A letter to Mispacha Magazine in reference to their Lying 10 Page Yenuka Spread!

This is what a reader sent to mishpacha magazine:

Dear Editors,

I am an ordained rabbi. I do not have time to read magazines, but Mishpacha enters my home every week; my wife and children read it. I am writing about the "Communicated" feature on "the Yanuka," Rav Shlomo Yehuda Be'eri, in this week's issue.

I understand that a Communicated piece is paid content. But it runs under the Mishpacha masthead, in a magazine that families trust and children read. That trust obligates a factual floor even for paid features. This piece does not meet it, and in at least one respect it appears to be demonstrably false.

The name. The article has the subject stating that he was named Shlomo after his grandfather, and that his grandmother called him by it throughout his childhood.

 Documentary records say otherwise. His sixth-grade graduation board from the Bialik state elementary school in Holon, from the year 2000, lists him by name and photograph as Shai Tzubary; I attach it. 

His own mother and sister referred to him as "Shai" in public social media comments as recently as December 2019. A Channel 12 investigation published in 2025 likewise reported that he was born Shai Tzubary in Holon. If the central figure of the piece misstates his own name, the reader is entitled to ask what else in the piece is misstated

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The biography. 

The article describes a childhood in Holon, attending school there while his father lived alone near Barcelona. Yet for years, the official biography circulated by his own organization told a different story: the entire family emigrating to Spain when he was three, a childhood in the Jewish quarter of Girona, and a return to Israel at age twelve. Both versions come from the same camp. They cannot both be true, and the attached school record contradicts the earlier one. A biography that is revised as inconvenient facts surface is not a mesorah. It is marketing.

The mofsim. The piece presents overnight disappearing growths, foreknowledge of October 7, and an apparition healing a broken foot, all anonymous, undated, and unverifiable, printed in a family magazine whose readers include impressionable children and teenagers. Klal Yisroel has paid dearly, from Shabbetai Tzvi onward, for movements built on unverified wonders around a charismatic figure. The gedolim who demanded verification in those episodes were vindicated by history, and they were not popular when they demanded it.

I therefore respectfully request:

1. That Mishpacha review how this piece was accepted for publication and verify the name and biographical claims against the documentary record.

2. That, if the claims cannot be verified, Mishpacha publish a clarification in a coming issue.

3. That Communicated content be labeled in plain language as paid advertising not verified by the editorial staff, prominently enough that a young reader understands the difference.

4. That Mishpacha adopt a standard for miracle claims in paid content. A magazine that would not print an unverified allegation against a Jew should not print an unverified wonder on behalf of one.

I write this out of concern for emunas chachamim, not against it. When wonder stories collapse, and unverifiable ones eventually do, it is the emunah of the young readers who believed them that pays the price.

I would appreciate a substantive reply.

B'kavod,

Rav …

Watch how he owns penthouses in Yerushlayim, Bat Yam etc!