Building the sacred community online: the dual use of the Internet by Chabad

The sacred community and the Internet

Over the last two decades, scholars of religion have focused on the ways in which Orthodox communities integrate modern ideas and practices with age-old traditions and laws (Ammerman, 1987, 2005; Davidman, 1991; Deeb, 2006; Mahmood, 2005). The antagonistic stance of Orthodox groups toward secular, modern, and technology-driven new media renders the societies that champion new media as the defining Other. For this very reason, Orthodox communities must digest ‘modern’ ideologies in order to oppose them; in the process, they adopt some of their rivals’ ideas (Stadler, 2009, 2012). As we shall see, this process has indeed catalyzed major changes in the beliefs and practices of these groups. Living in the heart of diverse modern cities poses many challenges for Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox groups, such as exposure to sinful temptations and the need to keep their boundaries pure. The community’s leadership copes with these challenges by means of a standard set of religious practices and ideologies. Among their strategies, leaders of Orthodox groups usually reject or disregard (post) modernity by interpreting history, tradition, and contemporary reality through the prism of religious reasoning.

Chabad congregants, much like other charedi groups, adopt a dualist strategy toward new media. That is, they simultaneously adhere to contradictory beliefs about the Internet, both rejecting and accepting its use within communal boundaries. Numerous charedi informants with whom we spoke mentioned that they did not have an Internet connection at home, yet they have access through work or other settings. Others discussed using elaborate filtering on their mobile devices or home computers to ensure moral purity and to achieve religious piety. In Israel, they mainly use the predominant Rimon filtered Internet service provider (ISP), and in the United States, some charedi families use non-government organization (NGO) spiritual advisors such as TAG or online services such as https://guardyoureyes.com/. Thus, charedi community members demonstrated their ambivalence toward new media and the care with which they use it.

Past studies have focused sharply on how ideals clash with actual practice in Internet use among members of charedi sects (i.e. Caplan, 2001; Horowitz, 2001). This includes specific attention related to use by females (i.e. Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai, 2005; Baumel-Schwartz, 2009; Livio and Tenenboim Weinblatt, 2007). Also, the Internet has been recognized by scholars as an important sphere for studying the inner workings of the traditionally closed enclave charedi culture (Tsarfaty and Blais, 2002), especially on issues such as communal discourse and policies pertaining to engagement with modernity (Neriya-Ben Shahar and Lev-On, 2011). Researchers have also noted that Orthodox Internet users and website operators act in various ways to justify their use in the face of these fears (Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai, 2005; Livio and Teneboim Weinblatt, 2007); previous research on Orthodox use of the web has elucidated questions of social control, sources of authority, and community boundaries as focal issues to consider when studying the relationship between religious websites and their larger community networks (Campbell and Golan, 2011). However, to date, questions of community-building through new media work in enclave societies have been understudied.

Within this history, Chabad is unique. ² Charedi communities are typically classified on the basis of their levels of piety and their needs, but Chabad has adopted a different religious worldview and strategy. Similar to other charismatic groups, Chabad strongly emphasizes personal experience, emotions, and spontaneity, as well as prophecy and preaching. In contrast to other charedi groups such as some chassidic sub-groups and Lithuanians, Chabad members tend to literally interpret texts, even those that are exceedingly allegorical, symbolic, and cryptic. Moreover, the authoritativeness of a spoken word, to include direct quotes from scripture, derives from the personality and prestige of the speaker, such as a rabbi or pastor (Lehmann, 1998). For the sake of ‘spreading the faith’, these movements take full advantage of modern communication technologies. Televangelism epitomizes this sort of outreach. In fact, most of the charismatic movements’ energy and resources are devoted to proselytizing. Let us briefly explain the uniqueness of Chabad and its history before discussing current new media strategies and their expected impact.

The Chabad community: between boundary protection and proselytizing

Chabad is a major charismatic movement on the global Jewish revival stage (Berman, 2009; Bilu, 2009; Friedman, 1994; Kravel-Tovi, 2009; Ravitzky, 1994). Chabad is a sub-group within charedi Judaism; more specifically, it is a part of the wider chassidic movement. The movement emerged in the 18th century as a charismatic religious faction that swept through Poland and the Russian Empire. As it grew, it distinguished itself by emphasizing popular mysticism, reforming liturgy, modifying ritual, and altering the Jewish Eastern European dress code (Baumel, 2006; Fishkoff, 2003; Friedman, 1994).

