Gone are the days of the naked Jew on the rooftop and a Hell’s Angels biker wanting to delve into his religious roots.
Chabad of the East Bay has seen plenty of changes since it set up shop in a converted frat house near the U.C. Berkeley campus some 30 years ago. But the organization’s mission remains largely the same.
“It’s mitzvahs on the spot for people on the go,” quips Rabbi Yehuda Ferris, who has been around for 21 years and dispensing one-liners for most of that time.
In late November, Chabad celebrated its 30th anniversary with a banquet, raising money for outreach programs for Jewish students on the U.C. Berkeley campus.
“Whatever it takes to get a Jew to be proud of being a Jew. To give them an entrance ramp to the highway of being Jewish. That’s our job,” Ferris said.
Over the years, that job has translated into such wildly diverse tasks as running a homeless shelter, officiating elopements in the back yard and counseling runaways and fugitives from the law.
“No job,” says the 46-year-old Ferris, “is too small or too strange.”
Ferris’ predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Langer, now a part of Chabad of S.F., came to Berkeley in 1975 and stayed for a decade. “I miss Berkeley,” he says. “Berkeley was so haimish.
“It provided the needs of the moment, of the times, those turbulent times,” he said. “This was Chassidism at its best.”
Langer describes Chabad as both a spiritual and physical haven that operates “25 hours a day.”
“Our main work is primarily beyond the walls of institutionalized Judaism,” he said. “We try to take our message to the street.”
These days, Berkeley’s Chabad runs a summer camp for kids at nearby Lake Temescal. It puts on such community celebrations as Purim parties, chanukiah-lighting events and matzah- and shofar-making programs. The organization conducts a daily minyan. Ferris teaches a class on Jewish medical ethics while his new co-rabbi, Yitzchok Kaye, leads a course on Jewish mysticism.
“They’re all educational and community service,” says Ferris.
Backed by longtime donors, Chabad has no membership fees or, for that matter, members. “Anybody can walk in here,” says Ferris. “Everyone’s equally important — unless you give $1 million.”
For many, Berkeley’s Chabad is best known for its drop-in Shabbat meals every Friday evening at the rabbi’s home. Talk to Ferris or his wife, Miriam, about practically anything and they’ll wind up inviting you over to eat and celebrate. Over the years, countless Berkeley students and visiting academics have taken them up on their offer.
“A warm Shabbos meal and some nice songs will kindle the Jewish soul,” explains Ferris.
Miriam Ferris, the mother of nine ranging in age from 3 to 21, doesn’t fret about the fact that she never knows exactly who or how many will show up at her table.
“My general policy is to make a lot,” she says. “It either gets used up or we have a lot of leftovers for the week.”
She also takes a pragmatic approach to the inevitable dishes that go awry. “I get very creative with titles. If I burn something, I say it’s called smoked whatever.”
Over the years, Chabad has served a dazzling array of eccentric and eminent Jews who were seeking spiritual guidance, enlightenment or maybe simply a good time.
“There are plenty of bizarre stories,” says Ferris.
As for the luminaries, the late rock promoter Bill Graham, a onetime busboy in the Catskills, waited tables for 200 guests at a community Shabbat at Langer’s home in Berkeley. Graham ultimately became a generous supporter of Chabad’s building of the giant chanukiah used in the annual candle-lighting ceremony for Chanukah in Union Square.
Former bagel mogul Noah Alper and his wife, Hope, had Ferris perform their kosher wedding on the Chabad roof back in 1986.
“They were very instrumental in helping us get our kashrut together for Noah’s Bagels,” says Alper, who started the business in 1989. Boasts Ferris: “I ate his first bagel.”
Alper is an avid fan of Shabbat at the Ferrises. “Friday night dinners at his house are incredible,” he said. “The house is loaded with Cal kids and other sorts of stragglers and who knows what.
“He has a wonderful way of bringing everyone in.”
These days, Kaye, who started a year and a half ago, also hosts Shabbat dinner for students at the Chabad house of more than 20 years on College Avenue.
Back at the old fraternity house on Piedmont Avenue, the early days of Chabad were bathed in the “aftermath of the ’60s,” recalls Langer.
On his very first visit to Berkeley’s Chabad, Langer was awakened in the middle of the night by a racket.
The reason for the commotion was the discovery of a young man sitting in a lotus position on the roof wearing a tallit and tefillin — and nothing else.
“He was in a catatonic state up on the roof,” said Langer, who checked out the man and got him quick professional help.
As for the ex-Angel, Langer said he was first contacted by the biker’s wife, a Cherokee Indian, who “wanted me to come over and kosher their home” and help enroll their children in Hebrew day school.
Along the way, Langer also persuaded the biker to clean up his act and abandon his marijuana farm up in Mendocino. The family became occasional participants at Chabad events before moving away.
“We take our mitzvahs where we can get them,” says a philosophical Langer.
Reflecting on his career in Berkeley, Ferris says: “I came when I was 25. I gave my best years to this place. And what do I get back?
“Nachas,” he answers.