Episode 8: "Through the Doing You Shall Be Comforted" | With Ruchi Ashkenazi, Chabad shlucha in Bangkok, Thailand

00:00 Speaker 1 What is life on shlichus like in Bangkok, Thailand? What does a Shabbos table look like when Jews from every walk of life sit around it? How do you raise children in a place like that? And more than anything, how do you cope and get up to keep doing your work after the immense, unimaginable pain of losing a child? An illuminating conversation with shlucha Ruchi Ashkenazi that touches the deepest places in the soul. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who have brought their shlichus into a range of fields, and through their stories, they’ll help each of us discover and define our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live is the best thing there is. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting now. Hello to Ruchi Ashkenazi, a shlucha in Thailand, no less! Ruchi, it’s so wonderful that you’re here in Israel and that I can meet you and introduce you to everyone, so they can hear from you. Tell us a little more about yourself.

01:12 Speaker 2 Thank you, Chani, for the opportunity. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Ruchi Ashkenazi, and I’ve been a shlucha in Bangkok, Thailand, for twenty-two years.

01:24 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:25 Speaker 2 Yes. We went there in 2000, so we really have...

01:30 Speaker 1 Easy to count.

01:30 Speaker 2 Easy to count, and easy to remember. I’m a mother of six children, two of them married, a grandmother to a sweet granddaughter, and a Chabad shlucha in Thailand. Our shlichus is mainly centered on working with the community, the Jewish community in Bangkok.

01:59 Speaker 1 Describe it for us. Bring us into the picture, into the scene.

02:03 Speaker 2 Okay, let’s bring you in and describe exactly what Thailand and Bangkok are like. Thailand is in the Far East, one of the countries of Asia. Actually, let me correct that: when the first shliach to Asia, Rabbi Avtzon in Hong Kong, went out, he received a letter from the Rebbe saying that he was traveling to a place that was “not near.”

02:28 Speaker 1 Right.

02:29 Speaker 2 Because the Rebbe didn’t like to use negative language, as we know: the Rebbe would say “house of healing” rather than “hospital.” So we, too, call the Far East “the East that is not near.” And it really isn’t near. Physically, practically, it’s not near. If we’re talking about flights, it’s a ten-hour direct flight on El Al, or you can travel via Dubai, nowadays, after COVID.

03:03 Speaker 1 And the prices match.

03:04 Speaker 2 And the prices match. They certainly do.

03:09 Speaker 1 And are you dependent on Israel for the children’s schooling?

03:12 Speaker 2 Yes, definitely. We’ll talk about that in a moment, too.

03:16 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:17 Speaker 2 As for the time difference, we’re four hours ahead of Israel when Israel is on summer time, and five hours ahead when Israel is on winter time. So that’s how you calculate it. We’re well ahead of Israel when it comes to the start of Shabbos, Yom Tov, and all those things.

03:35 Speaker 1 You finish Shabbos, and there’s silence on the phone.

03:37 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. And on the other hand, you know, you can say “Good Shabbos” to the children in the middle of their Friday afternoon.

03:44 Speaker 1 Yes.

03:45 Speaker 2 But it’s fine; we’ve really gotten used to it. The climate there is tropical, which means we don’t have four seasons. We have summer all year round—it’s always hot. I really don’t have a winter wardrobe. Once, when we came here with the children in winter, my son, who was seven then, said, “Mom, isn’t it embarrassing to wear a sweater?” That’s really how it is. He doesn’t know winter; we don’t have winter. But we do have monsoons and rain, which start around this season and can last until after Sukkos. So we sit in the sukkah in the rain, with real dedication, despite the rain.

04:27 Speaker 1 Rain, but not winter.

04:28 Speaker 2 But not cold. Rain—really heavy rain. Sometimes the water can reach your knees.

04:35 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:36 Speaker 2 So that’s Thailand in general.

04:41 Speaker 1 What does the street look like? You’re walking down a Thai street—

04:43 Speaker 2 Exactly. That’s what I was about to tell you: what the street looks like. Let’s say that, in many places, the average Thai person doesn’t have a big kitchen like we’re used to. Their kitchens are very small, and the average Thai person eats their meals out on the street. What does that mean? There are lots and lots of food stalls, and from twelve to one, that’s the way of life: everything stops. It’s time for kin khao—lunch. There’s nothing you can do about it. In many places, you can’t even make an appointment between twelve and one.

05:24 Speaker 1 Wow, it’s sacred.

05:25 Speaker 2 Absolutely sacred. Office workers go out to eat, just like that, and suddenly you see the streets full of workers from all kinds of offices. You can identify them by their clothes, because every workplace has a uniform.

05:42 Speaker 1 Yes, amazing.

05:42 Speaker 2 Every office has its own color or something like that. Suddenly you see everyone gathering to eat between twelve and one. So the streets are quite crowded with food stalls and places to eat. The food there is very heavily based on rice. Rice is really a staple, and the food is spicy.

06:02 Speaker 1 Do they eat with two sticks, or is that China?

06:04 Speaker 2 No, that’s China. But rice is really a staple, and the food is very spicy. They eat very, very spicy food. That’s why you’ll also find small kitchens in homes and apartments. So that’s more or less what the place is like.

06:24 Speaker 1 Rice is on the kosher side. On the non-kosher side, there are other things.

06:28 Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly. On the non-kosher side—right, you might see fried cockroaches and things like that. Sometimes, walking down the street, there are really unpleasant smells. But it’s not on every street. There are particular spots where the food stalls are concentrated, close to everyone.

06:47 Speaker 1 You need a map of where to walk, where to find the—

06:49 Speaker 2 Exactly. On the way to school, here or there—they already know the places; they’re familiar with them.

06:55 Speaker 1 That’s interesting. At the Chabad House restaurant, do you serve local food?

07:00 Speaker 2 What do you mean by local food?

07:02 Speaker 1 Usually—

07:02 Speaker 2 A Thai menu? Yes, there’s a Thai menu.

07:04 Speaker 1 Usually at Chabad Houses there’s kosher food—falafel, kosher restaurants, and so on.