Although this chasidic movement was founded in Czarist Russia, today the majority of its devotees reside in the United States and Israel. In contrast to mainstream ultra-Orthodoxy, Lubavitchers spread their ‘gospel’ through missionary activity (Bilu, 2009). Among the trademarks of Chabad’s members are the fervent convictions that the Messiah will arrive imminently and that the group possesses the absolute canonical truth. Over the years, Chabad developed an eschatological theology which culminated in the charismatic leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the seventh head of the Lubavitcher dynasty). Within the community, Schneerson – alias ‘the rebbe’ (Yiddish for rabbi) – was revered and had undisputed authority (Bilu, 2009; Kravel-Tovi and Bilu, 2008). During his time at Chabad’s helm, the movement was immensely popular throughout the Jewish world and its members were extremely successful in disseminating its spiritual message. This accomplishment was part of a general resurgence of charedi communities throughout the world, especially during the 1950s. Unlike other ultra-Orthodox Jews, who prefer to turn inward and fortify their boundaries, the Chabad movement turns outward as well, assuming responsibility for the Jewish collective and striving to teach its ways to a broader community.

Chabad-Lubavitch members indeed consider themselves guardians of Jewish law and heritage (Friedman, 1994). Consequently, it is incumbent upon them to zealously struggle against secularization and its impact on all Jews. In contrast to those charedi movements that oppose, shun, and fear modernity and its trappings, Chabad has taken an entirely different approach. The movement is not blind to the challenges that modernity poses for traditional Judaism, not least the problem of assimilation; however, it seeks a close dialogue and mutual relations, albeit complex ones, with the surrounding society. On one hand, the movement endeavors to reshape reality with traditional Jewish symbols and values; on the other hand, it preserves segregation strategies. In fact, negotiating the trappings of modernity appears to undergird Chabad’s efforts to teach young secular Jews the tenets of traditional Jewry, prevent assimilation, and bring ‘the spiritually dispossessed’ back into the fold of Orthodox Jewry. In Communicating the Infinite, Loewenthal (1990) discusses the roots of Chabad’s communicative approach toward the mystical teachings of chassidim through the establishment and circulation of the Tanya, its key mystical-ethical text, which was authored by Chabad’s first rebbe in 1797. This tradition of actively fostering accessible religious teachings to believers on varying spiritual levels was unique to Chabad. It not only promoted leader charisma but also became a source of dispute among chassidic sub-groups (Loewenthal, 1990: 4).

Similar to other charismatic groups, Chabad reaches out to its targeted audiences through modern methods and platforms, including mass media and the Internet. The movement also views these activities as prerequisites for another of its central objectives: to usher in the Messianic age.

Chabad’s outreach program is grounded in a network of Chabad Houses across the globe. At these ‘mission outposts’, the shlichim (emissaries) hold activities and distribute information on Judaism that reflect the sect’s unique interpretations. For instance, the emissaries offer classes on how to observe Jewish holidays while also supplying all the necessary items, such as matzot for Passover, so that uninitiated Jews can independently observe the holiday commandments. Each branch is open to all Jews and the events are usually free of charge. The second pillar of Chabad outreach is grassroots campaigns in crowded areas of major cities. Young messengers take to the streets for the purpose of striking up conversations with Jews ³ and persuading them to partake in a specific ritual, attend an event, or read a pamphlet. The best known Chabad campaign is the movement’s efforts to convince Jews to put on tefillin (phylacteries) in the middle of the street. Although Jewish law ordinarily requires a wholesome environment free of distractions for the tefillin ritual, Menachem Friedman (1994) claims that Chabad activists are willing to publicly desecrate the sacred in the belief that having unaffiliated co-religionists declare their Jewish identity in public outweighs the attendant transgressions. Furthermore, the tefillin ritual might ultimately help a ‘lost soul’ find his way back to Judaism. This public violation of the sacred is indicative of the tension inherent in fundamentalism, that is, tension between an individual’s aspiration to reach the levels of piety of an imagined sacred past and his or her opposing obligation to live in and engage with the contemporary world, especially through ‘outreach’ programs.

