Episode 2: From Ukraine to Eretz Yisroel - and when back? With the shlucha to Kremenchug, Dina Salmon

00:00 Speaker 1 Why, of all places in the world, did they go to little-known Kremenchug? How do children behave when they spend thirty hours straight on a crowded train? And what insights can come from suddenly arriving in Israel with no idea what lies ahead? Welcome to a conversation with shlucha Dina Salmon from Kremenchug, Ukraine. How can we make our lives lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet women whose shlichus has taken them into a variety of fields, and through their stories, help each woman find and define her own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created for is the best thing there is. Shlichus as a way of life. Let’s begin. Hello, everyone. Today our guest is Dina Salmon. If we were in Ukraine right now, and I was in Kharkiv, and we wanted to meet, how long would we have to travel?

01:01 Speaker 2 Almost four hours.

01:02 Speaker 1 Almost four hours. So now we’re a little closer.

01:05 Speaker 2 Right, in the same neighborhood.

01:06 Speaker 1 Yes, in the same neighborhood. It doesn’t get much closer than that. So Dina, please introduce yourself so everyone can get to know you.

01:16 Speaker 2 My name is Dina, I’m forty-four, and I’m a mother of seven. The oldest is twenty-two and the youngest is three. I’m a shlucha in Ukraine, in a city called Kremenchug, which isn’t very well known. The name was new to me too before I left, but we’ve been there for twenty-two years now.

01:39 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:40 Speaker 2 Yes, we arrived without children.

01:42 Speaker 1 Wow. Why did you go there, specifically?

01:45 Speaker 2 Well, the head of the community there—there was a Jewish community of sorts—was leaving. He wanted to move to Israel, and before he left, he called my brother-in-law, Meir Stambler, who works at the Federation of Jewish Communities, and said, “Send us a rabbi.” The community actually asked for a rabbi, because he had heard there were already rabbis in various cities. So even though our city was smaller than some of those cities, they got a rabbi first. Only afterward, a year later, did Poltava get a rabbi. And Poltava is actually a regional capital.

02:18 Speaker 1 Oh, you live in the Poltava region.

02:20 Speaker 2 In the Poltava region, in the city of Kremenchug.

02:22 Speaker 1 Yes. I have to tell you, people hadn’t heard much about the bigger cities in Ukraine either. When I told people we lived in Kharkiv, they’d say, “What’s Kharkiv? Do you mean Krakow in Poland?” They got them mixed up.

02:31 Speaker 2 Now everyone knows it.

02:32 Speaker 1 Exactly. Now everyone knows Kharkiv. It’s become well known, but not for good reasons.

02:37 Speaker 2 Yes, unfortunately.

02:39 Speaker 1 So, Dina, tell us something interesting about the beginning of your shlichus. Twenty-two years ago, things were completely different from today.

02:45 Speaker 2 Yes, we arrived as a young couple. There wasn’t even internet back then. There was no way to keep in touch. We had a phone call once a week. It felt a bit like we were living in a movie.

02:56 Speaker 1 Wow, so isolated.

02:58 Speaker 2 Yes. We had a driver who was basically our helper with everything. Back then, having your own car in Ukraine wasn’t really an option. The roads were very frightening, and we didn’t know the routes or even how to drive there, what the rules were. So we had this tough-looking driver, and he carried a car—carried a weapon, sorry. It made things feel quite scary. On the other hand, he was very nice. We arrived two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, and I asked him if he could find us a pomegranate for Rosh Hashanah. He couldn’t. Fine, so we ordered one from Israel. Some bochurim happened to be coming, and we ordered one from Israel. Then, in the month of Cheshvan, this man shows up with a pomegranate, and we’re like—

03:50 Speaker 1 Just a little late.

03:51 Speaker 2 Yes. What? What’s this? “What do you mean? I bought it, it was so expensive,” and all that. It had cost him a lot. We still had to pay him for the pomegranate, and it was all shriveled up. We couldn’t even cut it open.

04:02 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

04:03 Speaker 2 Inside, it was kind of rotten. The main thing is, we had a pomegranate for Cheshvan.

04:08 Speaker 1 Yes. I hope it kept until the following year.