07:08 Speaker 2 Right, good point. We also have Israeli food, so every traveler can feel they have a taste of home: schnitzel, salad, falafel, like you said. But we definitely have a Thai menu too.

07:23 Speaker 1 Nice.

07:23 Speaker 2 There’s noodle soup and all sorts of things, like pad kra pao, which is chicken or beef stir-fried with vegetables, and other dishes.

07:33 Speaker 1 Sounds good.

07:34 Speaker 2 Yes, Thai food is good.

07:36 Speaker 1 I don’t know it, but it sounds excellent.

07:38 Speaker 2 There’s a very tasty salad called som tam, made with green papaya.

07:43 Speaker 1 It must be lovely living there, with so much fruit.

07:45 Speaker 2 There’s lots and lots of fruit. Let’s put it this way: fruit that you have here in Israel is expensive for us to buy because it’s imported—like the peaches, apricots, and plums we’re seeing now. Those are really expensive for us. But on the other hand, we have all the tropical fruits. Pineapples cost next to nothing, and—

08:04 Speaker 1 How funny.

08:05 Speaker 2 Really good mangoes, and all kinds of fruit—mangosteen, lychee, and lots of wonderful fruit.

08:11 Speaker 1 A feast.

08:12 Speaker 2 Yes, we also have longan, and there’s no shemitah, and so on. We have our wonderful fruit, and the taste is different—completely different. I can’t really explain or describe it to you, but even things like potatoes and sweet potatoes taste different. That’s just how it is. I see it when family comes to visit me and says, “Wow, your fruit is different.” And when we come here, the children don’t take to—

08:39 Speaker 1 How funny.

08:40 Speaker 2 —the fruit here, because it’s not what they’re used to.

08:41 Speaker 1 You have to taste it to understand.

08:42 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. That’s exactly it. I can’t explain why, but that’s how it is.

08:46 Speaker 1 How funny. And the language is—

08:49 Speaker 2 The spoken language is Thai. It’s a very complex language, very hard to pronounce. You have to get the intonation right, the right tone. Let’s say I’ve lived there twenty-two years, and I don’t speak as much Thai as you’d expect. I know the basics, yes, but not as much as you’d expect for the number of years I’ve lived there.

09:13 Speaker 1 Yes.

09:13 Speaker 2 But I haven’t needed Thai very much, so I haven’t really learned it. Our work and activities are in Hebrew, with Israelis, or in English. So my English has gotten stronger instead.

09:28 Speaker 1 Do most people speak English? Most of the population?

09:30 Speaker 2 Thai, no. Let’s say ordinary Thai people can’t really communicate in English, so a lot of the time we muddle through. At first I struggled to speak English, and then I laughed at myself. I said, “I might as well speak Hebrew to them as English, because they don’t understand either one anyway.” But little by little, I don’t know, we manage.

09:49 Speaker 1 Does it make you feel like a tourist in everyday life?

09:51 Speaker 2 At first. At first.

09:54 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s fascinating. So the people there are basically Israelis, Israeli families who moved there for all sorts of reasons?

10:00 Speaker 2 Yes. Let me describe how the activities are organized in this whole place called Chabad in Thailand. We have Chabad Houses for travelers, spread out across Bangkok; Koh Samui and Phuket, which are islands in the south; and Chiang Mai in the north, as well as Pai, which is even farther north, a three-hour drive from Chiang Mai.

10:28 Speaker 1 Basically, wherever everyone goes traveling.

10:29 Speaker 2 Exactly, wherever everyone goes traveling. And they’re also going to open a Chabad House in Koh Phangan soon, and—

10:37 Speaker 1 That’s a scoop.

10:39 Speaker 2 Yes. So those are the Chabad Houses for travelers. In addition, there’s the work with the community—the many people who live there. That’s more our focus, and we live closer to the community, less among the travelers. So I don’t actually meet many travelers unless I go to a Chabad House.

11:02 Speaker 1 Other families take care of that alongside you.

11:04 Speaker 2 There are other families who work with the Chabad Houses. In Bangkok, we have the Wilhelm family—Rabbi Nechemia Wilhelm, a well-known person everyone has heard of—and on the islands there are other families. There are different families at the other Chabad Houses, and even within Bangkok there are several Chabad families. There’s Rabbi Kantor, the chief rabbi, who was actually the first to arrive in Thailand thirty years ago. And there’s the Haddad family; he’s in charge of the kashrus operation. I have a nephew who lives near us.

11:44 Speaker 1 Wow, how nice.

11:45 Speaker 2 Yes, my nephew—

11:46 Speaker 1 What’s his story?

11:47 Speaker 2 He lives near us, and he’s in charge too—the Goldberg family. He’s in charge of the whole food operation, basically.

11:56 Speaker 1 There’s a lot of kashrus work there, right?

11:57 Speaker 2 There are lots and lots of factories that need kashrus supervision. Yes, but—

11:59 Speaker 1 People here eat things, buy things in the supermarket, without actually knowing where they come from.

12:03 Speaker 2 Right, right, so there’s our kashrus supervision. Right—tuna, exactly. And naturally, a lot of religious, Charedi kashrus supervisors come to Thailand.

12:18 Speaker 1 So they also need Shabbos meals.

12:20 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. So let’s say the highlight of our activities, of my own family’s work, really is the Shabbos meals. As you started to say, they need Shabbos meals. I can describe the table at my house: at least—no fewer than fifty people. Forty-five, fifty, even sixty people.

12:42 Speaker 1 Wow.

12:42 Speaker 2 Before COVID, there were really a lot of people.

12:46 Speaker 1 That’s a production.

12:48 Speaker 2 Yes, right, it’s a production. It’s already—

12:50 Speaker 1 An event.

12:51 Speaker 2 Right, right. But my husband has a lovely way of describing our Shabbos table: it starts like Jabotinsky Street, in Bnei Brak, and ends in Ramat Gan.

13:02 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s beautiful.

13:03 Speaker 2 Yes, because—and this is something special—you can have kashrus supervisors from every kind of hechsher sitting on one side of the table, the left side. Really, every kind of hechsher. They might not even meet or speak to one another back in Israel. And as you go down the table, you get to people who are really—

13:26 Speaker 1 The whole spectrum.

