After leaving Hollywood behind, Ari and Nes Blau want you to know exactly what you're not missing

Six years ago, Ari and Nes Blau were on a successful Hollywood trajectory – he as a late-night comedy writer and she as an up-and-coming actress. Today, raising a Torah family in Jerusalem, they have straight-talk answers to a questioning generation whose senses are flooded with messages from an industry with a subtle yet overarching agenda

There’s a lot to like about Ari and Nes Blau.

They both have a sort of quiet conviction and confidence that you don’t find too often these days, which is even more impressive considering they’re both quite comfortable with being in the public eye. There’s no bluster, no showmanship, just a real clarity about the lives they’ve chosen to lead.
As Mishpacha detailed in “Their Big Break” (Barbara Bensoussan, Issue 753), when they first met, the Blaus were a Hollywood couple. Nes was an actress, featured in TV shows and movies, and Ari was a writer/producer on CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden. But in 2017, they left their names in lights behind for the world of Torah.

They never looked back.

After they left Hollywood, the Blaus moved to Israel. Ari learned for two years at Machon Shlomo in Har Nof, after which he started learning in Rav Yosef Elefant’s shiur in the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He recently started teaching Gemara at Aish HaTorah in the Old City.

A couple of years later, the Blaus started sharing their story. People reached out with their own struggles, asking about meaningful connection to frumkeit in a world bombarded with media. One particular letter they received was from a young Bais Yaakov girl who had been going through a difficult time. She got her hands on a laptop and started obsessing over inappropriate movies and TV shows.

“I dream of working in Hollywood,” she had written. “My parents don’t know I’m living a double life.”

She’d grown depressed, and life was getting harder for her, to the point that she considered harming herself. And that was the very week that the article about the Blaus was published.  It shook her up, as she realized that two people who had everything she wanted just walked away from it — running toward the life she was born into.

If they can walk away from the life I’m dreaming about, she thought, it can’t be everything I’m dreaming it is.

For the Blaus, this letter struck a particular chord.

“We thought maybe the modern Orthodox, the secular, kiruv-type crowd would be interested in what we’re talking about. Then we realized there’s so much going on, even in the heart of the yeshivish world,” Ari says, explaining that even though the frum world has tried to shelter itself as much as possible, things aren’t what they used to be. “With technology and the easy access, things have changed. Seven, ten years ago, you had to work a lot harder to watch and see, but today, kids are getting their hands on the internet on phones. People see it. And it can’t not have an effect on you, whether it’s the acting, music, or even the celebrity sports world.”

Over the past few years, the Blaus have been speaking all over the world in yeshivos, seminaries, camps, and community events, to a wide range of people. Here are the top five questions their audiences ask.