“I have to use my platform for good.”
On October 7, 2023, Shai Albrecht woke up in Jerusalem to a sound she had never heard before.
Her son ran into the bedroom and yelled that the fire alarm was going off. She and her husband jumped out of bed, grabbed two of their three children, and fled into the stairwell with the other guests.
Then something worse than the siren hit her. Their middle daughter was missing.
“There were moments that we were in the stairwell holding our children and just freaking out about where our other child was.”
Minutes later, they learned that another family had pulled their daughter into a bomb shelter. She was safe. Many others were not. That morning, the foundations of Shai’s life shook. The sounds, the fear, the scramble to find her child, all collided with the reality of a mass terror attack.
Shai says that as a granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, all the old trauma rose to the surface. She realized that once again, Jews were being hunted, and once again the world was watching. This time it was happening in real time on social media.
And then the lies began anyway.
From fitness to fierce advocacy
Before all this, Shai was known online as a fitness trainer and wellness coach. She built a thriving personal training business from her basement into an online fitness app. She helped women feel stronger and healthier, often blending in Jewish values and mental health.
One viral video changed everything. In it, she was training in regular workout clothes while her Orthodox husband, wearing a kippah, appeared beside her. The clip took off. An Israeli man commented that it was “so strange to see a kippah Jew and an unaffiliated woman together.” Shai wrote back in shock. She was Orthodox too.
“My eyes were opened to this reality that if you do not look Orthodox, people assume you are not Orthodox.”
From there she started posting about Jewish law, Shabbat, and what it really means to live an observant life. She explained that Orthodoxy is not about looking the part. It is about an ideology that teaches people how to live a healthy and beautiful life.
“Judaism has almost nothing to do with what you look like. It is about how you live, your purpose, and the value of life.”
She took a simple mitzvah like Shabbat and connected it to mental health. Twenty five hours where work stops and your worth is not tied to your productivity.
“God is saying it is not your production that makes you who you are. You have worth without your production.”
“There are real people there”
When the war began, Shai was in Israel with her husband and children for the first time in thirteen years. She had been “physically giddy” to go back, to show the land to her kids, to see family, to walk Jerusalem again.
Instead of a gentle homecoming, she found herself sheltering from rockets, counting children in stairwells, and watching relatives in Israel spiral into fear.
“There are real people there. Real people like you and me and they have children. My cousin lives there with four children and she will not leave her apartment. She is so petrified she does not even want to go to the grocery store.”
Shai says you can taste the fear when you hear the sirens in Israel. It is not abstract. It is psychological. It is in the air and in the eyes of every mother.
The terror, she says, is not only physical. It is psychological for every Jewish Israeli and Jew around the world.
That fear reached her own home in America too. Her eight year old daughter asked, “How would they know I am Jewish?” Then she asked if she could change her last name so the terrorists would not find her.
“My heart broke. I told her, you cannot. Your last name is Feinstein and you will stand proud behind your last name.”
Using her platform “for good”
Before October 7, Shai’s social media page was about fitness and demystifying Jewish tradition. After October 7, it became a front line.
“I have to use my platform for good. I have to inform the people around me of what is really happening.”
She began addressing the Israel Hamas war and the deeper Jewish story beneath the headlines. She talked about how Judaism treasures life. She reminded followers that one of the first commandments is to be fruitful and multiply. Judaism is about living, not death.
“All humanity should condemn the genocide of any people and every people. We are living in the twenty first century. This should not be happening.”
She did not romanticize the backlash. Her inbox fills with hateful messages and accusations. She assumes many of the people attacking her have been indoctrinated since childhood.
“My heart really goes out to those people. If I had been raised that way, I would hope I could learn more and see a different side. Most people do not. So my heart bleeds for them when they say things that do not even make sense. There is no logic. It is ignorance.”
Instead of fighting every comment, she stays focused on educating those who are willing to listen, and on raising money to rebuild devastated Israeli communities. Very early in the war, she and her husband set up a GoFundMe, holding the funds carefully until they found the right way to use every penny.
“We decided the best place for the donations to go is the rebuilding of the communities that have been absolutely destroyed by Hamas.”
Why Shai is an Esther for our time
Shai did not ask for a global platform. She is a wife, a mother, a fitness coach, and a woman who loves Torah and mental health. Yet when the battle for Israel and for truth moved online, she put her career on hold and stepped in.
The Times of Israel recently called her “a proud Orthodox Jew, the self driven daughter of two Israelis, and the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor” who was ready for this moment. When the propaganda war exploded, she traded fitness content for fact based advocacy and nearly 400,000 people now follow her for unapologetic truth.
Shai roots her courage in our own tradition:
“If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?”
She also quotes Pirkei Avot.
“In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
In other words. When leaders are missing, step up. When the world embraces lies, be the person who stands for truth and morality even when it is uncomfortable.
That is Esther’s story. And it is Shai’s story too.
“And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Esther 4:14, NIV
Her “royal position” is a phone screen, a podcast mic, a GoFundMe page, a little girl asking if her Jewish last name is safe. She cannot control what others do. But she can control what she says. And she has chosen courage.
Your step of faith
You may not have 400,000 followers. You do have influence.
You can pray by name for women like Shai who stand in public for Israel and the Jewish people.
You can share one of her videos with a simple note. “Here is why I stand with Israel.”
You can give to Christian Women For Israel, defending truth, Israel, Judeo Christian values, and Jewish life.
Every prayer. Every gift. Every voice matters.
Today’s Prayer
Lord, thank You for the courage of Shai Albrecht. Protect her family. Steady her heart. Use her words to push back darkness and to strengthen Your people. Make us faithful modern day Esthers in our own circles, willing to speak truth with love when silence would be easier. Amen.
