Episode 15: "You Can Be Everything You Want in Your Life, Just Not in the Same Decade" | With Chani Friedman, Chabad shlucha in Ashdod

00:00 Speaker 1 How can you develop expertise in the fields you’ve dreamed of while keeping up with the pace of life as a mother of a large family, running a Chabad House at the same time, and not forgetting to enjoy life itself? Join me for a fun chat over coffee with Chani Friedman, a Chabad shlucha in Ashdod, who gives us a glimpse into a life of shlichus in the fullest sense of the word. 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 them, help each of us find and define our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created for is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a way of life. Let’s begin. Welcome, Chani Friedman from Ashdod. Or have I already introduced you? Go ahead, introduce yourself.

01:02 Speaker 2 Well, nice to meet you. I’m Chani, a shlucha in Ashdod. Baruch Hashem, I’m a mother to a blessed family of fourteen children.

01:08 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:09 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem. I do a great many things in my life. My main focus today is my shlichus, and I’m really trying to develop my expertise in it, to gather ideas and add to them, and also to be a shlucha for other shluchos—to bring new ideas and get new things going. There’s the International Kinus Hashluchos, where I’ve been privileged, baruch Hashem, to be involved in the Hebrew-language programming, making it accessible and helping bring, baruch Hashem, many more shluchos—

01:39 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

01:40 Speaker 2 —to the Kinus each year. Yes, when we started, there were fifty. Today we’re talking about at least five hundred.

01:46 Speaker 1 Right, I remember the days when... That’s what I know, anyway.

01:49 Speaker 2 No, but when I first started going, about sixteen years ago, there were maybe fifty Hebrew speakers. Today they make up a very substantial part of the Kinus, and baruch Hashem, it’s taken a lot of work and a lot of partners along the way, but baruch Hashem.

02:05 Speaker 1 A woman of many accomplishments, in a few words.

02:08 Speaker 2 Ah.

02:08 Speaker 1 I’m saying.

02:09 Speaker 2 You.

02:10 Speaker 1 Tell me, a Chabad House in Ashdod—why is it needed? We know that if I travel to Thailand, I don’t have kosher food. So they open a Chabad House for me—how wonderful! There’s kosher food, and I can even spend Shabbos there. But what do people need you for in Ashdod? I mean, why?

02:26 Speaker 2 Excellent question. Really—

02:27 Speaker 1 And not just in Ashdod—there are Chabad Houses all over the country.

02:28 Speaker 2 A lot of people ask what role Chabad shluchim have in Israel at all. And by the way, there are more than 1,200 shluchim throughout the country today.

02:35 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s huge.

02:36 Speaker 2 A huge number! That may be a fifth of all the shluchim in the world.

02:40 Speaker 1 Yes, even more.

02:40 Speaker 2 And they’re right here in Israel. So what is our role here? As an aside, I’ll mention that the Rebbe sent my family here from the United States. Maybe we’ll come back to that shortly. But it’s a question we’re asked from time to time, and the answer is that we serve as a bridge to Judaism and mitzvos for the broader public. Yes, there’s the Rabbinate, and yes, there’s kosher food, but Judaism is much, much, much more than that. Judaism has far more depth and meaning. Unfortunately, here in Israel, Judaism has often taken on a very political character. The chareidi parties—and whether rightly or wrongly, the demands for funding and things like that—can make the average person think, “Wait, what do I have to do with Judaism?” It feels unpleasant, and very political, or like something old-fashioned that belongs to their grandparents. I’ll never forget the look on one bride’s face when I opened the door. She was stunned. “What? I thought I’d meet some older woman. Suddenly I see someone who looks...” Yes.

03:45 Speaker 1 Well, that improved Judaism’s image.

03:48 Speaker 2 It’s about making Judaism accessible to every person, wholeheartedly. And there’s always room for us to grow, too. Even if you’re already Jewish, and even if you’re observant and have been raised that way from birth, there’s Chassidus. Chassidus has so, so much to contribute even to a Jew who was born into a Torah-observant home, has always kept Shabbos, and has never dreamed of not keeping Shabbos or Yom Tov. Chassidus comes along with so much to add, so much depth and meaning to give. That’s part of our role as well. We see it in practice. By the way, today there are Chabad Houses specifically for chareidi neighborhoods whose “mission,” let’s call it, is to make Chassidus accessible and bring it into people’s lives. Not to make them change their affiliation. If someone is a chossid of a particular Rebbe, we’re not going to tell him, “Now you have to become a Chabad chossid.” No. Within what you already do, the way you live your everyday life, add the wonderful flavor of Chassidus. You’ll feel much, much better and much more connected, rather than doing things merely out of habit. So there are Chabad Houses in religious and chareidi communities too. It’s about bringing Judaism to people with love and with all our hearts, just as the Rebbe taught us.

