I was directed to tonight's Chabad Telethon by Rabbi Yossi Marcus with whom, while living in San Mateo, I enjoyed a weekly debate on issues great and small. Tonight, Chabad commandeered local TV channels in several large markets and in five hours of music and testimonials, raised $5 million for its operation and good causes.
Chabad, a religious community, is well-known for its aggressive encouragement to other Jews to live according to Biblical precepts. It also provides services for the disabled, elderly, children, and the less fortunate around the world, regardless of religious persuasion. For Chabad, every time a Jew does a Jewish thing, it's a “mitzvah,” a blessing, bringing the world one step closer to the arrival of the Messiah.
So much for the theology. It's Chabad's use of social technology that amazes and delights -- one of the more paradoxical social phenomena I've experienced.
Chabad is culturally bidextrous. One one hand, it's an Orthodox stream of European Judaism that emphasizes the mystical (like the Kabbalah) and the charismatic as pathways to knowledge. It dates from the 16th through the 19th Centuries, when most European Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, a kind of mega-ghetto in between Poland and Russia. Chabad carries on an oral tradition that it claims has coexisted with more legalistic Judaic traditions since the origins of the Torah, the Bible's first five Books. Chabadists believe in the literal meaning of the Bible, separation of men and women during worship, and strict observance of biblical laws governing everything from eating Kosher to child-care. On the other hand, Chabad is one of the savviest users of modern media. Chabad's website, though complex, is wonderfully designed. For its telethon, Chabad not only secured the use of several TV stations -- it also leased two satellite transponders to provide simultaneous national coverage for the LA-produced event. AskMoses.com, Chabad's online rabbinical academy, provides almost instant chat answers to questions posed by Jews and non-Jews about biblical matters and Jewish culture (from a Chabad perspective).
I'm not Orthodox. My personal philosophy is Taoism, which resists thinking in terms of the miraculous and views technology as merely a standing wave in the river of human invention. But tonight's telethon caught my attention and held it with a clever juxtaposition of tradition, music, testimonials, and high-tech. Plus very good intentions (uncommon to TV).
Chabad's mix of orthodoxy and state-of-art technology, creating the "Chabad mystique," is one of the better unintended consequences of our information age.
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
