Chabad.org
Main website of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, grown from Yosef Yitzchak Kazen's online outreach of 1988–1994; run from Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn as an outreach, publishing and news platform
| Chabad.org
| |
|---|---|
| Type | Website; division of the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center (by its own account) |
| Founded | 1988 (online outreach); 1993 (web presence); February 1994 (Chabad.org domain) |
| Founder(s) | Yosef Yitzchak Kazen (1954–1998) |
| Headquarters | Lubavitch World Headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York |
| Services | Jewish learning texts, audio and video classes, the Chabad library online, magazine, news, directory of Chabad centres |
| Key people | Zalman Shmotkin (director, as reported in 2003) |
| Remarks | Listed by Lubavitch World Headquarters under Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch |
Chabad.org is the main website of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. It grew out of the online work of the Brooklyn rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, who began using the Fidonet bulletin-board network in 1988. It went onto the web in 1993 as "Chabad-Lubavitch in Cyberspace", and took the Chabad.org domain in February 1994.[1][2] It is run from Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. Fishkoff calls it "the movement's Internet department".[3] It hosts Chabad's online library of Hasidic texts, the Rebbes' works, biographies and histories, a magazine, a news service and a directory of Chabad centres. As the movement's official site, it gives the Chabad leadership's account of the movement and its history, and should be read as a Chabad-side source.[4]
History
According to Chabad.org's own history, "In 1988, before most of society was aware of the unfolding communication revolution that became the Internet, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement began using online discussion networks to bring Judaism to tens of thousands of Jews around the world."[5] Fishkoff writes that in 1988 Kazen "used Fidonet, an on-line discussion network distributed on several thousand nodes internationally, to spread Yiddishkeit", and later "digitized thousands of Chabad documents and posted them on the newly emerged Web".[2]
Dovid Zaklikowski's history on the site credits Kazen with building "a virtual synagogue" in 1994, with the help of the not-for-profit Dorsai Embassy. With Dorsai's assistance, "they established a presence on the web in 1993", dubbed "Chabad-Lubavitch in Cyberspace". "In February 1994, with the assistance of Dorsai, they purchased the Chabad.org domain name and moved the servers to a small office in Lubavitch World Headquarters." Kazen worked on it alongside his "regular job in the United Lubavitch Yeshivah", and he and a colleague at one point "dipped into their personal savings to purchase computers and servers for the site".[1] (Chabad-side.) The same article quotes Kazen's brother-in-law, Moshe Kotlarsky, "vice chairman of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, the education arm of Chabad-Lubavitch".[1]
Kazen, who had been diagnosed with lymphoma in mid-1998, died in December 1998, aged 44.[6] Fishkoff writes that "When Kazen died in 1998, the New York Times called him a 'Web pioneer'". She adds that the site "is now directed by Zalman Shmotkin and run by a few yeshiva students sitting in a room at 770 crammed with boxes and old computer parts". By 2002 it had "more than 17,000 visits a day".[2][7] In 2008 Chabad.org said that "a team of more than eighty staffs Chabad.org, the largest Jewish information site on the Internet".[1]
- Editor's note: Chabad.org's obituary of Kazen, dated 2 December 1998, says he "passed away yesterday, Tuesday, December 2". In 1998, 1 December was a Tuesday, and the New York Times obituary (13 December 1998) is reported to give 1 December. That obituary was not available to read for this page. Chabad.org's traffic and staff figures are its own and have not been independently checked.
Ownership and funding
In its site footer Chabad.org describes itself as a division of the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center, operating under the auspices of Lubavitch World Headquarters. The Lubavitch World Headquarters website lists it under Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, the movement's educational arm.[4] Fishkoff places it, with the Jewish Educational Media video department and the Lubavitch News Service, among the multimedia operations on the fourth floor of 770. She describes Zalman Shmotkin as "director of Lubavitch News Service and Chabad.org".[3][8] Fishkoff describes Agudas Chasidei Chabad as "the umbrella organization" for Merkos and Machne Israel.[9]
The site's material is free to use. Kazen's own principle, as Zaklikowski quotes it, was that "Judaism has to be free".[1]
- Editor's note: No separate accounts or tax filings for Chabad.org or the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center were found for this page. Their funding is presumably reported within Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch or another headquarters body, but this has not been verified.
