The Boy Who Couldn't Say His Own Name

I have a son who has a slight stutter. So when I sat down with Hillel, I was a mother looking for answers and understanding. .

Hillel grew up with a stutter and overcame it two and a half years ago. "Since then," he told me, "my life has completely changed."

Before the Words Got Stuck

Hillel grew up in a Sephardic synagogue that put children front and center leading prayers. He loved it — it was the highlight of his week. Then, around fourth or fifth grade, his voice began to fail him. He was already an easy target, not great at sports, and now visibly struggling to speak. "That definitely made it worse," he said.

He kept trying anyway. Even after his bar mitzvah, he'd volunteer to read Torah, to lead prayers at school. His rabbi never once told him no — a kindness, he says now, that also meant he kept failing in public.

I pushed back: isn't showing up its own kind of success? "It's not a failure," he agreed. "But how do you explain that to a ten-year-old?" You can't.

He remembers one attempt at reading Torah that took 20 minutes. He finished, walked off, and ran out of the synagogue in tears. He'd gone from speech therapist to speech therapist. Nothing worked. Hardest of all, he said, was watching his parents not know what to do — because nobody did.

So what should parents do? His answer stuck with me: never push, but never say no either. "They always said yes," he said of his family. "Looking back, they were bracing for the aftermath every time." They gave him the freedom to just be a normal, talkative kid. "I have the worst personality for a stutterer," he laughed. "I love to talk."

An Aharon of His Own

He told me it always helped to have someone speak for him when he needed it — his mother, his wife. "It feels good," he said, "to have an Aaron," referring to the brother of Moses. Moses had a speech impediment and Aaron served as his spokesman.

"His brother speaks for Moses at first,” Hillel said, “but over time, Moses starts speaking for himself. I think that's what happened to me too."

Trying to Speak, and Failing

Hillel drew a distinction between stage fright, which is the fear of speaking when you can, and trying to speak and simply not being able to — not just on stage, but ordering food, talking to a friend, saying his own name. Until he was 25, he could not say his own name out loud. "Hi, I'm…" and nothing.

He calls stuttering roughly a 5-to-95 split — a small physical root, an overwhelming mental one. "You've been stuttering for 20 years," he said. "So now you're terrified to speak. That's what you actually have to get over."

Larry Stein, a former stutterer himself who finally helped him and never charged a cent, taught him that confronting the fear mattered more than any technique.

Doors That Closed

After moving to Israel, Hillel dreamed of climbing the ranks in the Israeli army. He had the drive and the physical readiness. What closed the door was the same thing that always had: if you can't reliably speak, you can't reliably lead. Most of the men around him were fiercely supportive, except one high-ranking officer who mocked him in front of a room. His commanders had that officer discharged.

He chose battles he could win, working four years in data and computers. He remembers too many interviews that both sides knew were over the moment he stuttered through his own name. Still, he kept showing up, until Aish did the opposite of everyone else: they were patient, and they hired him. "There are good people out there," he said. "You just have to wait to find them."

Finding Her

Dating, he laughed, was the same — "with a whole different level of anxiety." His first date went well. Their second, straight from an army shift, he couldn’t get through the evening without constantly stuttering, and they stopped seeing each other.

Months later, stationed in Hebron, a friend talked him into praying at the Cave of the Patriarchs for a wife, something Hillel never connected to. He prayed anyway, half-heartedly. Hours later, on guard duty, the woman who previously ditched him walked past him. They both decided, that same day, to ask each other out again.

From then on, she never left his side — ordering for him, never once making him feel like a burden. Even through his hardest stretch of unemployment, she never wavered. "That support," he said, "paved the path for me to find my voice again." The couple eventually married.

The Year Everything Changed

This past year, Hillel was asked to become his synagogue's gabbai — the one who calls congregants up by name during services. His first reaction: "No way." He agreed only if someone else did the actual speaking.

Then, one Shabbat, his backup didn't show. He was freaking out. He remembered something his mentor once taught him: put yourself in situations where you're forced to speak and succeed.

His whole life, his prayer before speaking had been the same: God, please help me not stutter. But that morning, it was undeniable — he was going to stutter no matter what. So he changed the prayer. Instead of asking not to stutter, he simply asked God to be with him. I know I'll stutter through this. But if You're with me, maybe I can get through it.

He did. He stuttered through every name but this time it felt different.

He'd spent years feeling like his prayers went unanswered. That morning, he finally felt God holding him up instead. He did it again the next week, and the week after — quietly overcoming a lifetime of fear simply because, for the first time, a whole community was holding him up while he did it.

Gaza

That same resolve followed him into reserve duty. Clearing a house in Gaza, a fellow soldier spotted two terrorists on a nearby porch. Hillel, a sharpshooter, hesitated — the same hesitation that had shaped his entire life. He didn't have a clear shot in that instant, but the hesitation itself infuriated him afterward. That's the old Hillel. I don't do that anymore.

For the rest of that deployment, something shifted — he decided, fully and finally, never to hesitate again, in speech or in anything else. At the end of it, his platoon awarded him Soldier of Excellence. "We knew you," they told him. "When you couldn't speak, we already knew who you really were."

Twenty Years, One Prayer

One dream remained: to lead the High Holiday prayers himself. Every year, he sat in the congregation instead, thinking, if I can't do this by next year, that's devastating. Every service — not just on the High Holidays, but three times a day, every day — opens with the same line before the Amidah: Hashem, s'fatai tiftach, u'fi yagid tehilatecha. God, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise. Most people whisper it to themselves before their own silent prayer. Hillel had to say it out loud, in front of the whole congregation. Every year, he reached that line and stopped, unable to continue.

Last year, for the first time, he organized his own Sephardic minyan and led it himself. When he reached that line, he told himself to hold it together — he was leading now. He got through it.

"That was the climax of my whole life," he told me. "Every year for twenty years, I prayed for that moment. And it finally came."

For almost two decades, Hillel had asked God to open his lips so he could sing His praises. Last year, that prayer was finally answered, with his own voice, carrying every word all the way through.