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Chabad women come together once a year in person. The rest of the time, there’s Instagram.
(JTA) — The first post on Rivky Hertzel’s Instagram account — which she and her husband signed up for last year ahead of a planned move to Zambia — depicts a classic Chabad activity: a mock matzah bake for children that the couple organized in Lusaka, the country’s capital, ahead of last Passover.
But like many Instagram posts, the cheerful photo didn’t exactly tell the whole story:
The kids’ chef hats were made out of paper, their aprons were made out of garbage bags, and their rolling pins were actually the detached handles of toilet plungers — wrapped in Saran Wrap — that Hertzel picked up on the fly at a local store when she realized she was short on baking supplies.
Only after the bake was done did Hertzel, 22, reveal the origins of the “rolling pins.” Much to her relief, the kids’ parents had a good laugh about it.
And months later, in a “Throwback Thursday” post, Hertzel shared a photo of the deconstructed toilet plungers themselves. The red ends of the plungers sat in rows next to the separated handles.
“What do you think we used the plungers for?” she wrote. One viewer responded, “Moshe’s staff.” Another wrote, “As a plunger:).” She then revealed that they were rolling pins, to her followers’ delight.
“I have friends in Alaska and in New York and anywhere else, and I think they were excited and kind of inspired by that,” Hertzel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “When you’re living in New York, what are you thinking about Jewish kids in Africa? No one’s thinking about it. They were inspired by the lengths that we were willing to go to make a special Jewish experience for kids.”
Hertzel’s experience is an example of the increasingly significant and versatile role Instagram is playing in the lives of Chabad’s women emissaries, known as shluchos. Nearly 4,000 shluchos gathered this past weekend for a conference that concluded with a massive gala dinner at a New Jersey convention center. But during the rest of the year, many of the emissaries live without a robust local Orthodox support system, often taking the lead in organizing Jewish activities in far-flung locales with few, if any, other observant Jews.
To fill that gap, some have turned to Instagram as a vehicle to document both their work and personal lives. And as a younger generation of emissaries begins taking up posts around the world, the way they portray their Jewish outreach cuts across Instagram’s many vibes. Some stick to curating a beautiful photo grid, while others use the platform to broadcast the messier parts of raising a family while running a Jewish community. Some keep their accounts private, viewing social media primarily as a way to reach friends and relatives across the globe.
“There’s so many wonderful, beautiful things that social media can be used for,” said Chavie Bruk, the Chabad emissary in Bozeman, Montana. “The more we can talk about the day-to-day struggles and the day-to-day life and the not-glorified part about being a shlucha, I feel like it just creates community and comfort and support.”
Bruk, 38, has been on Instagram for about 10 years, and started using it regularly about three years ago. Her Instagram is a combination of colorful family photos on the permanent grid, and front-camera facing 24-hour stories where she “doesn’t sugarcoat things” about her life as parent to five adopted children, one of whom is Black and another has a seizure disorder, living in a mostly rural state with only 5,000 Jews.
On Wednesday, she posted a story about a blockage in the septic tank of her house, which is not connected to the city sewer system.
“This has been two days of trying to figure out where is the blockage and they cannot figure it out,” Bruk says in the video. “And we’ve tried everything. Which means we haven’t really been able to use a lot of water in the house. So now it means that we have to get a backhoe. We’re very lucky that our neighbor has one. So Montana!”
Until the blockage is found, Bruk says in the video, her family has to limit their consumption of water.
“I show up how I am,” Bruk told JTA. “Just because you’re doing something really awesome and just because you even love what you’re doing, doesn’t mean it’s not going to be hard.”
She added, “My parents’ generation, there wasn’t room for that. There wasn’t room for expressing hardship. I think [in] that generation, the shluchos were looked at as superhuman. They just were able to pull it all off without their hair being ruffled… We need to embrace that and really be like, ‘You know what? No. We’re shluchos, we do amazing things. We do things that are superhuman, but we’re not superhuman.’”
Other emissaries use Instagram as a way to broadcast a fashionable version of themselves in an effort to connect with young Jews. Emunah Wircberg, 31, a shlucha and director of a Philadelphia art gallery called Old City Jewish Arts Center, is also a fashion blogger. Wircberg and her husband Zalman primarily serve Jews in their 20s and 30s, and they usually meet at the gallery for art-themed social events, networking opportunities and chic Shabbat dinners.
