A 10-story community center is slated to be built in the center of Jerusalem by Colel Chabad, an Israeli food security nonprofit affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, following a $5 million donation from philanthropists Debbie and Michael Flacks, eJewishPhilanthropy has learned. 

Called the Flacks Chessed Tower, the center — which will house a senior center, art studio, soup kitchen and synagogue — is set to be erected next to the Machane Yehudah shuk, or open air market, according to the organization. 

Michael Flacks is the founder and head of the Flacks Group, a Miami-based private equity firm that specializes in acquiring underperforming businesses, according to its website. Along with his wife, Debbie, the couple has supported several Colel Chabad projects over the years, including its programs for nutrition support and orphans. Among their charitable gifts is the Flacks Supermarket, one of Israel’s biggest nonprofit grocery stores, which opened  in 2005 in the predominantly Haredi Beitar-Illit settlement in the central West Bank. 

The Chesed Tower “marks a new phase” for the Flacks’ support of Colel Chabad, Michael Flacks said in a statement. “It will not only physically sustain, but will also nurture the spirits of the entire community,” he said. 

Rabbi Zalman Duchman, development director of Colel Chabad, said the center will be “a hub for inclusion, education and acts of kindness, ushering in a new era of hospitality and communal activism for Colel Chabad.” 

Duchman said that the center comes as a response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. He referenced an often quoted teaching of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which said that “a little light counteracts much darkness.”