The ‘Frum Rush Limbaugh’: Radio Show Focuses On Chareidi Community

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aaron-kleinTake top radio talkers Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. Mix in Israel news. Add a religious Jewish outlook. Stir Well. What you get is journalist Aaron Klein, who hosts a daily talk show geared specifically to the chareidi and Orthodox Jewish world and is available by telephone only.

Klein is the Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com, a top independent news website. He is author of multiple books on Israel and terrorism and is a regular fixture at Fox News Channel and top American radio shows.

Now Klein is hosting a daily show of his own through Kol Haolam, a phone network specifically catering to the frum community. What started off as a few hundred listeners per day has grown to thousands daily who call in to hear Klein’s analysis of the day’s news and events both in the U.S. and Israel.

Listeners can even leave messages for Klein to answer on the next day’s show. The Kol Haolam network also features other sections on news and daily sheurim by multiple rabbeyim.

Klein’s voice is familiar to listeners of such programs as “The Michael Savage Show,” “The Gordon Liddy Show,” “Mancow in the Morning” and “The Rusty Humphries Show.” He is also featured weekly on WABC radio host John Batchelor’s popular program. Those shows reach millions of listeners per week. Savage’s show alone has an estimated audience of 8 million.

Asked why he decided to focus on an obviously much smaller audience at Kol Haolam, Klein told Yated, “Because the frum Jewish world is my home. It’s where I come from.”

“I am honored to serve as a guest on secular shows and cable news networks. But with the Jewish audience, I feel like I am talking to my family. There’s a very intimate connection to the listeners, who I hear from every day. They leave me tons of invigorating questions to answer and to debate.”

Klein, based in Israel, focuses some of the daily show on Israel and the Middle East. Much of his nearly 30-minute daily stream also discusses U.S. issues, particularly Klein’s own investigations into the Obama administration and White House policies.

It was Klein, writing at WorldNetDaily, who first exposed that President Obama’s former environmental czar, Van Jones, was an avowed communist who signed a document blaming the Bush administration for the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Klein’s Kol Haolam audience was privy to the expose into Jones before most others in America. Week’s later, Klein’s pieces on Van Jones were picked up by Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck, leading to the resignation of Jones.

“We discuss the news before it’s news,” said Klein of his telephone show. “But we do it through the lens of religious Judaism and what is interesting to a frum Jewish audience.”

The show occasionally features guest’s from Klein’s extensive rolodex of Mideast leaders and even terrorists. Just last week, Klein debated a spokesperson to the Palestinian Authority regarding the PA’s denial of Jewish historical connections to Jerusalem. Week’s before, Klein debated Ahmed Yousef, the chief political adviser to Hamas. Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt has come on the program.

Although many of his listeners are charedi, Klein labels himself as modern Orthodox. He is a graduate of Yeshiva University in New York, where he got his start in journalism by serving as editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. He grew up attending a Chabad shul in Philadelphia led by Rabbi Abraham Shemtov and went to frum Hebrew day schools from kindergarden through high school.

Klein has penned several books, most recently, “The Late Great State of Israel: How enemies within and without threaten the Jewish state’s survival.” He is currently working on a new book about President Obama. In mid-2010, Klein is slated to debut his own national U.S. weekend radio show through Talk Radio Network, which also features Savage.

Klein’s frum telephone show can be heard by calling the Kol Haolam hotline at 718-305-5000. From the main menu, press 2, then 1, then 2.

{Elisha Ferber-Matzav.com Newscenter}


3 COMMENTS

  1. May he be matzliach. Yiden need parnosa and a talk show can be very profitable if run right.

    Just a word to the wise: A talk show host must be very careful to stay within the parameters of shmiras halashon. Not everything is suitable for ‘talk show’ material.

  2. Kudos to Klein for reporting on the Meah Shearim mom case in an honest fashion, featuring an interview with a parent of a child in the same hospital unit.

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