Members of the Chabad community in Israel and the United States readily use tools of modern technology, including the media, for the dissemination of its teachings (Ferziger, 2013; Shandler, 2009). Although not the largest chassidic sub-group, Chabad surpasses others in its impact on the outside world, Jewish and non-Jewish. In fact, in both Israel and the United States, Chabad members periodically engage in campaigns of religious influence from street centers to army bases and beyond (Ravitzky, 1994: 304). Chabad’s institutional aspects are well developed and are governed from its center (Friedman, 1994). In the past, leaflets, newsletters, books and other means were utilized for these endeavors, and a fervent zeal for religious activism marked the approach. Perhaps the most visible of these efforts is the work of the emissaries who develop contacts with local Jewish establishments on university campuses and in town centers around the world. Since the death of their leader, the highly venerated Rabbi Schneerson, the Chabad community has ruptured as some members have sought to affirm that the rebbe is still alive in some way, even anticipating his return as the Messiah (see Bilu, 2009; Kravel-Tovi, 2009). However, this study highlights the communal institution-building that arose prior to Schneerson’s demise and developed in its aftermath. In the Schneerson era, Chabad emissaries formed a strong mechanism for expanding Chabad’s influence and for integrating the community under its common mission while fortifying Chabad’s center in Brooklyn as its main hub (Ferziger, 2013: 101).

In their charismatic endeavor, Chabad members have used new media in various ways. Early accounts of religion online are traced in generic discussion groups such as net.religion or net.religion.jewish newsgroups on Usenet. However, during the 1980s, it was still rare for religious groups to use the Internet for their community or denomination’s communications. Instead, scholars point out broader-based (or even interfaith) discussion groups and the beginnings of online religious practice (e.g. online prayers, meditation) (cf. Campbell, 2013; Ciolek, 2004). Exceptions can be seen in the Evangelical ‘United Methodist Information’ Christian email newsletter and in Chabad’s online productions. In contrast to other communities, Chabad has a unique history with regard to the use of technology, modern communication forms, and the Internet. Some fundamentalist groups struggle with integrating modern technologies into their everyday lives, yet they do it in a tamed manner, as Zimmerman-Umble (1992) uncovers in her investigation of Amish appropriation of the telephone or as Nahon and Barzilai-Nahon (2005) discuss in their study of ultra-Orthodox Jewry in Israel, framed through their term ‘cultured technology’. Others discuss the Internet acting as a meaningful site for expressing religiosity and identity. Bunt (2009) argues with regard to contemporary Islam that the Internet serves as a means for understanding, interpreting, and transmitting forms of religious knowledge to complement its traditional discourse. However, as will be further elaborated, Chabad is unique in that it sanctifies technology and views the Internet as a means to deliver its message to the outer world, while it is apprehensive of its uses for community members.

After Chabad’s charismatic stage came to a close with the death of Rabbi Schneerson, the emissaries became even more important as they took on the central role of social action for the movement, committing the community around its organization, while reinforcing their common values of outreach. These tendencies re-emerge in the age of the Internet and new media, when the tools for mass dissemination of information have been rationalized and significantly expanded. Accordingly, it would be of interest to learn how these modern tools of communication mark the Chabad ‘territory’ and facilitate interaction among Chabad members and the larger public it aims to influence.

Methodology

Our study consists of website analysis and in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted with over 30 webmasters, while three websites were analyzed in depth: http://chabad.org, http://www.crownheights.info/, and http://col.org.il. The study was conducted between 2009 and 2013 in Israel and the United States. The core set of interviews were conducted face-to-face in the webmasters’ office environments. We define ‘webmasters’ as website leaders, public relations personnel, web designers, tablet/smartphone app developers, and content managers. Throughout the study, we frequently visited Jewish website offices in Brooklyn, New York. These meetings enabled observations of websites’ workings and insights into other community members and websites, including that of chabad.org and crownheights.info. Furthermore, discussions and interviews were conducted with various users of the website from within and beyond the Chabad community. Accordingly, we conversed with other online web producers such as bloggers, tablet application entrepreneurs, religious video producers, notably, that of JEM, an organization dedicated to Chabad video production, primarily for posting on Chabad.org., yeshiva students, rabbis and emissaries, webmasters of other websites, and avid web surfers. Interviews ranged from 45 minutes to 4 hours in length, and they typically took place in website offices, public coffee shops, private homes, or occasionally via phone, email, Skype, or Google Hangouts depending upon the interviewee personal preference and comfort level.

