In January 2024, three months into the war, Daniella Hellerstein took that office in her Modi’in business center and turned it into Beineinu Podcast Studio. David told her she was crazy. Two years later, many hundreds of episodes have been recorded in that room, by soldiers, by bereaved families, by people who just needed to tell their story. In this episode: the hallway encounter between an outspoken guest and a host who can’t stand him. The sticker board in her studio that is now full, and why a full board brings such mixed emotions. Whether a podcast audience can ever really be a kehilla. And the hardest question of all: the same medium that let Israel finally speak for itself gave our worst critics their biggest platform. Is there anyone Daniella would refuse to let record? Where is the line, and who draws it? What started as a business became a mission.
Few voices have carried the weight of this moment like Rabbi Doron Perez. The President of the World Zionist Organization and Chair of World Mizrachi, Rav Perez is also the father of Captain Daniel Perez הי״ד, who fell defending Israel on October 7th and whose body was held in Gaza for 163 days before being brought home for burial. In this episode of Defining Moments, Rabbi Perez sits down with Rabbi David Fine for a conversation that begins, as it should, with Daniel. Who he was, what shaped him, and what the rest of us can learn from the way he lived and the choice he made on his final morning. From there, Rav Perez opens up about what it means to hold pain and privilege, חדווה and חרדה, in the same heart at the same time. Not as a contradiction to be resolved, but as the truest description of Jewish life in this hour. We also turn to the hard questions about Klal Yisrael, the Israel-Diaspora relationship, and the unity we have to fight for even when we disagree. A conversation about one son, one people, and one heart big enough for both joy and grief.
In normal times, Rabbi Moshe Bloom is the rabbi of Netzach Shlomo in Petach Tikvah, and head of the English department at Machon HaTorah VeHa’aretz — the institute dedicated to the agricultural laws of the land of Israel. But these are not normal times. Rav Bloom is also an IDF officer and a Rav Gdud — a battalion rabbi responsible for 450 soldiers. For over 500 days, he has been fighting alongside his battalion. The moment Operation Roaring Lion began, they were sent straight to the Lebanese border. I spoke with Rav Moshe from that border — about what it means to be a rabbi for 450 soldiers, what his responsibilities look like in the field, and how he tries to be there for his men, night and day, so they can be the best soldiers they can be.
Rabbi Larry Rothwach is one of the most respected pulpit rabbis in America. He’s been the rabbi of Congregation Beth Aaron in Teaneck for over twenty-two years. During that time, he watched twenty percent of his community make aliyah. They’d call him from Israel and tell him the same thing: we love it here, but we miss having a shul that’s really a community, a rabbi who knows our names, a kehilla that’s there for us in moments of joy and crisis. Now he’s making aliyah himself to build exactly that - a new community called Meromei Shemesh in Ramat Beit Shemesh. He’s also the Director of Professional Rabbinics at RIETS, which means he’s been training the next generation of American rabbis in pastoral care and community leadership - work that overlaps deeply with what we do at Barkai for Israeli rabbis. Today we talk about what American communities have that Israeli ones often lack, whether that model can actually take root in Israeli soil, and what it means to start over and build something from nothing at a stage in life when most people are slowing down. הפקה: DABRU לפרסום ושיתופי פעולה צרו קשר במייל- info@dabru.biz
Amit and Arik Baron are a “mixed” couple—one became religious, one didn’t. More common than you’d think. Ami Baram, founder of Hitkashrut Zugit—an organization that supports these couples—shared just before October 7th that about 20% of Israelis are moving closer to religious observance while 13% are moving further away. A full third of our people are in flux. In this clip from the upcoming Defining Moments podcast, Arik and Amit offer a surprising insight: their kids are the answer. Children from these marriages grow up bilingual—fluent in both religious and secular worlds. What if we learned from them? What if we trained ourselves to speak both languages? We’d all be better off. הפקה: DABRU לפרסום ושיתופי פעולה צרו קשר במייל- info@dabru.biz הפקה: DABRU