A permanent tefillin station was installed on Tuesday at the entrance to the News 14 studios in a small ceremony attended by the channel’s management, anchors, reporters, producers, editors and staff. The initiative came from journalists and panelists Mendi Rizel and Shlomo Rizel, who donated the stand and three sets of tefillin, in Ashkenazi and Sephardi styles, in memory of their late father, Israel Rizel. They said the donation cost several thousand shekels.
Channel 14 CEO Ariel Adri and senior presenters Boaz Golan and Shimon Riklin attended the event, along with reporter Rabbi Menachem Michaelashvili, who works with the channel’s employees throughout the year. The first person to use the new station was military correspondent Hillel Biton-Rosen, who put on tefillin and blessed IDF soldiers and other security forces.
Before the ceremony, Mendi Rizel said on Boaz Golan’s program that the station was being dedicated “לעילוי נשמת אבינו, ישראל ריזל, זכרונו לברכה” and linked the project to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s 1967 call to encourage tefillin wearing in support of soldiers, citing the verse, “And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the name of the Lord is called upon you, and they shall be afraid of you.”
Golan said the channel already has a tefillin set in the synagogue, but the new sets will remain permanently in the lobby, visible and available to employees and visitors who wish to use them. Channel management said, “We are proud of tradition and Judaism and thank them for this initiative,” while the Rizel brothers thanked the management, participants and donors for helping “to bring merit to the many.”