05:05 Speaker 3 Yes.

05:06 Speaker 2 All the time.

05:07 Speaker 3 Twelve hundred locations means a lot of neighborhoods, too.

05:10 Speaker 2 Right.

05:10 Speaker 3 And lots of small communities, because how many large cities are there in Israel?

05:14 Speaker 2 In Ashdod, for example, there are already eighteen shluchim today, and it’s nowhere near enough.

05:19 Speaker 3 For some reason, I had about eight in mind.

05:21 Speaker 2 No, we have eighteen, bli ayin hara, but it’s nowhere near enough. The more we do, even in our particular district—the city center, the Kirya district, which includes City Hall, government and public offices, shops, malls, and so on—the more we see what’s needed. We have a written work plan that we put together, with Hashem’s help, setting goals for the coming years. We want to bring in at least five more shluchim, with Hashem’s help: for French speakers and Russian speakers, for teenagers and for the offices, to give Torah classes and run activities, and so on. And for this part of the district and that part of the district. In other words, there’s no end to it. On the contrary, the more involved you get, the more you suddenly see that you need more people; more needs to be done. In recent years, Chabad Houses have become quite specialized—niche Chabad Houses, I’d call them. There’s Chabad at the hospital, Chabad on Campus, CTeen. In the past, one shliach would do all of those things. Over the years, you suddenly realize—and the shluchim realize too—that it simply isn’t possible. There’s so much work, so much to do. There’s a limit to how many people we can reach and help. The more shluchim we bring in, the more Jews we’ll be able to reach, connect with and help, with Hashem’s help.

06:37 Speaker 3 Focusing on one particular area must also make such a difference. If you work just with the hospital, then you’re focused on it, and you’re actually able to do so much more.

06:46 Speaker 2 Absolutely, absolutely. At the hospital in our city, for example, it’s my brother and sister-in-law who run it. They work with the patients who come in: this one needs tefillin, that one needs a meal, someone else needs help with something—even before someone passes away, Hashem protect us—and all kinds of things like that. And they work with the staff, too. The medical staff have needs of their own, including similar things: one person wants their tefillin checked, another needs help with something, another wants to write to the Rebbe, and—

07:14 Speaker 3 That’s a whole community of people in itself.

07:15 Speaker 2 A whole community in itself.

07:17 Speaker 3 Just in terms of the numbers in Israel: I remember coming to Israel on one occasion and visiting a cousin of mine who’s a shlucha in a neighborhood here. I said, “You could really have a shliach for every building.”

07:26 Speaker 2 Right.

07:26 Speaker 3 In principle, especially with the size of buildings these days.

07:29 Speaker 2 Oh, the towers they have!

07:30 Speaker 3 Hundreds of people in a single building. Someone goes out to a village in Ukraine to serve fewer people than that.

07:36 Speaker 2 Fewer Jews.

07:36 Speaker 3 Yes.

07:36 Speaker 2 Right. Just our residential complex—a row of buildings around a huge, huge courtyard—has 450 families.

07:45 Speaker 3 Families. So thousands of people.

07:47 Speaker 2 Families means thousands of people. So yes, do the math. And when I talk about the entire district, there are also the needs of different language groups, different communities and different ages. We have so, so, so, so, so, so much work. The more we—

08:00 Speaker 3 In short, there’s no shortage of work.

08:01 Speaker 2 No shortage at all.

08:02 Speaker 3 There are also the public events. I think Chabad provides something people need through the Chabad Houses in Israel. I don’t know—take a Lag BaOmer parade, for example.

08:08 Speaker 2 Yes, so there are the big events around... I call it the cycle of the year and the cycle of life.

08:13 Speaker 3 Yes.

08:13 Speaker 2 So the cycle of the year is everything around the holidays, including the things Chabad is really famous for: the parades and the huge public menorah lightings. By the way, it’s amazing to see how these things are spreading beyond Chabad, and it makes me so happy. Every time I—

08:29 Speaker 3 As though it’s just obvious that they exist.

