Could there be a different way to do shidduchim?
The Shidduch Lounge started in the Five Towns with an idea.
Take some of the pressure out of the process.
Bring together singles with similar hashkafos in a relaxed environment, have shadchanim there to meet everyone and facilitate introductions, and let connections happen more naturally.
It was something new.
And the Five Towns was willing to try it.
With Da'as Torah and the support of the community, the idea took off.
What started here has now expanded to Lakewood, Toronto and Florida.
It's another side of the creativity that defines this community.
Not changing our values.
Finding new ways to help those values flourish.
See the Good: Five Towns & Far Rockaway
Can you find the good in herring?
At Thank You Live, the Thank You Hashem concert, two girls working merch and creating content for Thank You Women took on the See the Good challenge.
Shtreimels? "They are very stylish."
Rain in the sukkah? They ate there anyway.
Herring? Not a fan, but it keeps the boys fed when they come home from shul.
Then came a real one. In seventh grade, a classmate was stingy with the science notes she needed and even made her come to her house to get them. She was mad, until she found out the notes belonged to the girl's sister.
Sometimes the stingy one is just guarding someone else's notes.
Could there be a different way to do shidduchim?
The Shidduch Lounge started in the Five Towns with an idea.
Take some of the pressure out of the process.
Bring together singles with similar hashkafos in a relaxed environment, have shadchanim there to meet everyone and facilitate introductions, and let connections happen more naturally.
It was something new.
And the Five Towns was willing to try it.
With Da'as Torah and the support of the community, the idea took off.
What started here has now expanded to Lakewood, Toronto and Florida.
It's another side of the creativity that defines this community.
Not changing our values.
Finding new ways to help those values flourish.
See the Good: Five Towns & Far Rockaway
Are we supposed to enter shul feeling serious, or should serving Hashem make us happy?
That question stayed with Rabbi Heshy Blumstein.
He loved the yeshiva world in which he was raised, but he also felt that people needed warmth, love, and simcha to connect deeply to their davening.
That realization helped inspire Yismach Moshe, a shul built on Torah, tefillah, and joy.
Because when you show another Yid love, you remind them that they are a child of Hashem. That can bring them closer to Hashem and Torah.
What happens when a magician pulls out his Chanukah candles at a gig?
Shlomo Levinger performs for Jewish communities and pro athletes. Last year, on the first night of Chanukah, he asked who in the room was Jewish. An agent and a player came over, and they made the bracha and lit the menorah together on the kitchen counter. For some of them, it was their first time ever lighting Chanukah candles.
We caught him on Central Avenue for a round of Before or After, and he went three for three.
Could this be the happiest shul in the Five Towns?
Yismach Moshe was founded around ten years ago with Torah, tefillah, and simcha at its foundation.
Rabbi Heshy Blumstein wanted to create a place where people could walk into shul and smile. A community where serving Hashem with joy was not an extra feature, but part of the entire experience.
Even the windows tell that story, featuring figures like Rav Kook, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the Chazon Ish.
Different paths and traditions, brought together by one joyful vision of Yiddishkeit.
Can you find the good in a tone-deaf Chazzan?
Right before going on stage, the Thank You Hashem boys each pulled a scenario and had to see the good in it.
The tone-deaf Chazzan? "Just because he's tone-deaf doesn't mean he doesn't want to sing." He's singing from the bottom of his heart and letting his neshamah, his soul, come out.
Four weddings in one week? "Baruch Hashem, these people are getting married."
Then came traffic by school dismissal.
"There's nothing good about that."
Seeing the good is a skill you keep practicing, even when you're the Thank You Hashem boys.
What if a Torah shiur felt like a concert?
Niggun Chabura was built around an ancient idea: sometimes the shortest path to the soul is through a song.
Musicians take the stage. Torah, stories and ideas are woven through the music. And suddenly concepts that can be difficult to reach through a sefer or traditional shiur are being experienced in an entirely different way.
Because Torah isn't only meant to be understood.
It's meant to enter the heart.
It's another example of something you see again and again in the Five Towns and Far Rockaway.
Take something timeless.
Find a new way to share it.
And help another Yid connect.
See the Good: Five Towns & Far Rockaway
Magen David Adom brings the blood bank to the street.
Their mobile donation trucks travel around Israel making it easy for people to stop, donate, and help those in need across Eretz Yisrael.
You have probably never seen a parking sign like this.
