25 Years Later, the World Honors the Pioneer of the Jewish Internet

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen was a visionary.

In the late 1980s, he was among the very few who saw the vast potential held by what eventually became known as the World Wide Web, and set about building a Jewish presence in cyberspace. It was dubbed Chabad-Lubavitch of Cyberspace.

When Kazen, a red-bearded rabbi known to one and all as “YY,” passed away in 1998 at the tragically young age of 44, he was already being hailed as a “web pioneer.”1 Twenty-five years since his passing the internet has only grown in importance in our day-to-day lives, and the Jewish island he envisioned on the nascent Web flourishes, serving as a lifeline for millions of people on all seven continents.

The enterprise that he founded in those early days—Chabad.org—has seen people through life-cycle events, personal and communal crises, a global pandemic that challenged communal religious observance, and now a terrible war in Israel, as well as the ensuing emergence of antisemitism around the globe. It has guided 12-year-olds seeking to learn how to read the Torah and 98-year-olds searching for Jewish wisdom they may not have had access to in their youth. It has lowered the barriers for entry to Jewish knowledge and observance for countless individuals, more so, arguably, than any other development in human history.

And it all started with Kazen deep at work in Room 404 on the top floor of the prewar walkup that serves as the office space for Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters. There, in a small room lined with shelves of books and spare computer parts, cables snaking along the floor, Kazen spoke of motherboards, modems, and megabytes—the stuff that made up Chabad.org.

Few understood him, but he saw the future. With the guidance and inspiration of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—Kazen and his friend, Eli Winsbacher, founded Chabad.org, the site predating Amazon, Yahoo, eBay and The New York Times’ web presence. In fact, with a birthday in the fall of 1993, Chabad.org was one of the first 500 websites ever created, a pioneer among the 200 million websites now active.2

“The Hasidic branch of Judaism is rooted in the mysticism of 18th century Eastern Europe,” the Times wrote, “but the Lubavitch movement has long used modern means to propagate its teachings, and Rabbi Kazen staked a claim in cyberspace in the late 1980’s, before the World Wide Web existed.”

A true pioneer, he dreamed of a time when people could give classes that anyone could access from their home computer, of libraries of Jewish texts digitized and available for all to study, of rabbis sharing the Torah’s timeless wisdom via live video, and of communities of like-minded people forming despite geographical barriers.

And as a true lover of his people, he devoted nights and days to his ever-expanding flock of online Jews looking for guidance, information, and a person who cared about them.

In the process, YY Kazen became “the father of the Jewish internet.”

788 Eastern Parkway, home to Chabad.org for 30 years.

The Leap into the Unknown

It was only natural for Chabad-Lubavitch to enter the world of the Internet in its infancy.

The promulgation of Jewish thought and teachings via modern technology has deep roots in Jewish history. From Iberia to Italy, Jews were involved in the nascent art of printing. Records suggest that a Provençal Jew named Davin de Caderousse explored how to set Hebrew type before Gutenberg invented the modern printing press.3 Roman printings of Nachmanides’ commentary on the Torah, as well as the Talmudic glosses of the Rashba, are among the Incunabula—the earliest works of the printed word. And from the movement’s inception in the late 1700s, the seminal teachings of the Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbes were transmitted through printed pamphlets and books.

In this light, Chabad.org is merely the latest technological leap that is bringing Torah to people who would otherwise struggle to access it.

Kazen’s impetus to harness technology stemmed from the Rebbe’s revolutionary approach to tech. In 1975, the same year that the Altair 8800 was released and with it the birth of the “personal computer,” the Rebbe spoke about computers as a paradigm for a person’s service to the Creator.

“The programmers who coded the computer made it for specific uses,” he said in June 1975, “yet we see today that computers are used in many unintended fields.” Likewise, the Rebbe argued, by looking into the Torah as his or her “source code,” a Jew can find unprecedented ways to impact the world.4

More than viewing technological innovation as merely a means to transmit the Torah, the Rebbe viewed the act of harnessing technology for spreading the “wellsprings” of Chassidic teachings as a means of revealing the very purpose for which the technology was created.

Quoting the dictum of the sages that, “All that G‑d created was created for His honor,”5 the Rebbe articulated that, “All the scientific discoveries of recent years—their purpose is to add honor to G‑d by using them for holiness, Torah and mitzvot … .”

