More than 750,000 questions were fielded by Chabad.org’s “Ask the Rabbi” team in the last decade. The questions spanned the gamut—from the practical application of Jewish law to profound questions of faith and identity.
“Ask the Rabbi” is rooted in the earliest days of Chabad in cyberspace, when Rabbi YY Kazen, also known as the father of the Jewish Internet, began answering Jewish questions via online bulletin boards (the precursor to today’s message boards) in the late 1980s.
Nearly 30 years later, the service now has its own app. “Ask the Rabbi,” the latest in a series of apps from Chabad.org, brings answers to burning questions—and the chance to ask your own—on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
“The app is part of a project to bring the manifold features and sections of Chabad.org to smartphone users,” says Dov Dukes, who manages the mobile-app division at Chabad.org. “It aggregates recent popular questions published by the ‘Ask the Rabbi’ team, presenting them with a slick, modern interface. It also offers one-click access for users to submit their own questions, which are kept confidential.”
Answers, he adds, are sent privately via email.
Like the family of Chabad.org sites that are available in eight languages, this app takes advantage of localization, offering versions with questions and answers in English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Install the “Ask the Rabbi” app from the iTunes and Google Play, and see if you can stump these rabbis! Ask the Rabbi is made available free of charge by the generous partnership of Dovid and Malkie Smetana, Alan and Lori Zekelman, the Meromim Fund, and Moris and Lillian Tabacinic.
