Boca Raton synagogue finds new home after neighbors objected to previous site

Boca Beach Chabad has gotten so crowded that some congregants have told Rabbi Ruvi New they’ve stopped attending services.

That’s the last thing a rabbi wants to hear. But relief is finally coming: The Boca Raton synagogue has closed the deal on a bigger site near the Intracoastal Waterway after searching for a new location for almost a decade. The Orthodox congregation had originally hoped to move into a property near the beach but faced opposition from nearby residents, who sued in federal court to prevent the move.

The congregation will move into an existing 30,000-square-foot office building at 490 E. Palmetto Park Road, about a half-mile from their current building at 120 NE First Ave., which measures only 3,000 square feet.

The new building, to be called Boca Beach Jewish Center-Chabad, has three floors. Part of the first floor and all of the third floor will be leased out for offices to help the synagogue pay its expenses, said Murray Dalfen, Chabad’s campaign chair.

Congregants have pledged $9 million toward buying the property and are working to raise another $9 million to renovate the building. New hopes the congregation can move in next summer.

“It’s very much needed for the community, and transformative for us,” he said.

The previously planned project on Boca Raton’s barrier island spurred complaints from neighbors, and in 2016, two filed a lawsuit, saying land-use rules had been manipulated to accommodate the synagogue. The residents later amended the complaint to say they were concerned about traffic problems and emergency access to their neighborhoods. The lawsuit asked the court to stop the development of the land, one of three complaints related to the project.

New said the legal complaints are now moot because the congregation has found a new location.

One of the residents who filed a lawsuit against the city agreed, saying her neighbors have no problem with the new site, which is on the west side of the Intracoastal.

“No objections from barrier island residents,” Katie Barr said in a Facebook message last week to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “That mainland location should work for them.”

Meanwhile, since the original relocation plans, the congregation has grown.

“Since COVID, there has been a surge in new engagement,” New said.

A typical Saturday morning service has about 100 people in the winter months, he said, with participants crowded into hallways and even praying out in the street.

Although a post-COVID demographic study has not been conducted, the most recent research by the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, released in 2018, showed 134,200 Jews living in Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Highland Beach, or a third of the population, up from 131,000 in 2005.

The congregation estimates there are about 25,000 Jews living between Federal Highway and the ocean in East Boca Raton, Dalfen said.

“The need is so urgent,” said Dalfen, 74. “We are going to build an all-inclusive Jewish center on a really key corner in East Boca that will be easy to walk to and easy to drive to.”

The move can’t come soon enough for Amara Kaiyalethe, 41, a mother of two who lives near the new site. She and her husband arrived in the neighborhood from Minnesota in 2014, and now her parents, brother and sister-in-law also live in close proximity.

She said it’s important for Orthodox Jews to be able to walk to their synagogues on the Sabbath and the current site can no longer accommodate the many who are making a home in East Boca.

“This is going to become a real destination for Jews,” Kaiyalethe said.

Citing the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas in Israel and a surge of antisemitism around the world, she added: “Especially after the last year, this is really going to become a symbol of Jewish strength and pride.”