New Editor to Kfar Chabad

By COLlive reporter

Kfar Chabad Magazine has announced the appointment of Menachem Cohen as editor, the first to hold the title other than the founder Aharon Dov Halperin.

Halperin, who founded the Chabad publication in Hebrew in 1980, said he will now serve as Editor in Chief.

The move is seen as yet another effort to revive the long-struggling weekly which was once the only source for Chabad news and opinion and still has brand-name recognition.

“With our sights on the younger generation, the future generation… we’ll be joined by young and fresh forces,” Halperin writes in this week’s expanded edition for the Kinus Hashluchim convention in New York.

For Cohen, a father of one, the new position is closing a circle.

Kfar Chabad was his first journalistic venue, after which he was the New York correspondent for COL.org.il, later becoming Editor in Chief of the Hebrew Chabad news website and then working as an editor in the popular frum news site Kikar.net.

“This week you can spot the first facelift and in the coming weeks there will be comprehensive changes in the graphic layout and the content,” Cohen said.

“The goal is to make the paper appeal to a younger crowd – obviously while keeping its pure nature.”

For the issue number 1484, Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau is interviewed ahead of his guest speech at the Kinus banquet, 7 Israeli government ministers share a memorable moment at a Chabad center, and an article describes how IDF soldiers spend Shabbos with Chabad in Chevron.

Alongside his new position, Cohen will continue as editor of the Israeli COL, a partner of community news service COLlive.com.