Interviews focused on four core areas: (1) the mission and motivation of the site, (2) identification of the webmaster’s creed and relationship to his offline community, (3) perception of challenges and benefits posed by the Internet, and (4) sources of influence and perceived impact. Each interview generated a personal account of the interviewee’s belief system vis-à-vis technology and online practices.

Together with the interviews, our research also included analysis of the websites, with particular attention given to services offered, the creed expressed on the websites for their online practices, language use, and visual culture. Sites were selected by two main criteria: traffic and subject recommendations. Traffic and activity were strong determinants in the cases of chabad.org and col.org.il, while crownheights.info was recommended by key informants. Observational investigation is unobtrusive and grounded in the natural setting of Chabad members’ digital activities and facilitates an in-depth insight into the signs and metaphors of the rich multi-media world of Internet culture, including sounds, visuals, and writing or speaking style. To address the ways that communities employ the Internet to spread their influence while catering and fostering integration within their own communities, the aforementioned websites are explored in terms of their outward and inward community reach.

‘Ask the Rabbi’: Chabad.org outreach

As shown in our findings, Chabad webmasters select and distribute religious knowledge between core members and potential followers. On one hand, they promote an open-ended universe of Jewish knowledge that caters to lay audiences. On the other hand, they create spaces of interest for devoted members of the Chabad enclave, emphasizing cardinal concerns of the community, instrumental knowledge, and access to repositories of religious knowledge. Let us begin by examining the ways that webmasters promote universal outreach messages.

As described above, Chabad’s online presence and work can be traced back to the 1980s, when the Internet was not yet mainstream, but had garnered attention from smaller groups of computer enthusiasts, students, and followers in academia (Danet, 2001). Chabad emerged online through spaces such as electronic bulletin boards (BBS) like Keshernet, where Chabad activists, most notably the late Rabbi Kazan, started their religious online activism (Zaleski, 1997), that is to say, their deliberate acts to catalyze religious awareness and change. Moreover, from its inception, the Internet has been used by members of Chabad as a tool for highlighting their Jewish practices such as international emissaries and community/religious celebrations. In addition, the community visibly marked their websites as affiliated with the Chabad sect. This is most apparent in their URL name: chabad.org, Chabad online, their frequent display of pictures of the late Rabbi Schneerson and his famed house.

According to our interviewees, as early as 1988, the first ‘Ask The Rabbi’ emerged over bulletin boards, and a few years later, the entire Tanya, the basic text of Chabad philosophy divided into daily lessons, was made available online along with other Jewish texts and teachings (at ‘Chabad in Cyberspace’). This media project aimed to intensify Jewish knowledge, the spread of Chabad-oriented Judaism, and the use of the Internet as a tool for advancing godliness into what they consider a secularized world that required transformation. In accord, by the end of 1993, with the blessing of Rabbi Schneerson, Chabad.org was established. From a few grassroots initiatives of Rabbi Kazan and others, Chabad.org emerged as a legitimized and center-based institution, rooted in the heart of Chabad’s Brooklyn surroundings. From its beginnings, the goals of this website were directed outward. These ideals were discussed by Kazan in an interview:

Our setup was never for our own group. On the contrary, this was set up strictly to deal with the outside world. I don’t know if your average Chabad person is going to want his kid running around on the net. It’s like putting him in the middle of a newspaper store with all the magazines there … My perspective here is of getting out to the world. Getting a message of Judaism to the Jew who doesn’t know much, to the Gentile who is interested in finding out what Judaism has to offer. (Zaleski, 1997: 14)

