Chabad House co-director provides Jewish home for Chapel Hill, Durham community
This is an unpublished feature I wrote for a class in the spring of 2024.
Yehudis Bluming starts the morning like many other mothers, wrangling her kids to get ready for school. Have they brushed their teeth? Done their homework? On top of the normal morning routine questions, Yehudis asks if her kids have spiritually prepared for the day. Have they done their prayers? Their ritual hand washing? Once they’re all set, with the girls in long, brightly colored skirts and the boys in yarmulkes, the children participate in an online learning program for kids in areas without Jewish schools.
Meanwhile, Yehudis keeps in contact with community members in need — from a college freshman to a woman giving birth — and plans social and holiday events for them. On Fridays, she spends hours preparing Shabbat dinners that feed 100 guests.
“You should always be there for another Jew — whether it’s physically, emotionally or spiritually,” she said.
Yehudis and her husband Zalman, a rabbi, are co-directors of the Chabad House of Durham/Chapel Hill. Chabad is a movement within Hasidic Judaism, where followers faithfully observe various traditions, that focuses on Jewish outreach. Based in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it deploys couples across the world to run cultural centers that encourage Jews to connect with their heritage.
For Yehudis, this entails supporting college students at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, as well as the broader Jewish community that consists of around 10,000 Jews. Every Friday, she and Zalman host dinners at their house celebrating Shabbat, the day of rest, with students Yehudis calls their extended family. The attendees come from varying backgrounds; for many of them, this is their first or only interaction with Hasidic Jews. The Blumings provide two dinners — one for undergraduate students and one for graduate students and young professionals.
As the evening begins, the girls light candles with Yehudis to usher in the Sabbath while the boys pray with Zalman in the foyer. Then, everyone takes a seat at the long tables snaking through the dining room and serves themselves family-style. The menu items range from traditional Jewish foods like matzo ball soup to deconstructed sushi salads. For UNC students like Ruby Jackson, the home-cooked meals are a large draw to Chabad.
“I think the food is really good,” she said. “I live off campus, so it’s nice to have a decent meal.”
Jackson attends Chabad dinners about every other week — for the food, and the atmosphere.
“Yehudis is always welcoming,” Jackson said. “I’m always surprised when she knows everyone’s names.”
Chabad fills the familial niche that is lacking in some college students’ lives away from home. Yehudis has found herself in a maternal role to kids beyond her own, like Madison Harr, a fellow regular at Chabad.
“As soon as I came to UNC, I was looking for a Jewish community that I felt supported and loved in, and Chabad was the perfect place for that,” Harr said. “It feels like a home. When you come in, it feels like a family. Yehudis always greets me with a hug and makes sure I’m fed properly and am happy. She feels like a second mother to me, almost.”
When Yehudis first moved to the Triangle as a newlywed with a newborn, she was 22 years old and not much older than the students she served.
“I definitely grew with the students,” Yehudis said. “First, I was their sister, then their mother. One day, I’ll be their grandmother. But always a friend.”
She was raised in Crown Heights, the hub for the Chabad movement. Every week on Shabbat, she would listen to the leader of the movement, known as the Rebbe, speak for hours about scripture and Jewish life. Yehudis embraced the philosophy of generosity and love for fellow Jews.
“Judaism is not just your own. It’s a gift for everybody,” Yehudis said. “Whatever you have, whatever you enjoy, whatever you are given should be shared if able.”
Having considered a Chabad House as the ultimate form of giving, Yehudis always knew she wanted to lead one. Since 2001, she has. Although her husband has the official title of rabbi in the relationship, she said that they both take on the role of teachers.
“It’s really a co-partnership and not gender based,” she said. “You don’t have a role to play, which is something that’s very powerful within the Chabad House model.”
Together, Yehudis and Zalman visited Israel in early January for five days to show their solidarity for the soldiers and civilians affected by the war with Hamas. They brought barbecue and music to army bases to boost morale. At a hotel that housed refugees from a destroyed town, Yehudis said she gave the children and women silver heart necklaces to connect their hearts with hers.
“It was a very moving trip, very emotionally heavy,” she said. “But it was uplifting to know that we’re really part of one big family and that if one person is in pain, we’re all in pain together.”
That pain carries back to Chapel Hill as the Blumings support students who feel targeted by hate due to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“It’s a fine line of empowering the Jewish students to be proud of who they are, to not hide their identity and give them a space to come together as a family, whether it’s on Shabbat or any other time they feel the need,” Yehudis said. “And then, simultaneously, to make aware to those fighting antisemitism that we are behind them, whether it’s getting it touch with the University to put them in their place to realize that there’s no room for antisemitism. As a leader, you have that responsibility to ensure that students feel safe.”
From her biological children to the students she welcomes into her home to Jews across the world, Yehudis’ family extends as far as her arms can reach.