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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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Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer
Public schools have been barred from sponsoring official prayer since the Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling in Engel v. Vitale, a landmark decision that cemented the principle of church-state separation in American law.
Now, lawmakers in several states are advancing measures that aim to bring prayer back into public schools — with potential to reverse decades of precedent as politicians push for Christian prayer to return as a commonplace part of the school day.
In Tennessee, a bill introduced last month would require public schools to set aside time for voluntary prayer and the reading of “the Bible or other religious text.” Students would opt in to the prayer period by getting their parents to sign a consent form, which also requires participating students to waive their right to sue.
Texas enacted a nearly identical law last year, empowering school boards to institute prayer and Bible-reading periods in schools across their districts by March 1 — a move more than 160 religious leaders urged school boards to reject in an open letter last month.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton encouraged students to use the time to recite the Lord’s Prayer “as taught by Jesus Christ.”
In Florida, a proposed amendment to the state constitution would allow students and teachers to lead prayer over a loudspeaker at school-sponsored events — even though the Supreme Court ruled student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games unconstitutional two decades ago.
Meanwhile, a federal bill introduced by Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) last month would withhold federal funding from public schools that “restrict voluntary school prayer,” and new guidance from the Department of Education released last week allows teachers to pray with students.
Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Supreme Court’s church-state separation precedents like Engel v. Vitale aren’t in immediate jeopardy — but they are steadily being undermined.
“Teachers have a little bit more right to pray in public schools than they did last time. And then it just kind of slowly builds,” Nartowicz said. “The very principles of religious freedom in public school are very clearly under attack.”
A Jewish plaintiff
In 1951, the Board of Regents of New York proposed that public schools start the day with what it called a “non-denominational” prayer. Students were able to opt out with a parent’s signature.
“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen,” the prayer read.
Five families sued, arguing that the school-organized prayer violated their constitutional rights. They came from a range of religious backgrounds, including Judaism, atheism, Unitarianism and humanism.
But the case quickly took on a Jewish character, as a Jewish parent named Steven Engel became the lead plaintiff, and a broad cross-section of Jewish organizations became involved with the case. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith and the Synagogue Council of America — which represented 70 Jewish organizations spanning Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — all filed briefs urging the court to strike down school-sponsored prayer.
According to Bruce Dierenfield, author of The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America, when the court released its decision the blowback was intense — and, at times, antisemitic.
The Supreme Court received the largest amount of hate mail in its history. Politicians called to amend the Constitution and impeach the justices, and 15 states refused to immediately discontinue prayer and Bible reading in their schools. An angry protester burned a cross in plaintiff Lawrence Roth’s family driveway.
“Some people say this case produced more of a backlash than almost any other case in American history,” Dierenfield said. “It seemed to be the death knell of ‘Christian America.’”
A changing landscape
In the decades after Engel, the Supreme Court repeatedly reinforced the ban on school-sponsored prayer, controversially ruling that even required moments of silence could be unconstitutional if intended to encourage prayer.
That line shifted in 2022. The court sided with Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Washington state who had been placed on leave for praying at midfield immediately after games, sometimes joined by players.
The school district’s actions “rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
The Kennedy ruling “was kind of a slap at the absolutism of Engel,” Dierenfield said. “It epitomizes somewhat of a new day.”
The decision also hinged in part on disputed interpretation of facts: The majority argued that Kennedy had engaged in “short, private, personal prayer,” while the dissent said he prayed with students in a setting where they could feel pressured to participate.
The case highlighted the often-blurry line between voluntary and coercive prayer, a tension made more complicated by peer pressure and the authority teachers and coaches hold over students.
According to Nartowicz, teachers and students are free to pray or read religious texts as long as they don’t disrupt or pressure others — but that boundary is crossed when teachers pray with students. Even though new policies make prayer and Bible-reading periods opt-in, he said, the practice can still feel coercive.
“If a teacher’s praying, because teachers have so much control over students, a student might say, Oh, I need to pray in order to make sure I’m in the good favor of so-and-so to get a good grade in their class,” he said.
Rabbi Michael Shulman of Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, Tennessee, who wrote an op-ed speaking out against his state’s school prayer bill, shares similar concerns.
He said children at his congregation are often the only Jewish students at their schools, and a school-sponsored period for prayer would only worsen their feelings of alienation.
“Anytime religion and government mix, there’s a danger of signaling that this is what the state is promoting — which beliefs are normal, which ones are not,” Shulman told the Forward. “So when public schools, that are state institutions, promote this, it really changes the meaning of what ‘voluntary’ is.”
