Meaningful People

Nachi Gordon sits down with Julia Blum, a singer, songwriter and Yale graduate who grew up performing in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, in a home where God simply wasn't part of the conversation. After a college interview left her unable to answer one question, "who are you?", a trip after graduation brought her to the Kotel and to a Shabbos table in the Old City, where one dropped platter changed...

Nachi Gordon sits down with Dr. Moshe Glick, a dentist, Hatzalah volunteer and longtime pro-Israel activist from West Orange, New Jersey. On November 13, 2024, an anti-Israel mob marched on an event at Congregation Ohr Torah, and after yelling for police who never came, Moshe stepped in with the small flashlight in his hand to stop a man choking his 64-year-old friend David on the shul lawn. Weeks...

In this special episode, Nachi Gordon sits down with Bruce Blakeman, Nassau County Executive and Republican candidate for Governor of New York, and Congressman Mike Lawler, who is running for reelection in one of the most closely watched House races in the country. Bruce shares the promise he made to his grandfather at nine years old, why he's running for governor, how he handled the protesters wh...

Nessia was a Mexican music artist who walked away from a promising music career to pursue a deeper connection to Judaism and Torah. Feeling a strong spiritual pull toward Israel, she moved there on October 6, 2023, just one day before the October 7 attacks. Through studying Torah, she completed her conversion and embraced a new life focused on modesty, humility, and serving Hashem. She also shares...

Nachi Gordon sits down with Ben Brafman, one of the most well known criminal defense attorneys in the country and a proud frum Jew. Ben opens up about sitting with clients at the worst moments of their lives, why he says he's "not the morality police," the Otisville visiting day he can never forget, and the hardest conversation of his career, with Super Bowl champion Plaxico Burress.   They also g...

On September 30, Flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv was hijacked mid-air. A terrorist stabbed the pilot, the plane dropped 15,000 feet in under a minute, and for a few seconds nobody was flying it. Nachi Gordon sits down with Daniel Schlichter, who was sitting in the second row with his wife, two meters from the cockpit, and watched three Israeli passengers take the terrorist down while...

This is not a typical episode. Nachi Gordon sits down in Yerushalayim with Arnold Roth, whose 15 year old daughter Malki was murdered in the Sbarro pizzeria bombing on August 9, 2001. Arnold shares who Malki was, the last "I love you" she exchanged with her mother, and the twelve hours the family spent searching for her before the 2 a.m. phone call from her brothers.   But the story doesn't end th...

The shidduch system says stay in your lane: same hashkafa, same schools, and wait for the shadchan to call. Rivkah Fox thinks that's exactly what's keeping so many people single. With Blind Fate, the matchmaking platform she started on Instagram, she's throwing out the boxes and labels with anonymous bios, blind video dates and caricature resumes, and setting up couples the system would never put...

In this special throwback episode,Nachi Gordon sits down with Rivka Shotkin, a 16 year old from Passaic and the youngest guest in Meaningful People history. On January 31, 2021, a family ski trip in Tannersville ended when Rivka missed a turn on her last run of the day and went straight into a tree, breaking 11 bones, puncturing both lungs, and severing her spinal cord. She walks us through waking...

Nachi Gordon hosts a live panel on sexual abuse in the frum community, recorded at an event presented by Ray of Hope and Amudim right before Rosh Hashanah. He's joined by Amudim founder Zvi Gluck, Amudim's Director of Education Avi Landa, Amudim Clinical Director Dr. Miriam Lankry, and Ray of Hope founder Zelda Brody, who opens the evening by sharing her own story of abuse and the years of silent...

  This week, Nachi Gordon sits down with Charlie Harari for a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually means to love someone, honor your parents, and do teshuva. Charlie unpacks how modern therapy culture has replaced the role of a rebbe for a lot of people, and argues that real love isn't validation, it's pointing someone toward Hashem even when that's uncomfortable to hear. From there th...

As we mark 25 years since September 11, we're revisiting Ari Schonbrun's extraordinary story of survival. Ari worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower. A series of seemingly ordinary delays left him running late that morning, placing him on the 78th floor when the first plane struck. Thrown to the ground by the impact and surrounded by smoke, fire, an...