04:10 Speaker 2 Of course. It felt like an esrog after Sukkos.

04:14 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:15 Speaker 2 You know how they sort of shrivel up.

04:17 Speaker 1 It wasn’t even relevant anymore.

04:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

04:19 Speaker 1 Oh, dear. What else can you tell us about Kremenchug, so that listeners can get some sense of where it is?

04:26 Speaker 2 Look, all in all, it’s a beautiful city. I gradually came to love it—it took time. At first, when I traveled to Israel, I didn’t want to go back. At some point, though, I grew to love it, and we had a nice apartment and everything. Then I did like going back, and I could see its beauty. It’s right by the Dnieper River. Five minutes from our home there’s a beautiful river and a beautiful view. The people are nice, and the atmosphere is calm. It doesn’t feel like a bustling city; it’s more relaxed, with people walking slowly. You know, in big cities—

05:03 Speaker 1 Like Kiryat Malachi.

05:05 Speaker 2 Yes, in big cities people rush.

05:07 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:08 Speaker 2 And in the—well, I think throughout Ukraine there’s—

05:11 Speaker 1 That’s what I was going to say: even in Kharkiv, everything is slower and more relaxed than in Israel. It’s a different pace.

05:17 Speaker 2 There’s also something in Russian-Ukrainian culture about going outside for a walk, getting some fresh air.

05:24 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s right.

05:25 Speaker 2 So if people are outside, they’re already out for a stroll.

05:27 Speaker 1 Gulyat.

05:28 Speaker 2 Yes. Or people go out specifically to take a walk. So you see many more people just sitting on benches and in parks than you do in Israel.

05:36 Speaker 1 With their strollers and everything, because it’s a different pace.

05:39 Speaker 2 By the way, in Israel, if you go to, say, Rishon LeZion, the only people sitting in the parks are new immigrants.

05:45 Speaker 1 Oh.

05:45 Speaker 2 Because of that mentality.

05:47 Speaker 1 At least they’ve found a park that reminds them of...

05:49 Speaker 2 Yes. So we really do have a lot of parks in the city, and the community is very nice. The people are genuinely, genuinely nice. Talking about them makes me miss them, because we really didn’t face opposition from the start, baruch Hashem. You know, some people tell stories about all kinds of things.

06:05 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:06 Speaker 2 About opposition from different people. When we arrived, there were two communities in the city, supposedly two Jewish communities: the religious community and the nonreligious community. Some people didn’t want to come to us, but that faded after a few months, because people quickly understand that the rabbi is where they’ll find Judaism.

06:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:24 Speaker 2 And at the other community, they would read something from a notebook on Shabbos. Then, when the rabbi built a shul, it was already—

06:33 Speaker 1 Yes, they understood what...

06:35 Speaker 2 They understood what was authentic.

06:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:37 Speaker 2 That they really needed to go to the rabbi. Why would we go to someone who doesn’t know anything himself? So baruch Hashem, today we’re all united. Our community, our shul, also hosts the Jewish Agency and the Joint, the local chesed organization. When there was an Israeli center, they were with us too. In other words, we bring all the Jewish organizations together.

07:01 Speaker 1 You’re the magnet for all the—

07:03 Speaker 2 Exactly. And we have a kitchen where we prepare food for people, hot meals. By the way, it’s operating even today. The shul is operating today too; there are classes there.

07:12 Speaker 1 Who’s there? Are there people who can keep it running?

07:14 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. There are minyanim twice a day, Shacharis and Minchah, and there’s a men’s kollel that’s running.

07:21 Speaker 1 With air-raid sirens in the background.

07:23 Speaker 2 With air-raid sirens in the background.

07:25 Speaker 1 Wow.

07:25 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:25 Speaker 1 Does the shul have a basement or some place where—

07:28 Speaker 2 Yes. It’s not exactly a basement, but the lower floor has no windows. There’s a huge hallway there, and the kitchen has no windows either. So people go down there when there’s a siren. In general, people are fed up with the sirens; they don’t go running for shelter anymore.

07:43 Speaker 1 They don’t pay attention to them anymore?

07:44 Speaker 2 No.