It was in this rich environment of technological innovation that Kazen and others began to explore how the Internet could be harnessed to “spread forth the wellsprings” of Chassidic thought.

Perhaps epitomizing the work of these Chassidic hackers was WLCC, the so-called “hook-up room” in the back of Chabad Headquarters that served as the de facto incubator for many of the movement’s forays into emerging communications, including broadcasting the Rebbe’s public talks to hundreds of communities around the world and documenting the day-to-day happenings at the Rebbe’s court.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, center, at WLCC, Chabad’s telephone communications hub.

Other forays into technology included Torah classes on the radio, and of course the televising of the Rebbe’s farbrengen gatherings on cable and satellite.

As a student, Kazen worked at WLCC, restoring archival recordings of the Rebbe’s talks and running operations in the hook-up room. A natural schmoozer with a keen interest in technology, he brought his penchant for gadgets to his next job at the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva.

“I always liked to play with modern technology,” said Kazen at a session of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in 1994. “I got to use the computer in [my work at the] yeshivah. I streamlined a lot of work in the office, and once you do that, you twiddle your thumbs, because you don’t know what to do ….”6

Soon, Kazen became a regular contributor to Keshernet, the Jewish BBS (Bulletin Board Service). In 1989, he received an email about a Jewish woman in Texas who was being targeted by missionaries online. The woman was eager to respond with Jewish sources, but she faced a dilemma; she was allergic to ink and thus found her access to Jewish texts, and by extension Judaism, cut off.

“I said to myself: one second!” Kazen later told Jeff Zaleski, who in 1997 authored The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology Is Changing Our Spiritual Lives. “Here’s a niche that hasn’t been filled!”7

After emailing the woman Jewish texts he’d typed up, he began asking other Chabad activists—chief among them the staff of Sichos in English—for material to share online. Receiving the books from the typesetter, Kazen had to reformat the text, removing the Hebrew characters in order for it to display properly on the nascent Internet.

Thus was born Chabad of Cyberspace.

Personal Connections

Kazen began a listserv, sending out regular email blasts with insights from the Torah portion. He treasured the personal connections he forged with people on the other side of the world, as they did with him. Perched on an ergonomic backless chair in his Brooklyn office, Kazen exchanged emails with and gave advice to scientists in Antarctica, students in Australia and professors in California. In time, these emails became part of the first and longest-running “Ask the Rabbi” service on the Internet.

This calling, of helping people one at a time, serving them according to their needs, was at the heart of Kazen’s work.

In a tribute penned not long after Kazen’s untimely passing, a professor from Germany wrote that he’d been in touch with the rabbi since 1995 on behalf of his remote Jewish community around the U.S. military base in Garmisch, Germany. “For … years, almost on a daily basis, we turned to him for information, clarification and advice on a variety of halachic and community issues,” he recalled. “I always received [a] response in a few hours. He guided all of us with patience, tolerance and great love for the Torah and the Jewish people. … We are all indebted to Rabbi Kazen.”8

In the summer of 1996, Chaim Boehlje was on a work assignment in Kansas, 150 miles from the closest Jewish community, when he got the devastating news that his son had passed away.

Craving Judaic advice and a modicum of comfort, he turned to the Web. “The search engines and internet was not as refined as they are now, but I was led to Chabad’s web site. I emailed ‘ask the rabbi’ that night for advice in my situation.” Boehlje did not expect a rapid response, and went to sleep. When he woke up the next morning he checked his email. “There it was, a ray of hope, a friendly voice advising and consoling.” It was YY, who remained in touch with him throughout the grief, mourning, and beyond.

“[Kazen] rarely slept. He lived and breathed Torah, his family, and Chabad.org,” recalled Jane Davis, one of the rabbi’s regular online pen pals. “He sparked something in me that made me crave learning more and more. And this was his dream to share this kind of Torah enthusiasm with everyone he could, no matter the time of the day or night. Sometimes we would connect at 2 or 3 AM. We would be online at the same time, taking advantage of this unique medium that knew no time and never closed. This was the unique beauty of cyberspace. I would bring him the world in ways he would never experience. He would interpret that with a Torah teaching. He was relentless in his enthusiasm for teaching Torah.”9

Eli Winsbacher, left, with Rabbi Kazen, and site webmaster Michoel Kazen, in February 1996.