08:30 Speaker 2 Yes. Suddenly I’ll be walking past stores and see stands for putting on tefillin that aren’t run by Chabad. Sometimes they’re run by private individuals, sometimes by other organizations. I look at them and think, wow. I remember my father telling me about the early years, and I’ve heard even more from Israelis who lived here then, how people would look at them and say, “What is this? Putting on tefillin in the middle of the day? What’s this craziness? Where did it come from?” And today it’s simply become...

08:52 Speaker 3 He broke through the...

08:53 Speaker 2 It’s completely become something everyone does. Completely. The same with Shabbos candles. Suddenly all kinds of people are handing them out at stands, women from all sorts of communities. It’s really heartening. On the contrary, it increases the light and increases...

09:05 Speaker 3 Yes.

09:05 Speaker 2 Increases the good. It’s amazing.

09:07 Speaker 3 Wow!

09:07 Speaker 2 So that’s the cycle of the year. And then we also have the cycle of life. When a baby is born, for example, there’s Shifra and Puah in so many places. In recent years it’s really blossomed all over the country.

09:19 Speaker 3 It’s become this thing people say: “If our community doesn’t have Shifra and Puah, we’re out of the loop.”

09:24 Speaker 2 We’re not keeping up. Yes. And then, as the years go by, there are bar mitzvahs and bas mitzvahs. Parents want to prepare their son or daughter; then there are weddings, and brides who come wanting guidance that’s more approachable or more extensive. At the rabbinate, they give them an hour, at best.

09:45 Speaker 3 Yes.

09:47 Speaker 2 And then you can choose which Rebbetzin to turn to and what to do. So there’s that, and later on too, and, G-d forbid, after 120 years. There are mourners; there are all kinds of needs. So there’s the cycle of life, the cycle of the year, and also every age group. Chabad Houses have—well, different Chabad Houses have different activities, of course, but if you go through them, you’ll see there really are things for every age: for babies, for toddlers.

10:12 Speaker 3 Educational institutions.

10:14 Speaker 2 That’s already the next stage. But yes, even activities like the Good Deeds Club, a bas mitzvah club, classes for teenagers, and later classes for adults.

10:26 Speaker 3 Challah-separating events.

10:27 Speaker 2 Yes, so, so many things.

10:28 Speaker 3 Wow.

10:28 Speaker 2 It never ends.

10:29 Speaker 3 When you break it down, it’s...

10:30 Speaker 2 It’s so much. People say, “What? What is there to do in Israel?” Even when I meet Chabad women who live in a community, they aren’t always...

10:40 Speaker 3 Right.

10:40 Speaker 2 Aware of the scope of everything that’s going on.

10:41 Speaker 3 If you’re not actually living it, then...

10:43 Speaker 2 And sometimes they have this mistaken idea and ask, “How many baalei teshuvah have you made? How many [unclear] do you have?” That doesn’t interest me at all. I’m not here to make people into Chabadniks. That’s really not our job. Our shlichus is to bring every Jew closer and love every Jew, and to give every Jew what they need—to make this a home for every Jew, both materially and spiritually.

11:02 Speaker 3 What the Rebbe asked for.

11:03 Speaker 2 You can really see it. That’s why, for example, some Chabad Houses run soup kitchens.

11:07 Speaker 3 Right.

11:07 Speaker 2 Here in Ashdod, we also make a point of helping families, whether with food packages or in any other way we can. Of course, each place according to its needs and its budget and so on. But helping a Jew both materially and spiritually—that really is our mission.

11:24 Speaker 3 Basically, everything.

11:25 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

11:27 Speaker 3 Tell me, I’m curious. Just tell us a little about Ashdod, for those who don’t know it—the population, the city.

11:32 Speaker 2 Well.

11:33 Speaker 3 The fifth-largest city.

11:34 Speaker 2 The fifth-largest city in Israel. I know, it sounds like... And people hear “Ashdod” and think it’s far away. But Ashdod is a twenty-five-minute drive from Tel Aviv—without traffic, of course.

11:46 Speaker 3 All right, let’s not talk about the traffic.

11:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

11:48 Speaker 3 Look, I’m from Kiryat Malachi, so for us Ashdod is like the big city.

11:52 Speaker 2 The big city.

11:53 Speaker 3 Yes, we go into town.

