One of the final phases in a new building project for Chabad of Bellingham, WA was completed last month with the purchase of a 4,800 square foot building located just off campus at Western Washington University.

Formerly known as the Shalom Center, the building has been home to several of Bellingham's Jewish organizations. Renamed the Rohr Jewish Center, the building will be getting new life after Rabbi Avremi and Nissa Yarmush, directors of Chabad in Bellingham, WA closed an $880,000 deal for the premises.

"The building has personal connection with Jewish life in the area, so it’s an appropriate move," says Rabbi Yarmush.

Eighty students participate at Chabad’s weekly social and educational programs, but until now it entailed an uphill one-mile trekto the old building. The new center is located just off campus, making it convenient for Western Washington University’s 500 Jewish students to participate at Chabad activities, often a catalyst to life-altering decisions in the lives of individual students.

Sasha Parsley, an international politics major showed up at a Friday night dinner shortly after the Yarmushs arrived on campus in September 2009. The experience marked a turning point for Sasha, who admits that until then, "Judaism wasn’t a high item on the priority list."

"I started to learn more about Judaism, and then one day I thought, why not keep kosher?" One thing led to the next, and soon Parsley joined Chabad’s Ivy League Torah Study Experience, an immersive Jewish studies program and retreat.

Parsley credits the Yarmushs for their steadying hands as she traveled on her journey seeking her way.

"Rabbi Avremi and Nissa were my support system as I vacillated back and forth." Parsley was struggling with her decision to drop her non-Jewish boyfriend back at Western Washington University, as her commitment to a more observant Jewish life deepened.

Eventually, she put a stake in the ground and returned to Western Washington University for her senior year. Now fully observant and the president of the Chabad student board, Parsley plans to study in a seminary in Israel next year.

Tamir Bresler, a biology student in his junior year expects the new building will facilitate greater Jewish engagement at Western Washington University. The center includes a spacious student lounge, kosher kitchens serving up food in small café, a library and administration offices.

"It’s an exponential improvement in every way," says Bresler, in reference to the location, ample parking spaces and large, airy spaces inside the center. He was recently elected social representative on the student board, and he now works to recruit for events and classes.

The transition to the Rohr Jewish Center was in itself an exercise in Jewish outreach on campus. "Students stopped by and noticed the koshering of the new kitchens and asked about kosher," Bresler explains. Their first encounter with Jewish life at Chabad is often punctuated with questions about fundamental Jewish practices, he says.

But after they get acclimated to the new environment, "their questions get deeper, and they start to relate to Judaism on a deeper level."

That's what we live for," says Nissa Yarmush. "Seeing and experiencing this thirst for knowledge and the satisfaction that comes along with it being fulfilled gives us just as much nachas as if they were our biological children.