Ben Brafman: When Making Money Costs You Your Family

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 a dentist on board treated the pilot. Daniel handed them the headphones they used to tie him up.

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.

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 together, like a yeshivish guy with smicha and a modern Orthodox Ramaz grad who are now married with kids. Hundreds of singles in eight countries have gotten married through her setups, and instead of pushback, rabbanim and even a Rebbe's gabbai are calling her for help. Nachi Gordon pushes her on all of it: whether crossing hashkafa lines puts someone's Yiddishkeit at risk, why she calls image the biggest problem in the shidduch world, how she gets paid without becoming a debt collector, and the week an entire family turned on her over one green check on the Loop app.

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 up in the ICU nine days later, three months of rehab during COVID without being able to see her family, and landing back in the hospital with septic shock just five days after finally coming home.

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 suffering that led her to build Ray of Hope. Using live audience polling throughout the night, the panel works through how well the community actually handles abuse, how young the conversation about bodies and boundaries with kids should start, and what to say and what never to say when someone discloses to you. From there the conversation moves into harder territory: which warning signs actually mean something, why going to a rav first is often not the full answer, when police need to be the first call, and how survivors navigate marriage, dating, and family relationships with relatives who still stay close to their abuser. Zvi, Avi, Miriam, and Zelda spend real time on why so many people still stay silent out of shame, push back hard on the idea that abusers often get more communal support than their victims, and close out the night on what they'd want every survivor in the room, and everyone listening at home, to walk away knowing.