Today, Kazen’s son, Rabbi Choni Kazen, a Chabad emissary in Montreal, serves as a member of the Ask the Rabbi team, fielding questions and providing Torah information and guidance just like his father before him.

And like his father, he is on call to help people at all times of night and day.

For someone like Aharon, a disabled veteran living outside Salem, Oregon, the service has been a lifeline. His home is remotely located, and while he appreciates his connection with a local synagogue, living far from Jewish resources like kosher supermarkets and Judaica stores can be a challenge.

Aharon goes to Chabad.org for everything from the Hebrew Word of the Week to the Kosher Cooking minisite to the Shabbat and Holiday Times app. But what means the most to him is that he can connect with a rabbi, anytime—just as Kazen envisioned 30 years ago.

“As a senior citizen and a disabled veteran, I live on a very fixed income, and Chabad.org has been a wonderful resource for me,” Aharon said. “I can write in or ask for a rabbi to call me. If I have to have counsel with a rabbi—maybe my rabbi is out of town and I need counsel—well I’ve got counsel. The rabbis get back to me in short order, they always answer my questions, and I really appreciate that feature.”

None of this would have happened without YY.

Rabbi YY Kazen spent nights and days tending to his flock of "web surfers."

Demystifying Mysticism

When Chabad.org went live 30 years ago, it received thousands of visitors. Within three years, that number had blossomed to more than 60,000 unique visitors a week, along with another 30,000 weekly email recipients.

The site also generated considerable interest from the media. It was the subject of a New York Times cover story under the headline “The Computer Age Bids Religious World to Enter.” As the Times would later note, Chabad.org “served as a model” for other sites across the web.

“When you go to the Internet and you read about Judaism … the stereotypes fall away,” Kazen told the Times. “This is not an 18th-century guy on the street. It’s Judaism in practice.”10

For many people, Chabad.org would create a positive interaction with Judaism, one that has led to many embracing Jewish life and practice themselves.

One such individual is Howard, or Henoch, Duboff. Duboff had grown up in what he describes as “a somewhat religious household,” a proudly Jewish family which went to services on holidays and occasionally Shabbat. But Duboff found the Jewish life he’d been exposed to lacking “spark.”

In those early days of the internet, before Google and even browsers, there was a lot of information online, but it wasn’t always simple to find.

Chabad.org's collection of offerings continued to grow and expand.

“I don’t recall exactly how or why I decided to search for information about Judaism, but I wound up finding messages posted by a Rabbi Yosef Y. Kazen,” Duboff wrote in a tribute to Kazen. “Rabbi Kazen would post the text of various weekly publications (such as ‘L’Chaim Weekly’) for others to read. Rabbi Kazen would include his contact information at the end of the publications, signing off as ‘YY’ from Chabad-Lubavitch in Cyberspace.”

In an age before the wide popularization of the internet, Duboff was struck by the idea of a black-hatted, long-bearded rabbi sitting at a computer. “Modern technology mixed with those old-fashioned rabbis!”

It was more than just that, however. Duboff was intrigued by Kazen’s simple but profound responses to the questions he saw posed by others. Despite his years of Hebrew school, this was his first exposure to fundamental Jewish ideas as illuminated by the light of Chassidus: It was via Kazen’s messages that Duboff learned of the Jewish soul, the importance and impact of each individual mitzvah, and the concept of Moshiach.

At first he thought “YY” was a pseudonym, but eventually he learned the rabbi on the other side of the computer connection was very real indeed. On one occasion, Kazen mentioned to Duboff that he’d printed out one of his emails and read it at the Shabbat table to his children. “I was astounded that this person took such a personal interest in my spiritual growth.”

Neither did Duboff’s connection with Kazen remain virtual. Duboff became a regular at the Kazen home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, more than once spending the entire Sukkot and Passover holidays with them. So deep was Kazen’s impact on him, that after the rabbi’s passing Duboff named his first son “Yosef Yitzchak.”11

In embracing the cutting edge of technology to share Jewish knowledge and practice, Kazen built something that would continue to impact the lives of countless individuals long after his own passing.

Early logo of Chabad Lubavitch in cyberspace.

One such person is Hershy Sufrin.