Wirchberg’s Instagram is largely beige, black and white, showing off her modest style of silky skirts layered with chunky knits, oversized blazers and coats, and a variety of wide brim hats, all with a loose silhouette. Some of the photos are shot in Philadelphia and others are taken in Israel, posing in front of the iconic Jerusalem stone.
Wircberg also posts stylized pictures of her family life and Jewish ritual, such as shots of her family’s Purim costumes, Hanukkah and pre-Shabbat candle lighting. Some of them are inflected with Chabad teachings, including references to Chaya Mushka Schneerson, the wife of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Chabad leader known as the Rebbe.
Emunah Wircberg is a Chabad emissary and a modest fashion blogger. (Screenshots via Instagram)
With 20,000 followers, Wircberg’s friends have asked her why she doesn’t try to monetize the page, though she does include links to donate to local Jewish institutions. “I view my Instagram as part of my shluchos, so I don’t want it to be a place where I’m trying to make money,” she said.
Wircberg also posts videos of her Shabbat cooking — recounting one time when she accidentally used an unkosher mustard for a chicken that she had to throw out — and shares artist-centered events and other activities.
Wirchberg said she appreciates “every opportunity that you have to show your life as a shlucha, Chabad Hasidic woman.” She added, “Showing that to the world and showing that to your followers and connecting with them in that way is actually a really cool, great channel to be able to do that.”
Other shluchos shy away from using Instagram as a public platform. For Esther Hecht, the 26-year-old emissary in Auckland, New Zealand, making phone calls to her friends and family in England and the United States often feels like an impossible task — a distaste that, polling shows, she shares with other members of her generation.
Instead, she finds the asynchronous nature of social media to be a helpful alternative when it comes to catching up with people.
At the conference, in between speaking at the podium in front of the nearly 4,000 guests, she found herself handing out her phone to exchange social media handles. Asked why she focuses on the platforms, she said, “It keeps me connected.”
Esther Hecht, the shlucha for Auckland, New Zealand, speaks at the annual conference for Chabad women emissaries. (Courtesy of Chabad)
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The post Chabad women come together once a year in person. The rest of the time, there’s Instagram. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brooklyn Nets Forward Michael Porter Jr. Defends Deni Avdija Against Hate for Representing Israel
Mar 2, 2025; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Portland Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija (8) drives to the basket against Cleveland Cavaliers guard Ty Jerome (2) and forward Dean Wade (32) during the second half at Rocket Arena. Photot: Ken Blaze-Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. defended fellow NBA player and Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija against the hate he receives for representing his home country of Israel.
Porter Jr. recently made an appearance on a live stream with YouTuber N3on and mentioned that Avdija is a player who gets to the free-throw line often. N3on then commented that Avdija “gets a lot of hate,” referring to hate messages on social media, even though “he’s a good player.” When Porter asked the streamer if Avdija is criticized because he is Jewish, N3on replied yes.
“Really? What are people mad about?” Porter asked.
“Because he wore a flag or something,” N3on replied, referring to Avdija’s public display of pride for Israel, such as wearing a jersey featuring an Israeli flag or draping himself in an Israeli flag on the court.
“It’s so weird,” Porter said in response. “Do people not want others to represent their country? What do they expect from him?”
Michael Porter Jr. tells N3on people are weird for hating on Deni Avdija just because he proudly represents Israel
“Why hate someone for repping their country?”
pic.twitter.com/C945Xr0dhB
— luci. (@inmaxera) May 2, 2026
Avdija, who is set to become a free agent in 2028, is the first Israeli to be named an NBA All-Star and last month became the first Israeli to reach and win an NBA Playoff game. Unfortunately, the Portland Trail Blazers ended their 2025-26 season last week with a 114-95 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the 2026 playoffs.
Earlier the year, Avdija spoke to The Athletic about the hate that he receives as an NBA player from Israel.
“I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. It’s frustrating to see all the hate,” he said. “Like, I have a good game or get All-Star votes, and all the comments [on social media] are people connecting me to politics. Like, why can’t I just be a good basketball player? Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is? Just respect me as a basketball player.”
“You don’t have to love what I stand for or how I look, but if I’m a good player, give props,” Avdija added. “All this hate … for no reason, like I’m deciding things in the world … I’m from there, and I respect my country, and I stand behind it. I’m a proud Israeli because that’s where I grew up. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Israel and the support the people and fans gave me. But all the extra stuff around it? It’s just unnecessary.”
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Mike Stoller and Iris Rainer Dart talk ‘Beaches’ and reviving their Yiddish musical
A Peanuts poster in the background of our video call reminds Iris Rainer Dart of her brief time starring in a musical.