‘Exactly the right time’
School prayer advocates are explicit about their goal: They want the Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, to take up their case.
It’s unclear if the court will choose to weigh in. In November, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a case where a lower court had upheld a ban on broadcasting a pregame prayer over the loudspeaker at a high school football game.
But proponents of school prayer aren’t giving up. The Tennessee bill states that “the idea of separation of church and state departs from the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the State of Tennessee” and lists 11 Supreme Court decisions, including Engel, as examples of rulings that it says conflict.
“I think this is exactly the right time to have this issue brought back into the public square, both because our Supreme Court has, I think, more properly aligned in most recent decisions and because I think we just need to have prayer back in our schools,” Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill’s sponsor, told The Tennessee Conservative.
Meanwhile, Paxton has pledged to defend in court any school district that implements a voluntary prayer period.
For those who remember how fiercely Engel divided the country, a new showdown at the Supreme Court feels almost inevitable.
“I sit on tenterhooks all the time about seeing that somebody’s going to bring a suit saying that they have the right to have organized prayer in public schools. I would not be the least bit surprised to see a case — see the Engel case come up again in the Supreme Court,” Jonathan Engel, Steven Engel’s son, said in a 2023 documentary. “So we may have to fight this battle again.”
The post Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer appeared first on The Forward.
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Gunmen Kill Three People and Abduct Catholic Priest in Northern Nigeria
A police vehicle of Operation Fushin Kada (Anger of Crocodile) is parked on Yakowa Road, as schools across northern Nigeria reopen nearly two months after closing due to security concerns, following the mass abductions of school children, in Kaduna, Nigeria, January 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Nuhu Gwamna/File Photo
Gunmen killed three people and abducted a Catholic priest and several others during an early morning attack on the clergyman’s residence in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state, church and police sources said on Sunday.
Saturday’s assault in Kauru district highlights persistent insecurity in the region, and came days after security services rescued all 166 worshippers abducted in attacks by gunmen on two churches elsewhere in Kaduna.
Such attacks have drawn the attention of US President Donald Trump, who has accused Nigeria’s government of failing to protect Christians, a charge Abuja denies. US forces struck what they described as terrorist targets in northwestern Nigeria on December 25.
The Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan named the kidnapped clergyman as Nathaniel Asuwaye, parish priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Karku, and said 10 other people were abducted.
Three residents were killed during the attack, which began at about 3:20 a.m. (0220 GMT), the diocese said in a statement.
A Kaduna police spokesperson confirmed the incident, but said five people had been abducted in total and that the three people killed were members of the security forces.
“Security agents exchanged gunfire with the bandits, killed some of them, and unfortunately two soldiers and a police officer lost their lives,” he said.
Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Sunday that Nigeria’s security crisis was “increasingly getting out of hand”. It accused the government of “gross incompetence” and failure to protect civilians as gunmen kill, abduct and terrorize rural communities across several northern states.
A presidency spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pope Leo, during his weekly address to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, expressed solidarity with the victims of recent attacks in Nigeria.
“I hope that the competent authorities will continue to act with determination to ensure the security and protection of every citizen’s life,” Leo said.
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Israeli FM Sa’ar Stresses Gaza Demilitarization, Criticizes Iranian Threats in Talks with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano. The meeting included a one-on-one session followed by an expanded meeting with both countries’ bilateral teams.
Sa’ar told the media, “We support the Trump plan for Gaza. Hamas must be disarmed, and Gaza must be demilitarized. This is at the heart of the plan, and we must not compromise on it. This is necessary for the security and stability of the region and also for a better future for the residents of Gaza themselves.”
He also commented on Iran, saying, “I praise President Peña’s decision in April of 2025 to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. The European Union and Ukraine have also recently done so, and I commend that. The Iranian regime is murdering its own people. It is endangering stability in the Middle East and exporting terrorism to other continents, including Latin America. The attempt by the world’s most extremist regime to obtain the most dangerous weapon in the world, nuclear weapons, is a clear danger to regional and world peace.”
Sa’ar added that Iran’s long-range missile program threatens not only Israel but other countries in the Middle East and Europe. “The Iranian regime has already used missiles against other countries in the Middle East. European countries are also threatened by the range of these missiles,” he said.
Lezcano praised his country’s decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem. “Paraguay’s sovereign decision to open its embassy in Jerusalem was made in faith and responsibly. It reflects the coherent foreign policy that we consistently and clearly hold with regard to Israel,” he said. He added that Paraguay “unequivocally and unquestionably supports the right of the State of Israel to exist and to defend itself,” a position reinforced after the October 7, 2023, attacks.