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It
was privelege for me to speak with Rabbi Kazen by phone and on the internet.
His pioneering work on the Jewish web must continue. He was very concerned about
the Jewish family living in ……….Rabbi Kazen asked me to call him at the
hospital in New York .Although he was very weak , he wanted to help these
people(Shalom family ) connect with the Chabad in Paris. I was very impressed
with his concern, inspite of his own illness. (H.Pearle in Rochester, NY
,pearle@writeme.com).
Yousef
Kazen, 44 rabbi pioneered on Internet, a Hasidic rabbi who pioneered the use of
the Internet as a powerful recruiting and educational tool for the Lubavitch
movement, died Dec, 1 at New York Hospital. He lived in Crown Heights,
Brooklyn. The Hasidic branch of Judaism is rooted in the mysticism of 18th
century Eastern Europe, but the Lubavitch movement has long used modern means
to propagate its teaching, and Kazen staked a claim in cyberspace in the late
1980s , before the World Wide Web existed.
An
early user of computer bulletin boards, he was inspired by the notion of adding
a 24-hour Web site to the movement's worldwide network of outreach and study
centers. He digitized and made thousands of documents available on the Web,
including an English translation of the Tanya, a seminal text of Jewish
mysticism, and the writings of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher
spiritual leader, who died in 1994. With the growth of the Web's popularity ,
Kazen's Internet site, chabad-Lubavitch in Cyberspace, served as a model for
other Jewish groups . Visitors to WWW.Chabad.Org can read articles on
science and Judaism , listen to religious melodies and browse a gallery
displaying the work of Hasidic artists. In addition to building a Jewish
library on the Web , Kazen sought to create an oline congregation and to answer
questions by e-mail ,operating first from his own basement and later from a
cramped office at Lubavitch headquarters. His internet activities varied from
helping to organize a Passover service held on a boat near Antartica to
dispatching kosher recipes to Jews living far from centers of population .
Kazen developed automated responses to the most frequently asked questions and
responded personally to some messages, like the e-mail from a student in new
Mexico who wanted to know whether it was permissible to smoke marijuana on the
morning of the Sabbath. "I wrote him back that, the prayer itself gives
you the high", the rabbi told Jeff Zaleski, author of The Soul of
Cyberspace(1997) .
Kazen
was born in Cleveland and grew up there in a Yiddish-speaking household , the
youngest of seven children of Russian immigrants. He became a rabbi at the United
Lubavitcher Yeshivoth in New York . A heavy-set man with a carrot-colored
beard, he was also at the forefront of the more traditional Lubavitch outreach
programs, which include the "Mitzvah tanks,"the vans and trucks that
dispense both prayer books and tefillin (box es of scriptures worn during
prayers).
Kazen
is survived by his wife, Rochel six children Raizel, Michoel, shmuel, Elchanan,
Pertetz and Sarah ; his parents , Rabbi Zalman and Shifra Shula Kazen , of
Cleveland; six sisters ,Esther Apern of Sao Pualo, Brazil; Devorah Alevsky of
Cleveland; Henya Laine of Brooklyn; Bluma Weinberg of Kansas city, Kan .;
Rivkah Kotlarsky of Brooklyn, and Rochel Goldman of johannesburg, South Africa.
Although
he is not physically among us but his good deeds and merits are still among us
.
