Jeff Seidel has spent more than four decades finding Jews wherever he can, at the Kotel, on college campuses, in airports, at football games, and even in nightclubs, trying to make sure one more person has a place for Shabbat and a stronger connection to Judaism. He sleeps about four hours a night, starts preparing for Friday night on Sunday morning, and still talks about missed opportunities as if they happened yesterday.

Michael sits down with Jeff to go beyond the stories people already know and ask what shaped him, what more than 40 years of outreach has cost him personally, why assimilation worries him more than antisemitism, and why he still feels he should be doing more. Jeff also talks about growing up in Skokie searching for Jewish pride, studying psychology, coming to Israel, building a network of families willing to host strangers for Shabbat, becoming a rabbi later in life, and the small moments he believes can change a person’s life years after you’ve forgotten they ever happened.

At the center of the conversation is one question Jeff keeps coming back to: if each of us has the ability to help someone else, why aren’t we doing more?

JEFF SEIDEL's Jewish Student Centers

Website: https://jeffseidel.com

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Yehuda Kastel spent years building the high-energy persona people know as DJ Hudacris. He started DJing as a teenager, got his first major break at Camp Simcha, went viral online, and eventually spent years performing alongside Nissim Black. But while his career was taking off, Yehuda was pushing himself to the point that his body started fighting back. After frightening physical symptoms and a Lyme disease diagnosis he later came to believe was a false positive, he began confronting severe anxiety and panic attacks. The turning point came when his rebbe told him he was spending too much time being “Yehuda Chris” and not enough time being Yehuda Kastel.Michael pushes Yehuda on what happens when the public version of you starts taking over the private one, why slowing down was so difficult, how therapy and learning to be alone changed him, and what Nissim Black taught him about humility and putting Hashem first. They also get into marriage, loneliness, self-awareness, the Baal Shem Tov, hidden tzaddikim, Geulah, and Yehuda’s belief that the better you understand yourself, the better every relationship in your life can become.

For years, people knew him as Fiveish the Clown. But behind the laughter was a story most people never knew.

Feivish Adams joins Michael to share the remarkable path that took him from competitive gymnastics in California to Jewish entertainment, becoming a baal teshuva, performing with Uncle Moishe, raising a family, and eventually returning to coaching.

He opens up about a painful experience in his college gymnastics career that stayed with him for decades, how it shaped the person and coach he became, and why, at 67, he’s once again teaching gymnastics to a new generation including Hasidic teenagers and adults who never had the opportunity to pursue it growing up.

Funny, vulnerable and deeply personal, this is the story behind Fiveish the Clown and the man many people never really knew.

GYMNASTICS LESSONS WITH FEIVISH

Phone: (845) 222-6304Email: flownastics@yahoo.com