07:44 Speaker 1 It’s not like in Israel, where there’s a siren and then a boom. Sometimes there are sirens for no apparent reason.

07:49 Speaker 2 Sometimes a missile just passes over the city on its way to some distant area, and the siren goes off.

07:56 Speaker 1 So that’s why they don’t take it—

07:58 Speaker 2 They don’t take it seriously anymore. They’re fed up.

08:00 Speaker 1 For us, it was the opposite, by the way. There were no sirens, but there were booms.

08:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:03 Speaker 1 There’d be a boom, and then we’d go down to the basement. So what can you say about life now? What is there to say? But...

08:13 Speaker 2 Yes, today we’re in Israel.

08:14 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:14 Speaker 2 In Kiryat Malachi.

08:15 Speaker 1 Everyone asks you what will happen, when you’re going back. That uncertainty.

08:21 Speaker 2 Yes, they ask. I ask myself too.

08:22 Speaker 1 That’s the hardest thing to deal with. Exactly.

08:24 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s right. I ask myself too. My husband went to Kremenchug for Pesach with my daughter. I didn’t think it made sense for me to travel with two little ones—three little ones, actually. A three-year-old, and all that. He traveled for thirty, thirty hours.

08:42 Speaker 1 That’s crazy.

08:43 Speaker 2 So that’s not really practical. We’re hoping he’ll go for Shavuos, if there aren’t missiles again, because yesterday several missiles hit our city, and that made the women—the people—a bit anxious.

08:55 Speaker 1 Are people still leaving from time to time, or at this point, is everyone who stayed planning to stay?

08:59 Speaker 2 I haven’t heard of anyone leaving. I don’t know.

09:02 Speaker 1 There was a wave of people leaving at the beginning.

09:03 Speaker 2 At first there was, yes, yes, but not a wave, not a very big wave either. There were a few families. Actually, the children from our preschool left. I mean—

09:12 Speaker 1 No, that makes sense. Maybe young families.

09:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, with small children.

09:14 Speaker 1 It was easier for them to... not that the trip was easy technically, but easier in terms of thinking, “Well, maybe we’ll start a new life somewhere.” But for older people, I think it’s harder to leave the place behind. It’s crazy.

09:25 Speaker 2 Right, right. It’s very hard.

09:28 Speaker 1 A lot of people from Kharkiv came to us, because it was among the first cities to be shelled. They left for Kremenchuk, for Poltava.

09:34 Speaker 2 Right.

09:34 Speaker 1 To this day, there are people in those areas.

09:36 Speaker 2 That’s it. We need to sort that out too, see which children have arrived from other cities. Maybe we have people from Kyiv, maybe people from Kharkiv.

09:44 Speaker 1 So is the preschool running?

09:45 Speaker 2 The preschool isn’t running.

09:46 Speaker 1 Right, so it’s not...

09:47 Speaker 2 No. First of all, my two children are here. So...

09:50 Speaker 1 That’s already a certain percentage.

09:52 Speaker 2 Right, and there are a few other children. Maybe only two children from the preschool actually stayed in the city, and one lives quite far away, so I don’t think his mother will bring him. In any case, she isn’t bringing him. So the preschool isn’t running, and I think the schools are operating online.

10:07 Speaker 1 Yes, they keep sending materials and things.

10:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:10 Speaker 1 Not really Zoom, but...

10:11 Speaker 2 Yes. What will happen? We don’t know.

10:13 Speaker 1 What’s going on?

10:13 Speaker 2 We’re waiting for Moshiach. We don’t know what will happen. People as—really, as you said, people ask.

10:18 Speaker 1 Right.

10:18 Speaker 2 Yes, they ask, and I tell them, “What do you think? What will happen?”

10:21 Speaker 1 Only Hakadosh Boruch Hu has the answers.

10:23 Speaker 2 Absolutely. We have to keep strengthening our faith that this is the right place for us, that for now we need to be here, and we’re waiting for the Geulah.

10:34 Speaker 1 We have no choice but to strengthen ourselves. You can’t fall apart either. What are you going to do? You have to keep going and get up every morning. There are children, and life has to go on. And when we really think about it, we truly believe in hashgachah pratis and know that we need to be here now. Nothing went wrong. Hakadosh Boruch Hu intended from the outset for us to be here now. But it’s still hard. What insight helps you cope, something you could share with others? Everyone is dealing with her own challenges. For us, this is very much at the center of things right now.