“I was the understudy for Judy Kaye in the L.A. company of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown,” recalled Dart, 82, the author of the bestselling novel Beaches and the book and lyrics for the new Broadway musical based on it. “She wanted to go home for Thanksgiving, and so they let me go on one time to see if I could do it. And then for Thanksgiving, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then went on as Lucy!”
After that, it was curtains. “That’s my distinguished acting career,” Dart said. “Boy, am I glad it gave me up!”
But Dart never gave up on musicals, which she started writing as an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon with an up-and-coming composer named Stephen Schwartz. She worked as a writer for Sonny and Cher’s variety show, and used Cher as a partial model for the character of Cee Cee Bloom, the brassy diva whose friendship with the more refined Bertie White is the center of Beaches. (There’s a bit of Dart in Bloom, too — namely the Jewishness.) Years later, after Garry Marshall directed the 1988 film version of Beaches, Bette Midler, who gave life to Cee Cee on screen, asked Dart to write a new vehicle for her.
Searching for subject matter, Dart remembered her stint as a replacement teacher at her daughter’s Jewish school in her largely Judenrein neck of California. She felt unprepared to take over — “The understudy doesn’t know the lines” — but she got mailers from Jewish institutions to develop her lesson plans. One was a catalog of Yiddish films.
Growing up in Pittsburgh with Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents, she didn’t need subtitles to watch them. Inspired, she wrote what would become The People in the Picture, a memory play of Yiddish theater and the Holocaust.
Midler wouldn’t go on to star in the show, which debuted on Broadway in 2011 with Donna Murphy, but she made the shidduch between Dart and Mike Stoller, the legendary songsmith who, with lyricist Jerry Leiber, penned “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakety Yak” and, yes, a tune called “Charlie Brown” for the Coasters.
When it came time to adapt Beaches, a story built in part around backstage drama, and an enduring friendship that grows out of it, Dart reconnected with Stoller after working with a different composer on a previous run of the show.
Stoller, 93, has had his music feature in many Broadway musicals — mostly of the jukebox variety, long after they had already been hit records. He says he approaches crafting an original score differently, writing for characters rather than an artist like Elvis. With Beaches he set out to write a “musical-musical,” that was traditional and book-driven. In the case of both Beaches and People in the Picture, there’s a heaping helping of Yiddishkeit.
One line that has audiences rolling in the aisles comes when Cee Cee (played by Jessica Vosk) pays a visit to her friend Bertie (Kelli Barrett), whose mother is dying at a Catholic hospital. She tells the nuns “my mother used to point you out to me on the street and say, ‘At least they married a Jewish guy.’”
Stoller spent some of his early years living in the converted basement of his grandparents’ house in Bell End, Queens. His grandmother spoke Yiddish, Russian, Polish and English with a Cockney accent.
“She left Bialystok and moved to Whitechapel in London on her way to America,” Stoller explained.
Stoller never had a bar mitzvah, and learned his father didn’t either. It was only when the family moved to California that Stoller learned his dad, A.L. Stoller’s, full name.
“I was thrilled to find out that his name was really ‘Abraham Lincoln Stoler,’” Stoller recalled. “In a way, it sounded Black, and I was working primarily with African American people when I started writing along with Jerry, and those were the singers that inspired us, and so I felt additional pride in his name.”
The People in the Picture brought Stoller to tears. Beaches, which (spoilers for a 41-year-old story) ends with Bertie’s untimely death, has audiences cracking up before they reach for a Kleenex.
The one song Stoller didn’t compose for the show is “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which became a standard from the film. But beyond that, the story stays truer to Dart’s novel than the movie did.
“I always knew, because I wasn’t writing it, that it would not be the story that I wanted to tell,” said Dart of the film version. “The story I wanted to tell was in the book and in this musical.”
In the meantime, Stoller and Dart want to bring back People in the Picture. Dart said she has a new draft ready to go.
“I’m hoping that maybe we can get Jeff Goldblum, who says he loves Yiddish,” Dart said. “He’s from Pittsburgh also, and I think his father, Dr. Goldblum, may have been the doctor to my family, to my mother. Because there were two Dr Goldblums, and one of them was an eye doctor, and my mother was always trying to fix him up with my cousin.”
“Need I say more?” Dart asked.
The post Mike Stoller and Iris Rainer Dart talk ‘Beaches’ and reviving their Yiddish musical appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says Iran ‘Should Wave White Flag of Surrender’ as Shaky Ceasefire Holds Despite Exchange of Fire
US President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign a memorandum in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday dismissed Iran‘s military capability and said Tehran “should wave the white flag of surrender” but is too proud to do so.