11:54 Speaker 2 Yes. I can hardly ever go—

11:56 Speaker 3 Need a doctor, anything—it’s Ashdod.

11:57 Speaker 2 Go there to spend money, to buy something, without meeting women who’ve come from Kiryat Malachi.

12:03 Speaker 3 Right, so I know it fairly well.

12:04 Speaker 2 Yes. And geographically, because of the missiles, people like to put Ashdod in the south, but it’s actually relatively central. It’s directly west of Jerusalem. If you open a map, the route from Jerusalem to Ashdod is simply a straight line. We’re the ones who face due east, straight toward Jerusalem, when we daven.

12:23 Speaker 3 How interesting.

12:23 Speaker 2 Yes. Open a map and you’ll see.

12:25 Speaker 3 I mean, I know the map, but I never noticed...

12:28 Speaker 2 Take a look—they’re really in a straight line. Ashdod is to the west and Jerusalem is to the east.

12:31 Speaker 3 And Jerusalem is the center of the world. So you really are central.

12:34 Speaker 2 Central. And there’s very accessible public transportation too—trains, buses, and so on. So Ashdod has around a quarter of a million residents. The population is very interesting. There are the longtime residents, generally the families who founded the city—families who came from Morocco and Tunisia. There was also a big wave of immigration from Romania at the time. They make up the city’s original core. Over the years, Ashdod has taken in a great many immigrants. The most significant wave, of course, came from the countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, when the city practically doubled in size. Over the past fifteen years, there’s been massive immigration from France—really large numbers, especially in the neighborhoods near the sea. And there are also many people from South America.

13:21 Speaker 3 So the sea is the attraction here, I take it.

13:23 Speaker 2 Yes, the sea is...

13:24 Speaker 3 Look, we’ve seen people immigrate, people who’ve come here. “Where are you going to live?” “I don’t know.” They open a map and look for a city by the sea. If they don’t have a cousin somewhere, or some other reason to go to a particular city, it’s the sea.

13:36 Speaker 2 There’s something about the sea—wow—it’s so uplifting, so very uplifting. It’s one of the places I go when I need to relax. And every time I go, I tell myself, “You don’t come here often enough. You have this amazing natural resource right in your city, a five-minute drive from your house, twenty minutes...”

13:50 Speaker 3 Twenty minutes on foot.

13:51 Speaker 2 Twenty minutes. And the thing is, when you get there, you can already see the sea, because it’s up on a sort of hill.

13:56 Speaker 3 Sometimes seeing the sea is just what you need.

13:58 Speaker 2 When you leave our place, when you leave the Chabad House and walk a little, even just toward the parking lot, the sea is already right in front of you. If you go out at sunset—wow.

14:05 Speaker 3 Wow.

14:06 Speaker 2 Wow, it’s amazing.

14:06 Speaker 3 Right, along that whole road—what’s it called?

14:08 Speaker 2 Begin.

14:08 Speaker 3 Begin. You can see the sunset.

14:10 Speaker 2 The Chabad House is fairly high up on the hill, so you can look down and see it all. It’s so beautiful. And every time I go there, say, in the morning to daven Shacharis or something, I say to myself, “Why don’t you come more often? Why don’t you do this more?”

14:24 Speaker 3 Wow.

14:24 Speaker 2 You really have to. It opens your heart and lifts your spirits. And yes, it definitely attracts a lot of people. There’s also a lot of industry. The port supports thousands of families, as do ELTA, Israel Aerospace Industries, the Electric Corporation, Agan Chemicals, and all the import and export businesses around the port. Thousands upon thousands of people work there. So, by the way, Chabad Ashdod actually has a shliach dedicated to the industrial area.

14:49 Speaker 3 Wow.

14:49 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s his job. And even he says it isn’t enough, that we need more people, because the area is really, really huge.

14:56 Speaker 3 And it’s endless.

14:57 Speaker 2 It really is. He just works from morning until evening, until the businesses close. He also runs holiday activities; it’s only on Shabbos and Yom Tov that he isn’t active. But otherwise, yes, it’s really... And the port itself is enormous, absolutely enormous. There’s also a naval base there, which he’s responsible for and works with too.

15:16 Speaker 3 It really is quite a city.

15:18 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely.

15:19 Speaker 3 By the way, besides the immigrants, there’s also a Charedi community.

15:21 Speaker 2 There’s also a Charedi community, right. It’s more in the eastern parts of the city.