11:09 Speaker 2 Yes. You know, all my life—not all my life, but for many years, especially at the beginning—I dreamed of going back to Israel. And in a way, my dream came true. But now that I’m here—

11:21 Speaker 1 In a...

11:22 Speaker 2 Yes, but now that I’m here, it doesn’t feel like a dream come true. If anything, I miss being there. Every time I speak with my people—I have a class once a week, so I speak with people who stayed there—I feel how much I miss them. My insight is really to believe. That’s the only insight: to believe in hashgachah pratis, that I need to be here right now. My children are going to school, which they didn’t have before. They’re getting to know real friends, not virtual ones; after all, they were learning online. So maybe that’s important. Maybe they needed the experience of going to a regular preschool, a regular school. Maybe it’s good for shaping who they become. It’s definitely good for them, not maybe.

12:05 Speaker 1 Definitely, yes.

12:05 Speaker 2 It’s definitely good for them.

12:07 Speaker 1 Seeing the glass as half full, really.

12:09 Speaker 2 Of course. And my parents live nearby, so being close to them gives me the opportunity to honor my parents.

12:13 Speaker 1 Yes.

12:13 Speaker 2 My married daughter lives nearby. She comes over to eat with us.

12:16 Speaker 1 Things that sound so ordinary to other people, but...

12:19 Speaker 2 Yes. I’m not suffering. Look, I have a nice apartment here.

12:23 Speaker 1 Boruch Hashem.

12:24 Speaker 2 And there’s room for everyone. I even had a guest come for Shabbos. She’s originally from Kremenchuk, and she came here for Shabbos.

12:33 Speaker 1 It’s strange to meet up in Israel, isn’t it? It feels different, seeing people from there.

12:36 Speaker 2 Very.

12:37 Speaker 1 It’s hard to take in the situation. I remember meeting a few families on Pesach, and it felt strange. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around us being here in Israel, and under these circumstances, with people who are so much a part of life over there. To you, they’re part of the landscape there, and...

12:52 Speaker 2 I went for an evening walk with a friend from there who lives here now. Yes, a shlucha from another city. The whole walk felt surreal. I enjoyed it. Yes, just going for a walk together.

13:05 Speaker 1 As though you’d dreamed of doing that for years.

13:07 Speaker 2 Right, but it was very strange. The entire walk, I kept feeling how strange it was. Really strange.

13:13 Speaker 1 Planted in some kind of situation.

13:15 Speaker 2 Yes, one that isn’t mine.

13:17 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:18 Speaker 2 All right, but people get used to this strangeness.

13:20 Speaker 1 Yes. No, whatever seems—

13:21 Speaker 2 You think it’s like COVID.

13:22 Speaker 1 Strange to someone else, it’s...

13:23 Speaker 2 Yes. As you said, COVID. We felt like we were in some kind of movie that had nothing to do with us, that...

13:27 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. We thought COVID was as surreal as it could get, and then the war came.

13:32 Speaker 2 Yes, and now there’s salmonella.

13:34 Speaker 1 So things never get boring.

13:35 Speaker 2 Exactly.

13:36 Speaker 1 You know, at the beginning of COVID, we traveled to Israel with about twenty-four hours’ notice. I was due to give birth, and the doctor told me to go to Israel. So we drove eight hours and got on the last flight. We didn’t know if we’d make it onto the plane, and I said, “Oh my goodness, what a surreal trip.” I thought it was the most surreal trip of my life. And then, suddenly, came the fifty-hour journey during the war.

13:55 Speaker 2 Wow, wow. We traveled too.

13:56 Speaker 1 And I laughed. I said, “You really never know what...”

14:00 Speaker 2 Wow, that was a journey that never ended. At some point, the children stopped asking when we’d get there.

14:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

14:06 Speaker 2 At first they still asked, “So wait, when will we get there? How long can you ride on a train?” At some point, they stopped asking.

14:13 Speaker 1 It’s crazy.