At Khal Mevakshei Hashem, the reserved spot is not for the rabbi or president. It is reserved for a “big tzaddik.”
That message captures the entire shul.
When the room becomes noisy, Rav Yossi Zakutinsky does not simply shush everyone. He shares a Torah that reminds them who they are and draws them back into davening.
Growth here is not measured by how spiritual someone looks. It is measured by greater humility, deeper love for another Yid, and the courage to become who you are capable of becoming.
How did Pnimius HaTorah become such a major part of the Five Towns?
For decades, Rav Moshe Weinberger and Aish Kodesh have helped bring the inner world of Torah to the forefront of Jewish life.
At a time when these ideas could feel distant to the average person, Rav Weinberger made them accessible.
Chassidus. Pnimius. Music. Passion. A deeper connection to davening and to Hashem.
What some began calling "Neo-Chassidus" became a movement far beyond the walls of one shul.
But Aish Kodesh isn't just about ideas.
It's a chaburah. A community that sings together, grows together and shows up for one another.
In a community already filled with a fire for Yiddishkeit, Aish Kodesh took that fire and helped bring it to a new generation.
And from Woodmere, that fire spread around the world.
See the Good: Five Towns & Far Rockaway
The spiritual explosion of the Five Towns and Far Rockaway did not happen overnight.
Rav Shlomo Freifeld pioneered a warm, living Yiddishkeit filled with fire. Rav Moshe Weinberger brought the deepest teachings of Pnimiyus HaTorah to everyday Jews. Rav Yossi Zakutinsky helped carry that light into a new generation.
How did a studio in the Five Towns become one of the biggest exporters of Jewish content in the world?
Living L'chaim saw a simple problem.
There were endless hours of content being created for every imaginable audience, but not enough high-quality content made specifically for Orthodox Jews.
So they started creating it.
Money. Mental health. Emunah. Children's stories. Jewish journeys. Difficult conversations.
Different shows tackling different parts of Jewish life, all from a studio right here in the Five Towns.
And millions of views later, those conversations are reaching Yidden around the world.
It's part of a pattern we've seen throughout this community.
Deep Yiddishkeit doesn't have to be afraid of new mediums.
Sometimes the newest tools can be used to share the oldest ideas.
See the Good: Five Towns & Far Rockaway
In 1928, when Beth Shalom was founded, the Jewish community in the Five Towns looked very different.
Rabbi Freundlich shares how the shul grew alongside the neighborhood and why its doors remain open to so many kinds of Yidden. On any given Shabbos, you’ll find different generations and different minyanim under one roof.
Outside the shul, that same spirit runs through the Five Towns: Jewish communities living side by side, each with its own traditions, connected to one another and to our brothers and sisters in Israel.
See the good in the Five Towns.
In the middle of the Old City, Ezriel Gess is using art to make Hashem more visible in the world.
As both a sofer stam and an artist, he moves between precise lettering and expressive painting, bringing the same kedushah into both.
Before the shuls, yeshivas, and Jewish infrastructure, Far Rockaway was mostly dirt roads and summer homes.
Then families began moving out from Manhattan and Brooklyn, and leaders like Rabbi Dr. Gilbert Klaperman and Rav Binyamin Kamenetzky helped build the institutions a growing Jewish community needed.
But the story did not stop with infrastructure.
Rav Shlomo Freifeld brought a Torah on fire. Rav Moshe Weinberger spread Pnimiyus HaTorah. A new generation transformed that fire into music, media, farbrengens, and movements now reaching Jews around the world.
This is how the Five Towns and Far Rockaway became what they are today.
Three years later, the Nova festival grounds are no longer just a place people remember. They are a place people come to stand, read the stories, and understand what happened there.
It is heavy. It should be. But walking through it also makes one thing clear, we are still here.
Hundreds of Yidden came from the neighborhood and from all over. One fan's favorite Thank You Hashem song: "Back of the Wagon," a classic.
Want Thank You Live in your city? Let us know in the comments.
What is it about the Five Towns and Far Rockaway that produces so much Jewish creativity?
Music, media, events, causes, and a passionate Yiddishkeit that has spread far beyond the neighborhood.
In this See the Good series, we explore the legacy of Rav Shlomo Freifeld, visit Kehilas Aish Kodesh and Khal Mevakshei Hashem, and meet some of the creators who call this community home.
What gave this neighborhood its unique fire?
Welcome to the Five Towns and Far Rockaway.