Nachum Segal
Nachum Segal has been the host of JM in the AM since September of 1983. A graduate of Mesivta Ohr Torah of Riverdale and Yeshiva University’s Yeshiva College, Nachum began his radio career at the Yeshiva University campus radio station, WYUR, in 1981. At YU he picked up the initial skills and technical know-how necessary to host a radio show. During his senior year at Yeshiva, Nachum was approached by Norman Laster (Neshoma Show) through Mr. Larry Wachsman (then, Director of Student Activities at YU) and was offered the opportunity to produce and host the Hebrew and Jewish Program at Upsala College’s WFMU.
Nachum started at WFMU on Erev Rosh Hashana 1983 and immediately incorporated much of his college radio style into the morning program. Since then the show has grown to a point of overwhelming popularity around the world. Nachum’s smooth presentation of music, news, and community events accompanies tens of thousands of listeners through their morning routine. Nachum serves as Master of Ceremonies for major New York area concerts in some of the most prominent venues.
Nachum is the son of Esther and Rabbi Zev Segal. He lives with his wife Staci and their children. Binyamin, Chava, Yosef, Yehoshua and Yonina Segal all attend Manhattan Day School. The coming fundtraiser marks Nachum’s 20 on WFMU.
The New York Times Discovers Nachum Segal. Read Ari Goldman’s article from 9/24/2000
Click here to see a picture of Nachum on a go cart & the Homowack
Mark was born in good old New York City back in 1966. His first meeting with the JM extended family occurred before he was born as his parents lived in the same Washington Heights apartment as Rabbi & Shevy Yudin. His next encounter with the JM extended family was with Rabbi Zev Segal, Nachum’s father. As a close friend of Mark’s grandfather Rabbi Segal was called upon to name Mark at his bris- perhaps that is why his Hebrew name is Nachum.
Following a short stint in the Heights, Mark’s family moved to Far Rockaway where he attended South Shore Yeshiva for a short time. Six years later the Zomicks moved to their current home in Teaneck, New Jersey. Mark and his sisters joined the ranks at The Yeshiva of Hudson County where he graduated in the top 95% of his class. After attending, TA then MTA then TMSTA (they kept changing the name) Mark went on to Yeshiva College where he became involved in as many student activities as time allowed. It is there that he metRobert Katz who, as WYUR Program Director, turned him down for his first radio show. Finally, Howard T Konig saw his talent and the rest is radio history.
Mark first met Nachum when they were both attending Camp Morasha and he substituted for the first time in 1986. On his first broadcast he discovered that the speakers in the studio go off when the microphone is on- perhaps that was why he didn’t hear the record skip while he was on the phone.
Mark spent 13 years at MediaVest Worldwide, one of the country’s largest purchasers of television commercial time. He worked in many capacities and concluded his stint there in the Strategic Resources Group.
In 2002 he was named the Comptroller at Main Event Caterers in Englewood and in 2004 he became Vice President; Director of Operations at Ariel Tours.
In 2006 Mark became COO of A&M Media, a magazine publisher. A&M’s flagship publication, Tu Tarjeta Y Màs, is distributed with pre-paid telephone cards.
Mark lives in Teaneck with his wife Rachelle (Weinberg) and their children- Shoshana, Leora and Adam. They attend the Young Israel of Teaneck where Mark is President.
Mattes has been associated with Jewish programming on WFMU longer than any current staff member, having volunteered for the first of many marathons of the fledgling “Hebrew & Jewish Program” in 1978. During that marathon, the announcement was made that Mattes had recently served as the ceremonial “Mayor for a Day” in Elizabeth, NJ while attending the Jewish Educational Center. That piece of information has been repeated by Nachum more often than any other biographical fact of any staff member (or other historical figure) in the past 16 years.