14:14 Speaker 2 They slept. There was a night, then another morning, then another night, then another morning. Wow, and we still hadn’t arrived. And we were sitting crammed together on the train.

14:23 Speaker 1 Oh my.

14:23 Speaker 2 We were in a compartment meant for four people, with four beds: two bunks on one side and two bunks opposite them.

14:30 Speaker 1 Like a little suite.

14:31 Speaker 2 Yes. So, in principle, it’s supposed to hold four people.

14:35 Speaker 1 I’d call them bunks.

14:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:36 Speaker 1 You know, before my first train trip in Ukraine, we traveled fourteen hours to Odessa. My husband told me, “Yes, you get a room with four beds.” Do you know what I pictured? A nice little hotel room. Okay, not five-star. But when I went in, they were bunks.

14:53 Speaker 2 Lying down isn’t so bad—

14:54 Speaker 1 Yes, no, but—

14:55 Speaker 2 But when you have to sit, it’s very uncomfortable for your back.

14:58 Speaker 1 Yes.

14:59 Speaker 2 And imagine, a thirty-hour journey.

15:02 Speaker 1 Crazy.

15:03 Speaker 2 There were fourteen of us in that compartment for four.

15:06 Speaker 1 Oh.

15:07 Speaker 2 Yes. So the children—

15:08 Speaker 1 Dark times.

15:09 Speaker 2 Really. The four children sat up on the top bunks, their legs dangling down toward us, while we sat beneath them.

15:17 Speaker 1 Where did you put your things? Underneath? Above?

15:19 Speaker 2 Well, that’s the thing. There was one suitcase beside us taking up a seat, two suitcases beside us, another suitcase in a different compartment with another family, and one more suitcase in the corridor.

15:30 Speaker 1 Oh my.

15:30 Speaker 2 Yes, and the whole trip we were afraid someone would take our suitcases. Some people really did have their suitcases stolen.

15:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

15:36 Speaker 2 One man arrived without his suitcase. He said, “I don’t have clothes for Shabbos. I have nothing. I don’t have a suitcase.”

15:41 Speaker 1 Oh my.

15:42 Speaker 2 He had helped his father onto the train and left his suitcase beside him for a second. Someone walked by, took it, and kept going.

15:50 Speaker 1 Yes. Oh my, oh my.

15:51 Speaker 2 There wasn’t anything expensive in it, but, you know, being without clothes makes you feel—

15:55 Speaker 1 The life you’ve brought with you is already down to the bare minimum. Yes.

15:56 Speaker 2 Exactly. Being without clothes makes you feel homeless.

15:58 Speaker 1 He only had that one suitcase with him to begin with, so even that...

16:01 Speaker 2 A carry-on bag.

16:02 Speaker 1 Yes.

16:02 Speaker 2 He said, “It was a carry-on bag with my clothes, my things, my tefillin.”

16:07 Speaker 1 Everything. If someone had asked you beforehand whether you’d be willing to make a trip like that?

16:12 Speaker 2 No. My husband wants me to go back with him. He says, “Let’s all go as a family for two weeks.” I tell him, “I’m not doing that. I’m not putting the children through that. They’d come back traumatized.”

16:21 Speaker 1 You know, someone asked me—after I told her about the journey—“How did you do it? I won’t even drive with my children from Ashdod to Ashkelon. They start screaming, fighting, jumping around. I can’t handle it. How did you do fifty hours?” I told her, “Do you think that if someone had asked me, I would have agreed to go on that journey?” But when you’re in the situation, you cope. You find strength. You have no choice.

16:44 Speaker 2 You know what? They were such sweet kids. They behaved so well, because they saw they had no choice. At first, like I said, they complained and kept asking, “When will we get there? When will we get there?” At some point, when they saw we still weren’t getting there, they stopped complaining. They had candy for breakfast and candy for lunch.

17:01 Speaker 1 A school trip.

17:01 Speaker 2 Exactly. And when we got to Israel, that same day—or maybe it was the day after—we rented a car and drove somewhere. After about fifteen minutes, they started asking when we’d get there. So I said to my husband, “Look, they’re back to being normal kids.”

17:17 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem.