Kazan’s intent from the outset was to make a clear distinction between two populations: Chabad members and ‘the world’. In addition, the interview unveils that the founders’ first strategy was to spread the worldview of Chabad out to the world, assuming the world is fallen and needs to be changed. At the time, Kazan did not foresee Orthodoxy’s fervent fascination with the Internet and involvement with Internet-based activities (Campbell and Golan, 2011); however, he articulates the website’s goal of outreach that has been continuous up to the present. In another interview with a leading figure at chabad.org, the Internet/Chabad connection was depicted:

This [technology] is historic. It goes to the core of Hassidic philosophy and the Kabala … Applied Kabala is Hassidic and uses spiritual ideas to Godliness to make the world in a complete way. [as for the Internet] a lot of people shun it. The technology is here for a purpose for something positive – Chabad tried to use everything we can in a positive way. (February 2010)

This interviewee explains that the Internet serves as a platform given by transcendent powers to devotees. In his view, the Internet corresponds to Chabad’s philosophical guidelines of broadening the scope of religious involvement and therefore views the net as being a tool for disseminating sacred concepts in the world. This view differs from other ultra-Orthodox viewpoints that consider the Internet as a source of livelihood at best and of evil inclinations, sinfulness, and moral corruption at worst (Campbell and Golan, 2011; Horowitz, 2001). As our interviews reflect, Chabad’s distinctive view of the Internet, apparently supported by its leaders, drove Chabad members to invest with great passion in this enterprise and to devote considerable resources to enhance its influence.

This notion is also illustrated by the account of a Chicago-based Chabad rabbi, in which he described the creed of the Internet and the media at large:

There is a famous discussion on the rebbe in relation to TV. How can the rebbe be on Cable (TV)? People used to ask. The Television is Treif (non-Kosher) they used to say. In the 1980’s the rebbe borrowed an explanation from the Gmara that referred to the Gold in the (Biblical) Tabernacle and the Temple, where is asked: how can we use something so vain in the temple? The answer is that it is not in the Gold but rather in its usage. Is it for vain usage or to enhance God’s majesty in the world? So the same goes for TV and Cable. I would extrapolate this for the Internet. It is not wrong, but it is how people use it. How we educate our children. Life is very different from the Ghetto and Shtetl (old Jewish towns of Eastern Europe). In 2012, some people are addicted to the web. (Personal interview, 24 May 2012)

In this excerpt, citing the rebbe, mass media and the Internet for the sacred community are analogized with the gold in the temple. In effect, the Rabbi shows that the way to resolve the ambivalent nature of the mass media in religious communities is to highlight its instrumental nature and as a result to legitimize its use. Thus, the Internet is elevated to become a tool toward Godliness, rather than a defiled status as a gateway to sin.

Following its gradual legitimization, Chabad’s presence over the Internet was further advanced. In early 2010, the website leaders of Chabad.org boasted 350,000 subscribers and by 2013 claimed to have 3.4 million users per month and over 34 million yearly unique visitors (data from personal interview, 11 November 2013). According to compete.com, chabad.org’s traffic in April 2014 reached 603,087 unique users. Over 50% of its use is driven by regulars, and it tops the list of Jewish education sites, with an average visit lasting 4.7 minutes (according to the Jewish Internet Metric Study, 2009 conducted in 2009). This places chabad.org as the current leading Jewish website in the world in terms of its popularity and exposure. It has also been acclaimed for its historically early delivery of religious education over the net by the Smithsonian as well as among the leading American media companies (Fishkoff, 2003: 282–283).

Today, chabad.org’s tools and services are significantly expanded, enabling additional texts and services including news (often pertaining to Jewish issues in the United States and Israel), blogs, daily study options of the Chumash-Torah, the Tanya, and other well-known texts, as well as new interpretations of the Parsha (the weekly Torah portion), blogs, live feed of ‘Jewish TV’, animated instructional accounts, and other forms of free instructional and informative services, all of which utilize up-to-date Internet production methods, for its visitors and links to versions of the site in several other languages (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Home page of chabad.org (28 May 2014).

