"Someone wrote to me: Thanks to you I started keeping Shabbat": Hadar Hertz on the power of the network

Hadar Hertz, 29, married to Asaf, did not plan to become a content creator. Her path on the network started almost by chance, out of personal study and a desire to pass on ideas that touched her.

"I started studying the inner dimensions of the Torah, and it brought me healing and great light and the ability to connect to the Holy One, Blessed be He, from a much more internal place," she says. "I just started filming myself and uploading ideas. I felt that I also had the ability to summarize and make these high things accessible in a way that would be very acceptable."

For her, the moment she realized that this content has an impact came after one video that received thousands of views and a large number of shares. "There I realized that there is something else here. There is something here that touches, and it touches not only the narrow audience, but also outside. Suddenly I realized that I have a direction."

From there she continued to live streams, questions and answers, and conversations with followers, and the community grew. During the month of Elul, for example, she held spontaneous live streams where she spoke about repentance, awakening, and ideas from the sources.

"I see the platform as a place of sanctification of the Name"

Over time, Hadar realized that she wanted to use the network in a very specific way. Instead of making her personal life the center of the content, she chose to focus the exposure on the messages she wants to convey.

"I see my platform as a place of sanctification of the Name," she says. "That's why I also try very hard not to upload things from my personal life. I want to go to a more internal meaning and an influence that will really benefit the world. The network is already there, so try to spread good and connect people to good."

One of the things important to her is the direct connection with the community that was created around her. Once she uploaded a small game around a deck of cards of personal messages, and was sure that a few dozen would contact her. In practice, more than 200 messages arrived.

"I answered one by one," she says. "It was important to me that the connection with the followers would be internal and not just external, and not just for the sake of the numbers."

According to her, it is precisely the personal messages that illustrate to her how much short content on the network can produce a real change in another person's life. "I can receive many messages a day about how things I uploaded changed a worldview," she says. "Someone can write to me: 'Thanks to you I started keeping Shabbat', or 'I started making blessings on water'. There are a lot of personal consultations in private."

Alongside the excitement, Hadar is careful to remind herself that she does not see things as a personal achievement. "I know that it is really nothing from me. The Name gave me the tools and the ability to convey it in a way that probably speaks to the heart. I really try every time that the things will come from the heart."

For her, the term "network influencer" takes on a different meaning from the one usually attributed to it. The influence is not measured only by the number of views or followers, but by the connections that are created and the ability to cause someone to stop, think, or strengthen themselves.

Despite her significant presence on the network, Hadar is also very aware of its limitations. "The real test is to meet physically with people, when you leave the network," she says. "The network is edited, it is filtered, it is not life itself. You don't show all the difficult moments, not because you are ashamed of them, but because in the end you come to show effective and nice things."

She says that sometimes she receives messages that move her to tears, but tries not to forget that the goal for her is broader: to awaken connection, internal responsibility, and faith.

"My message is that everything we see outside also exists within us," she says. "Man is a small world, and if a person makes a change, then the whole world changes."