Kfar Chabad Magazine

Kfar Chabad Magazine is a Chabad community weekly founded in 1980 and named after the Israeli village of Kfar Chabad. For more than four decades, it has served as a principal forum for Chabad life in Israel, publishing religious thought, community news, features, interviews, cultural material, and coverage of Jewish and Israeli affairs. Its pages have connected Chabad families and institutions in Israel with emissaries and communities around the world.

From a local newspaper to a national weekly

The first issue appeared on 20 June 1980, 6 Tammuz 5740. Its first twelve issues were distributed as a local newspaper in Kfar Chabad and appeared every two weeks. Beginning with issue 13, in Shevat 5741, it became the “biweekly of Young Chabad in the Holy Land,” expanded its scope, and began circulating throughout Israel. About a year later, with issue 38 in Shevat 5742, it became a weekly publication.

The newspaper was initially published by Young Chabad in Israel. It later moved into private ownership within the framework of the Chabad Hasidic Association in Israel and became a publication representing Chabad Hasidim throughout the country. Its development from a local paper into a national weekly reflected both the growth of Chabad communities and the need for a regular publication linking readers, institutions, and emissaries.

Editors, writers, and a changing format

The publication was initiated by Yosef Yitzhak Gopin and Aharon Dov Halperin. Halperin has served as its editor-in-chief since its founding and has been central to shaping its editorial and communal character. Over the years, the magazine published the work of rabbis, educators, thinkers, journalists, and writers, including Yitzhak Yehuda Holtzman, Rabbi Moshe Marinovsky, Rabbi Michael Taieb, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Chitrik, Rabbi Moshe Orenshtein, Rabbi Yisrael Alfenbein, Rabbi Eliyahu Wolf, Rabbi Alter Eliyahu Friedman, and Haim Gil.

Its contributors also included prominent figures in Chabad thought and communal life, among them Rabbi Yoel Kahan, Rabbi Shmuel Elazar Haleprin, Rabbi Shalom Dovber Levin, Rabbi Tuvia Blau, Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, Rabbi Gedalia Axelrod, Rabbi Avraham Meizlish, Rabbi Yosef Hartman, Rabbi Yehezkel Sofer, Rabbi Menachem Brod, Rabbi Binyamin Klein, Avraham Hanokh Glitzenstein, Yehoshua Mondshine, Naftali Tzvi Gottlieb, Rabbi Uri Ben Shahar, Rabbi Shalom Dovber Wolpo, Rabbi Hanania Yosef Eisenbach, Binyamin Lipkin, Yossi Elituv, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Reis, Rabbi Chaim Levi Yitzhak Ginsburg, Yehuda Zeitlin, Levi Sheikowitz, Rabbi Ido Weber, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Vahaba, Shlomo Riesel, Menachem Mendel Kurts, and Menachem Mendel Bronfman. At various times, the paper also published stories by the Chabad spiritual mentor Rabbi Shaya Lifkin, using the pen name Y. Mar-Dror.

Supplements and new audiences

In 2004, the weekly began appearing in full color. In 2006, journalist and author David Rotenberg joined the staff as consulting editor after serving as an editor at the Haredi weekly BaKehillah. During this period, the publication divided its material between Aspaklaria, a magazine devoted mainly to Torah subjects, and the principal Kfar Chabad magazine, which carried feature articles on a broad range of topics. A women’s supplement, Mishpacha Hasidit, was published alongside them, initially edited by Fredi Brod and, from 2012, by Rachel Brod.

The news supplement Chabad News began appearing in 2002 in a tabloid format. In November 2007, journalist and author Shneur Zalman Ruderman succeeded Rotenberg and remained with the paper until the end of 2008. At the end of that year, the weekly experienced a financial crisis and ceased publication for two weeks. As part of a recovery plan, much of the staff was dismissed and the separate sections were reunited in a single magazine, apart from the women’s supplement.

In September 2009, Yisrael Brod was appointed general manager to lead a broad recovery plan and raise funds toward the publication’s debts. In 2010, the management appealed to Chabad emissaries around the world for assistance in stabilizing the paper and developing its future programs. At the beginning of 2012, publication stopped for approximately five weeks and then resumed. In Iyar 5772, Brod left the management after helping arrange the payment of part of the magazine’s debts.