Although the site’s title and URL are named ‘chabad.org’ and visitors should therefore expect to engage in the world of Chabad, most of the interface and stories are not clearly identifiable as expressions of the Chabad worldview. For example, in Figure 1, we see a lead article entitled ‘My Scary Drive in an Overheating Car’. ⁴ The dramatic image links to a short, mundane anecdote about ordinary car trouble. But it is then imbued with spiritual meaning, inspiring contemplation and reflection on God’s role in the world of everyday challenges. This piece, as many others, is popular and invites the engagements of spiritually receptive readers with a broad knowledge of Judaism. However, it is not necessarily Chabad oriented. This is true of other parts of this webpage, except for the search platform for Chabad-Lubavitch at its center. This is not to say that the website does not filter these Jewish websites in a way that conforms to the Chabad perspective, as the iconography and discourse are derived from different popular conventions prevalent on the Internet, such as news reports and blogger anecdotes.

Chabad orientation is highlighted in some stories. For example, in an interview with ‘Hanna’, a rabbinical student of the reform movement in Brooklyn, she described her preparation for her Parsha (Torah portion) discussion every week. In her efforts to keep the discussion current and relevant, rather than just scholarly, Hanna told us that she consults various websites. In her search, she finds that ‘I keep getting useful materials from chabad.org, but I am cautious. Some ideas I don’t agree with, such as their approach to God’s relationship to people’ (personal communication, 2 March 2010). Hannah’s reflection mirrored responses from other webmasters and Jewish instructors we have interviewed. They appreciate the power of Chabad.org (alongside other popular websites they mentioned, such as aish.com, the non-Orthodox myjewishlearning.com, or even Wikipedia) to provide information and rich ideas that are extremely useful to them. However, the image of Chabad, as well as the perspective it integrates, makes them wary of its content and somewhat distrustful. But despite their misgivings, people from various denominations noted Chabad.org’s visibility, influence, and rich repositories of information, even among ultra-Orthodox communities, albeit to a lesser extent.

When we asked the webmasters of Chabad.org about the community’s uses of the website, they pointed out the web pages dedicated to daily study (e.g. of the Tanya) and the website’s repositories of Jewish texts. In this sense, the community of Chabad believers is viewed as a compartmentalized sector of people who can enjoy the website’s services, but who are certainly not the site’s key audience. It should be noted that Chabad.org does offer localized services to emissaries, for a price, that enable emissaries to create their own website to provide for their own community while using the content and the website’s reputation for social legitimacy. However, the bulk of the website is geared toward a broader audience that may encompass a range of affiliation with Chabad or even with Judaism. This stands in contrast to other Chabad websites, such as crownheights.info or col.org.il.

The sacred community online: crownheights.info

Beyond Chabad’s outreach concerns, several of its websites are devoted exclusively to community affairs and therefore focus on the community’s internal issues, especially the needs to strengthen religious knowledge and discipline. In this sense, we uncovered an alternative approach to communal boundaries on two websites: col.org.il (‘COL’) and crownheights.info. These websites demarcate the special accents of the community while also integrating the overarching missions of the Chabad movement. Community concerns are emphasized along with network of followers.

‘COL’ is an acronym for ‘Chabad On Line’. It is a Hebrew website based in Israel, and its webmasters are mainly from charedi neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the town of Kfar Chabad. Much like chabad.org, COL and crownheights.info emerged much later in the history of the Internet (in the 2000s) and were started up by teenaged entrepreneurs. COL was founded by Menachem Cohen, an Israeli who started working at age 15 as a reporter for small local Israeli Chabad newspapers. Crownheights.info was established by a 17-year-old New Yorker (referred to here as ‘Daniel’), with the hope of earning a livelihood. He now has a strong standing both in COL and in the popular and online newspaper Kikar Hashabat (kikarhashabat.co.il) that caters to the ultra-Orthodox community at large (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Chabad On Line (COL.org.il) homepage – News for the community (4 August 2013) (our English translations added).

