Monroe, NY - Chabad-Lubavitch Planning For A 20,000-Square-Foot Permanent Home In Downtown Monroe

Monroe, NY - Pesach and Chana Burston just want to produce better Jews. Their movement is as outward-looking as the Satmar Hasidim of Kiryas Joel are insular. They want to inspire fellow Jews, whatever they call themselves. "Our philosophy is, we're there to serve Jewish communities, regardless of background," says Pesach, a 29-year-old rabbi. "Why create barriers and distinctions when people have so much in common?"
In their short time in Orange County, he and his wife have built a dedicated following with weekly "Kabbalah and Chicken Soup" gatherings at their spacious Monroe home.

Now they want to establish an even larger Chabad presence in Orange County. They're planning on a 20,000-square-foot building off Gilbert and High Streets in downtown Monroe that would become a permanent home for their expanding activities. It would also hold a synagogue.

Thus far, the only friction the Burstons have encountered is with a rival Chabad group in Goshen, led by Rabbi Yakov Borenstein and his nephew, Meir.
The elder Borenstein, who has represented Chabad in Poughkeepsie for about 20 years, claims he placed his nephew in Goshen to do outreach and that the Burstons are usurpers with no right to the Chabad name. Both groups, the Burstons and the Borensteins, hold similar activities and call themselves Chabad of Orange County.
Occasionally, this otherwise obscure rivalry has spilled into the pages of the local news papers, where the Borensteins have placed ads asserting their legitimacy and distancing themselves from the Burstons' building plans in Monroe.
Chabad headquarters in Cown Heights, Brooklyn, NY sides with the Burstons in this turf battle. "We are particularly pained that a small, irresponsible group is subjecting the good people of Orange County to unnecessary confusion," said a spokesman for the movement. "The only authorized Chabad-Lubavitch representatives in Orange County are Rabbi Pesach and Chana Burston."

The Burstons' success and expansion plans probably also cause a twinge of anxiety within Monroe's Reform and Conservative temples, whose leaders would rather not lose members and donors to Chabad. Some of the couple's most fervent admirers - those who go to the "Kabbalah and Chicken Soup" dinners and underwrite Chabad holiday parties - belong to Congregation Eitz Chaim and Monroe Temple Beth-El.
The rabbis from those two temples preferred not to speak for publication about Chabad.