15:24 Speaker 3 Has that always been there? How did it start?

15:28 Speaker 2 Well, it’s fairly... I’d say it’s been around for about forty years. It’s interesting—it’s roughly the same period when my parents came to live in the city. By the way, we haven’t mentioned that I’m a shluchah in the city where...

15:37 Speaker 3 Right.

15:37 Speaker 2 Where my parents are the head shluchim. And, boruch Hashem, there are five of us siblings working under them, each of us...

15:44 Speaker 3 That’s amazing.

15:45 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s amazing. And by the way, there’s a division of responsibilities. I mean, there are several of us, each with a defined area. We even signed a contract with my father—a contract that sets it out.

15:58 Speaker 3 Literally, geographically.

15:59 Speaker 2 Geographically, with a printed map stamped to show where the area is.

16:03 Speaker 3 It has to be that way.

16:04 Speaker 2 Yes, so things are organized.

16:05 Speaker 3 So there’s no room for problems.

16:06 Speaker 2 Exactly. Everything is organized, and everyone knows where their place is. Once you set the boundaries, it’s much easier for everyone to work. One person works at the hospital, and another is the director of the school, preschools, and so on. And really, baruch Hashem, it’s an enormous privilege. It’s hard for me even to explain what it means to us, because of my parents. Maybe we should go back to that. In 5736, 1976, the Rebbe decided to send people to Israel and announced that he was doing so. At the farbrengen on 19 Kislev, he announced that he was sending one group to Tzfas and one to Jerusalem. He wanted to send one more than a minyan—that is, eleven—so they would be his representatives, his extended arm in Israel. Now, that was a particular period. People who lived in Israel then will remember: it was around the time of Operation Yonatan. There were a lot of problems.

17:02 Speaker 3 Security problems.

17:03 Speaker 2 Well, we always have security problems in Israel, but let’s say it was a time when morale had taken a dip. The Rebbe decided he wanted to send people to encourage everyone, specifically to the Old City of Jerusalem and the old city of Tzfas. He really asked the shluchim to lift those places up. My father says that afterward, instructions came from the Rebbe about who would go, who could be selected, because so, so many people applied. He said there were hundreds of candidates, and then the Rebbe gradually narrowed the list. He said it couldn’t be couples in their first year of marriage. They had to have been married at least two years, or be bochurim who weren’t planning to get married in the next two years. So the list gradually got shorter. And he describes how Rabbi Klein called them in and said, “You’ve been chosen.” Eleven bochurim were sent to Jerusalem; eight families and three bochurim were sent to Tzfas. By the way, my husband’s parents were also in that group.

17:59 Speaker 3 In the group.

17:59 Speaker 2 In the group sent to Tzfas.

18:00 Speaker 3 I was wondering whether...

18:02 Speaker 2 Yes, they were in the group sent to Tzfas, and we...

18:04 Speaker 3 Did they all travel together?

18:06 Speaker 2 At that time, yes.

18:07 Speaker 3 On the same plane.

18:07 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes, the same flight. My husband and his mother didn’t, because he was born prematurely.

18:13 Speaker 3 So you weren’t together on the flight.

18:15 Speaker 2 No, I hadn’t been born yet. My father was already... My father was sent to Jerusalem as a bochur, and my husband’s parents were sent to Tzfas as a couple.

18:23 Speaker 3 Oh, I see.

18:24 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s how it was. But they were all very, very close. After my parents got married, they moved to Tzfas. They lived there too. So the families know each other, and we’re also the first couple from among those shluchim.

18:38 Speaker 3 From those families.

18:38 Speaker 2 To make a shidduch between the families. It’s a little like marrying a relative, in the sense that you know the whole family and everything. It’s funny, because I remember asking my mother when I was still quite young, “I wonder who’ll be the first couple from among the shluchim to get married?” She said, “No, that’ll never happen. We all know one another.”

18:55 Speaker 3 Like cousins getting married.

18:57 Speaker 2 Yes, because they lived there without family in Israel. That group was their family, and it still is. When I meet someone whose parents are among the shluchei kodesh, as they’re called, it’s like meeting a cousin. We know each other; we know everything.

19:13 Speaker 3 Wait, so when did your parents get to Ashdod?

19:14 Speaker 2 My father had come as a bochur. For two years in Jerusalem, they were at the Tzemach Tzedek synagogue. They really immersed themselves in the place. They brought Bibles with them and did mivtzoim with many people living in Israel. I hear how much those groups of shluchim strengthened the connection to the Rebbe among Chabad chassidim. They arrived, you know, a group of energetic young people, fresh off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport.