The second website, Crownheights.info, is based in Crown Heights, the heart of a Chabad-dominated part of Brooklyn. The website claims 28,000 unique visitors per day. It is focused on local news, Israel news, and most importantly, Chabad community concerns. The office, located within a Crown Heights home, functions as a lively newsroom. For example, while we visited the website office, a phone caller informed Daniel, the web manager, of a bus accident. Daniel immediately dashed off to cover the event, interview witnesses, and snap photos. The event was over quickly, but it provided a live example of the website’s reporting on current events, primarily with photographs. Daniel takes pride in the responsiveness of the website; ‘if there’s a siren outside or helicopter, you would go online and find out what happened’, he said (personal interview, 2 June 2010). He spoke of his work’s important function of warning the public of possible hazards, even if they are occasionally offensive to their way of life. For example, he reported a horrific kidnap-rape that occurred on a nearby street. He described his hesitation to report this occurrence, as the brutal crimes may be abhorrent to community members and may disrupt their moral rhythm. Also, ‘Jews were not involved’, he said. However, he added that after careful consideration, he finally decided that the public should know about events in the neighborhood. Accordingly, Daniel defines the mission of the website as informing and protecting the community (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Crownheights.info: discussing international Jewish events from a Chabad community perspective (28 May 2014).

Furthermore, Daniel seeks to cater to the many emissaries and their contacts abroad. In this sense, crownheights.info operates similarly to COL. Although crownheights.com acts as a local online paper for the Crown Heights/Brooklyn Jewish community, its coverage encompasses the global Chabad community. The neighborhood of Crown Heights has become the center of Chabad. It is the hub of emissary gatherings, the home of the revered rebbe, and the overall institutional base. With its prominent standing in the community, Crownheights.info has taken on more than a local orientation. As described above, it focuses primarily on local community news, but also integrates news about Israel as a common topic and world Jewry with a strong affinity to Chabad’s emissaries. This serves to legitimize both COL and crownheights.info and frame them as institutional spaces under communal consensus and signifies that they are operated by the most highly connected, appointed ‘ambassadors’ of the Chabad world. In addition, the websites support community aspirations by validating its members’ functions using a media outlet for coverage of their activities and events, such as weddings, appointments of emissaries around the world, and death announcements.

According to a COL webmaster, the online connections among emissaries are very important. The website’s pages show many emissary photos posted from around the world. ‘Chabad is like a family’, he adds:

‘Not everyone knows each other, but they care; when you do something you get responses from everyone’. Rabbi ‘Jacob’ is an emissary in Bangkok. He was raised in a large family in Jerusalem. When he publishes a piece, all of his friends and family respond, on talkbacks, with messages in English, Yiddish and Hebrew. People who are on the website do not expect to read an update from the prime minister or from the ultra Orthodox. Nothing but from the courts of the Chabad community. We have flash bulletins of ‘congratulations for newborn babies, reminders on upcoming weddings, Brith (rite of circumcision) celebrations and the like. In cases of disaster, like the story of the daughter of a Chabad emissary who died in a fire after playing with matches, we got 300 post responses. Unlike talkbacks, where people hide (in online anonymity), here people state their full names. The success of the website can be seen if every emissary will use it as his homepage’. (Personal interview, 9 August 2009)

This webmaster maintains that the website stimulates a sense of community, connecting people of vague affinity, if any, to each other. These virtual connections correspond to Anderson’s (1983) notion of an ‘imagined community’ where the communal consciousness is constructed through shared images and meanings, rather than actual connections. In Chabad, congregants may not personally know the members whose news is covered on the website (e.g. emissaries, rabbis), yet they can vicariously participate in the communal events and follow the happenings, events, and rituals of its key members. This communal consciousness facilitates and simulates a sense of close relations and transfers them to cyberspace on COL’s safe, trustworthy, and familiar plane.

Doing the work of God via the net

This study explored a key paradox of fundamentalist movements that have concerned theorists of religious movements, namely, the tension between otherworldly orientations and the attraction of engaging in everyday life necessities. Aiming to analyze this quest in detail, we examined webmasters’ strategies to distribute religious knowledge over the selfsame Internet that is also considered an obstacle to religious piety. We asked about how they select symbols and information for different groups and audiences. How do they handle religious prohibitions, morality, and preventions? We aimed to uncover the ways Chabad invites new members and expands their influence in the outside world while at the same time protecting and fortifying the enclave’s own community boundaries? As demonstrated, Chabad differed from other charedi sects, and we found that Chabad has produced a twofold strategy and a new integrative theology of the Internet. The movement’s use of the Internet is an amalgam of strategies that integrate a sense of Jewish belonging that is adjusted to non-charedi and even non-Jewish people, as well as a sophisticated internal voice formulated exclusively to cater to members of Chabad. The external voice is part of the Chabad Jewish project, which aims to elaborate on a Judaism that is simultaneously universal and particular. The internal discourse differs in that it is dedicated to local, internal issues, such as community affairs, emissary activity, prohibitions, modesty rules, and kosher food. This discourse is part of the project of Chabad to reinforce community boundaries, as well as Jewish particular habitus, such as modesty, Jewish ritual, halacha (practical law), and education.

