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The Chabad.org Blog

It’s Been a Really Hard Two Days for Our Family

January 30, 2024 2:42 PM

It’s not often that many of us at the Chabad.org Editorial Team share personal things, but at the same time, we consider every one of you to be dear family with whom we share our sorrows, our joys, our challenges, and our triumphs. With deep pain, we share with you that two of our beloved team members lost parents this week.

On Sunday night, Mrs. Chana Weisberg, editor of TheJewishWoman.org and the voice behind Ordinary People, Extraordinary Stories podcast, lost her dear father. Rabbi Dovid Schochet was a strong and wise rabbinic leader of the Toronto Jewish community for more than six decades, and we join the Weisberg and Schochet families as well as Canadian Jewry in mourning his loss and celebrating his incredible contributions.

Then, on Monday, we learned of the tragic passing of Mrs. Rochel Kaplan, mother of Rabbi Yaakov Kaplan, director of ChabadU, which produces the amazing courses that so many of you have come to love and enjoy on a regular basis. Mrs. Kaplan was a poet, teacher, and leader who directed Chabad in Maryland together with her husband, Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan (may he be blessed with long life), for more than 50 years.

Please join us in conferring the traditional wish: May the Omnipresent comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem!

We invite you to send your condolences in the comment section below, and we will make sure they are delivered to the families. (You may also indicate if you wish your comment to remain private and we will not publish it online.)

With wishes that we only share good news with one another!

The Chabad.org Editorial Team

New Book Sheds Light on the Origins of Chabad

January 10, 2024 3:56 PM

10 Shevat is the day in 1950 that the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, passed away, and the day one year later that his son-in-law, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, formally assumed leadership of the Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic movement. This date marks something more, as well. Building on the foundation laid by his father-in-law and the previous generations of Chabad’s spiritual leaders, the Rebbe would go on to transform the Chabad movement into a global organization with branches on all continents, engineer a worldwide renaissance of Jewish life, and become known as the “most influential rabbi in modern history.”

But what is Chabad, and what is its philosophy?

To answer these questions—and many others!—Rabbis Nissan Dovid Dubov and Naftali Hertz Pewzner set out to produce a series titled The Basics of Chassidus. Working with Sichos in English, they’ve already published the first volume, Chabad: Its Origins, Principles, and Purpose.

Inspired by the Rebbe’s own efforts to index his predecessors’ teachings, as well as the encouragement he gave to those who previously set out to codify the teachings of Chabad, they wrote a highly readable work they expect will provide readers with an in-depth perspective on the origins and themes of Chassidism, and the contribution of Chabad in particular.

The book has been flying off store shelves since its release in 2022, and its publisher—Sichos in English—has now made it available to our readers online.

On behalf of our readers, Chabad.org thanks our longtime partners at Sichos in English—true pioneers of sharing Jewish wisdom both in print and online—for sharing this treasure, which we trust will enlighten and educate so many.

Click here to read the book online

Click here to purchase a paper copy

Click here to read a book review

Marking the Passing of Our Partner, Rabbi Yonah Avtzon

January 24, 2025

This Shabbat (3 Shevat on the Hebrew calendar) marks six years since the untimely passing of our dear friend and partner, Rabbi Yonah Avtzon, director of Sichos in English.

Sichos in English began as a small-time operation in 1977, a side project for the teenage Rabbi Avtzon and fellow yeshivah students. They worked together to translate the Yiddish talks of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—into English and distribute them in pamphlets to many thousands of eager readers around the world.

In time, with the Rebbe’s blessing, the operation expanded to include the writings of other Chabad rebbes and chassidim. Even as SIE burgeoned into a major publishing operation (with multimillion-dollar projects, such as translations and elucidations of the Alter Rebbe’s Code of Jewish Law and Selections From Likkutei Sichos), Rabbi Avtzon remained focused on his goal: getting high-quality Jewish content into the hands of as many people as possible.

To that end, the prices were always kept low, and almost all content has been made available for free online.

In keeping with guidance he received from the Rebbe, Rabbi Avtzon took it upon himself to personally edit every single book that the organization published.

When Rabbi YY Kazen began sharing Jewish content on the nascent internet in the mid-90s, Rabbi Avtzon was one of his early partners, eager to dispatch the texts he was producing to ever-widening audiences in an entirely new medium.

This relationship has continued to blossom and evolve, and we are honored to work hand in hand with Rabbi Shmuly Avtzon who now directs the growing SIE team.

As his yahrzeit approaches, we extend our prayerful wishes to Rabbi Shmuly, the Avtzon family, and the countless readers whose lives continue to be touched by the life work of Rabbi Yonah Avtzon.

May his memory be a blessing.

The Chabad.org Team

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