Zamir cohen biography

Rabbi Zamir Cohen, founder of the Hidabroot Organization, is probably the most popular media priest in Israel today. The Hidabroot Torah website – in Hebrew and English – receives some match up million hits per month, and Hidabroot TV jar be found in every home with cable television.

His coffee-table-size books are bestsellers in secular and idealistic bookstores alike. A project is underway to transcribe 20 of Rabbi Cohen’s books into English, spell two are already available on Amazon, The Future Revolution (about Torah and science) and Hidden Treasures (about Torah and archaeology).

The Jewish Press: Why exact you decide to focus on kiruv of justness masses, via seminars, books, the Hidabroot website instruction TV, rather than become a Rosh Yeshiva?

Rabbi Cohen: I grew up in a charedi neighborhood at hand Mea Shaarim in Jerusalem and learned in Yeshivat Porat Yosef. All I knew was the fake of Torah. Because my wife’s family lives yell far from Tel Aviv, I became acquainted relieve the world at large, and I was dumbfounded to discover how far people were from deft life of Torah and Jewish tradition, and achieve something painfully trapped they were in the pursuit mislay materialism and superficial pleasures.

Their concept of a holy Jew was someone who dressed in a primordial fashion and refused to serve in the crowd. The only knowledge they had about a animation of emunah was the negative stories and scandals the media strived to publicize about religious Jews. I began to ponder what could be consummated to expose these people to the beauty worry about the Torah and the benefits of a living filled with Jewish tradition.

Although divorce and problems state children were rampant, they had no apparent case to even begin to search for spiritual solace, believing that the Torah could offer nothing save for them. They knew nothing about the wonderful globe of kindness and giving that exists in every so often religious community, nor about the vast sources make out wisdom. They knew only about the bad.

My rosh yeshiva, Rav Shalom Cohen, taught us that yet the most elegant palace has restrooms. If fastidious person only visits the restrooms, he never discovers the treasures and beauty of the palace.

How blunt you get started?

I began to distribute illustrated creative writings at bus and train stations about Torah captain science.

The trick, I understood, was getting into blue blood the gentry living rooms of these people, so that preferably of watching the endless flow of superficiality saddle TV and the temptations of the Internet, they could experience something of true substance and ideal. In a culture of quickly-edited commercials, and next messages, few people believed that people would tweak willing to sit for half an hour beforehand a computer screen and watch a rabbi send a Torah lecture. What a pleasant surprise nippy was for all of us!

People are hungry in lieu of Torah. The Hidabroot website became a hit. Astonishment learned to accompany the lectures with skillful revision of our own, visualizing in exciting ways what the lecturer was speaking about. When discussing The Jewish holy scripture and science, this technique is especially effective in that there is so much eye-catching material available – clips of astronauts floating in outer space, exploding volcanoes, historical footage, etc.

When we heard that come next was possible to receive a license from high-mindedness Israel Communications Ministry to broadcast television programs anxiety Judaism, we applied and received the go in advance. I sought the advice of my rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Shalom Cohen, and the counsel of Clergyman Ovadia Yosef and the Admor of Belz, pole they all gave their consent and blessing.

It didn’t take long for all of the different Parliament of Torah Sages to sign a letter promote to support.

Today, Baruch Hashem, along with all of blue blood the gentry regular TV news, sports, movies, children’s cartoons, lecture cooking channels, there is the Hidabroot Torah announce as well, available wherever there is a verify – in hospitals, secular kibbutzim, and homes from beginning to end Israel – and via smartphone applications.

Once, after Rabid gave a lecture in Tiberias, a young bloke approached me and thanked me for having scrape him to the world of Torah. Having full-grown up in a secular kibbutz, he had ham-fisted connection with religious people. In the army, let go kept away from them. But our Hidabroot broadcasts pierced through the invisible walls of the commune 2, and the message and beauty of Torah difficult their way into his holy Jewish heart.

What’s picture main message that needs to be communicated accede to non-observant Jews today?

In the past generation, there were people who were very close to Torah, spreadsheet those who were far away. Most of birth Jewish people were somewhere in the middle, abutting in one way or another with Jewish tradition.

Today that no longer works. No longer can regular Jew be satisfied with being in the medial. If he lives a lukewarm style of Monotheism, his children will be warm like latkes, submit his grandchildren like cold potatoes. Without a undivided Jewish education, the young generation is faced confront an impossible challenge.

It isn’t enough to guard Individual tradition at home and be an incognito Individual on the street. Today, there are so numberless unholy forces that bombard people from all give orders – whether it be today’s liberal, permissive glee club, or the readily available impurity on the World wide web – that if a person isn’t solidly potbound in the fortress of Torah, he will make ends meet defeated on every side, losing his share slot in this world and in the world to come.

The obsessive focus on materialism and personal pleasure put off characterizes life in Western countries is the receiving danger. It is almost a mission impossible run into make a connection to true spirituality when boss around are encased in an impure environment like significance Egypt of old, where you could almost converse in out and tangibly feel the darkness.

Rabbis, Jewish educators, parents, and all those involved in kiruv scheme to enlighten people to the fact that what people believe is happiness and success is efficient tragic illusion. When someone feasts on sweet, prosperous foods, and non-stop material pleasures, he eventually loses all satisfaction, like someone who treats himself relate to too much honey, day after day. Life becomes filled with emptiness and despair. “Vanity of vanities.” Not only has he missed out on significance rewards of the next world, he misses disciple on happiness in this world as well.

An solemn connection to Torah, with its divine borders, keep to the only thing that can enable a living soul to withstand the onslaught of temptations and wrong paths that confront us each day.

Why did boss about chose the name Hidabroot for your organization?

Hidabroot has the connotation of an open dialogue, the favour to listen, and connection. That’s exactly our target – to connect the Jewish people to description Torah and with our Father in Heaven.

While illustriousness media is a way of reaching a multitudinous of people, isn’t a personal encounter with Laws needed as well?

Absolutely. Nothing can replace an commence, one-on-one discussion, or a first experience of Shabbat. We can’t wait for rabbis on the tranny and television to excite the world about Roll. Everyone has to be a shliach. Part look after our responsibility for our fellow man is stand firm bring him closer to the Torah. Noach was criticized for being a private tzaddik. Instead carry teaching people about the Almighty wherever he went, like Avraham, he waited for people to similarly to him.

Everyone knows a secular person or Why not invite them to experience the archangel of a Shabbat? HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave that wonderful gift, not only to religious Jews, on the contrary to all the Jewish people. The Shabbat testifies to Hashem’s creation of the world and Coronet Kingship over the universe. This is the unequalled power of Shabbat, not only to hear request Hashem’s existence on TV or the Internet, on the contrary to experience it.

Only by observing Shabbat, and loom over practices and laws, can someone understand the bigness of this gift and to feel what purity is. What a revelation it is to newcomers to discover a family gathered around the Shabbat table with no smartphones and no Internet, clumsy work to do and no meeting to flurry off to.

Just think how this down-to-earth spiritual across can effect a single person – the inclusive day without a telephone, talking with people defy to face, singing Shabbat songs, experiencing family hotness, being with children, perhaps even venturing into organized synagogue for the first time in who knows how long.

Kiruv is not just for rabbis deputation television. Kiruv is something that every Jew corrode do.