Trump’s comments to reporters in the Oval Office came as the United Arab Emirates said it was under attack from Iranian missiles and drones, even as Washington said a shaky ceasefire was intact despite an exchange of fire the previous day as US forces attempted to force open the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite the escalation, Iran‘s military has been reduced to firing “peashooters,” Trump said, adding that Tehran privately wants to make a deal despite its public saber-rattling.
“They play games, but let me just tell you, they want to make a deal. And who wouldn’t, when your military is totally gone?” he said.
Trump heaped praise on the US blockade of Iranian ports in the region. “It’s like a piece of steel. Nobody’s going to challenge the blockade. And I think it’s working out very well,” he said.
When asked what Iran would need to do to violate the ceasefire, Trump said: “Well, you’ll find out, because I’ll let you know … They know what not to do.”
Trump argued that Iran “should save the white flag of surrender,” adding, “If this were a fight, they’d stop it.”
The US military said it had destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after Trump sent the navy to escort stranded tankers through the strait in a campaign he called “Project Freedom.”
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the operation to protect commercial ships was temporary and the four-week-old truce was not over. “We’re not looking for a fight,” he told a press conference. “Right now, the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely.”
Iran fired missiles at US ships on Monday and attacked the UAE, a key regional ally of Washington, with missiles and drones. After issuing a new map of the Strait of Hormuz with an expanded Iranian area of control, Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards warned vessels on Tuesday to stick to the corridors it had set or face a “decisive response.”
Shortly after Hegseth spoke on Tuesday, the UAE’s defense ministry said its air defenses were again dealing with missile and drone attacks coming from Iran.
‘RIGHT TO RESPOND’
The Gulf Arab state’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the attacks were a serious escalation and posed a direct threat to the country’s security, adding that the UAE reserved its “full and legitimate right” to respond.
There was no immediate comment on that from Iran, though earlier its parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, had said breaches of the ceasefire by the US and its allies endangered shipping through the strait, which carries a large share of the world’s oil and fertilizer supplies.
“We know well that the continuation of the current situation is unbearable for the United States, while we have not even begun yet,” he said in a social media post.
The Strait of Hormuz has been virtually shut since the United States and Israel began attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, triggering disruptions that have pushed up commodity prices around the world.
Iran has effectively sealed off the strait by threatening to deploy mines, drones, missiles, and fast-attack craft. The United States has countered by blockading Iranian ports and mounting escorted transits for commercial vessels.
Hegseth said the US had successfully secured a path through the narrow waterway and that hundreds of commercial ships were lining up to pass through.
The US military said two US merchant ships made it through the strait, without saying when, with the support of Navy guided-missile destroyers.
Iran denied any crossings had taken place, though shipping company Maersk said the Alliance Fairfax, a US-flagged ship, exited the Gulf under US military escort on Monday.
Several merchant ships in the Gulf reported explosions or fires on Monday, and an oil port in the UAE, which hosts a large US military base, was set ablaze by Iranian missiles.
Iran also said it fired warning shots at a US warship approaching the strait, forcing it to turn back.
Reuters could not independently verify events in the strait as the two sides issued contradictory statements.
General Dan Caine, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian attacks against US forces fell “below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.”
PAKISTAN’S MEDIATION EFFORTS CONTINUE
The war has killed thousands as it spread beyond Iran to Lebanon and the Gulf, and has roiled the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that even if the conflict ended immediately, it would take three to four months to deal with the consequences.
US and Iranian officials have held one round of face-to-face peace talks, but attempts to set up further meetings have failed.
Iranian state media said on Sunday that the US had conveyed its response to a 14-point Iranian proposal via Pakistan, and Iran was reviewing it. Neither side gave details.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said peace talks were still progressing with Pakistan’s mediation and warned the US and the UAE against being drawn into a “quagmire.”
He was traveling to Beijing on Tuesday for talks with his Chinese counterpart, his ministry said. Trump is also due to visit China this month.
A senior Pakistani official involved in talks said: “We have put in a lot of efforts – actually both the sides have narrowed gaps on a majority of the issues.”
Trump has said the US-Israeli attacks aimed to eliminate what he called imminent threats from Iran, citing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Trump has insisted Iran must surrender its enriched uranium stockpiles to prevent it producing a nuclear weapon – an ambition Tehran denies.