Folsom Chabad joined by community members and civic leaders as a nearly two-decade vision reached a major milestone on Hana Way
For Rabbi Yossi Grossbaum, Sunday morning was about far more than turning a shovel of dirt in the community he loves and he calls home.
Surrounded by members of the community with wife Goldie at his side, Grossbaum led a celebration that is a milestone years in the making as ground was officially broken for Folsom’s new Chabad Jewish Community Center and synagogue, moving a longtime vision another major step toward reality in the community they have served for just shy of two decades.
The groundbreaking took place at 795 Hana Way, where the future 23,483-square-foot, two-story center will rise on a two-acre property near East Bidwell Street. The future campus will give Chabad a permanent home for worship, education, youth programs, holiday celebrations and community gatherings serving Folsom, El Dorado Hills and the surrounding region.
But Sunday’s gathering was about much more than the size of the building or the plans that will eventually take shape on the property.
The community came out in force for the celebration, filling the site with longtime Chabad families, supporters, friends, civic leaders and people of different faiths and backgrounds who gathered together to mark the occasion.
The turnout underscored a theme repeated throughout the morning: While the new center will become a permanent home for Jewish life in the region, the journey to reach Sunday’s milestone has been closely connected to the broader Folsom community.
City leadership was well represented at the celebration. Mayor Justin Raithel was joined by Vice Mayor Anna Rohrbough and City Council members Sarah Aquino, Barbara Leary and Mike Kozlowski. City Manager Bryan Whitemyer and Folsom Police Chief Adam Green were also in attendance.
Sacramento County Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez represented the county, while Assemblyman Josh Hoover joined the celebration on behalf of the state. A representative from Congressman Kevin Kiley’s office attended as well, along with other community leaders and supporters.
For the Grossbaums, the gathering represented the latest chapter in a story that began long before there were architectural drawings, city hearings or construction plans.
“When Goldie and I came here to Folsom twenty years ago, we didn’t come here to build a building,” Grossbaum told those gathered. “We came here to build a community. One person at a time, one family at a time, one mitzvah at a time.”
Nineteen years ago, Yossi and Goldie left the familiar surroundings of Brooklyn with two young children and headed west with the ambition of establishing a Jewish community in Folsom and El Dorado Hills.
Grossbaum recalled that they were just 25 years old at the time. They had big dreams, even if they did not yet know exactly how everything would come together.
They did know what they wanted to create. Their local effort began in their living room and later moved into Chabad’s South Lexington Drive location. As their own family grew, so did the community around them.
Over the years, the Grossbaums watched children learn their first Hebrew letters, celebrate bar and bat mitzvahs, grow into teenagers, leave for college and begin building adult lives of their own.
They watched families celebrate together and support one another, building relationships that extended well beyond religious services.
For Grossbaum, those years explain why Sunday’s groundbreaking was never simply about erecting another building.
“It’s not only about the 23,000 square feet,” he said. “It’s not only about the walls, the rooms, the concrete, the steel. It’s about creating a permanent Jewish home where people will learn, celebrate, pray, connect, and belong for generations to come.”
That sense of belonging was reflected in the crowd gathered Sunday. Raithel used his remarks to highlight the relationships that have developed among Folsom’s faith communities over the years, particularly along South Lexington Drive, where Chabad has operated alongside other houses of worship.
“For many years, I’ve affectionately referred to South Lexington as God’s Way,” Raithel said.
He described it as a stretch of Folsom shared by Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities and said those relationships illustrate something important about the city.
“People of different faiths, traditions, and backgrounds living alongside one another, supporting one another, and building community together,” Raithel said.
The mayor said Chabad’s move from South Lexington is the result of what he called a “wonderful problem to have” — the Jewish community has simply outgrown its current space.
“This groundbreaking represents much more than a new building,” Raithel said. “It represents a permanent home for Jewish life here in Folsom and in our region.”
He added that while Chabad may be moving to a new home, the relationships established on South Lexington will continue.
That broader connection to the community was echoed by Hoover, who said his relationship with Chabad dates back about a decade, when local community member Kevin Duel introduced him to Rabbi Yossi, Goldie and the congregation.
Hoover said he has watched those relationships grow over the years and believes the new facility will benefit more than those who worship there.
“This is not just going to be an amazing gem for the Jewish community,” Hoover said. “It’s also going to be an amazing gem for the community at large, for the community as a whole.”
Hoover also spoke about the importance of creating a place where people can gather openly and feel secure in expressing their faith.
“I am so grateful that you are going to build a place where people can come and feel welcomed, be able to worship openly, safely, and with a whole heart,” he said.
Hoover presented a certificate recognizing the groundbreaking on behalf of the California State Assembly.
A representative from Congressman Kevin Kiley’s office also presented a congressional certificate of recognition, describing Chabad as a cornerstone of the community where people can gather for faith, community and culture while providing a place for those who need support.
Max Weinstein, who opened the ceremony, credited Rabbi Yossi and Goldie with nearly two decades of commitment to the community and described the need for the new center in simple terms.
“Somewhere along the way, a problem arose. A good problem,” Weinstein said. “We outgrew the space we had.”
