Chani Oppenheim is up to her kishkes in moving boxes, and her Internet is down, but she couldn’t be happier. The executive director of Hillel at Davis and Sacramento is counting down to the demolition of the current Hillel House and the launch of construction of a new, $5 million Jewish center on the site.
With a ceremonial groundbreaking Sunday, April 3, work will soon begin on the three-story house, which should take a year to complete. Until then, Hillel is moving to a bungalow a stone’s throw away on A Street, right across from the U.C. Davis campus.
“The [new] building is an outgrowth of our success,” said Oppenheim, who has been with Hillel for nearly five years. “Kids are telling us they want more, and they want to be here.”
Since 1965, when Davis Hillel first opened, it has occupied a now-80-year-old cottage on the A Street site. Back then, Davis was not the most in-demand institution in the U.C. system, with only a few hundred Jewish students served. Today, with five area campuses under its umbrella, the Hillel serves more than 5,000 students.
“We reached our limits,” said Michael Singer, a retired U.C. professor and a longtime Hillel board member. ”We get 70 to 100 for Shabbat dinner and they’re packed in like sardines.”
Moreover, he says, the current house had begun to show signs of wear. “We’ve had lots of visits from plumbers, electricians and roofers,” he said. “There’s a point at which you’re putting good money into a facility falling apart. You need to do something better.”
The new 9,500-square-foot Hillel House will have a basement activity center that will seat 150; administrative offices, a state-of-the-art kosher kitchen, several activity rooms and a chapel that seats 92. It will also be a green facility, with solar panels, special hot water systems, green design insulation and environmentally friendly paints.
All that new space will allow students to expand on programs, such as Challah for Hunger, which has Jewish students baking loaves of challah, selling them on campus and donating the proceeds to a local food bank.
Oppenheim has noticed a bittersweet feeling about taking a wrecking ball to the old Hillel House. She said it was always “very haimish. You walk in and want to flop down on the couch and eat some chicken soup.”
But new trumps old.
“[Students] are every excited about the new house,” Oppenheim added. “They realize the possibilities this new house can afford them.” The groundbreaking ceremony for Hillel of Davis and Sacramento’s new house takes place 3 p.m. Sunday, April 3, at 328 A St., Davis. Information: (530) 756-3708 or www.hillelhouse.org.