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No longer a ‘Real Housewife,’ Orthodox influencer Lizzy Savetsky turns to fighting antisemitism
(New York Jewish Week) — Lizzy Savetsky’s life has been turned upside down and inside out over the past eight months.
The 37-year-old social media influencer, who identifies as “a proud Orthodox Jewish woman,” became practically a household name this summer when she was announced as a cast member for the 14th season of “The Real Housewives of New York.” Having recently relocated from Texas to the Upper East Side, the mom of three kids (Stella, 10, Juliet, 8 and Ollie, 2) was thrust into the spotlight alongside six other New York City-based socialites, including fashion designer (and “Girls” guest star) Jenna Lyons and Israeli real estate agent Erin Lichy.
But then, in mid-November, after just weeks of filming, Savetsky left the show. At the time, she said it was due to antisemitism she experienced in online forums. In the aftermath of her departure, there were unsubstantiated reports that she clashed with other cast members, and that her husband had been heard using a racial slur.
In a recent interview with the New York Jewish Week, Savetsky declined to comment on those reports. Instead, she spoke about something she considers exceedingly more important: using the joy and light of Hanukkah — and, well, her social media reach of 225,000 Instagram followers — to fight antisemitism.
Though she’s no longer associated with the reality juggernaut, Savetsky has emerged as a famous Jewish New Yorker nonetheless. These days, she’s making public appearances to talk about community safety and antisemitism, and she even hosted a Hanukkah party at her home where she lit the menorah alongside Mayor Eric Adams.
This Festival of Lights, Savetsky is the face of the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces’ “Live the Miracle” media campaign. Each night of Hanukkah, a different high-profile Jew lights a candle alongside an Israeli soldier, part of a video campaign intended to stand up against antisemitism while supporting the IDF. Also featured in the videos are stand-up comedian Modi Rosenfeld, Israeli actor and anti-antisemitism ambassador Noa Tishby and rapper Kosha Dillz.
Savetsky and her family lit the candle on the first night of Hanukkah alongside Shahar, a female naval combat sergeant currently serving in the IDF. Savetsky called Shahar “an amazing role model for her daughters” who showed them “you’re never too young or too small to contribute amazing things to the Jewish people.”
“It was really one of the most special experiences that we’ve had as a family,” Savetksy said of meeting Shahar and lighting the candles with her. “From a biblical sense, Hanukkah comes after a very dark time and it’s about bringing light to the darkness. To be able to celebrate this, in this moment, is a profound experience, and to be able to do that with a soldier from the IDF is something that means so much to me and my family and to be able to share that with the world is a really big deal.”
The FIDF campaign is only the latest move by Savetsky to showcase her Jewish pride. Though she calls herself an “accidental activist” — the NYU grad who grew up in Fort Worth first began her fashion blog, “Excessories Expert,” in the 2010s, and her media accounts then were mostly dedicated to fashion and lifestyle content — she has become well known for talking about Jewish traditions and customs, promoting Zionism and her love for the State of Israel and, perhaps most urgently of late, calling on others to help fight the scourge of antisemitism.
“I just saw how necessary it was,” Savetsky said of her shift to calling on others to help fight antisemitism. “I want to do everything I can for my people because I want to ensure a future for my children and their children. So I really made a conscious decision to shift my platform to not only fighting antisemitism, but to also share and educate about Judaism because I think a lot of hate is born out of fear.”
“It’s a privilege to stand in solidarity with these influential Jewish figures who will not let darkness prevail,” said Steve Weil, the chief executive officer of Friends of the IDF. “These are people, who, in the face of social media and all sorts of attacks, are standing up for morality, for dignity, and for these young men and young women who are literally at the front line of humanity.”
“I have always been unapologetic about my support for Israel and calling myself a Zionist,” Savetsky told the New York Jewish Week. “I want to put a face to what that means — it is like a wife and a mother and somebody who’s loving and hard-working.”
And yet, her beliefs and outspokenness have drawn the ire of many, especially when the “Real Housewives” cast was announced. Her Instagram handle proclaiming her a “proud Zionist” drew broadsides from pro-Palestinian activists, while some Jews on social media also criticized her for not dressing modestly despite being part of a Modern Orthodox Jewish community.
Savetsky said she and her family received hateful messages and even death threats. Even her husband, plastic surgeon Ira Savetsky, received a letter mailed to his office calling him a “kike” and an “arrogant piece of sh–.”
“I expected to receive negativity. I know that, unfortunately, Israel is a very polarizing topic and I have always been unapologetic about my support for Israel,” she said. “But the amount of hate and the fact that it was coming from all directions — from the far right, from the far left, from so many different groups of people — and the viciousness of it just it really broke my heart.”