13:26 Speaker 2 Distant, yes, from all across the spectrum. They really enjoy coming and experiencing this warm, welcoming, delicious, family-style Shabbos table. It truly feels like a family gathering, because it’s inside our home, in the living room. The whole living room changes before Shabbos: we move the sofas, add tables, and shift the dining table around the living room. The entire house really changes. But the added value is simply incredible, incredible, incredible. So many people enjoy that feeling of home and family, and it does so much. A lot of families from the community come too. One woman told me, “Ruchy, when I come to your house on Friday, I feel like I’ve come to my mother’s.”

14:18 Speaker 1 Wow, how moving to hear that.

14:19 Speaker 2 It’s that feeling of home, of having a good time, of—

14:24 Speaker 1 Wow.

14:24 Speaker 2 It’s a really lovely experience.

14:26 Speaker 1 And you’re meeting people from every part of the population. That’s—

14:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:32 Speaker 1 Let’s say a woman listening to you here thinks, “Wow, I’d love to take part in a meal like that.” There’s nothing like it in Israel.

14:37 Speaker 2 Right.

14:38 Speaker 1 She has to travel to Thailand.

14:39 Speaker 2 Right. You’re welcome to come.

14:41 Speaker 1 Be careful—it’ll get crowded. But really, it’s something extraordinary.

14:45 Speaker 2 And these days, all sorts of families stay with us too. Just people who come on a trip and want to be near a community rather than in a travelers’ area. Because Shabbos meals with travelers have a different character.

14:56 Speaker 1 Yes.

14:57 Speaker 2 They simply show up. I don’t even know—let’s start with the fact that on Thursday, I don’t know how many people I’m preparing for. I don’t know. My nephew and I are always discussing, “Okay, so who’s coming for Shabbos?” I know which families from the community I’ve invited or who’s told me they’re coming. But beyond that, guests can suddenly walk in—people I didn’t know were coming, whose names I don’t know, whom I’ve never met. Then a conversation develops as we go along, and—

15:27 Speaker 1 Have you developed tricks for—

15:28 Speaker 2 It’s really nice.

15:28 Speaker 1 “Oops, twenty more guests two hours before Shabbos.”

15:32 Speaker 2 I don’t—let’s say I prepare a set amount of food, and we never run out. For fish, I’ll make at least five salmon fillets, and I have a set amount of chicken too. We never run out. At some point I stopped worrying about those numbers, but sometimes, really—

15:57 Speaker 1 Because you see that in the end, there really is—

15:58 Speaker 2 Yes, because no one is going to leave hungry. And I’ve learned the trick, too: people enjoy the salads and fish more. So I make at least twelve kinds of salad.

16:09 Speaker 1 Wow.

16:11 Speaker 2 And then people eat less of the main course, because they’re already full.

16:16 Speaker 1 Full, yes.

16:17 Speaker 2 Yes, so that’s where I put in the effort. Yes, really—

16:20 Speaker 1 Wow. You know, this is fascinating in itself—it’s a separate podcast—but hearing about all the different kinds of Chabad Houses... People hear “a Chabad House abroad” and think they’re all the same. Sometimes they even come in and say, “Wait, you don’t have such-and-such?” But every Chabad House has such a different style.

16:35 Speaker 2 Right, right.

16:35 Speaker 1 In Ukraine, for example, it’s aimed at the local community, and we’d love to have tourists. If only we had a little of that—something interesting and completely different. It’s just fascinating to hear about the differences and how each place operates.

16:49 Speaker 2 Right. I think it depends on the nature of the place, because every place has its own character. For us in Thailand, the main thing is the travelers who come to tour, including people who’ve finished their army service and come to let loose, enjoy the beaches and everything else Thailand has to offer. That’s the kind of people who come.

17:12 Speaker 1 Have you ever come across Jewish Thais? Is there some small percentage, or does that not exist?

17:20 Speaker 2 That almost doesn’t exist. No, there really aren’t any. We haven’t met any, unless someone converts.

17:27 Speaker 1 Yes, but—

17:28 Speaker 2 And then that’s a different story, a different niche. There have been a few isolated cases, yes.

17:38 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s interesting. So the local population doesn’t really figure into your work, because they aren’t—

17:42 Speaker 2 Right, we really don’t work with—exactly. No, we don’t work with Thai people in that sense at all. We just enjoy the services they provide.

17:50 Speaker 1 Why not? At least...

17:51 Speaker 2 Yes. Thai people are very gracious. You go out and experience something that doesn’t exist here. For example, you go to the supermarket, and there’s someone at the entrance to help carry your bags. You get to your building, and there’s a guard and a shopping cart. The guard takes the things out of your car, loads them onto the cart and brings it to the elevator for you. So—

18:15 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s service.

18:16 Speaker 2 Absolutely. They’re very gracious people. They really give you the feeling that they were created to serve you. That’s the feeling. And they always greet you with their hands together and a bow, as is the Thai custom.

18:30 Speaker 1 That’s how it should be. “The world was created for me.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu created them so that you could do what you need to do.

18:36 Speaker 2 And here it feels so strange. It’s so different. When I come here, suddenly you have to do everything yourself—carry things, and—

18:41 Speaker 1 Wait, what? You have to peel the potatoes yourself before putting them in the pot?

18:45 Speaker 2 So at home, I have help. I have a regular helper who’s learned the whole routine of preparing for Shabbos. She’s really skilled at it now. She goes to the market for me on Wednesday, and she does most of the shopping. We get chicken and meat from our kosher store, which is inside a dairy restaurant called J Cafe. It’s become a real gathering spot for all the Israelis. It opened three or four years ago, before COVID, and it has a dairy restaurant and a store with kosher products—things from Israel.

19:30 Speaker 1 Do you find that the Israelis there keep kosher? Not necessarily because of the kashrus, but because it’s familiar to them, it’s their language, so—

19:40 Speaker 2 Yes. That’s why we always try to keep the shelves and refrigerators stocked with cottage cheese and five-percent cheese from Israel. People really enjoy it. Even people who always used to buy meat and chicken at the supermarket have said, “No, your quality and the beautiful packaging…” I mean—

20:00 Speaker 1 A kashrus campaign.

