Dear Friend,
If you are reading this, your life has likely been affected in some way by Chabad.org. Maybe you enjoy our articles and stories, take our quizzes, or stop by to find handy Jewish information. Perhaps, you just “happened” to bump into this article. But the fact is that Chabad.org is part of your life.
After nearly three decades online (Chabad.org was among the first few hundred websites in the world!), it’s hard to imagine a world without Chabad.org.
I remember the first time I came across it. I was on my eighth-grade graduation trip to New York, and we were touring the warren of offices above the large sanctuary of the Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
In one room, we saw a man surrounded by computers, wires, screens, modems, and more.
Turning around on a swivel stool, he greeted us with a grin as bright as his carrot-colored beard and chatted with us about his work, connecting with Jews and non-Jews all over the world via a wonderful new thing called the “Internet.”
Most of us had not yet owned an email address, chatted online, viewed a website, or even placed a cell-phone call—but we were acutely aware that things were happening. The dot-com bubble was beginning to inflate, and words like “AOL,” “keyword,” and “cyberspace” were everywhere.
We did not fully understand what he was doing (who did?), but we were so very proud to know that he was doing the Rebbe’s work, spreading the joy and light of Judaism to the farthest corners of the earth. With vision, sweat and a smile, he was charting a new trail where others saw nothing, creating a lane of spirituality on the information superhighway.
That man was Rabbi YY Kazen, “the father of the Jewish internet,” who tragically passed away in 1998 at the age of 44. Alongside his family, he left thousands of “orphans” around the world, people who had been touched by his revolutionary work—work that we strive to perpetuate and elevate every day here at Chabad.org.
On his yahrzeit, Kislev 12, join me in taking a moment to reflect in gratitude. Do a mitzvah in his memory, and perhaps learn something (online, of course!), to honor the soul of Harav Yosef Yitzchak ben Harav Shlomo Schneur Zalman Kazen.
On behalf of the Chabad.org family,
Menachem