The vitriol became overwhelming, Savetsky said. “For the first time I found myself really fearing for my safety and questioning my decision to put myself in this public position,” she said.
Ultimately, after only weeks of filming, Savetsky insists she decided to leave the show because of the antisemitism she faced. “It was definitely not the path for me and for my family,” Savetsky told the New York Jewish Week. “I have no regrets about going through the process because if anything, it shined a light on just how much hate there is out there.”
“I would rather know and understand the reality of it so that I can use my efforts to fight it,” she added. “The fear that I felt from experiencing all the hate I’ve gotten in the past few months really just motivated me to double down and fight even harder.”
Days after her announcement, Page Six, citing “production insiders,” reported that there was more to the story surrounding Savetsky’s departure — including that Savetsky declined to match a non-Jewish cast member up with a Jewish man, and that her husband repeated anti-Black slurs to a producer.
Savetsky declined to comment on these allegations, nor have the rumors been confirmed by Bravo or a named member of the cast. The show is set to air sometime in 2023.
And while she may not be a “Real Housewife,” Savetsky plans to stay in the city. “New York is the center of the universe,” she joked, citing the large and diverse Jewish community as a huge reason why she wanted to raise her kids here. Living on the Upper East Side, Savetsky’s daughters attend a Modern Orthodox day school, and the family is a member of the newly created Altneu congregation, helmed by Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt and his wife Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt.
Despite leaving the show, Savetsky has no plans to be silent about antisemitism. Savetsky has gained more than 20,000 followers since the “Real Housewives” cast announcement, and the subsequent antisemitism she faced — as well as the rise in antisemitic incidents, in general — have only inspired her to be more outspoken about her Judaism and Zionism, she said.
“Everything has changed in the past few months — for me, personally, and I believe for the Jewish people and the world,” Savetsky said. “The world is waking up to the reality that antisemitism isn’t just this looming threat, but it’s real and it’s here and I think people are opening their eyes to that.”
She added: “I’ve never felt like my purpose was so clear as I do in this moment to be loud and proud and to stand up for my people.”
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The post No longer a ‘Real Housewife,’ Orthodox influencer Lizzy Savetsky turns to fighting antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Report: Concerned with Iran’s Rearmament, Netanyahu to Propose to Trump Joint US-Israeli Military Action
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Aug. 10, 2025. Photo: ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lay out the case for a renewed attack against the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program to US President Donald Trump when the two leaders will meet at Mar a Lago in the last days of December, NBC News reported on Saturday.
While the damage visited on Iran’s ballistic missile program and uranium enrichment program during the 12-day war in June this year is understood to be substantial, Jerusalem is nevertheless concerned that Tehran restarted both, the report said, citing an official with direct knowledge of the matter and four former US officials briefed on the plans.
When the leaders meet at the president’s Florida estate, Netanyahu will make the case that Iran’s rebuilding efforts represent a threat necessitating swift and decisive action.
A White House spokesperson said that “The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government’s assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities. As President Trump has said, if Iran pursued a nuclear weapon, that site would be attacked and would be wiped out before they even got close.”
The visit to Mar a Lago on December 29, confirmed by Netanyahu’s office earlier this week, will mark the premier’s fifth trip to the US since Trump returned to office; it will be his first since the US-brokered ceasefire and hostage release deal in October that has halted the Gaza war after two years.
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Australia PM Says Jewish Community ‘Completely Unbreakable’ After Bondi Attack
Members of Bondi Surf Life Saving Club and North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club walk towards Bondi Beach during an event to stand shoulder to shoulder as they observe three minutes of silence to honour victims, responders, and lifesavers following the mass shooting that targeted a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on December 14, in Sydney, Australia, December 20, 2025. REUTERS/Audrey Richardson
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday that the country’s Jewish community was “completely unbreakable” after attending a memorial at a Sydney synagogue for the victims of a mass shooting attack on a seaside Hanukkah celebration.
The mass shooting at Bondi Beach on Sunday, Australia’s worst in nearly 30 years, is being investigated as an act of terrorism targeting Jews. Authorities have ramped up patrols and policing across the country to prevent further antisemitic violence.
Albanese said the event he attended at the Great Synagogue in Sydney on Friday night showed “the spirit of our Jewish Australian community is completely unbreakable.”
“It was a night of unity, resilience, comfort, faith and love,” Albanese said in remarks televised from the capital Canberra, ahead of a national day of reflection on Sunday to honor the 15 people killed and dozens wounded in the attack allegedly carried out by a father and son.
LIFESAVERS RETURN TO BONDI BEACH
Albanese, under pressure from critics who say his center-left government has not done enough to curb a surge in antisemitism since Israel launched its war in Gaza, has vowed to strengthen hate laws in the wake of the massacre.
The government of New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, has also pledged a raft of reforms, including a tightening of hate and gun control laws.