20:01 Speaker 2 “I’ve started buying only from you.” I’ve heard that from several people. They don’t necessarily keep strictly kosher. Most of them, let’s say, aren’t particular about cholov Yisroel the way we Chabad people are. They have no problem buying something at the supermarket that’s kosher but isn’t cholov Yisroel.

20:23 Speaker 1 There’s a lot available, yes.

20:24 Speaker 2 Yes, there’s a lot, and a lot of variety. But when they can get the things from Israel—the yogurts and the dairy desserts—that does it for them.

20:34 Speaker 1 That does the trick.

20:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:36 Speaker 1 What’s it like raising children in Thailand?

20:39 Speaker 2 Oh, wow. What’s it like raising children in Thailand? Maybe we really should go back to the beginning. We arrived on shlichus five years after our wedding, with two children: a three-year-old boy and a girl of a year and a half. At first, it was hard for them to adjust. The three-year-old really remembered his preschool and the—

20:57 Speaker 1 They weren’t born into it.

20:58 Speaker 2 Right, they weren’t born into shlichus. Later they grew up there. We have a Chabad preschool, and our Chabad school as well. It’s small, warm and good, with classes based on the children’s ages. We don’t have every grade every year.

21:19 Speaker 1 Small classes, right?

21:20 Speaker 2 Exactly. It depends on their ages—

21:22 Speaker 1 You have to know when to be born.

21:23 Speaker 2 You have to know when to be born, exactly. And you know, it’s happened many times to us and to all the shluchim’s families that there’s one girl in a class of boys, or one boy in a class of girls.

21:35 Speaker 1 That’s no good. You need to coordinate.

21:37 Speaker 2 Are you kidding? In my son’s year—

21:40 Speaker 1 No, that happened to us later. Three of us were pregnant at the same time, and suddenly there were two boys and a girl. Wait, what do we do?

21:45 Speaker 2 What’s that girl going to do? So our children study together through fourth grade, until age nine. From age nine, the boys and girls are separate. One year, in my youngest son’s age group, all of us shluchos had boys.

22:04 Speaker 1 Well done.

22:05 Speaker 2 So that was a successful year, and this year they’re bar mitzvah age.

22:07 Speaker 1 That really makes it easier—

22:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

22:09 Speaker 1 Every child matters so much when there are—

22:11 Speaker 2 Very much, very much.

22:12 Speaker 1 When you can count them on one hand, and…

22:15 Speaker 2 So they study in that school until… Let’s start there, because this is one of the challenges of shlichus.

22:21 Speaker 1 Wow.

22:21 Speaker 2 It’s really challenging.

22:22 Speaker 1 The challenge.

22:23 Speaker 2 The challenge. The boys stay at home until around bar mitzvah, and then they go to study in Israel.

22:32 Speaker 1 In yeshivah.

22:33 Speaker 2 In yeshivah, or sometimes not yet in yeshivah. Sometimes they went to do their last year of cheder and lived with their grandmother in Kfar Chabad. The girls leave after ninth grade, before starting tenth.

22:44 Speaker 1 As much time at home as possible.

22:45 Speaker 2 As much as possible. And they studied in a very small group. There were three girls in my oldest daughter’s class: my daughter, the daughter of the Vilel[?] family, and Rabbi Kantor’s daughter.

22:54 Speaker 1 And they all stayed together through ninth grade, and…

22:57 Speaker 2 Yes. At the end of ninth grade, they went to Israel.

22:58 Speaker 1 What a transition. And you’re a ten-hour flight away from home.

23:02 Speaker 2 Right.

23:02 Speaker 1 It’s not—

23:03 Speaker 2 It’s not as though your daughter can come home for the weekend. But there’s nothing to do about it. It’s…

23:09 Speaker 1 Part of it.

23:09 Speaker 2 It’s part of life. I think that if we look for the good in every situation, it really helps the girls mature. It gives them the independence to manage on their own, because now they have to take care of themselves. My oldest daughter studied in Kfar Chabad and lived with my mother-in-law. My second daughter studies in the Krayot, at a Chabad girls’ boarding school for the daughters of shluchim. That’s another kind of independence: suddenly getting around on their own, taking buses and trains. It simply helps them grow up.

23:47 Speaker 1 First of all, they have to get to know the country and learn to manage on their own.

23:52 Speaker 2 Right, because they grew up in Thailand. They grew up somewhere else.

23:56 Speaker 1 Wow.

23:57 Speaker 2 And they do it bravely.

23:58 Speaker 1 [unclear]

23:59 Speaker 2 Yes. Later, with my third pregnancy, I gave birth to twins in Thailand, a boy and a girl. Then I had another daughter, also in Thailand—the one who’s studying now. My youngest son was born in Israel.

24:13 Speaker 1 What’s it like giving birth in Thailand?

24:13 Speaker 2 My children are thirteen. A dream. A dream, plain and simple.

24:18 Speaker 1 Wow.

24:18 Speaker 2 Even twenty-one years ago, it was wonderful. Thailand has advanced; it isn’t the same Thailand we arrived in. It was simply a dream. Private medical care.

24:27 Speaker 1 Because you can actually compare. You’ve experienced both.

24:29 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. The hospital is private, so you have all the comforts. The doctors are Thai, but they did their professional training outside Thailand. They’re very knowledgeable, and you really can rely on them. And then there’s the pampering you get in Thailand. During your hospital stay, you have a private room. When I gave birth to the twins, I’d had a C-section, and the nurses would bring them to me from the nursery. They would sit with me in the room until I’d finished nursing them. It was as though they were there just for me.

25:08 Speaker 1 Wow. Does every woman who gives birth get that treatment?

25:10 Speaker 2 Yes. And the proof is that when my daughter gave birth, she came to Thailand to have her baby.

25:16 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

25:16 Speaker 2 So you know it’s a treat.

25:18 Speaker 1 You wouldn’t want to give that up.

25:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:20 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s amazing, because people imagine that—

25:23 Speaker 2 Exactly.

25:24 Speaker 1 Israel, Israel, Israel.

25:25 Speaker 2 No, people also imagine that when they hear “Thailand,” it sounds like a third-world country. But it really isn’t. It’s developed in every way. I’ve seen it develop over the years I’ve been there: big malls, tall buildings, complex road networks, everything. It’s not an underdeveloped country at all.

25:47 Speaker 1 Not what people imagine when they hear the name.

25:48 Speaker 2 Right, exactly. That’s what they imagine, but it’s really not like that. And… it’s a great place.

25:56 Speaker 1 Let’s go back to the twins. Let’s shift away from Thailand for a moment and talk about the incredible story you went through with your daughter, one of the twins. So—

26:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:08 Speaker 1 A boy and a girl.

26:08 Speaker 2 Yes, a boy and a girl. They were born more than twenty years ago.

26:13 Speaker 1 Wow.

26:14 Speaker 2 Yes, in Cheshvan, on 11 Cheshvan. A wonderful boy and girl. Their names are Berel and Mussi, and they grew up as sweet, healthy children. But when my daughter Mussi was six, at the end of first grade, we suddenly noticed in Thailand that something wasn’t right with her. I don’t know—she was getting tired all the time, really tired. Once, and then again, she seemed to faint. When things got a little worse, we suddenly noticed that something looked off with her eyes. I took her to doctors, we had her checked, and they told me something—I don’t know—

27:08 Speaker 1 [unclear]

27:09 Speaker 2 The year before, the previous summer, we got her glasses because she had a lazy eye. They told me, I don’t know, that her prescription had changed a bit. “Let’s change her prescription here and there.” Fine, I got her new glasses, we changed the prescription somehow, but I don’t know—my mother’s heart felt that something wasn’t right. I was about to ask them to do an MRI or a CT scan or something, but the hand of Divine Providence led me otherwise, and they wouldn’t agree to do it. We had a flight planned to Israel because my brother-in-law, my husband’s younger brother, was getting married. So I flew to Israel. I remember it as if it were today. It was fourteen years ago, on a Sunday afternoon. An afternoon flight. We landed in Israel at ten-thirty, eleven at night, and the whole family came to—my sister and my mother-in-law came to meet us. As soon as they saw my daughter, they were really alarmed. Something told them something was wrong. On the way from the airport, she threw up. And I don’t know. My mother-in-law said to me, “Don’t you notice? Something’s wrong with Mussi.” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. They said everything was fine in Thailand; she looked fine.” We landed, as I said, on Sunday evening. On Tuesday there was the Chabad women’s conference. Even back in Thailand, I’d told the children, “You should know, this is an annual conference, once a year, and I’m going.” I’d told them in advance. Then my mother-in-law said, “Come on, let’s get her checked.” We went to the health clinic in Kfar Chabad, without my daughter. We’d put her straight into a kindergarten in Kfar Chabad. The doctor said, “Well, if that’s the case, take her back to the eye doctor who saw her last year.” Fine, we said.

29:00 Speaker 2 Okay, fine. We went back to that eye doctor. I had an appointment on the day of the conference. That evening I went to the conference and sat there. The theme of the conference was trust in Hashem. They spoke a great deal about trusting Him in every circumstance, in every situation, and trying to see the hand of Divine Providence. I remember a shlucha spoke about her own experience with illness and how much she’d tried to see the positive side of everything. I really enjoyed it. I drew so much strength from that conference. I went to the doctor with my sister. We were at a wedding and were practically pulled away from it. The doctor looked at Mussi and examined her, and he said to me, “Ruchi, she needs—” I mean, “Ma’am, come, she needs an MRI.” So I got there, and he said, “All right, make her an appointment for an MRI,” and so on. The process here in Israel is different from what we’re used to in Thailand, again. The next morning I went to the pediatrician to get a referral for the MRI. This time I brought Mussi with me, and as soon as the doctor saw her, she said, “Ruchi, you go straight from here to Schneider. No MRI, no letter. Go to Schneider right now.” So I went. My husband wasn’t with me; he’d stayed in Thailand. I went straight there with my family—my wonderful sister, my brother-in-law and my mother-in-law. We sat there, and because she was seven and a half, by the time we got through the ER and everything, she’d eaten. They told me she now had to fast for six hours so they could anesthetize her for the MRI, because a child in her condition, we couldn’t...

30:59 Speaker 3 We had to put her under.

31:00 Speaker 2 We had to put her under. So, okay, spend the next six hours with her, waiting until they can anesthetize her. Those six hours passed, with every minute feeling like an eternity. I went to take her for—sorry, it wasn’t even an MRI, it was a CT scan. I was about to go in with her for the CT, but I was in the early stages of pregnancy, so I couldn’t go in with her. She came out, and within an hour or two, we found out, right there in black and white. The doctor sat down with me and told me very plainly that she had a tumor in her brainstem.

31:42 Speaker 3 Wow.

31:42 Speaker 2 A tumor.

31:43 Speaker 3 To hear that without your husband there.

31:45 Speaker 2 Without him. I was with my family, as I said—my sister, my brother-in-law, my mother-in-law—but my husband was far away. He was in the middle of negotiations to buy the property for the Chabad House in Phuket. I reached him there in Phuket, and it hit him completely out of the blue, as they say. What do you do now? There were several things we had to deal with at once. So the first thing—

32:19 Speaker 3 First of all, you didn’t even live here.

