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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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Can Manischewitz make matzo ball soup hot again?
Last weekend, I was walking through Lower Manhattan, when I strolled past something confusing. Several women in matching baby blue leggings and puffer coats were dancing to pop music in a small park outside the Soho Apple store, surrounded by ice blocks with something — it was hard to tell what — frozen inside them. As I got closer, I realized that they were handing out some kind of greens-boosted energy drink. The set-up was a made-for-Instagram PR stunt.
The whole point of the event seemed to be to cultivate a cool Manhattanite sheen for the brand. People were taking cans of the beverage, because why not — it was free! No one, however, was hanging out and dancing with the paid promoters, who were dancing conspicuously alone. The drink, which was gross, piled up in nearby municipal trashcans. The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth, and not just from the fake sweetener in the beverage. Do these stunts sell energy drinks? Do they sell anything at all?
These questions were front of mind when I showed up at an art exhibit at a gallery on the Lower East Side. The art show was called SOUP, and it was hosted by Manischewitz to mark the launch of, yes, a line of jarred soups.
When I walked in, there was a solid crowd mingling in the gallery. Photos from Manischewitz’s newest ad campaign from Ohad Romano — a delightfully campy set of family photos featuring, of course, jars of soup — hung on one wall, opposite the soup-free work of two other Jewish artists, psychedelic scenes by Dan Weinstein and colorful objects from Rosemarie Gleiser.
Orange-aproned waiters passed around teacups full of soup and a bartender made gin and tonics featuring Cel-Ray and spritzes with Manischewitz wine. (The wine is owned by a different company than the food products, so was unrelated to the event.) There was a line in the back room to get Manischewitz-themed patches sewn onto Manischewitz-branded hats. A baby on a woman’s hip giggled. A man in a sharp suit, cravat and kippah laughed with a group of friends as they all sipped chicken soup with matzo ball floaters.
But what did any of it have to do with actually selling soup?
Talia Sabag, a marketing manager at Manischewitz, told me that the art show was part of the rebrand that the company has been rolling out over the past few years. Their boxes of matzo went from a bookish off-white to a bright orange, with scribbled illustrations of little figures carrying bowls of soup across the box that look like they should have walked out of the Jewish Almanac. The company told The New York Times, in 2024, that the rebranding effort was to refresh the brand, but also to target a new base of “culturally curious” consumers. In short, they wanted to sell kosher products to everyone, not just Jews.
Nearly everyone at the art show’s opening, however, seemed to be Jewish. More relevantly, the show was only planned to be up for six days.
While I sipped my teacup of soup, I asked Sabag what the show was meant to achieve for the brand. At first, she stuck to the message, arguing that the show was exactly what it said it was: an art show about soup.
“We want to celebrate the interwoven ways cuisine plays a role in communicating Jewish culture to ourselves and to the world,” she said with a bright smile, all symbolized by “the warmth of soup!”
Eventually, though, we got down to it: “A lot of studies do show that Gen Z does buy products based on that coolness factor,” Sabag told me. (She mentioned Nutter Butter as an example; the cookie started posting surreal, apocalyptic memes and saw their sales spike as a result.) In the words of the Gen Z buyers the brand is trying to attract, the art show is aura farming.
But is it possible to make Manischewitz cool? The brand is so iconic, so central to American Judaism, that it almost feels like asking whether it’s possible to make Judaism itself cool. Whether or not Judaism needs help in that arena is an open question, but plenty of people and brands have been trying to boost its coolness factor, whether it’s handbag designer Susan Alexandra’s glitzy launch party for her line of Judaica or the transgressive Bushwick burlesque show, Sinner’s Shabbat.
“We want to open up the conversation to the younger generations of course,” Sabag said. “But we’re not neglecting our core audience: our bubbes.” That means balancing nostalgia and hipness.
It’s almost impossible to purposefully construct coolness; by its nature, it resists trying. Usually, trying to be cool can only backfire, like the event with the energy drink dancers.
But I have to admit: The art show was kind of cool. It nailed its aesthetic, embracing the absurdity and surrealism of a moment in which a historic, grandmotherly brand like Manischewitz would be running an aura farming event, tonally a perfect fit for an irony-pilled era. Yet it also took itself seriously in the right ways; it was, ultimately, an actual art show with Jewish artists’ work in a neighborhood with deep Jewish roots, serving historic Jewish food. It felt genuine and rooted even as it was irreverent. Every detail was thoughtful. The drinks were actually good. The soup was exactly the same as ever.
The truth is, Manischewitz’s rebrand is cool because Manischewitz has always been cool. So has Judaism.
The post Can Manischewitz make matzo ball soup hot again? appeared first on The Forward.
