Mendel Mintz | "We Just Wanted To Build a Family"
Meaningful People
Meaningful Minute
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2025
⏱️ 72 minutes
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Summary
In this deeply personal conversation, Mendel Mintz shares his journey of growing up in Crown Heights with a lifelong physical disability, building a life of community impact, and finding unexpected love with his wife, Miriam, a beloved special educator from Baltimore born with dwarfism. He opens up about their dream of building a family through IVF, the joy of being on the brink of shlichus together, and the unimaginable tragedy of losing Miriam to an extremely rare complication at the very height of their lives. Mendel reflects with searing honesty on grief, walking out of the hospital alone, wrestling with faith, and what it means to keep showing up for Hashem with real questions and no easy answers. He also shares how he's turning pain into purpose through Miriam's Library and Learning Center, a new educational hub in Baltimore dedicated to the children and values she lived for.
To honor Miriam's legacy and help bring this life-changing project to reality, you can make a meaningful difference here: https://www.charidy.com/Miriam/mm
This episode is for anyone carrying loss, living with visible or invisible challenges, or searching for a way to transform heartbreak into a life of meaning.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For the two years that we were married, we were actively working on building a family. |
| 0:04.0 | We were going through IVF with PGD to ensure that our children should be healthy and not have the limitations or challenges that we had. |
| 0:10.0 | And we were at the very end. We were meant to go home that morning. |
| 0:13.0 | Things from there went downhill were complications. |
| 0:16.0 | It was extremely rare condition where I developed an extreme reaction to that ultimately took her life just a couple days later. |
| 0:22.6 | Transitioning from building life to the opposite. |
| 0:26.6 | Watching my life shadow was really unthink. |
| 0:29.6 | Meet Mendel Mintz. Born in Crown Heights, he's lived his whole life in a wheelchair, |
| 0:33.6 | but he never saw it as limitation. |
| 0:35.6 | He built a career of bringing people together driven by the belief that nothing is impossible. |
| 0:40.8 | Then he met Miriam, a teacher from Baltimore filled with light. |
| 0:44.9 | Together they dream of a family, a life of purpose, a schlichtess of their own. |
| 0:48.4 | But just two years after their wedding, as they dreamed of building a family together, |
| 0:52.2 | Miriam's life was suddenly taken. |
| 0:54.0 | And Mendel was |
| 0:54.3 | left to figure out how to move on when the life he was building fell apart. |
| 0:58.8 | Leaving the hospital myself. |
| 1:00.1 | No Miriam, no kids, no schlichas, no. |
| 1:03.7 | You went with everything and the hope to even have even more, and then you left the hospital. |
| 1:08.1 | Empty-handed. |
| 1:09.9 | I just need 30 seconds of your time to ask you if you could do something absolutely free. |
| 1:14.6 | That is, hit the subscribe button. |
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