What originally started as a fun online activity during maternity leave for her fourth daughter is now a growing venture for Miriam Malnik-Ezagui.
From Maternity Leave to Millions of Followers
Now, a full-time family content creator, Malnik-Ezagui has amassed a total of over five million followers on several social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Her videos share an authentic look at her life as an Orthodox Jew and include everything from family activities, food and clothing to Jewish traditions and religious requirements.
“My content is made of up of what inspires me, whatever is on my heart,” she says. “I just fly by the seat of my pants. Most of my videos, I make and create the same day.”
A Powerful Voice at Yom HaShoah
Malnik-Ezagui will be a special guest speaker at Yom HaShoah, the annual Day of Remembrance to honor the memory of millions of Jewish Holocaust victims, at the Virginia Holocaust Museum on April 19 from 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
The program will feature the lighting of the Holocaust Memorial Candles by survivor families from the Richmond region, the awarding of the Carole Weinstein Prizes for Tolerance and Justice in the Visual Arts, and a keynote address by Malnik-Ezagui, followed by a question-and-answer period.
A Calling Before Content Creation
Before her rise on social media, Malnik-Ezagui worked as a labor and delivery nurse and a birthing instructor.
“I’m passionate about labor and delivery,” says Malnik-Ezagui who lives with her husband and five daughters in Brooklyn, New York. “I describe it as a life calling.”
The first videos she posted on social media in 2022 showed how she wrapped her daughter in woven wraps. “In the beginning, the content was more mother and baby,” she says. “I wasn’t talking about Judaism or the Holocaust.”
Finding Her Voice Through Advocacy
But, in 2022, comedian and actor Whoopi Goldberg, a host on the talk show The View, made a comment that the Holocaust was not about race and Malnik-Ezagui’s content changed to include more information about her life as an Orthodox Jew.
“That was incorrect,” Malnik-Ezagui says of Goldberg’s musing. “Nazis racially profiled people. Up to that point, I never said I was Jewish online. I was hesitant.”
Her content often includes stories about her grandparents’ harrowing Holocaust experiences. Her grandmother, Lilly Appelbaum Malnik, is a Belgian Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz for 14 months and met the German Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele three times. Her grandfather, Abraham Malnik, was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in several ghettos and concentration camps including Dachau and Theresienstadt.
She will be talking about her grandmother’s experiences among other topics when she appears at the Virginia Holocaust Museum.
What has always inspired Malnik-Ezagui is combating misunderstandings about Orthodox Jews.
“I talk to people about what it’s like,” she says. “I am always educating.”