32:20 Speaker 2 We didn’t live here. What were we going to do? We’d come for a wedding. I had arrived a month, a few weeks, before the wedding. The wedding was—this was right at the beginning of Tammuz. We can now mark fourteen years. The wedding was after Tisha B’Av, but the question was, what do we do now? The first thing, obviously, was to turn everything over and find out what could be done. That was Thursday evening. By Friday morning my husband had landed in Israel. We were at Schneider, and on Sunday we sat down for another meeting with the doctor. He told us that children in her condition don’t survive even a year. The sky just fell on us. Really. You can’t imagine. I remember my husband saying to me, “Hashem will help. That won’t happen to us.” Then you run from doctor to doctor, trying to find the best treatment, consulting Rabbi Firer with all the findings, asking what to do. We were plunged into a whirlwind of treatments. In fact, there wasn’t very much they could do because of where the tumor was. They couldn’t operate; it was too dangerous. What they did do was start radiation treatments, with anesthesia every day. You have to bring your child in to be put under, and at the same time they gave her a lot of steroids, which completely threw her off. First of all, they made her swell up, and they disrupted everything. They increase your appetite. In short, it was really difficult, and I won’t go through all the stories. And then there were the other children. It was clear that we weren’t going back to Thailand in this situation, so we began a kind of routine in Israel. The school year started, and the children went into schools here—kindergartens, cheder, school. At one point, when Mussi felt well enough and had the strength, she even started school in Kfar Chabad.

34:46 Speaker 3 In second grade, actually.

34:46 Speaker 2 In second grade, yes. She went into second grade, and to this day I remember the teacher, who gave her so much and welcomed her so warmly, and the girls and her friends. Somehow we got through that year and carried on with our lives in Israel, and—

35:05 Speaker 3 Somewhere in the middle of all that, you gave birth.

35:07 Speaker 2 That’s right. I gave birth in Shvat, and that, too, was something truly heavenly. Let’s say that in my heart I was asking, “What does Hakadosh Boruch Hu want from me? If You’re giving me this kind of challenge, with a child who’s ill, in a place that isn’t my own...” We were living in my mother-in-law’s house. She opened her home to us. She really is a wonderful woman with a big, loving heart. We simply moved right into her home, and we brought in a foreign caregiver and everything. And...

35:39 Speaker 3 For an unknown length of time.

35:40 Speaker 2 For an unknown length of time. And the children missed their home so much. You know, I realized something very interesting then. A lot of shluchim live in different places around the world, and sometimes they feel that their children are missing out in some ways—on family, on uncles and aunts and grandparents, on having friends, if the community is small or they don’t even have a community. But when that place is a child’s home, and they feel they have a meaningful life, a life in which they give and do things, they miss that home. They miss that very life, too. Even when they’re now in Israel, with everything Israel has to offer, all the comforts and all the delicious food and everything. But...

36:29 Speaker 3 That’s nice for a week or two.

36:30 Speaker 2 Yes, but for us, let’s say, it was a kind of uncertainty. Suddenly there would be urgent calls, hospitalizations, and the children had to deal with it all. Their way of knowing how things stood was whether their father went back to Thailand. He was in constant contact, but if he traveled, it meant Mussi was doing better and her condition allowed it. We coped, and as I said, I was at the beginning of my pregnancy. During that year I gave birth to our youngest son, and it really was an extremely difficult challenge. The day I gave birth—just a week before that, her condition had worsened. The day before the birth, I was sitting with her at the doctor’s office, and the doctor told me, “We need another MRI to check. I think we’re heading into another round of radiation.” I said, “What do I do? I’m going. That’s it, I’m going to give birth.” It was a scheduled delivery. I had chosen the date and knew I was going in for surgery. But what could I do? On the morning of the birth, I went to give birth with my sisters, and my husband took her for the radiation-planning session. Those really were difficult periods in our lives. When I look back today, I say, wow, where did the strength come from? Because in the middle of it, you’re running on autopilot. You just function because you have to. You know how many places I went while I was pregnant—to radiation treatments and all sorts of other places? I simply didn’t feel pregnant. I remember saying, “Wow, it’s such a natural thing.” I didn’t even remember what week I was in. I think I went to the doctor maybe twice. I just didn’t know. No, I didn’t remember. I was simply running on autopilot. But in situations like that, you really do receive strength you never knew you had. Strengths emerge in you—to give attention to the children who, baruch Hashem, are healthy, while you’re in a state of worry.

38:28 Speaker 3 So they can stay sane.

38:29 Speaker 2 So they can stay sane, and also care for a sick child, and give birth as well.

38:34 Speaker 3 And take care of yourself.

38:35 Speaker 2 And take care of myself.

38:37 Speaker 3 A mother holding all of that together.

38:38 Speaker 2 And during the birth, the whole family told me, “That’s it. Now you need to disconnect from Mussi.” You know, during her illness she asked us to call her Chayush Chaya, because she wanted so much to live. She just wanted to live. And I had to care for her, too. She always radiated this desire for life. So we went about everything with the feeling that there would be life here, that we would live and survive and get through it.

39:11 Speaker 3 On the one hand, that keeps you going. And today, looking back, how do you feel about it? I mean—

39:16 Speaker 2 You really say, wow, how did I function? How did I survive? You know, sometimes, because these are dates in the year, when those dates come around—

39:24 Speaker 3 Every date is a trigger.

39:25 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a trigger. And you say, wow, how did I survive that? There are superhuman strengths within us that really reveal themselves in difficult situations, in situations as challenging as those.

39:40 Speaker 3 If someone had asked you beforehand whether you could cope with something like that—

39:43 Speaker 2 Who could have imagined it? Who even dreams of such a thing? And what really sustained us was the shlichus. That sense that we had to go back there. I’ll tell you something else. Before we traveled to Israel, before we discovered that our daughter was ill, a woman who had been growing closer to Yiddishkeit was sitting in my living room. She said to me, “Tell me, Ruchi, what would bring you back to Israel? Could anything ever bring you back? What would make you decide to close up and return to Israel?” I ran through different things in my mind. I said, “You know what? I don’t know what to tell you, but let’s hope that if we ever do need to return, it will be for good reasons, for good things,” or something like that.

40:29 Speaker 3 That’s a very important thing.

