Ami Magazine

Rolling with the Punches

By: Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter

https://amimagazine.org/2025/05/13/rolling-with-the-punches/ 

As a six-year-old boy, Eli Portal was involved in an ATV accident that left him partially paralyzed. Today, Rabbi Portal is transforming his personal challenges into mentorship, support and education for members of the Jewish community who are facing adversity in their lives.

We’ve been communicating via email, and it’s really nice of you to come to my office so we can finally meet.
Well, my wife and kids are big fans of Ami Magazine.

How many kids do you have?
Three, bli ayin hara.

When someone tells me, “My wife and kids are big fans of Ami,” that usually means “but I’m not,” or at least “I’m reluctant to reveal that I am.”
It’s not that. I just don’t go through it from cover to cover on Shabbos. My wife prescreens it for me, and then she says, “Eli, you have to read this article.”

You’re certainly entitled to some rest on Shabbos, being busy all week teaching kids.
That’s only my day job. I happen to be a therapist as well. Everything I do is tied together, and it all goes back to my beginning.

What do you mean by your “beginning?” I assume you don’t mean the day you were born.
Right. Arba’im yom kodem…

Let’s start with your childhood.
I grew up in Woodmere as the fourth of five boys in a well-respected family.

What do your parents do?
My father is a real estate attorney. He’s a partner in Nixon Peabody. My mother has done a number of things, but she’s also a great mother, which is the hardest of all her jobs.

What’s your father’s yeshivah background?
He learned in Chofetz Chaim, but we aren’t a Chofetz Chaim family. My father is one of the most ehrliche people you’ll ever meet; he’s an honest straightshooter who values stability. He has lived in the same house and been a partner in the same firm for the past 30 years.

To which shul does he belong?
When he moved to the Five Towns from Queens there were only the Young Israel of Woodmere and Rabbi Spiegel’s shtiebel, which is where we davened. My father was its president for 30 years and he’s still the baal korei. He’s a real chasid of Rabbi Spiegel, even though he doesn’t have any chasidishe blood. His parents are actually from Morocco. My grandmother came from Casablanca, while my grandfather came from Marrakesh.

So you’re Sefardi?
Yes, but not so much in practice. My grandfather, Rav Avraham Portal, who was a mechaber sefarim, was brought to the Mir in Brooklyn by Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz in 1948, and he was later went back by him to Morocco to bring more talmidim to the Mir. He was only 16 when he came here and people said that he was “Ashkefied.” Because we davened in Rabbi Spiegel’s shtiebel, I grew up davening Nusach Sefard and not Eidot Hamizrach.

Is your mother Ashkenazi?
My mother comes from a Lubavitcher family. Her father survived the war and came to America. He was a big chasid of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. His name was Reb Leibel Zisman, and he wrote a book about his life.

But you didn’t grow up with the Nusach Ari of Lubavitch.
No. My mother’s mother wasn’t Lubavitch; she was a real Yankee. She preferred that her daughters go to other schools, but the Lubavitcher hartz continued through the generations and we grew up in a chasidishe shtiebel.