New Youth Center and Mikvah for Thornhill’s Russian Jewish Community

In the 1950s, Chaya Esther Zaltzman traveled 36 hours by train each way — every month — from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to reach a mikvah in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her husband, Rabbi Chaim Dovber (Berel) Zaltzman, eventually built a mikvah of their own, a pit dug in secret under Soviet rule.

On Sunday, August 2, their grandson — Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman — led the dedication and mezuzah ceremony for the Kholodenko, Murad, and Ressin JRCC Youth Centre, Library, and Mikva in Thornhill, Ontario — a house adjacent to the main synagogue of the Jewish Russian Community Centre of East Thornhill. The event, which drew hundreds for dinner, music, and celebration, marked the formal completion of a project years in the making.

Netanel Sakovitch, a community member who was born in Kherson, Ukraine, and attended Chabad programs in Israel before settling in Thornhill, said the building serves a need he didn’t have as a child. “When I was growing up, places like this didn’t quite exist,” he said. His four daughters now use the library weekly. “The new center covers all the generations — the library for the kids, the after-school for the young ones, and the mikvah for the adults.”

The JRCC was founded in Toronto in 1980 by Rabbi Yoseph Yitzchak Zaltzman, who was sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to serve what was then roughly a thousand Russian Jewish families. Today, the organization operates a network of community centers, Hebrew schools, and programs serving an estimated 50,000 Russian-speaking Jews across the Greater Toronto Area — a community shaped by decades of Soviet-era suppression of Jewish life. Rabbi Mendel, Rabbi Yoseph’s son, opened the East Thornhill branch in 2005. For the first decade, the community operated out of rented spaces. In 2015, they moved into a permanent home.

In December 2020, the property next door came up for sale. The JRCC bought the standalone house and began a phased renovation. The lending library — Shloimele’s Library, named for the Zaltzmans’ late son, Meir Shlomo — moved in first in 2021. The mikvah, a ritual bath, was completed in 2023. Hebrew school and youth programming followed.

The library now circulates 20,000 books a year — and that number is growing annually. It also serves as the Canadian partner for a program that ships Jewish children’s books to Chabad emissaries nationwide. The lower level houses a mikvah and a guest suite; upstairs, a youth center, three classrooms, and an outdoor sukkah that seats twenty.

The building is named for three donor families: Kholodenko, Ressin, and Murad. Weeks before the dedication, Rabbi Berel Zaltzman passed away at 91. Rabbi Mendel dedicated the mikvah to his grandfather’s memory. In the USSR, his grandfather had built one in secret. In Thornhill, this one has his name on it.