Born and raised in a middle-class suburb of Chicago, Sufrin grew up in a family that focused “more on the traditional side of things—not so much on the halachic side of things.” Sufrin’s parents wanted him to have a better Jewish education than they themselves had had, so they sent him to a local Jewish day school for a well-rounded—and what they perceived as a middle-of-the-road—Jewish education.

“The two rules in my house were: you have to marry a Jewish girl and you’re never going to wear a black hat,” Sufrin recalled. While his school did not focus on Jewish practice and observance, there was a lot of focus on Jewish history and culture, including one aspect that fascinated young Hershy: mysticism.

“They told us stories of the Baal Shem Tov; we believed in the more mystical side,” Sufrin said. “It opened my mind to the idea that there are tzaddikim—righteous people—who are special, influential people who we can be inspired by and to whom we can connect. That was long before I knew who the Rebbe was.”

Sufrin went to high school in nearby Evanston and focused on art and design—something for which he has a passion. In his senior year, he decided to take on the ambitious project of creating a font from scratch. It took the high schooler months, but he was successful, and then he realized that he should be taking this a step further.

“When I was done, I said, ‘Well, I’m Jewish, why don’t I make a Hebrew font?’ ”

But creating a font is far from simple. “For English fonts, there are rules about spacing; there’s an anatomy to the typeform, there are counters and descenders and serifs,” said Sufrin. “I wanted to learn those rules and terminologies around Hebrew letters.”

Sufrin started Googling, and he ended up on Chabad.org.

“The first thing I fell in love with was Letters of Light, Rabbi Aharon Raskin’s videos on each of the Hebrew letters and their shapes, and what their names mean,” Sufrin said. “It wasn't what I thought I was looking for, but I ate all that up.”

The spark of interest in Jewish mysticism that had been kindled in his youth burst into flame.

“The more I was introduced to Kabbalah and Chassidism, the more I wanted to know,” Sufrin said. Sufrin went on to the Lesley University College of Art and Design, around the corner from Harvard. He walked into Chabad at Harvard, directed by Rabbi Hirschy and Elkie Zarchi, and immediately felt welcome.

“I got the sense of home because nobody was trying to force me into anything,” Sufrin said.

Sufrin’s journey eventually led him to Yeshiva Tiferes Bachurim in Morristown, N.J., which offers a yeshivah experience for students who were not raised in a Torah environment.

“I fell in love with the people there, the program. I got more involved with Chassidism as far as my personal growth, and getting a deeper understanding of those Baal Shem Tov stories, about the shapes of Hebrew letters and the Kabbalah. I learned how to apply to my life the things that to me made Judaism magical; to make me the best version of myself that I could be.”

Today, Sufrin runs an animation studio and finds meaning in his work. He proudly wears a black hat, and his children are getting a rich Jewish education.

And he is especially proud to be a part of the team at Chabad.org—the site that changed his life— as a regular contributor of informative and educational animations.

The face of Judaism on the Internet circa 1997.

New Paradigm

Even as he worked hard to build an infrastructure, Kazen remained deeply involved with the individuals he met online. This continued in the last months of his life, when he worked on a laptop from his hospital bed.

Since he was supposed to rest, “he would keep his computer underneath his bed,” recalled his nephew Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, now director of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch’s Suite 302 division. “When [his wife] Rochel was gone, he would tell us to go out to the hall and make sure that she had left the floor—and then he would pull it out.”12

“ … [H]e must have been ill at the time he answered my e-mail this summer,” a woman wrote not long after Kazen’s passing, noting that he’d asked her to share the results of the project she’d asked his help for.13

The projects he inspired, like the hundreds of millions of people his vision has impacted, do not remain only in the digital realm. This can be seen in the lives changed from Brazil to Bangkok to Baton Rouge, the latter of which will soon become home to the YY Kazen Campus for Chabad of Baton Rouge, La. The center is being built by YY’s youngest son, Rabbi Peretz Kazen, co-director of Chabad at LSU and Greater Baton Rouge, and will be the first brick-and-mortar memorial for the virtual visionary.

“People often think my father’s vision was just to use the Internet as a means to broadcast Jewish teachings,” observed Rabbi Peretz Kazen, “but really it was something much more expansive. It was a new paradigm of connectivity.”

A quarter of a century after YY Kazen’s passing, his work continues, the light he brought into this world growing ever brighter.

A poster advertising Chabad's foray onto the World Wide Web.