19:42 Speaker 3 All fired up.

19:43 Speaker 2 All fired up! They practically sent the plane flying with the enthusiasm they arrived with, and then they spread out everywhere. And after about two years—by the way, during the first two years they weren’t allowed to leave Israel.

19:54 Speaker 3 Wow, that was a condition.

19:55 Speaker 2 It was a condition. There was one really exceptional case involving a passport problem, and they received special permission from the Rebbe to leave Israel. But then the Rebbe sent them a detailed letter asking the shluchim to begin finding positions in Israel in their fields of qualification, in rabbinical work. It’s a letter with numbered points, a very detailed letter asking them to spread out across Israel and share their light. And many of them really are spread throughout the country, from Eilat all the way to Tzfas.

20:29 Speaker 3 So basically, the bochurim who—

20:31 Speaker 2 Both the bochurim and the families.

20:32 Speaker 3 Oh, already...

20:34 Speaker 2 To spread out. Some did stay in Tzfas, and there are a few families in Jerusalem. But every one of them—each of those couples who later married and so on—really went into communal work, whether as rabbis, shluchim, or in yeshivos. They gave Chabad’s work here in Israel an enormous boost. After my parents had lived in Tzfas for about two years—actually, three years; I was already two—they wrote to the Rebbe and asked for a place of shlichus. The practice then was to submit a list of possible places and proposals to the Rebbe. So first they went and checked out the possibilities, looked into what was there and what wasn’t, what one place offered and what another offered. They wrote to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe chose for them. He chose Ashdod and blessed them with great and wonderful success.

21:22 Speaker 3 How moving to receive an answer so quickly.

21:26 Speaker 2 Very.

21:26 Speaker 3 “That’s my place.”

21:27 Speaker 2 “That’s your place.” That was it.

21:28 Speaker 3 With a blessing and everything.

21:30 Speaker 2 Everything. Then they moved here, and very shortly afterward my sister was born. And that was that.

21:35 Speaker 3 And the rest is history.

21:36 Speaker 2 The whole family is in Ashdod.

21:39 Speaker 3 Wow.

21:39 Speaker 2 Yes, five of us out of nine are in the city, baruch Hashem. So that’s what I was starting to say before: for me, having my children’s cousins in the same city is a huge thing, because we grew up with no family nearby at all. All my mother’s sisters, my father’s sisters... My father has a sister in Italy and a sister in Wisconsin, so we just didn’t have... It’s hard even to describe that time. We would speak to my grandparents about twice a year, before Pesach, before Rosh Hashanah, and on our birthdays. On each person’s birthday, there would be a phone call from Bubby and Zaidy. We drew lots of pictures, wrote them lots of letters, recorded ourselves on cassette tapes, and sent them over. It was a different world. They came to visit, but so rarely. Flying was such a big deal...

22:25 Speaker 3 And even the families you were close to, as you said, like family, lived far away in Tzfas.

22:31 Speaker 2 Right, but still, once a year... First of all, to this day they have a Shabbos gathering of the shluchim. By the way, the term “Kinus Hashluchim” started with that group. From there it spread to everyone.

22:41 Speaker 3 In Israel.

22:41 Speaker 2 Yes. That group of shluchim—I distinguish between the shluchim throughout Israel and that specific group that came from America. To distinguish them, they’re usually called shluchei kodesh. They’re all holy, but that’s the name for this particular group. So they began holding gatherings. They would spend Shabbos together, men, women, and children. Every year a special letter from the Rebbe would arrive for the gathering.

23:01 Speaker 3 I’ve seen those.

23:02 Speaker 2 Amazing.

23:02 Speaker 3 The book of shlichus.

23:03 Speaker 2 Right, right, right. There are really special letters in which the Rebbe would connect it to the weekly parsha. The gathering was always close to the yahrzeit of the Rebbe’s father, 20 Menachem Av. The Rebbe held that very dear—that it took place around that date and was in memory of his father. So yes, that’s really the family. Even today, let’s say, I think they’ve finished marrying off all their children, but—

23:25 Speaker 3 An extended family.

23:26 Speaker 2 Yes, at the children’s weddings, everyone showed up, every single one—

23:31 Speaker 3 As though it went without saying.