40:29 Speaker 2 Then I said, “No, nothing—nothing would bring me back to Israel.” And that year we were there, we didn’t live with the feeling that we were settling in Israel. We felt we were there for a limited time, and the shlichus would sustain us. Through all kinds of unpleasant situations, sudden emergencies, hospitalizations, and all sorts of things—we were going back to the shlichus. It was clear and understood that we would return to the shlichus. During that year, we also dreamed of taking her with us. She really, really wanted to go and missed home. We thought about traveling for Pesach. By then she was not in good physical condition: half her body was paralyzed, and she was in a wheelchair. We consulted the doctor. She said, “Listen, medically she’s fit to travel. It can be done. But if you’re asking whether it’s advisable—after all, it’s a ten-hour flight—I wouldn’t do it.” So we set the idea aside. We also dreamed of taking her to the Rebbe, and that didn’t happen. But it was clear to us that whatever happened, we would return to the shlichus. That was clear.

41:46 Speaker 3 You were here temporarily, for a specific situation, and—

41:49 Speaker 2 A difficult situation, a painful situation, yes. And time passed. When my little one was four months old, in the month of Sivan, on 25 Sivan, sadly, our Mussi returned her soul to Hashem. It was truly hard. It was very hard to watch her, but also to watch the way she faced it. She never complained, never asked, “What are they doing to me? It hurts,” or anything like that. And you know, she was a shlucha with all her heart and soul. She was born on shlichus, and she truly was a shlucha. I can tell you something that happened during her treatments. It was Sukkos. She was receiving radiation treatments, and you know, as Chabad chassidim, wherever you go on Sukkos, you take a lulav and esrog, the Four Species, to give people the opportunity to make the blessing. We arrived, and the nurses treating her had already become real friends of hers. There were also medical clowns who came to cheer the children up, and others. She offered them the chance to make the blessing over the Four Species. One of the nurses said, “What are the Four Species, anyway?” She didn’t even know. And my Mussi, as naturally as could be, handed them to her and said, “These are the Four Species we make a blessing over on Sukkos, and it’s Sukkos now. Come on.” And she stood there—

43:21 Speaker 3 A seven-year-old girl.

43:22 Speaker 2 Not even seven. She stood there and said the blessing with her, word by word. I remember thinking, as I watched from the side—I wasn’t directing the situation—wow, this is what it means to be a child who’s a shlucha from birth. Even while she was ill, even while she was in danger, she reached someone with such gentleness and sweetness. Afterward, on the way back, she said to me, “Mom, how can a woman her age not even know what it means to make a blessing over the Four Species?”

44:01 Speaker 3 What a description of her.

44:03 Speaker 2 Yes. She was so innocent and so special. But sadly, that’s what happened, and Hashem’s ways are hidden.

44:13 Speaker 3 What an ordeal.

44:14 Speaker 2 There are truly very hard questions. It’s a different kind of challenge in life. Suddenly there are questions like why this happened, and why the child had to suffer—questions we don’t always have answers to. And afterward the children asked very hard questions, too. But there aren’t answers.

44:35 Speaker 3 You had to strengthen the children and strengthen yourselves.

44:36 Speaker 2 Strengthen the children, and her twin as well. Because she had a twin, she is always part of our lives. On his birthday, it’s his birthday and hers, too. That’s how we keep going, trying to draw on the strength we need. There’s a letter the Rebbe sent after the terrorist attack at the vocational school in Kfar Chabad. In his letter of condolence to the families, he wrote, “You will find comfort in continuing your work.” I think that’s what truly gives us strength to this day. Even though thirteen years have passed—and since you asked why I’m in Israel, we actually came for her yahrzeit.

45:24 Speaker 3 Wow.

45:25 Speaker 2 The pain is still pain. The hole remains forever. But as they say, “You will find comfort in continuing your work.”

45:35 Speaker 3 You return to the work, and—

45:37 Speaker 2 You return to the work and to the shlichus. On the contrary, you spread her light—something she can no longer do herself. During that first year, around the time of her first yahrzeit—actually, no, it was earlier—our eldest son had his bar mitzvah. We held it in Thailand, and at the bar mitzvah it was decided that a Sefer Torah would be written. The decision to write a Sefer Torah in her memory came out of a farbrengen. And on what would have been her eleventh birthday, on 11 Cheshvan, we celebrated the hachnosas Sefer Torah.

46:21 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s a special date in its own right, not just—

46:23 Speaker 2 Yes. Right, 11 Cheshvan. And... it was an incredible event. When we organized it, my goal was that there wouldn’t be a single Jewish child in the community who didn’t come. Everyone had to be there. We publicized it, and I worked on it, and it really was an incredible, moving event. So many people contributed, and everyone felt it was their event. In a certain sense, it was her wedding.

46:55 Speaker 3 Wow, that must have brought up such mixed emotions—

46:57 Speaker 2 Yes. Very, very mixed.

47:00 Speaker 3 All in one evening.

47:01 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely. And at her older son’s bar mitzvah, we focused on a mitzvah she was especially careful about: tzedakah. We gave out tzedakah boxes with her picture on them and a message about the meaning of giving tzedakah. And even on her last Shabbos in this world, I said to her, “Chayush, we’re lighting candles. I’m lighting candles.” She was already in a haze, not really conscious. I put a coin in her hand and placed the tzedakah box in front of her. I helped her, and together we put the coin into the box. She was so careful about that mitzvah, and about davening. She was a little girl, a tzaddekes, but she davened like a young woman.

47:59 Speaker 3 Wow.

48:01 Speaker 2 So, if we’re here to leave people with a message—

48:08 Speaker 3 Of course.

48:08 Speaker 2 For everyone who’s heard me, perhaps we can take this point with us: even a little girl—or any of us—can look around and think, “What can I do for someone else?” We can pay attention to what’s happening around us and try to help however we can, whether it’s in times of joy or when people are facing challenges. And the person going through a challenge also needs to know how to accept help. Personally, it wasn’t easy for me to accept help.

48:53 Speaker 3 You were used to being the one who gives.

48:54 Speaker 2 Exactly. I was used to being the one who gives. But sometimes things aren’t simple, and you have to know how to accept help when you need it. We also need to be aware of what’s happening around us—with family, neighbors, wherever it may be. That’s something very strong that we established in Thailand in her memory and that continues to this day: the mitzvah of Shabbos candle-lighting for women and girls. Together with another shlucha, who came up with the idea, we taught the older girls to give out Shabbos candles—Neshek—at the Israeli embassy in Thailand every Friday. It’s been going on for years. We call it “A Taste of Shabbos,” and the shluchos take turns. Each week, someone else bakes cookies. That year’s older girls pack them in a beautiful box, and one of the shluchos who took this on writes a line connected to the weekly parsha. We add the candle-lighting time and give them out at the embassy. She goes there with her students to distribute them. The box says it’s in memory of Chaya Mushka Ashkenazi. We started it, and it has continued.