At the end of 2012, journalist Menachem Cohen became editor alongside editor-in-chief Aharon Dov Halperin. On 19 Iyar 5773, the magazine celebrated the publication of its 1,500th issue. In 2014, Yosef Levin became vice president for commerce, and two weeks after his arrival the women’s supplement Mishpacha Hasidit returned, edited by Rachel Halperin.

In January 2018, the weekly launched a news supplement covering developments in the Jewish world and in Chabad, combining feature articles with current-affairs and security sections. In July of that year, it introduced a subscription-only magazine for adolescent girls, Livnot. Since June 2019, the newspaper package has also included a communication bulletin published by Young Chabad in Israel.

A publication for the whole community

The expansion of the magazine enabled it to serve different groups within Chabad society. From 2015–2016, the weekly included Mishpacha Hasidit and a free children’s supplement, Kinderlach, distributed in tens of thousands of copies in Chabad centers throughout Israel. In 2017, the magazine launched an application that allowed subscribers abroad to read its articles despite delays in international mail.

In this way, Kfar Chabad Magazine became more than a news publication. It functioned as community infrastructure: conveying information, strengthening connections among families and institutions, giving space to religious and literary voices, and linking everyday communal life with wider conversations about Judaism, society, and Israel.

Torah, leadership, and Chabad identity

During the 1980s, the weekly was one of the prominent platforms for campaigns concerning the “Who is a Jew?” law and opposition to transferring parts of the Land of Israel to the Arabs. It also provided a forum for responses to publications critical of Chabad Hasidim and their leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Although the magazine is identified with Chabad, its subject matter has also addressed broader questions of Jewish life, education, outreach, community, and society in Israel.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was involved in the publication of the newspaper and gave instructions and guidance concerning various aspects of its work. Beginning in 5747, the weekly published a passage each week from his most recent farbrengen. The passage was edited by the Vaad Hanachot BeLashon Hakodesh and reviewed by Schneerson. In a letter sent to mark the 500th issue, he emphasized the importance of doing everything possible in matters of Judaism, Torah, and mitzvot, including publishing and distributing the newspaper.

During the messianic tensions surrounding the Rebbe in 1993–1994, the magazine promoted an explicitly messianic line, published essays and opinions on the subject, and regularly printed the declaration “Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu v’Rabbeinu Melech HaMashiach Le’olam Va’ed” on its cover. After Schneerson’s death in 1994, it stopped focusing on his messianic status and began expressing the position of Chabad’s moderate current, which distanced itself from the messianist position. In 2010–2011, marking the magazine’s thirtieth anniversary, the editor-in-chief published a column titled “Behind the Scenes,” describing instructions he had received over the years concerning the publication’s contents.

A record of Jewish communal life

The importance of Kfar Chabad Magazine lies not only in its longevity. Its influence was built through thousands of issues that reached family homes, study halls, educational institutions, and communities in Israel and abroad. The magazine documented the development of Chabad in Israel, preserved essays and stories, gave public space to leaders and writers, and helped transmit ideas, customs, and forms of communal memory from one generation to the next.

As a print publication and later a digital one, it demonstrates how journalism can become part of communal infrastructure. It does not merely report events; it creates a shared vocabulary, encourages learning and participation, links local communities with emissaries around the world, and preserves Jewish memory within a changing social reality.

Why Kfar Chabad Magazine belongs in Moreshet

Kfar Chabad Magazine merits inclusion in the archive because it has functioned for decades as one of the central media institutions of Chabad in Israel. Since 1980, it has documented community life, circulated Torah and religious thought, created space for discussion of Jewish and Israeli affairs, and addressed women, adolescents, and children through dedicated supplements.

The publication preserves important chapters in the history of Haredi and Israeli society: the transition from a local newspaper to a national and international weekly, the relationship between Israeli Chabad communities and emissaries abroad, changes in print and digital media, and evolving debates about identity, leadership, and tradition. For Moreshet and Moreshet.com, it is a valuable record of how a Jewish community builds memory, strengthens its institutions, and passes its values to future generations.