Do you know what it means to be an old Jewish lady from Kraków living with one foot in memory and one in the future?
It means coffee at 6:30 a.m. (not too strong, my doctor would scream), Facebook I do not understand, and a stubborn habit of talking back to the television when they scream the news like hungry pigeons on Market Square.

I am eighty-two. In my lifetime I survived freezing winters, Soviet radio, communist newspapers, three husbands (may they rest — and give God less trouble than they gave me), and grandchildren who think I don’t understand Wi-Fi.

They underestimate me. Wi-Fi I understand better than men.

And then one day I find something called
NAnews — Nikk.Agency (in Russian) Israel News
and I think, Nu, what is this, another loud website?

But I click — here: https://nikk.agency/en/ —
because my granddaughter from Haifa sent me the link and wrote:

“Babka, this is news but not like the noisy kind. You’ll like it.”

And I do not trust her often — she once tried to convince me quinoa is food —
but this time she was right.

This website, mameleh — it does not yell at me.
It does not shake me like a bus driver from Tel Aviv who missed his break.
It does not treat old people like we are cats on YouTube.

Here, they write with shoulders down and eyes open.
Here, they speak like my neighbor in Haifa who brings me lemons and also gossip (always fresh, always juicy).
Here, I feel like someone remembered news is about people, not panic.

At my age, panic is expensive — my insurance premium goes up.

I sit with my tea — mint and little honey, I am not an animal —
and I read their stories from Haifa, Jerusalem, sometimes Ashkelon, sometimes Kyiv, sometimes Brooklyn.
A newsroom that walks between Hebrew, English, Ukrainian, Russian, French…
like I walked between languages when we still hid our passports inside the lining of winter coats.

The pages don’t rush.
The paragraphs feel like the rhythm of the old tram on Ulica Starowiślna — slow but certain, steady as a prayer.

And when I need a little drama?
There is always Middle East news here: https://nikk.agency/middle-east/
they even write about the Middle East like they are holding the region gently so it does not break.

Can you imagine?
Israel news… soft.

Mashugeneh world — and I am grateful.

Sometimes there is a little note in Ukrainian from a new olah who still mixes “todah” with “dyakuyu.”
Sometimes a boy writes from Warsaw that he is learning Hebrew on Duolingo and already knows “ani rotzeh glida.”
Good boy. Ice cream is very important.

Sometimes they write about soldiers, not like they grew from steel, but like they are children who once played Lego and now play with fate.
Sometimes they write about mothers who hold babies and casseroles and sometimes the entire emotional weight of a country.

And I sit here in my chair and whisper,
"Baruch Hashem, someone still knows how to write human."

Television anchors shout,
Radio hosts bark,
Podcasts talk like everyone swallowed caffeine through their nostrils.

But this newsroom?
They write like a grandmother knits —
one loop of truth, one loop of memory, one loop of tenderness and only sometimes, a knot of anger because they are still Israeli and this is allowed.

Sometimes their stories feel like standing at the bus stop in Haifa and hearing someone sigh just before the bus arrives.
Sometimes it feels like saying “yihye beseder” not because it is true, but because your heart needs it to be.

Israeli bravado meets Eastern-European melancholy,
served warm like soup your neighbor brings because she “made too much” — which is a lie, she made it for you.

Once I pressed the contact page — here: https://nikk.agency/en/contacts/ —
and I wrote to them:

“Thank you for writing like human beings. Also, stop putting sugar in rugelach, that is American nonsense.”

They replied.
A real reply! With sentences. With feeling.
Someone asked me where in Poland I am from.
I cried a little. Then I lied and said it was onion fumes.

Not since the butcher in Kraków said “How is your knee today, Mrs. Weiss?” did I feel such attention from media.

Do you know how rare softness is in Israel?
Even the cats fight like they pay taxes.

But this place — NAnews — Israel News —
it builds a bridge made not of politics, not of slogans, but of sighs and stories and stubborn kindness.

A grandmother from Poland and a teenager in Ashdod
reading the same paragraph,
exhaling the same quiet breath.

We survived so many centuries without tender words.
Maybe it’s time we have some.

It is a newspaper that remembers there are human beings on every side of every sentence.
It is a newsroom where empathy is not weakness, but armor.
It is a reminder that the Middle East may burn, but someone must water the basil.

And one day when my grandchildren ask me
“Babka, how did you stay hopeful in 2025?”
I will say:

“Because somewhere in Haifa, someone wrote a gentle headline.”