Pop Chassid Nehorai began blogging as Pop Chassid in 2010. The blog initially focused on movies and chassidus, examining pop culture through a Jewish lens, but gradually Nehorai began writing about more personal topics such as his struggles with addiction and mental health, his marriage, and his views on religion and politics. Nehorai later published a sequel post, "20 More Photos That Change The Holocaust Narrative", in 2016. Another post published in 2013, "I Didn't Love My Wife When We Got Married", wherein Nehorai discussed his relationship with his wife and his thoughts on love in general, went similarly viral. Tracy Moore, writing for
Jezebel, said of the piece: "It's worth a read for its unique perspective, but also for its universal truths: Your definition of love changes as your relationship grows; it becomes more about the effort you make and less about a feeling that has consumed you."
"I Have A Therapist" In 2013, Nehorai helped launch "I Have A Therapist", a campaign intended to promote mental health awareness and destigmatize therapy. The campaign took the form of a
Tumblr blog which published photos of people holding signs reading "I have a therapist", "Therapy is awesome", and similar messages, as well as accounts by visitors of their personal experiences with mental illness. Nehorai was inspired by conversations with Chasidic singer-songwriter Esther Freeman, as well as his own experience with
bipolar disorder, and financed the blog through Charidy, a web fundraising startup of which he was co-founder and chief marketing officer. More than 5,400 people visited the site between October 16 and November 4, 2013.
"Sleeping on Strangers on the Subway" photo and video That same year, Nehorai discovered a photo on
Reddit showing 65-year-old Jewish man Isaac Theil allowing a tired fellow passenger on the Brooklyn-bound
Q train to rest on his shoulder. Moved by the image, Nehorai shared the photo to the Charidy
Facebook page; the picture subsequently went viral, garnering over one million likes and nearly 200,000 shares on Facebook. Inspired by the photo's popularity, Charidy subsequently produced a video, created by Nehorai and filmmaker Saul Sudin, showing an actor resting his head on the shoulders of various subway passengers while a camera records their reactions. The goal, according to Nehorai, was "to show that it should be normal, and that there are a lot of people who would be willing to do this kind of nice thing."
New York Times Israel ad In October of 2015, Nehorai started a
GoFundMe campaign to buy a full-page advertisement in
The New York Times challenging what he saw as biased media coverage of Israel. The ad included the text, "The media hasn't told Israel's story...so now we have to" as well as a list of recent terror attacks in Israel that the paper had neglected to report on. Posted on October 8, the campaign received closed to a thousand donors and over 8,000 shares on social media, and raised $30,000 in 5 days. Beginning as a collaborative group blog for personal essays, poetry, and fiction writing, the website evolved into a creative collective hosting communal gatherings, arts workshops, weekend retreats, "creative
farbrengens", and other events.
HevriaCast From 2017 to 2019, Nehorai also hosted
HevriaCast, the site's official
podcast, wherein he interviewed artists, writers, and other creatives in the Jewish world. The podcast was recorded at
CLAL Studios in New York City, and the standard intro and outro music was "Voice Lessons" by
Darshan. The show's guests included Hasidic artist
Yitzchok Moully, comedian
Mendy Pellin, writer and activist
Shais Rishon, filmmakers
Amy Guterson and
Leah Gottfried, social media influencer
Adina Sash, and musicians
Dalia Shusterman,
Isaiah Rothstein,
Bram Presser,
Jon Madof,
Basya Schechter, and
Eprhyme.
Torah Trumps Hate Nehorai is the former executive director of Torah Trumps Hate, a
grassroots organization that mobilizes
Orthodox Jews for progressive causes and demonstrations. following the election of
Donald Trump in the
2016 United States presidential election; Nehorai joined later as a leader of the group. The group was further galvanized following the infamous 2017
Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia and the lackluster response from Orthodox leadership, making the transition to public activism. In September 2017, members of Torah Trumps Hate participated in the March for Racial Justice in
Brooklyn, one of several nationwide marches in response to the
shooting of Philando Castile. The organization has also assisted immigrants navigating immigration procedures at airports, cosponsored a February 2018 protest advocating for
Dreamers, and mobilized members for nationwide protests such as the Lights for Liberty March, held in
Philadelphia on July 12, 2019, the eve of proposed ICE raids that had been threatened by the Trump administration.
Other work Nehorai contributed to a 2017
Limmud conference in New York, hosting a workshop session on creativity and fear. In February 2019, Nehorai interacted on
Twitter with
New York State Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she had tweeted positively about a phone call with then-
Labour Party MP
Jeremy Corbyn, who had in the past been regularly accused of antisemitism and of mishandling allegations thereof within the party. Nehorai replied to the tweet, saying "I’m a huge huge fan of yours. I hope you’ll take a look at the amount of Jews trying to call attention to Corbyn’s long, documented history of anti-Semitism.The left’s blind spot in this regard can still be fixed. But we need leaders like yourself to listen." Ocasio-Cortez responded favorably, and the two later discussed Corbyn during a private phone call. The footage he posted was viewed over 3 million times and sparked public scrutiny of the arrest, leading to an official statement by the department and condemnation of the officers by Democratic politician
Julian Castro. ==Personal life==