It’s been almost a decade since the Chabad of Hunt Valley was started, and Rabbi Shalom Zirkind said that he knew right away their shul was needed in the area.
“I was living in Baltimore, and I noticed there was nothing serving anywhere from Greenspring toward the reservoir, from the Beltway north to Pennsylvania. It was just a big open pocket. You have Mays Chapel, which has a large concentration. You have Hunt Valley, which has a nice large concentration. Then as you go further north in terms of the farmland, there are definitely Jewish families living there, too,” Zirkind said.
A decade later, Zirkind, his wife and their seven children operate a small Chabad house, part of the larger Maryland Chabad network, in a nondescript house on West Padonia Road in Cockeysville.
The Chabad of Hunt Valley sits on a sprawling piece of land that allows it to hold a variety of events and happenings, maybe more than what is typical of a more suburban or urban Chabad house.
“The space allows us to do things — we pitched a tent on our front lawn for a Seder with 50 people. I might not have been able to do that on Greenspring Avenue,” Zirkind said. “We adapt to the area as needed.”
Zirkind comes from Canada, while his wife is a native of Chicago. He said that he thinks his adopted home is a special place.
“There’s been layers [in Baltimore] — families that have been here for generations, which I think is nice. The concentration is also nice. I don’t live far from my kids’ school. It’s 20 minutes to get kosher food. It’s not as spread out as, say, Los Angeles or New York or those kinds of cities. It’s a wonderful place,” Zirkind said.
Passover at Chabad of Hunt Valley was a unique experience because of the ability to have an outdoor Seder, but that’s not the only time Zirkind intertwines Jewish tradition and nature. Each month, there is a community dinner on Friday nights with 40-plus attendees who sit on the Chabad’s outdoor patio.
“It’s a beautiful, community event,” Zirkind said.
While the summer doesn’t hold any of the largest Jewish holidays, it still has a day very special to Jewish Baltimoreans: the Orioles’ Jewish Heritage night, which was first introduced last season.
“We did it in style last year. We got kosher food and we had a pregame with hot dogs and burgers and fries,” he said.
Even though summer hasn’t begun, the mind of a rabbi who also organizes community events is always just as focused on the near future as he is on the present.
“We’ll have to get ready for Rosh Hashanah before we know it,” Zirkind said.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a chance for the Chabad of Hunt Valley to expand, as the High Holidays bring out Jews who may otherwise not be as involved. They have held Rosh Hashanah services at the Baltimore Country Club, which Zirkind said offered a “different style” of celebration and piqued the interest of new parties.
For Zirkind, holidays are wonderful, but one other Jewish tradition that is particularly rewarding to him is the b’nai mitzvah. For lots of Jews, a child’s 13th birthday marks the end of their Hebrew school journey after intense and tedious Torah training. Zirkind thinks about it differently.
“It’s not as critical for a bar mitzvah to read the Torah on the bar mitzvah, it’s more about them knowing what it means to be a Jewish man and embracing that going forward.
Unfortunately, what happens in a lot of places is as soon as they are done drilling their bar mitzvah, the kid doesn’t want to go anymore because they’re just so burnt out of it. I want to show them the beauty in, ‘hey, put tefillin on for a couple of minutes everyday. Say the Shema. Talk to Hashem. Pray to Him. Think about Him,’” Zirkin said. “That’s more [important] than reading. I don’t want to come across as putting anyone down, I’m just saying that Chabad’s view is that it begins at that moment, it doesn’t end there.”
For Zirkind, Baltimore and Hunt Valley are now home, and he wants to do as much as he can to serve the Jewish community on the outer reaches of Charm City. They would love to expand, and are always willing to look into a new space. At Chabad of Hunt Valley, moving forward is the status quo.