23:32 Speaker 2 Really, just like family.

23:34 Speaker 3 Wow. And for you, was it obvious that you would continue living in Ashdod and open, essentially, a smaller Chabad House, or...

23:42 Speaker 2 Well...

23:43 Speaker 3 Did you wrestle with that decision?

23:44 Speaker 2 It’s interesting, because when we went out on shlichus twenty-something years ago, most of my friends weren’t shluchos in Israel. Most were shluchos in Russia, in Ukraine.

23:53 Speaker 3 That was the period when they were filling the—

23:55 Speaker 2 Who filled the—yes, exactly, that was the period when they were filling all of Eastern Europe. Fewer people went out on shlichus within Israel then. I definitely have friends in Israel, but fewer. And to some extent, when I was growing up, I thought, “Okay, we’ll go on shlichus and open a Chabad House on the moon, maybe.”

24:11 Speaker 3 Yes.

24:11 Speaker 2 Somewhere that doesn’t have one yet. And there really were discussions at first. We looked into a few places and so on. There was even a place we planned to go to and start there for the holidays, but by then I was too close to giving birth, so it was postponed. In the meantime, we moved near my parents, and my father said to my husband, “Come, there’s something here—come help me run it.” It started out as something temporary. We always thought it was temporary. Then, about two years after we’d moved to Ashdod, and baruch Hashem, two children had been born, we started talking about what we were going to do. We said we needed some kind of sign about where to be. That Chanukah, my husband and I traveled to the Rebbe with our two children, and we wrote to the Rebbe asking for a bracha for shlichus and so on. When we got back, my father said, “There’s an offer here from a shul started by some Jews who came from Moscow. They own an office building, and they took a few offices, joined them together, and started a shul there. They’re really looking for a Chabad rabbi. Maybe you’d like it?” We said, “Well, there it is. Nowhere to run.” No, that was our answer. Because even when we started thinking about Ashdod itself, we weren’t sure where. Ashdod was being built up a great deal then. New districts were being built—12, 15, 16, 17—no, 17 hadn’t been built yet. District 16 was sort of... District 15 was suggested a lot. District 14 was suggested a lot too. In Ashdod, the city isn’t divided into neighborhoods with names; each district is designated by a letter of the alphabet, from Aleph through Yud-Zayin. I think Ashdod is the only place like that. I think Be’er Sheva has it too. You know? Yes. I remember coming across it. Like Paris. Yes, District Gimel, District Tes, something like that. But in Ashdod it’s very orderly. And by the way, you can also

25:53 Speaker 2 tell which district you’re in from the street name, because the names follow themes. Oh. Yes. For example, District 12 has streets named after the tribes and the months. How interesting. Yes, and specifically in District 12. Yes. Every Ashdod resident has to pass a test on this. No, you know, connecting the street name to... Someone gives you a name—say they tell you to go to the Colorful Flower Street—and you already know it’s a flower. Flowers are in District 8. There’s an area with Kinneret. So that’s rivers and... maybe District 11? That’s 11. Eleven. Its main street is Kinneret. Okay, I’ll start paying attention. It’s interesting. Yes, and usually when someone tells me a street, I know right away. I don’t need to open a map. There are rabbis somewhere in the north, near the sea. Right, right. Those are the older, more established parts of the city. So there are all kinds of public figures from Jewish history. Yes. So at first—we were considering different parts of Ashdod, and this was the offer we received. When it came, we understood that this was the Rebbe’s answer. An actual, concrete offer. Something really practical and specific. “Here, come.” There was even a small amount of money at the beginning to help us get started. So that was it: we moved to that district. When was that? Exactly twenty years ago. 5760. Wow. In the summer. So it will be twenty years. Yes, in the summer, but we started doing a little work before we moved into the district itself. We started around—really, after Chanukah. What’s the distance, say, from your parents to where you live? By car, about eighteen minutes. Oh, so you did live close by. Look, in Israel that isn’t all that close. Right. But relatively speaking... It’s about a forty-five-minute walk. Oh, right. So on Shabbos, that’s a distance.