It promised on Saturday to introduce a bill on Monday to ban the display of symbols and flags of “terrorist organizations,” including those of al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic State.
“The displaying of these symbols can only be done by someone who’s either deranged or has an intention to insult and intimidate and scare,” state Attorney General Michael Daley told a press conference in Sydney, where 15 of those injured in the attack remained hospitalized.
Around 1,000 surf lifesavers returned to duty at Bondi Beach on Saturday, restarting regular patrols after a halt sparked by the shooting on the first evening of the Jewish festival of lights. After the attack, authorities closed roads across the famed beachside suburb for several days.
The Bondi Beach volunteer and professional surf lifesavers, in their distinctive red and yellow uniforms, lined the sand on Saturday morning for two minutes of silence to honor the victims, Surf Life Saving Australia said.
Peter Agnew, the group’s president, said in televised remarks that the tribute was “out of respect to the Jewish community and also to support each other this morning.”
Australia’s Jewish community on Friday gathered at Bondi Beach for prayers, while hundreds of swimmers and surfers formed a huge circle in the waters off the beach to honor victims.
Alleged gunman Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead by police at the scene. His 24-year-old son Naveed Akram, who was also shot by police and emerged from a coma on Tuesday afternoon, has been charged with 59 offenses, including murder and terrorism, according to police. He remained in custody on Saturday in hospital, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said in a statement.
Authorities believe the pair was inspired by militant Sunni Muslim group Islamic State, with flags of the group allegedly found in the car the two took to Bondi.
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We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
Hallmark holiday movies are famously formulaic. They all have guaranteed happy endings and almost universally involve a homecoming, a life-changing shift in work-life balance and a chaste kiss amid glowing lights. But that doesn’t mean they have to be bad.
Since 2019, Hallmark has occasionally applied this formula to Hanukkah. This is generous of them. It is also where the trouble begins.
Sorry to be a Grinch, but this year’s installment in the Hallmark Hanukkah canon was not only corny (that’s to be expected) but also honestly kind of offensive. In the plot, a rabbi’s son comes home for the holidays and falls for the pastor’s daughter; their families end up combining Hanukkah and Christmas services and traditions to “unite their communities through song,” since, as the logline says, “coming together is the best way for everyone to celebrate the holiday season.”
After watching the movie, two of us — Mira Fox and Benyamin Cohen — cringed in dismay. We thought we could easily write a better plot, one that didn’t seem knocked out by a monkey typing into ChatGPT but still stays true to the frothy hallmarks people love about, well, Hallmark, complete with soapy romance and happy ending, but without the Christian hegemony.
So here’s our attempt. Give us a call, Hallmark.
The name
Love at First Light
The plot
Esther Rayzel Stiefel (not all Jewish women have generic names like Rebecca Goldstein) is a high-powered Jewish consultant who flies home to her struggling childhood synagogue to “fix Hanukkah,” a simple marketing mission her boss thinks will somehow reverse decades of suburban synagogue decline through a few simple branding choices.
Naive and headstrong, Esther believes it’s a task she can confidently take care of in one night, with a PowerPoint. Instead, it drags on for all eight days — derailed by committee meetings, Talmudic disputes and the discovery that Hanukkah is, theologically, a minor holiday that has nothing to do with synagogue attendance. This insight comes thanks to Esther’s new study partner: the synagogue’s new, young rabbi, Shaya Carlebach, who is singlehandedly revitalizing the shul’s youth attendance through his impish grin and knowledge of the slang term “6-7.”
Romance, sufganiyot and and a humorous montage of the pair trying to make an “elevated” latke out of everything but a potato ensue.
The cast
Kristen Bell, Emmy-nominated for her role as a non-Jewish podcaster dating a hot rabbi in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, stars as Esther. Some call it stunt-casting, or worse, others progress: an attractive blond with a normal-sized nose can play a television Jewess.
A shaggy-haired Timothée Chalamet repurposes his Wonka topper as a black hat to play Shaya Carlebach, a Rashi-quoting neo-Hasid who has a penchant for Yiddish EDM and moonlights as a DJ. The supporting cast — including Benny Blanco playing himself as a music industry friend — all correctly pronounce the end of his last name as “CH” and not “CK.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, who has real-life experience restoring a shul, plays Shaya’s widowed mom who falls in love with the equally widowed dad of Esther, portrayed by Kelsey Grammar. The star of Frasier — whose sixth season featured the holiday episode “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moskowitz” — already has daddy-daughter chemistry with Bell from their little-seen 2018 film Like Father.
Seth Rogen, his beard dyed white in a nod to Santa Claus, plays Esther’s boss, Nick Frost. Barbra Streisand makes a cameo.