The critical question now becomes, How can we explain the use of these strategies? In his book, Stolow (2013) questions what might be gained or lost once religion and technology are allowed to mingle intimately (p. 3). As we show, Chabad formulated the complex relationship between technology and religion that has proved effective and successful in terms of both popularity and outreach. Stolow (2013) argues that online successes of a specific group can also be related to its media platforms. He stresses that media (p. 5) provides an environment within which religious adherents proclaim their faith, mark their affiliation, receive spiritual gifts, or participate in any of the countless local idioms for melding the sacred with everyday life. In the context of religion, technology forms a grid of orientations, operations, embedded and embodied knowledge, as well as powers without which religious ideas, experiences, and actions could not exist. In our findings, we uncover Chabad’s formula for a unique attitude toward technology that has even produced a theology of the Internet that allows distribution of this knowledge to different audiences. The sanctification of Internet spaces allows devotees and religious agents to use it as a kosher means to salvation. They argue that it is God’s medium, and thus God’s knowledge is disseminated through it. In order to strengthen sanctified spaces, Chabad webmasters build a universal Jewish voice and at the same time ‘Chabadize’ Judaism. In this worldview, the Internet is a strong, effective, and legitimate tool for communicating and distributing religious knowledge, in parallel with many other religious movements and organizations worldwide that seek to filter the knowledge of their faith through their own perspectives (cf. Campbell, 2010; Echchaibi, 2013). Thus, the digital landscape has become a stage for competitive notions of religiosity, one that favors charismatic and technologically skilled groups that can use the medium as a source of visibility for their movement and ideals.

Conclusion

The early legitimization of the Internet by Chabad during the 1980s illustrates their positive view of engaging with the tools of modernity to interact with the non-chasidic world and paved the way for the work of future webmasters and social networking (i.e. Facebook, Twitter). The Internet has become an acceptable space where Chabad websites (intentionally or unintentionally) complement each other. For this task, Chabad has developed a dual strategy while using the Internet, that enable a ‘division of labor’ between sites dedicated to the outreach vision of Chabad and those devoted to internal use, spreading the messages. For Chabad, as among other religious communities (such as the Free Methodist Church of America, the Anglican Church of Canada, or websites that aim to represent ‘larger’ religions, rather than denominations or smaller communities, such as Buddhism and Islam), the Internet provides visibility to outsiders as well as within. In many ways, these websites serve as the ‘face of the community’ and an entryway to the space within its boundaries, while for others, they provide a participatory social landscape within which to work and play. This strategy was developed as a reaction to the tension between the yearning to protect the enclave and the Chabad way of life (as comparable to efforts of other ultra-Orthodox groups that have created a ‘digital enclave’ of communal websites; see Campbell and Golan, 2011) and the inclination to expand and add more devotees. Through their efforts, Crownheights.info and COL assist in building respect for emissaries as an elite group, reinforcing the ties among them, albeit through a traditional format that is reconstructed online (announcements of births, marriages, deaths, etc).

The study highlights webmasters’ perspectives and their online productions. However, much remains to be learned about community concerns regarding new media’s impact on users. More specifically, one could question the ways that Chabad users integrate the new medium into their everyday lives, both in their formal communal activities (in school, synagogue, workplace) and in their informal activities (during prayer, leisure). User immersion into these communal web spaces also raises questions about believers’ engagement with sacred and secular spheres of life while highlighting the need for further study of users’ religious conceptions about the rise of religious/communal websites. In addition, additional research could examine the Internet’s influence on religious communal practices: mobilization of worship spaces, impact on unifying/changing liturgy, and the like.