Chabad of Bethesda is undergoing a $2.5 million expansion, which includes the purchase of an adjacent property on Goldsboro Road and transforming the residential area of the existing Chabad center into programming spaces. The center’s director, Rabbi Sender Geisinsky, said the expansion will accommodate the growth of Shabbat services, programming and the preschool.
“It’s an aggressive goal, a lot of it has to do with raising funds, but we would like the new space to be fully built with doors open to the public by the start of the school semester in 2024,” Geisinsky said.
Chabad of Bethesda was established in a commercial property in 1999. Over the years, it moved to successive locations, opening on Goldsboro Road in 2017.
The 400 participating families learned about the expansion plans over the 2022 high holidays. During an end-of-the-year campaign, the Chabad raised $400,000 in three days, Geisinsky said. The organization closed on the next-door property in May.
This purchase allows Geisinsky, his wife, Nechama Geisinsky, and their nine children to move to the new property and transform their current residential space into classrooms, offices, libraries and more.
The new space will increase the capacity of the preschool — Zlata’s Garden, named after Rabbi Geisinsky’s mother — from 25 students to 75. Shabbat attendance and kids and women’s programming will also have room to expand.
Currently, the sanctuary space has multiple functions and often goes through several “conversions” in a 24-hour period, Geisinsky said.
On Sundays, for example, the space is first set up for morning minyan. Then the configuration is changed to accommodate Hebrew school. Then it’s rearranged for an evening program, and finally set up for preschool for the following morning. Geisinsky said he hopes that the expansion will decrease the need for constant reconfiguration.
Geisinsky’s parents, Rabbi Bentzion and Zlata Geisinsky, founded the center, but the younger Geisinskys took over leadership after Zlata died 13 years ago.
“I wouldn’t say anything has dramatically changed, because my parents were and are devoted and much-beloved leaders of the community,” Geisinsky said. “When we stepped in, we continued very much in the same vein and the same spirit that my parents had started.”
Since moving to the Goldsboro location, Chabad of Bethesda has doubled the number of participants on Shabbat, even during the COVID pandemic, Geisinsky said.
“When my parents originally moved to Bethesda, people told them, ‘You’re parking in the wrong neighborhood. It’s not an Orthodox or traditional neighborhood,” Geisinsky said. “But I think that the Yiddishkeit, the Judaism, that we’re celebrating here is something that every single person can love.” ■
Molly Zatman is a freelance writer.