Behind the scenes
Hallmark passes because the jokes have too much Yiddish and the executives didn’t get any of them. Also, Streisand requests fresh rugelach on set, a bark mitzvah for her cloned dog, and $18 million.
Warner Bros. pounces, but the script spends months in development, caught up in the midst of a corporate takeover. David Ellison, the new head of Paramount who is constantly trying to prove his Jewish bona fides, promises he’ll cast an Israeli, but only if he can fund the film using sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia.
Netflix produces the movie instead, repurposing the menorahs from the Nobody Wants This set, and says it will give the film a short theatrical release to qualify for an Oscar. Diane Warren scores the soundtrack and includes a song called “Let the Light Find You.”
The opening scene
Esther, wearing a power suit that signals both competence and unresolved resentment toward her mother, kisses a mezuzah as she strides through a glossy open-plan office in Manhattan murmuring into her phone buzzwords like “engagement,” “deliverables” and “community buy-in.”
A junior colleague asks the meaning of Hanukkah. Esther pauses, realizes she doesn’t really know, and says, “I’m too farklemt to do this right now.” Also, she’s late for lunch with her mom, who offers to raise a grandchild so Esther can focus on her career if she’ll just pop one out like, yesterday. (Nagging Jewish mothers might be an overdone trope, but this anecdote is straight out of real life.)
Cut to Esther’s boss assigning her the Hanukkah account — Esther’s childhood synagogue, now hemorrhaging members and relevance. “We need to make it festive,” he says. “Warm. Universal. Christmas-adjacent.”
Esther promises quick results. She books a flight home that night. Eight candles appear on the screen. Only one is lit.
The meet-cute
Esther arrives at the synagogue, a product of multiple mergers over the decades, and buys a hot drink from the lobby cafe, The Kiddush Cup. As she reaches to grab the non-dairy creamer, her hand brushes up against Shaya. They both realize they’re lactose-intolerant and have undiagnosed Chron’s. She introduces herself briskly, explaining she’s here to “optimize Hanukkah engagement.” Shaya smiles and asks if she wants to study.
They sit down for a chevruta — Shaya pulls an Artscroll Talmud off the shelf while Esther opens her laptop to Sefaria.org. They both try not to stare at each other. It’s antagonistic, flirtatious and immediately derailed by a congregant interrupting to ask the rabbi whether LED candles can be used in a menorah. In his attempt to summarize the arguments for and against the electric candles, Shaya digresses into recounting Talmudic gossip, like that time one student lay under his rabbi’s bed while he had sex with his wife because “this, too, is Torah.” Esther begins to realize there might be more to Judaism than Hanukkah-print pajamas.
The plot twist
By night four, Esther’s PowerPoint has grown to 97 slides (98 if you’re counting the one showing all the Jewish a capella groups parodying KPop Demon Hunters into Hanukkah medleys.) She has zero buy-in. Every attempt to “rebrand” Hanukkah collapses: Is it about miracles? Assimilation? Resistance? Latkes? Mensch on a Bench?
Esther is beginning to worry that all her ideas about revitalizing Hanukkah are more about trying to imitate Christmas. Hanukkah stockings aren’t going to convince anyone to come to shul.
That’s when Shaya casually mentions Purim. Esther can’t believe she didn’t think of this herself. After all, she is named after the holiday’s heroine. Perhaps it is a nod to the megillah, in which God’s divine hand is hidden.
In their study sessions, Esther and Shaya begin to speak faster and faster, cooperatively overlapping, discussing how the best way to bring people into synagogue isn’t trying to make Judaism closer to Christianity, but instead leaning into real Jewish practices. Hanukkah bushes might be pretty lame but Purim spiels can be outlandish, whip-smart and fun.
“Wow,” Esther exclaims, “It’s pretty ironic how everyone wants to make Hanukkah about Christmas when the whole holiday is about religious zealots resisting assimilation!” They laugh heartily.
The ending
On the eighth night of Hanukkah, Esther finally gives up.
At the synagogue candle lighting, she scraps her prepared remarks — a TED-adjacent d’var Torah about resilience, relevance and light as metaphor — and instead tells the truth. Hanukkah, she says, doesn’t need to be fixed. It resists optimization. It has survived this long without a content strategy.
Still, Esther has to do something to prove to her boss that she succeeded and get a long-awaited promotion, so she and Shaya decide to host a sufganiyot-eating contest in concert with a local bakery; they have their first kiss covered in strawberry jam. But the real moral — and romance — comes in the beit midrash, with Esther’s realization of the real solution to the synagogue’s woes.
What this synagogue needs is a blowout Purim party: Costumes, chaos, congregational email threads. Shaya offers to DJ. Someone starts arguing about hamentaschen fillings. Good thing they have more than eight nights to plan this time. (Coming this spring, A Very Purim Proposal.)
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