This week, Nachi Gordon sits down with Yudi and Chumi Herzberg to talk about the life, story, and legacy of their daughter Charlotte, who passed away in a car accident on June 2. Yudi and Chumi walk through what made Charlotte so uniquely herself, the note she left her mother the night before the accident, and how they found out and told the rest of their kids. They also talk candidly about the up...

This week, Nachi Gordon sits down with philanthropists Yossi Hoch and Simcha Shain to talk about the world of tzedakah, from the pressure donors carry to the changing psychology of giving. They open up about what has shifted since their parents' generation, how technology and platforms like Charidy have reshaped fundraising, and why some of the most established organizations now struggle to compet...

Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt grew up in Moscow as the son of the city's chief rabbi, trained in Bnei Brak and Ponovezh, and spent a decade as assistant rabbi at Manhattan's Park East Synagogue — until he was abruptly and very publicly fired. In this raw conversation with Nachi Gordon, he opens up for the first time about that moment: the New York Post headline, the car crash he got into reading abou...

Josh Livingstone is a husband coach who works almost exclusively with men, and in this episode he explains why so many well-intentioned husbands still leave their wives feeling unheard. He and Nachi unpack what he calls the real root of most marital friction: it's not a lack of communication, it's a failure to translate. Josh walks through the "headache test," the reason a wife asks her husband to...

Mendel Krashunsky is the founder of the Frum Health Club, a worldwide movement pushing Yidden to finally take their health seriously. He opens up about losing his father, an oligarch who lived a life of total luxury, to a preventable illness at just 38 years old, and how the grief sent Mendel into his own spiral of emotional eating that left him 70 pounds overweight and battling GERD before he'd e...

Claire Blumenthal Zeitler was adopted into an Orthodox Jewish family as a baby — until, a year after her wedding, her biological mother tracked her down and revealed something nobody could have prepared her for: her biological father is part of the deposed royal family of Bahrain. In this deep dive with Nachi Gordon, Claire walks through the whirlwind of discovering she's half-Arab, the isolation...

Moshe Tischler and Shloimy Zaltzman, two of the biggest names in Jewish wedding music, sit down with Nachi Gordon to trace how they broke into the industry, from meeting as yeshiva teenagers to Shlomi's near-miss record deal and the emotional moment years later when he watched another bandleader step into that same opportunity. They open up about what the job really costs, the travel away from the...

A Tisha B'Av documentary that will challenge the way you think about achdus. Watch Full Film

Five years ago, Maya Namdar's world changed forever when a drunk driver took the life of her daughter Liel, just moments after a Shabbaton reunion in Woodmere. In her second appearance on Meaningful People, Maya returns to share the story in a way she never has before: the knock at the door, the screams that woke her neighbors, and the haunting last text Liel sent seconds before impact reminding a...

Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff takes us on a journey through the entire Jewish timeline, from Adam and Chava in Gan Eden to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, the long exile, and the prophecies surrounding the coming of Moshiach. Together with Nachi Gordon, they explore why history unfolds the way it does, what Chazal and the Nevi'im teach about the end of days, the role of Eretz Yisrael, and whether...

In this powerful conversation, Nachi sits down with Zahava Farbman, a crisis, trauma, and bereavement expert, to talk about what families really need after tragedy. Zahava shares why grief is not something people simply "get over," how to speak to children after painful loss, what not to say to someone in pain, and why we never really know what is happening behind closed doors. She also opens up a...

Yossi Farro has turned a mitzvah into a global mission. In this episode of Meaningful People, he shares how a childhood spent putting tefillin on strangers in New York grew into a journey that has taken him around the world, connecting with celebrities, billionaires, entrepreneurs, influencers, and everyday Jews. From chance encounters with actors to live streams and meetings with some of the bigg...

On the ninth yahrzeit of Malki Klein, her father, Avrami Klein, joins Nachi Gordon to share the story of a daughter whose struggles were often invisible to the people around her. From learning challenges and school rejection to addiction and ultimately her tragic passing, this conversation explores the pain Malki carried, the misconceptions surrounding struggling teens, and the lessons her family...