17:18 Speaker 2 Because for so many hours they hadn’t asked when we’d get there, and they hadn’t said, “Ugh, we’ve had enough.” Kids can’t travel for that long; they get fed up, and it’s hard for them. But when there’s no choice, there’s no choice. Children sense that there’s no choice, and that we’re fleeing.

17:32 Speaker 1 Wow. And then, when they complain after ten minutes, baruch Hashem, everything’s all right.

17:35 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a sign that we’re normal.

17:37 Speaker 1 Because that’s normal, right.

17:38 Speaker 2 Right. When we complain about trivial things, it means everything’s okay.

17:43 Speaker 1 It really is a process. I remember when we got to Israel, for the first few days you’re just thinking, “Wow, we made it.” And then, little by little, other things start bothering you: “I’m missing this, I’m missing that.” And those things do bother you, too.

17:57 Speaker 2 Right.

17:58 Speaker 1 But relatively speaking, little by little you heal and—

18:03 Speaker 2 It’s definitely a kind of healing.

18:03 Speaker 1 You go back to being a person.

18:05 Speaker 2 Complaining about trivial things is definitely a kind of healing.

18:07 Speaker 1 Yes. Feeling normal.

18:08 Speaker 2 When you complain about trivial things, don’t tell yourselves, “There are people who are suffering.” Tell yourselves, “Things are good for us. Baruch Hashem, we’re not complaining about pain. Baruch Hashem, we’re not complaining about wars, G-d forbid. We’re complaining that our socks are too tight,” or whatever it might be.

18:24 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem that we can complain about trivial things.

18:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:26 Speaker 1 Not about serious things.

18:28 Speaker 2 Right.

18:29 Speaker 1 May those be our problems.

18:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:32 Speaker 1 Well, Dina, I want to ask you an interesting question, because we want to take a tip for living a life of shlichus from every guest, every shlucha, every woman who comes here. A lot of women ask about this. You know, when I was in Kharkov, people would ask me, “How can I feel like a shlucha too? How can I do something too?” And I would always say, “No, shlichus is a mindset. It’s a way of life. You don’t have to go to Ukraine or Thailand to do shlichus.”

18:56 Speaker 2 And that really is true.

18:57 Speaker 1 So how do you put it into practice? Suddenly you land here and think, “Now I have to do it, not just say it.” A woman gets up in the morning, gets the kids ready, goes to work, comes home without a moment to breathe—laundry, dishes, Shabbos. How can she really go to sleep at night knowing, “I was a shlucha today”? One thing, even something small.

19:17 Speaker 2 You know, because we’re living in the generation of Geulah, there’s a sense of shlichus in the world. I’ve seen it not only among religious people, but in every community, even among non-Jews. People feel that they have some sort of—we were born with a mission in this world. People feel they have a mission. A few days ago, a friend of my daughter’s came over, a girl from a family going through hard times. They played, and then evening came. So I gave her dinner. She just naturally sat and ate with all the kids—an omelet, vegetables, everything. Suddenly I thought to myself: There are children who didn’t end up as at-risk teens because there was a family that welcomed them, gave them dinner and gave them a feeling of family. After all, people come into each of our homes. Anyone who lives here has friends coming over and all kinds of people. And we don’t know what we’re doing for them, even with little things like that. And even—it’s funny. Everyone says this, and everyone knows it: when you say hello to someone and smile at them—

20:26 Speaker 1 The neighbor.

20:27 Speaker 2 The neighbor, and so on. These things sound so ordinary, but they’re really not ordinary at all. We live in a generation where—

20:32 Speaker 1 When you get up in the morning and leave the house, you’re so caught up in your thoughts. You really, really have to make a little effort to see beyond yourself and give someone a smile. Yes, it really can change their day. At any hour.

20:43 Speaker 2 We ourselves are recharged more when we give.

20:46 Speaker 1 Of course.

20:46 Speaker 2 It would be terrible if we didn’t give. The moment you stop giving and become absorbed only in your own family and children... Look, giving to your family is also shlichus. Every mother is a shlucha in this world. So if you feel that right now you’re not giving to the world, only to your children, raising them for Torah, for marriage, for good deeds, to be good people, giving them values—that’s an enormous shlichus. We mustn’t diminish its value.

