.
The building’s new site — 7505 Yale Ave. — is where Maryland Hillel purchased its first property in the late 1940s after a “nomadic decade” on campus, Israel said. He told the crowd on Sept. 8 that Maryland Hillel had owned that land until the late 1970s when they sold it to UMD, and it was then used as the university police auxiliary building.
“[UMD] tore down the old Hillel site when the building became too dilapidated about 10 to 15 years ago, [so] the history was lost,” Israel said. “We managed, through serendipity and the Yiddish word ‘bashert,’ which I think is telling of the way that divine providence shines down a favor and a smile.”
He said one of the donors’ relatives attended the groundbreaking ceremony from Baltimore who had met his wife at the old Hillel facility when they were both students at UMD decades ago.
“We are grateful to go back home … where we started,” Israel said, adding that the new location is central for many students.
Construction on a new Hillel building was slated to begin in 2019, but was delayed to 2021 due to the time it took to design the building, get plans approved and obtain funding for construction, according to The Diamondback. In November 2022, Maryland Hillel announced that its new building would open in fall 2024.
Although construction has been delayed, Israel is excited for the future of Maryland Hillel.
“As the University of Maryland remains a very healthy environment for Jewish students, we are attracting Jewish students from across the country, literally almost every state,” Israel said. “[University of] Maryland’s reputation is strong, which means that we’re serving as a magnet, and that should continue to grow.”