50:22 Speaker 3 Keeping her light going.

50:23 Speaker 2 Keeping her light going. When we celebrated her twin brother’s bar mitzvah, the joy was mixed with sadness. That stays with us throughout life. So we also gave Shabbos candles to the women there, for them to light that Shabbos in her memory.

50:46 Speaker 3 I think that, beyond taking a message from this, each of us can make a small commitment in her memory after hearing her story: to give tzedakah, or to encourage another woman to light Shabbos candles, so that—

50:58 Speaker 2 Right.

50:58 Speaker 3 Her work continues.

51:00 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

51:00 Speaker 3 Through all of us.

51:01 Speaker 2 Absolutely. That would truly be a blessing.

51:05 Speaker 3 Ruchi.

51:06 Speaker 2 And perhaps we can end on something positive.

51:08 Speaker 3 On an optimistic note.

51:09 Speaker 2 On an optimistic note, yes. Perhaps something about what shlichus is like. What does it mean to be a shlucha in a place like that? I can quote something Rabbi Kantor once told us. We had to perform a taharah for a woman who had passed away. It was the first time for me and two other shluchos, along with other women from the community. It was something we never imagined we would have to do.

51:42 Speaker 3 On shlichus, you find yourself—

51:44 Speaker 2 You simply do everything, yes. I’ll never forget the taxi ride back. Rabbi Kantor told us that being shluchim and shluchos is like being in an emergency room at a hospital: you do whatever needs to be done. It’s the same for a shlucha anywhere in the world. She does what’s needed in that moment. And although it’s not an official role, if we’re ending on an optimistic note, I’ve also been a doula more than once.

52:16 Speaker 3 Wow.

52:17 Speaker 2 So shlichus, as they say, is there from the moment of birth until a person finishes their purpose in this world.

52:24 Speaker 3 The Jewish life cycle.

52:25 Speaker 2 The Jewish life cycle, exactly. That’s really—

52:28 Speaker 3 Wow. So you’ve gone with women from the community when they gave birth, to support them?

52:33 Speaker 2 Yes. I was with a woman from the community a long time ago, several years back. They’ve since left Thailand and moved back to Israel. I’ve also been a doula for several shluchos—one for two births, and another for her first birth. Let’s just say it’s not something I studied. It comes naturally, and you do it because it needs to be done. In situations like that, too, you suddenly find the strength to encourage and support someone, to help, to give massages when needed.

53:06 Speaker 3 Suddenly, you do it all.

53:07 Speaker 2 Yes. And it’s an amazing, amazing, amazing experience.

53:10 Speaker 3 Wow. So shlichus really means, “Where am I needed? What do they need me to do? I’m there.”

53:14 Speaker 2 Exactly. Wherever—yes, exactly.

53:16 Speaker 3 You were created to...

53:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

53:18 Speaker 3 Fulfill a particular purpose.

53:20 Speaker 2 Exactly. To be there for whatever needs to be done and whoever needs you. And I think giving in that way gives you so much in return. It strengthens you, and suddenly you discover, “Wow, I can do this, and this too.” I’ll tell you honestly: when I was younger, I had stage fright. Even when I arrived in Thailand, I thought, “How am I going to speak in front of an audience?” But then life—

53:50 Speaker 3 You work on it and discover you can.

53:51 Speaker 2 You work on it and discover so many strengths. Today I do it; I give classes. I also organize women’s evenings for the women in the community, which is something really nice and worthwhile. It takes a great deal of work to reach out and make sure many women come. And even if you’ve worked hard on an evening and only a few come, you can’t get discouraged. You have to say, “The women who came heard and received what they needed to hear.”

54:23 Speaker 3 Even if it’s just one woman.

54:24 Speaker 2 Yes, even one woman. One person is an entire world. So—

54:29 Speaker 3 Moshe Rabbeinu had one mother.

54:31 Speaker 2 Exactly.

54:33 Speaker 3 You step out of your comfort zone for someone else, and in the end, you discover things about yourself you never knew were there. Strengths—

54:41 Speaker 2 Exactly.

54:41 Speaker 3 Talents, abilities—

54:44 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

54:44 Speaker 3 That’s the gift we receive through being shluchim.

54:47 Speaker 2 Exactly. That’s just how it is.

54:49 Speaker 3 And that applies in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, too—

54:52 Speaker 2 Exactly.

54:52 Speaker 3 And Be’er Sheva.

54:53 Speaker 2 Exactly.

54:54 Speaker 3 Not only abroad.

54:54 Speaker 2 That’s exactly what I was going to say. Every person, every woman, everyone has something to give and contribute. It doesn’t matter where on the globe they live—in which city, place or country. Everyone can give and help if we simply open our eyes, pay a little more attention, and listen to what’s happening around us. We can really accomplish a lot—

55:21 Speaker 3 By looking around us.

55:21 Speaker 2 By giving and doing.

55:24 Speaker 3 Ruchi, there’s no way to sum up a conversation like this. Thank you so much. I hope every woman who heard you takes the strength she gained from you and carries it forward, because it’s a circle that never ends. May those merits stand by you and be in memory of—

55:42 Speaker 2 Chaya Mushka bas Chaim Eliezer. Yes.

55:45 Speaker 3 And...

55:45 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

55:46 Speaker 3 May we merit to see Moshiach come already, and with Hashem’s help, you’ll be reunited very soon.

55:51 Speaker 2 Amen. Amen and amen.

55:51 Speaker 3 Thank you, Ruchi.

55:52 Speaker 2 Amen and amen.

55:53 Speaker 3 Thank you.

55:54 Speaker 2 May we hear good news, and may everyone have only good.

55:56 Speaker 3 Amen.