He described the future center not simply as a Chabad house, but as a home where families will celebrate together, children will connect with their heritage and future generations will have a place to strengthen their Jewish identity.
“We’re also doing something so much more than that,” Weinstein said. “We’re building a home.”
The property itself has already undergone a significant transformation.
A longtime residence that previously stood on the site was used by local firefighters for training exercises before it was demolished in preparation for the development. Cleanup followed as crews prepared the property for Sunday’s ceremony and the construction that will follow.
Grossbaum used that transformation as a metaphor for what the day represented.
“A short time ago, just a couple of weeks, we saw the old structure on this property come down,” he said. “Today, we begin to build.”
He connected the moment to a broader Jewish principle of responding to destruction and darkness by rebuilding and creating something greater.
“That even when confronted with darkness, the Jewish response has always been to create more light,” Grossbaum said.
“And today, we are creating more light. We are saying that Jewish life in this region is not only here, it’s growing, it’s strong, and it has a future.”
The center those gathered Sunday came to celebrate has been designed around that future.
Plans approved by the city call for a 17,285-square-foot ground floor and a 6,198-square-foot second floor.
At the heart of the first floor will be the synagogue sanctuary. The level will also include classrooms, community gathering areas, a social hall, teen lounge and a mikva, a traditional Jewish ritual bath.
The second floor will include offices and conference rooms along with four guest rooms intended to accommodate visiting scholars and support extended programming.
The campus will extend outdoors as well, with plaza and courtyard areas, a rear patio for gatherings and activities and a 53-space parking lot.
Architectural plans feature a combination of flat and low-angled rooflines with natural earth-tone materials, including masonry, woodgrain and concrete slab finishes designed to complement the business-professional character of the surrounding East Bidwell Street corridor.
The project reached a major regulatory milestone earlier this year when the Folsom Planning Commission unanimously approved the design for the center.As Folsom Times previously reported, that approval cleared a significant hurdle for Chabad’s plans to transform the Hana Way property into its permanent campus.
Before demolition, the property contained a 2,336-square-foot single-story residence built in 1976, along with a swimming pool and smaller outbuildings.
The property’s development history stretches back to 1989, when Folsom approved a parcel map and rezoned the original 6.73-acre property from agricultural reserve to business-professional use. It was later divided into three parcels surrounding the Hana Way cul-de-sac.
The southern parcel at 785 Hana Way was eventually developed with an office building, while the parcel at 790 Hana Way remained undeveloped. Chabad later acquired the two-acre parcel at 795 Hana Way as it pursued plans for a permanent community center.
Sunday’s ceremony also recognized those who helped move the vision from an idea toward construction.
Grossbaum thanked donors, volunteers, supporters, community leaders and friends who backed the project and helped make the groundbreaking possible.
“This is not our building,” he told the gathering. “This is your building. This is our community’s home.”
Major supporters were recognized before the ceremonial groundbreaking, including Ezra David Philip and Perla, who were presented with a plaque acknowledging their partnership and support of the project.
Philip said he and Perla were grateful to be part of the effort and reflected on one of the recurring themes of the day — the power of light.
“A little light dispels much darkness,” he said. Then came the moment that brought everyone to Hana Way
After years of imagining, planning, fundraising and working toward a permanent home, shovels were placed into the soil. Cameras came out and supporters gathered around the Grossbaums and project leaders as the ceremonial first dirt was turned.
For many in attendance, it was the physical representation of something they had heard discussed and envisioned for years.
For Yossi and Goldie, it was another milestone in a journey that began when a young couple with two children boarded a flight from New York to Sacramento with a vision of creating a Jewish community in a city they would soon call home.
They built that community first. Now they are beginning to build its permanent home.
The celebration took place with a visible public safety presence as well. Folsom Police officers were at the property prior to the ceremony and remained on site throughout the groundbreaking and celebration to help ensure the safety of those attending.
As Sunday’s program came to a close, Grossbaum looked beyond the freshly turned soil toward the generations he hopes will eventually fill the building. He spoke of children laughing, families celebrating and people gathering together in a center intended to serve the community long after the generation now bringing it to life
Reaching the groundbreaking, he emphasized, did not represent the end of the work. The goal is to continue growing, connecting with more people and strengthening Jewish life throughout the region.
“We can never be satisfied with the light that we created yesterday,” Grossbaum said. “What we accomplished yesterday was good for yesterday. But today, we have to increase, we have to grow, we have to improve.”
“There’s always another person to reach. There’s always another mitzvah to inspire. There’s always another life to touch.”
For the crowd gathered Sunday — Jewish and non-Jewish, longtime friends, newer supporters, residents and civic leaders — the morning represented both a culmination and a beginning after two decades of building community brought Chabad to Hana Way.
“We live in a world that is often filled with darkness and uncertainty, but each of us carries the ability – and the responsibility – to bring light into it,” Grossbaum shared. “This new center is not just a building; it is a beacon. It will be a place where kindness is shared, where learning is alive, and where every person can find a way to illuminate their corner of the world. Together, we are not just laying a foundation of bricks and mortar – we are laying a foundation of light.”
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