Shortly after Nachum took over at WFMU, Mattes officially joined the staff. He took his “solo flight” at filling in for Nachum during one of the first marathons when Nachum decided to spend the morning sprawled out on the floor, having nearly fainted from a bout with the flu. This was not, however, Mattes’ first on air experience. He had been co-host of a WYUR radio show with Dave Kufeld and host of the Saturday night Jewish music show at WYUR during the 1978/79 season, while on his one year stint at Yeshiva University. Following his tenure at Rutgers/NJIT, Mattes alternately worked in the field of Jewish youth and computers. Currently, he is Education Director of the Fair Lawn Jewish Center Religious School.
Mattes, his wife Caryn, and their children Aryeh and Eli, live in Passaic.
Click here to see a picture of Mattes
When not rooting for the Mets, Jets and Nets (he likes alliteration…he would also like at least ONE championship some time soon!), Robert is a senior professional for a major Jewish non-profit prganization. His love of radio dates back to 1981, where he and Nachum Segal first met as rookie DJ’s on YU’s radio station, WYUR. It was love at first sight (with a radio station, not Nachum). As Program Director in 1984, Robert WOULD HAVE LOVED TO OFFER MARK ZOMICK A SHOW, BUT COULDN’T FIND AN APPROPRIATE SLOT. In 1985 Robert ascended to the role of successor to Nachum as Station Manager of WYUR, and became the play-by-play voice of Yeshiva University Macabees Basketball for two years. (Hey- it’s not the Knicks, but it’ll do).
After graduating YU in 1985, Robert earned his MBA in Marketing while moonlighting at WNBC, WCBS and other local New York radio stations. He was also one of the voices on “Sports Phone”. In 1987, reality set in and he realized that an Orthodox Jew had no future in sports-casting, especially since he was always being asked to work on Shabbos. Unfortunately for him, the NFL and colleges didn’t play their football games on Tuesdays.
Robert now lives in Fair Lawn, NJ with his wife Susie (Rosenfeld). He has two awesome sons, Jason and Joey.
Robert spent the best times of his life at Camp Massad Bet in the beautiful Pocono Mountains’ sleepy town of Dingman’s Ferry, PA. A camp, he notes, that imbued him with his love of Israel and his strong Religious Zionist identification. Maybe that’s why he and Meir Weingarten get along so well. One day, if he grows up, Robert wants to be a baseball player.
Click here to see a picture of Robert
Click here to see a picture of Robert & Meir
Mayer Fertig was 19 when he was first heard on the air hosting JM in the AM in Nachum’s absence. Besides Nachum, he is the only member of the JM staff for whom radio has been a day job. He was the managing editor of WCBS Newsradio 880 from 2000 to 2004. In all, he was a broadcast journalist at WCBS and at ABC News Radio for 13 years.
Mayer began at WCBS as a per-diem desk assistant. Within a few years he was offered a staff position and promoted directly to afternoon producer. This feat, he was told, had not been seen at the station since the Nixon administration, which he missed covering as he did not yet know how to read. Afternoon drive went well and, after a year or two, he was promoted again to produce the morning news. This afforded the remarkable opportunity to begin work at 12:30 AM, which considerably shortened his commute. He also produced for a number of years the popular, but now defunct, “Ask the Governor” and “Ask the Mayor” monthly call-in programs.
He wrote television news for a time, just to prove that he could, then left the world of professional broadcasting and journalism for the world of business and spent several years as his own boss. In mid-2006, presented with a job offer that seemed too interesting to decline, he became the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Jewish Star (www.thejewishstar.com), a newspaper that covers Orthodox Jewish communities on Long Island and in Far Rockaway. Mayer and his staff strive to defy expectations and produce quality journalism with no strings attached, while also making the paper financially successful through the sale of advertising.
Working a second job as a radio newscaster during the early-90s, Mayer provided customized hourly reports to half-a-dozen small stations from a microphone in Newark, N.J. A favorite was a gospel station in Trenton, N.J. where, at the end of each newscast, the disk jockey would say, “G-d bless you, brother!” During that time Mayer also anchored newscasts twice each afternoon on the “The Nachum Segal Show” but was disappointed anew at the conclusion of each report when Nachum invariably failed to say, “G-d bless you, Brother!”
