Early last spring, the founder and co-director of Chochmat HaLev said his rapidly growing center in Berkeley “could evolve into the pre-eminent school for Jewish meditation in the country.”
“Could” has now been replaced by “should.”
After a three-year search, Avram Davis and co-director Nan Fink Gefen have found a new home for Chochmat HaLev, which was bursting at the seams at its former location in a converted west Berkeley warehouse.
The new location is a former Baptist church at 2215 Prince St. in a south Berkeley residential area, a few blocks from the Ashby BART station. The new facility has 8,000 square feet of usable space.
Chochmat HaLev’s former Eighth Street location, which it vacated on Jan. 27, had a mere 1,200 square feet. The space had become totally inadequate for programs that used to draw five or six participants, but now sometimes attract upward of 80 people.
“We are so excited,” Fink Gefen said of the $607,000 purchase. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to grow as we need to go…to have additional programming and to do it in a beautiful way.”
The new building, which was built in the mid-1930s, will become the headquarters for Chochmat HaLev’s local and national programs.
The independent center has become one of the world’s foremost institutions of Jewish meditation education, offering classes, workshops, meditation groups and retreats.
Fink Gefen said about 5,000 people have passed through Chochmat HaLev’s doors since it opened in 1994, with about 200 to 300 regulars. More than 50 classes and 60 weekend workshops are currently offered — and plans are to offer more of everything.
Chochmat HaLev moved into the new facility two weeks ago and celebrated with a Kabbalat Shabbat service Jan. 28 and a chanukat bayit, dedication, ceremony the next day. The mezuzah was hung and people sang and danced.
However, the new building needs more work, including renovations to several rooms, and some foundation and structural fortification. The facility must also be brought into line with the American Disabilities Act.
“There are things that need to be done, but it’s in relatively good shape for its age,” Fink Gefen said.
Eventually, the new facility will house a meditation sanctuary, library and resource center, kosher kitchen, meditation garden, offices and classrooms. The phones are already in, and the number has remained the same, (510) 704-9687.
In part because the building has been a church for more than 60 years, “it has a real strong spiritual feel to it,” Fink Gefen said. “It definitely feels like the home for us at this time.”
On the other hand, at least two minor adjustments have already been made. Several rows of pews were removed from what will now be the main meditation hall, and a cross above the front door to the sanctuary was sawed off.
“There was another cross inside, but I guess they took that with them,” Fink Gefen said of the previous owners, the Glad Tidings Church.
Fortunately for the new owners, the building’s religious symbolism was limited. It has no stained glass, although there is an immersion tank, which was used for baptisms, behind the main sanctuary.
“We’re talking to various people about how we can maybe make it into a mikvah,” Fink Gefen said. “We’re talking to Lubavitchers and other [Jews] about how we can do it so we’ll all be comfortable with it. Maybe it won’t become a mikvah that an Orthodox person would come to, but it could be more loosely used.”
One of the things Fink Gefen likes best about the facility is that it’s U-shaped with a courtyard in the middle. The courtyard is going to be converted into “a beautiful meditation garden.”
Chochmat HaLev is also excited about the rental-revenue potential of the building. Fink Gefen said the main hall will be a perfect space for b’nai mitzvah, weddings and concerts.
“Rental space in the East Bay is not always easy to find, and there are many people who would love to have their event in a Jewish space,” she said.
For a down payment on the property, the meditation center came up with $275,000, which was donated by “a group of about 10 people who have been very involved in Chochmat HaLev. This is very much their community.”
The remainder of the purchase price came from a loan, which Chochmat HaLev will repay over 25 years. Fink Gefen said the nonprofit’s revenues, which were about $80,000 last year, will cover mortgage payments.
Fink Gefen and Davis looked at more than 30 properties in their three-year search for a new home and even explored the possibility of renting.
At one point, they wanted to purchase a building in a warehouse area of Berkeley, near Fifth and Channing streets, but the neighbors dissuaded them. Because light industry now dominates that area, Chochmat HaLev would have had to go through the rezoning process, and residents of the area promised they would fight.
Things worked out for the best, Fink Gefen said.
“We’ve been in such a funky space that our public front has been diminished,” she said. “Now we have a physical space that embodies the values of Jewish meditation and signals that Jewish meditation is a legitimate practice within Judaism.”