Boca Raton has been growing by leaps and bounds for some time now, especially with new housing and development on the western side of the city. Chabad of West Boca Raton has witnessed all this change, and when its doors open for Rosh Hashanah in its brand-new building, it will mark a milestone in this part of Southeast Florida: welcoming area Jews and their guests to worship in the first synagogue in West Boca.
“We’re really only moving down the block,” Rabbi Zalman Bukiet explains in terms of geography. “But it’s really eight blocks if you’re going to walk from here to there,” he clarifies, before adding that “it will be the first synagogue west of Route 441.”
Route 441 separates what used to be undeveloped land, swampland really, to the west, and the first developed land in Boca, which lies along the Atlantic Ocean to the east.
The new building comes on the heels of 25 years of development and rapid population growth in Southeast Florida and Boca Raton in particular, which sits at the southeast tip of Palm Beach County, alongside the heavily Jewish and earlier developed Broward and Dade counties.
“Drastic changes have occurred in this part of Florida since we arrived here in 1989,” says Bukiet, who directs the Chabad center with his wife, Chani. The rabbi is a native New Yorker; his wife grew up in England and attended a Chabad seminary in France before coming to the United States. They are the parents of four children.
“There have been a lot of physical changes since we got here,” adds Chani Bukiet. “And many spiritual changes as well. Boca itself has really come a long way. It was not built up when we came here. There were still a lot of open fields and farmland back then. There is also a lot more here now for Jews in terms of Jewish observance.”
As the rabbi goes on to explain, “when we first moved here, we had to go into Miami Beach to buy kosher milk. Now there is a separate kosher marketplace; the Winn-Dixie supermarket has a kosher bakery and deli; and there are five or six kosher restaurants. And we have several mikvaot and religious schools right in Boca.”
It takes a strong and vibrant community to keep those restaurants and other Jewish-related establishment in business, and according to Rabbi Bukiet, that’s exactly what Boca worked its way up to. There is plenty of demand for the services being provided. He has also seen a significant sector of Boca Jewry transform into a strongly observant Modern Orthodox Jewish community.
There are about 600 members of this observant community who relocated and wound up moving down here; others became more religiously observant since they have been here with the help of Chabad,” he says. “The proof is in the numbers: The area now has 60,000 Jews, and Boca has more than 20 synagogues, including five Chabad Houses [one with a brand-new mikvah] and four other Orthodox shuls.”
‘A Sense of Permanence’
The Bukiets have not only witnessed all this progress, they’ve helped spur it on, encouraging and planting the seeds that are blossoming in this bedroom-community offshoot of the busier, earlier-established East Boca. Families, in particular, have been drawn to the boom of multiple-story housing west of Route 441, away from Florida’s Turnpike and the original, smaller ranch homes closer to the water.
After 20 years in the same location, the Bukiets learned that their lease would end this year and started looking for their own property. The search ended around the corner.
The change in location will relocate the shul literally down the block, though it’s a long block. “It amounts to a move of eight short blocks west,” notes the rabbi. “The old address was Kimberly and Lyons Road, and the new property will be on Kimberly and 441.”
The 12,000-square-foot building under construction doubles the size available for services, classes, Shabbat dinners and more. It will allow plenty of room for an expanded main shul, a weekday shul, a social hall, lecture hall, library, youth video lounge, kitchen and a larger religious school, to be called the Jeff Weltman Hebrew School. Plans for a mikvah are also included.
“I’m excited about having more space for our Hebrew school, which is like my baby,” says Chani Bukiet. “We’re really launching forward from the ground up. The new building provides a sense of permanence, of having our own place. The expanded space will allow us to more comfortably provide for the community.”
To sum it up: The Bukiets say it will be a place where one and all are welcome to pray, explore, experience, talk, laugh and study—where body and soul are nurtured.
More Space for All
Boca resident David Feldan attends programs and often participates in the Chabad minyan, or prayer service. He is working with the rabbi on the construction of the new building. “I’ve known Rabbi Bukiet for about five years. He is an extraordinary person; truly a Chassid and baal emunah (“master of faith”) in everything he does and every decision he makes. In the new space, it will be much easier option for the rabbi to reach out to people and for people to reach out to him.”
Feldan explains that “the old building the rabbi will soon vacate is located in a shopping center, where he has always had to contend with limited visibility and limited frontage. The move will result in a location that is much larger.”
In fact, the new facility doubles Chabad’s current space, with the shul to be housed in a stand-alone building. The street it now faces—Route 441—is much busier and will serve as a “beacon for people to find him,” assures Feldan.
Stan Sussman also believes in Jewish causes. Originally from Connecticut, he began financially supporting Chabad in Orange-Woodbridge, Conn., after his daughter and her family got involved there. “As baalei teshuvah [“returners to the faith”], I saw the profound effect Chabad had on their lives. Then I began to support Chabad in Westport, Connecticut, where my son lives. We’re here in Boca enough to be considered full-time residents since 2000. I’ve known Rabbi Bukiet for more than 15 years, and Jewish life here has grown steadily and considerably.”
Sussman, who attends services at Chabad of West Boca in its present storefront location, says attendees represent a real variety of people.
“The rabbi and his wife have done a fantastic job welcoming everybody. At services on Saturday, you see that mix: Israelis, Sephardic Jews from Latin America, people just finding Judaism, Orthodox and the not-so-Orthodox. I’ve been meeting with Rabbi Bukiet every week to review the parshah [Torah portion] and the Jewish perspective of what’s going on.”
Sussman is happy to lend his help because he feels that “Chabad is a good Jewish cause. And Chabad is always expanding. Chabad rabbis are the most dedicated people I know.
“Rabbi Bukiet has the belief that G‑d will provide whatever we need,” he continues. “Since I began studying with him, I have gotten to see so many examples of the things the rabbi is trying to teach me and how he lives his life—what G‑d can provide and what happens when you have strong faith.”
And while that’s of the utmost importance, so is a little breathing room.
Says Sussman: “There is nothing like having a home for yourself—a building of your own, your own space. This move to the new building is really all about space.”
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