After attending MTA and Yeshiva Neveh Zion in Telshe-Stone, Israel (www.neveh.com) he earned a degree in Broadcast Journalism at Brooklyn College. Mayer and his future wife, Chani Bergman, met while attending the Core 3 course, ‘People, Power and Politics.’ Today, neither recalls any of the material taught in that course, nor much of anything from the Greek Classics course they subsequently attended together. They married in 1992. Both grew up in Flatbush. After making their home in Elizabeth, N.J., with their children, Leora, Dovid and Naftali, for five years, the family returned to Flatbush in order to shorten his commute without beginning work at 12:30 A.M. Instead, work sometimes ends at that time.
Beginning in 2003 Mayer was a founding coordinator of Hatzalah of Union County (www.hatzalahofunioncounty.org) with two friends who today maintain the organization.
Leora and Dovid debuted on JM in the AM in November 2004. Leora aspires to serve as a JM guest host herself, someday. For a time, Dovid appeared to find Hatzalah more interesting than JM because, perhaps, no emergency vehicles are involved in the production of the radio program. However, this passed.
Click here to see a picture of Mayer
The other JM “mayor”, Meir Weingarten is often confused with Mayer Fertig, a wonderful compliment. He usually assures the mistaken listener that in fact he IS Mayer Fertig confusing the issue all the more so.
Meir was born at a very young age in Boro Park – a different Boro Park, not the one that is currently in Brooklyn. He attended Yeshivat Etz Chaim – of blessed memory, the first Religious Zionist Day School in America. Meir spent the six and seventh grade living in Jerusalem and studying at the Chorev Elementary School (which does still exist).
Upon graduation from Etz Chaim he was admitted to Chaim Berlin High School where he graduated four years later – although they have since disavowed all knowledge of his files.
After a year and a half of advanced Talmudic study at Yeshiva Emek Halacha, Meir ran off to Israel once again – this time spending six years at the Jerusalem College of Technology – Machon Lev where for a small fee he acquired a Bachelor¹s degree in computer sciences – something that will come in very handy years later when he will have to type this silly bio into a word processor. (By way of explanation Machon Lev is a College level educational institution in Jerusalem combining half a day of Yeshiva studies and half a day of university level studies in the applied sciences.) After graduating Machon Lev, and having no where else to go, Meir stayed on and volunteered his services as the executive assistant to the president of the college – Dr Yitzchak Nebenzahl, who had spent the previous twenty years as State Comptroller of the State of Israel.
Upon his return to the States Meir joined the family business – Ariel Tours – a wholesale tour operator specializing in travel to Israel. To this very day this continues to be Meir¹s preverbal “day job”. As business was slow Meir had to keep himself occupied with other activities. In 1985 he founded the Yavneh Minyan of Flatbush. For 8 years Meir served as the shul President, Gabai and the guy who cuts the cake for kiddush.
In 1990 together with Yitzchak, Yossi and Boaz Goldshmid he (con)founded the singing group Kol Achai which he continues to produce and manage till today — and for as long as the three Israeli¹s who are much bigger than he is, have patience to put up with him.
In 1989 Meir met Nachum Segal and together they began a ground breaking friendship. In 1989 they took their first of many trips to Israel together, broadcasting live from Jerusalem on Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day. Since then Meir has co-hosted and co-produced the very popular annual special programs on Tu- B¹shvat, Yom Haaztmaut and Yom Yerushalayim. (Photo of Meir & Nachum during the Tu B’Shvat program) He has also been an invaluable force in the fund raising efforts of JM in the AM. In 1997 he joined Mattes, Mark, Robert and that other Meyer (who spells his name all wrong) as a substitute host.
Meir’s passions are anything to do with Israel especially politics, Jewish Music and collecting butterflies.
References available upon request
Click here to see a photo of Meir. Click here to see a photo of Meir at his party.