Editorial line and coverage of Chabad
The site's mission statement reads: "Everything in this world was created for a divine purpose. All forms of modern technology can and should be harnessed to make the world a better place and, in the case of Jews, to spread Judaism in the widest possible manner."[5] Fishkoff places this in the Rebbe's view of media: "Video, radio, satellite TV, and the Internet were always viewed as value-neutral tools that could be used either for good or evil." She quotes the Chabad.org project supervisor Moshe Berghoff: "So we can take all his creations and use them for godliness."[3]
Chabad.org is the movement's own voice, and its coverage of Chabad is written from inside. Its biographies of the Rebbes, its histories (for example of Tomchei Temimim) and its news reports on Chabad institutions are published under the auspices of Lubavitch World Headquarters. It refers to Menachem Mendel Schneerson as "of righteous memory".[6][10] This puts it on the non-messianist side of the movement's post-1994 split; see Chabad messianism. Its archive of recordings is used by Chabad-side writers as primary evidence. Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, replying to Heilman and Friedman, says they could have used "the hundreds of hours of recordings that are available on Chabad.org, (a website which you refer to repeatedly)".[11]
Fishkoff notes favourable reviews from "ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, PBS, Time, the Village Voice and the Washington Post".[12] Her own access to Chabad was arranged largely through Shmotkin, whom she thanks for "spending endless months digging up material for me".[8]
- Editor's note: No independent or critical study of Chabad.org's editorial policy was found. In particular, nothing was found on what it leaves out about the movement's controversies (abuse cases, messianism, fraud cases, politics), or on its relationship with independent Chabad news sites such as CrownHeights.info, COLlive and ChabadInfo. Statements above about its editorial line are drawn from its own publications and from Fishkoff, who was given extensive access by Chabad.org's director. Readers should treat Chabad.org as a Chabad-side source.
See also
- Kehot Publication Society
- Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch
- Agudas Chasidei Chabad
- Chabad messianism
- Menachem Mendel Schneerson
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Dovid Zaklikowski, "The Infancy and Growth of Judaism on the Web", Chabad.org, 8 December 2008. Chabad-side.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army (2003), pp. 281–282. Journalistic; broadly sympathetic to Chabad.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch (New York: Schocken, 2003), p. 281. Journalistic; broadly sympathetic to Chabad.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Chabad.org", Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters (lubavitch.com), listed under Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, accessed 19 October 2026. Chabad-side.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "About Chabad.org", Chabad.org, accessed 19 October 2026. Chabad-side.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Father of the Jewish Internet Passes Away – Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, 44", Chabad.org, 2 December 1998. Chabad-side.
- ↑ Amy Harmon, "Yosef Kazen, Hasidic Rabbi and Web Pioneer, Dies at 44", New York Times, 13 December 1998 (cited for the headline; the text was not accessible for this page). Press.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army (2003), acknowledgements, p. 324. Journalistic; broadly sympathetic to Chabad.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army (2003), pp. 261–262. Journalistic; broadly sympathetic to Chabad.
- ↑ Mordechai Rubin, "From Lubavitch to Shanghai: The History of Tomchei Temimim in 11 Images", Chabad.org, 2017. Chabad-side.
- ↑ Chaim Rapoport, The Afterlife of Scholarship: A Critical Review of 'The Rebbe' by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman (Oporto Press, 2011), Kindle p. 146 of 197. Chabad-side reply.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army (2003), p. 283. Journalistic; broadly sympathetic to Chabad.