21:16 Speaker 1 So maybe the first piece of advice is to notice what I already do in my everyday life that’s shlichus, and build on it. First of all, I’ll feel that I’ve done shlichus, which will make me feel good and encourage me to do more of it.

21:29 Speaker 2 Still, when you give to others who aren’t your children—

21:32 Speaker 1 Something you’re not obligated to do.

21:33 Speaker 2 Something you’re not obligated to do, yes. That gives you something extra.

21:37 Speaker 1 Yes.

21:37 Speaker 2 Really, in the little things: inviting a friend over, talking to someone while you’re standing at a bus stop. Those little things where you do something good for someone else, or compliment her on her pretty shirt or her bag.

21:55 Speaker 1 Sometimes you have no idea what you’ve done for someone.

21:57 Speaker 2 Exactly. Usually you have no idea what you’ve done. Yes. Just don’t do harm—don’t criticize people. Oh my.

22:05 Speaker 1 If you don’t have something good to say.

22:06 Speaker 2 Right. Wow, people take criticism very hard these days. I think it’s less—things aren’t like they used to be. People used to take criticism better, or—I don’t know, maybe not.

22:17 Speaker 1 Everyone’s sensitive. I think these are sensitive times. Everyone is carrying something, and you don’t know what sore spot you might have touched.

22:25 Speaker 2 Exactly.

22:26 Speaker 1 It really is sensitive. I think showing sensitivity and compassion toward everyone you meet on the street is already a good start. Who knows what you might do for them? Don’t judge, don’t.

22:35 Speaker 2 You know, even little things. Someone sent me a WhatsApp message. Who doesn’t send WhatsApp messages? One day she just wrote to me out of the blue, “How are you? How are you feeling?” It warmed my heart so much. Right then, I wrote to someone else, “How are you? How are you feeling?”

22:48 Speaker 1 Like a chain.

22:48 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And really, is it so hard for us to write, “How are you feeling?” It takes nothing.

22:55 Speaker 1 Right.

22:55 Speaker 2 But it made me feel good that she just wrote to ask how I was feeling.

22:59 Speaker 1 I need to think about that. To have that mindset: let’s stop for a second, do something for someone else, and then carry on with our routine, with our day.

23:06 Speaker 2 Right, exactly.

23:08 Speaker 1 Do that a few times a day and we’re all set. And think about the world—if every woman stopped just a few times a day and did one little thing, what a ripple effect it would have.

23:15 Speaker 2 Yes, but you mentioned women at work. At work, too, you can do shlichus all the time. You’re constantly meeting people. You’re constantly trying to do good. So do it with a smile. Do it with that sense of purpose. If you truly have a shlichus mindset, then you’re doing shlichus all the time.

23:33 Speaker 1 It’s the mindset. It’s being focused on “Who needs me?” rather than “What do I need?”—as the rabbi said. “Where am I needed?”

23:39 Speaker 2 Wow, those are very powerful words.

23:41 Speaker 1 Yes.

23:41 Speaker 2 Who needs me?

23:43 Speaker 1 When we’re preoccupied with ourselves—with our own problems, and everyone has problems—we can get stuck in that endlessly, and it brings us down. But when we concern ourselves with other people’s problems, our own problems—

23:51 Speaker 2 Seem smaller.

23:52 Speaker 1 Yes, they really do seem smaller. It really works that way. Well, a few words to close?

24:00 Speaker 2 Wow, I really enjoyed this.

24:01 Speaker 1 Yes.

24:02 Speaker 2 Yes, really. It was my first time.

24:04 Speaker 1 Mine too. As of now.

24:06 Speaker 2 Yes. And what are my closing words? Be good shluchos. Do good in the world. This world needs goodness. We’re just a moment away from the Geulah, and every little thing can tip the scales. Lag BaOmer is coming up soon, and the whole point of Sefiras HaOmer and Lag BaOmer is to do good and be united. So do good. Good Shabbos, everyone. Call your parents, call your friends, do good.

24:42 Speaker 1 Thank you, Dina.

24:43 Speaker 2 Thank you, Chani.