Simi Hershkof, founder of the entertainment and news page "Doss Celebs," described a childhood in a very closed haredi home and years of bullying in religious schools. Speaking on Channel 7, she said she grew up without smartphones, television or even radio, speaking Yiddish with her father and Hebrew with her mother, and studying in closed haredi institutions. She said school was especially hard because of dyslexia and serious learning difficulties, and that she relied on private tutors.
Hershkof said classmates bullied her physically and emotionally, including pulling her hair and locking her in a closet. "It made me lose trust in people," she said. As a young blogger attending events, she still struggled socially, so she created an anonymous page to cover entertainment and society stories from the religious and haredi worlds. "If they don't like Simi, I'll create a character for myself. No one would know who was behind it," she said.
What began as a small platform grew into a prominent content brand. One of the first posts she said she published was about singer Static putting on tefillin, and later she said other celebrities also shared faith-related content with her. She said she was driven by "kiruv levavot," explaining, "If someone who is not religious did something connected to religion, I would immediately post it and people were moved by it." Her wider breakthrough came after she was first exposed in the media and appeared in a documentary series, and the page has since grown to more than 100,000 followers and high monthly reach.
Hershkof said she sets clear boundaries and will not publish content that goes against the values she was raised with. She also said her work came with a personal cost, including initially carrying two phones, one kosher and one not, and a rupture with her father that lasted 10 years before improving. As the brand expanded into events, gatherings and activities for women, she said one event drew 500 girls and women, including residents of Mea Shearim and secular women. Her goal, she said, is to show the public the good side of haredi society, highlight acts of charity, and build a bridge between communities, calling it "the Chabad House of the secular."