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Thousands Protest Over Israeli President Herzog’s Visit to Australia in Wake of Bondi Massacre
Demonstrators gather at Town Hall Square to protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s state visit to Australia following a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, 2025, in Sydney, Australia, Feb. 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Thousands gathered across Australia on Monday to protest over the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is on a multi-city trip aimed at expressing solidarity with Australia‘s Jewish community following a deadly mass shooting last year.
Herzog is visiting Australia this week following an invitation from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 shooting at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15.
The visit has attracted the ire of some people in Australia, who accuse Herzog of being complicit in civilian deaths in Gaza. Anti-Israel groups have organized protests in cities and towns across the country on Monday evening.
In Sydney, thousands gathered in a square in the city’s central business district, listening to speeches and shouting pro-Palestinian slogans.
“The Bondi massacre was terrible but from our Australian leadership there’s been no acknowledgment of the Palestinian people and the Gazans,” said Jackson Elliott, a 30-year-old protestor from Sydney.
“Herzog has dodged all the questions about the occupation and says this visit is about Australia and Israeli relations but he is complicit.”
There was a heavy police presence with a helicopter circling overhead and officers patrolling on horseback.
Police used pepper spray and tear gas to push back groups of people who were trying to breach the line and march ahead. Several protesters were arrested as they clashed with police.
Authorities in Sydney declared Herzog’s visit a major event and were authorized to use rarely invoked powers during the visit, including the ability to separate and move crowds, restrict their entry to certain areas, direct people to leave, and search vehicles.
On Monday in a Sydney court, the Palestine Action Group – which organized the protest – failed to legally challenge the restrictions on the demonstration.
PRESIDENT COMMEMORATES LIVES LOST
Meanwhile, thousands of Jewish community members, government officials, and opposition party politicians welcomed Herzog at an event, more than a kilometer away from the protests, honoring the victims of the Bondi attack.
“We all remember the boycotts, the threats, the colleagues who turned their backs on their Jewish friends … that was the prelude to Bondi,” he told a large crowd at Sydney’s International Convention Centre, according to an ABC News report.
Herzog began his visit earlier on Monday at Bondi Beach, where he laid a wreath at a memorial for the victims of the attack. He also met survivors and the families of 15 people killed in the shooting.
“This was also an attack on all Australians. They attacked the values that our democracies treasure, the sanctity of human life, the freedom of religion, tolerance, dignity, and respect,” Herzog said in remarks at the site.
In a statement, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-Chief Executive Alex Ryvchin said Herzog’s visit “will lift the spirits of a pained community.”
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Saudi Arabia Wealth Fund Set to Announce Strategy Revamp, Sources Say
A billboard at the site of New Murabba shows The Mukaab, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Benmansour
Saudi Arabia‘s $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) plans to announce a new five-year strategy this week, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said, in the biggest reset yet of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic transformation plan.
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund soft-launched its new 2026-2030 strategy with key investors and strategic partners on Monday on the sidelines of a conference in Riyadh, the two people and another familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The new blueprint will emphasize sectors including industry, minerals, artificial intelligence, and tourism, while scaling back and in some cases reconfiguring expensive mega projects such as The Line, a futuristic mirrored city, the sources said.
All three sources declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
One said the new roadmap will place greater emphasis on attracting capital from major global asset managers, reflecting mounting fiscal pressures as oil prices remain well below levels needed to fund the kingdom’s ambitious transformation agenda.
The shift marks the most significant recalibration to date of bin Salman’s Vision 2030, which for nearly a decade has prominently featured mega futuristic developments. The kingdom is currently reviewing several of the mega projects.
Many of these, including The Line, which extends 170 km (106 miles) into the desert, and the planned Trojena winter sports hub, have faced delays and ballooning costs. The latest to be suspended was a cube-shaped skyscraper in Riyadh.
Last month, Saudi Economy Minister Faisal al-Ibrahim told Reuters: “We’re very transparent. We’re not going to shy away from saying we had to shift this project, delay it, re-scope it,” without mentioning specific projects.
Under the new strategy, NEOM will shift away from its earlier emphasis on tourism and futuristic urban design toward renewable energy and industrial development, including green hydrogen, solar and wind projects, and data centers that benefit from their proximity to the sea for cooling, the people said.
The Line was not on display in the venue at Monday’s opening day of the private sector forum, while NEOM’s video displays underscored the new direction, focusing on energy and industrial initiatives rather than the high‑profile real estate and tourism concepts once billed as being at its core.
PIF’s updated focus echoes details previously reported by Reuters, including a broader shift toward logistics, mining, and advanced manufacturing, as well as clean energy and religious tourism.