27:28 Speaker 2 Yes, we do it from time to time. On Rosh Hashanah, for instance, there’s one meal when we walk over and eat with them. And now and then, when there’s a special Shabbos, an anniversary, a birthday. So it’s possible. It’s doable, and the children can do it too, but not often, because it depends on the weather. Also, baruch Hashem, they’re busy with their Chabad House and we’re busy with ours. So yes, we have to coordinate it. Do you actually get together apart from occasions like those? Look, they run the institutions, so we see each other all the time in connection with... Yes, but I have to add something I realized over the years: whenever we got together, it was around the institutions, around the activities. We’d hold an event and they’d come; they’d hold an event and we’d come. I’d see my mother in the morning—she runs the preschools. It really reminds me of ourselves too. So we were seeing each other all the time, and it was always about that. Then I suddenly realized that wasn’t right. How do you put it? None of us is getting any younger. And what about the mitzvah of honoring your parents? What about seeing my parents outside of “business,” in quotation marks, without talking about the... So I made a firm decision, and baruch Hashem, I can say I’ve managed to stick to it for several years now. I don’t take that for granted. I simply put a weekly visit to my parents into my schedule, usually on Sunday evenings, around nine. On your own? Usually I go on my own. Sometimes I take one or two of the children with me. Oh, real quality time. Time together. But we have

28:57 Speaker 2 a condition: we don’t talk about the institutions or the activities. That’s actually common advice for couples. Yes. They’re always talking about the children, the house, this and that, all the problems. There’s also that idea that you shouldn’t talk about those things when you go out together. Yes. Yes, exactly. We don’t talk then about the Chabad House or any of that, but about what really matters to us and concerns us, and about our relationship too. And with my parents as well. So just as I try to do that with my husband, I need to bring a little of that back to my parents. After the holidays I slipped a bit, but yes. It happens. It’s always like that after the holidays. But you’ve also just had a baby. Let’s mention that Chani is rocking the stroller as we speak. Baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem. Yes, little Yehoshua is three months old, baruch Hashem. So once a week, on Sundays, I go visit them, and we talk about everything—politics, family, stories about the children, all sorts of things. How wonderful! You’ve given yourself more of a chance to enjoy the fact that you have family nearby. You don’t have to make a sacrifice and say, “Oh, I have no family.” They’re right here, and you can enjoy that. Right. I do have to say, as an aside, that it has its challenges, okay? Because when your head shliach—Chani, I’m sure you understand this... Right, we’re in the same situation. When your head shliach is your father or your father-in-law, both sides have to act very wisely. No, but everyone... I always say, it doesn’t matter how many agreements you have. If there isn’t goodwill and willingness and... Sensitivity. And mutual support and sensitivity.

30:23 Speaker 2 To pay attention to things like that. And, on the other hand, to have kabbolas ol. Because the whole structure is built on this: the head shliach is above us. Regardless of the fact that he’s my father, the head shliach is above us, and he has simply incredible siyata diShmaya. When we face conflicts or other situations, we ask him what to do, what he thinks is best, and he gives us advice. Wow, I can’t even explain how we see Hashem’s hand in it, and how the Rebbe sends answers through him. It’s simply amazing. But yes, when the whole family lives like this, it’s a lot, a lot, a lot of fun, and you have to be mindful. You have to be mindful. And one of the things you really have to watch is boundaries—maintaining boundaries and respect. People sometimes say to me, “Oh, so your parents must have told you about that.” No. My parents don’t tell me things. They don’t tell me things about the kindergarten. They don’t tell me things about the school. Only if there’s a particular case—say, a family in my neighborhood needs help and they think I might not know about it—then they’ll tell me. But otherwise, we really don’t pass information along. I don’t know who’s involved in what. If there was some incident with a kindergarten teacher, or... The point is really to maintain boundaries and respect. And also, the people we work with in the communities, the people involved with the Chabad House and so on, shouldn’t feel that this is one big jumble—a group sitting around picking them apart and gossiping about them. Absolutely not. Absolutely, absolutely not. I’m sure that comes across to them somehow, and they can feel it. Because sometimes people say, “What, your mother didn’t tell you?” No, she didn’t.

31:46 Speaker 2 And she won’t tell me, either. She won’t tell me that. We see this very clearly with my brother at the hospital, for example. Never, ever will he say whom he saw or what he saw, unless a social worker asks us to help a particular family or something like that. And often I’ll come to him and say, “You know, so-and-so...” “Yes, of course, I saw them, met them, spoke with them,” and so on and so forth. And if there’s a need, we coordinate. Yes, but with a great deal of confidentiality, of privacy. Really protecting people’s privacy, wholeheartedly. Professional ethics. Absolutely, absolutely. Here too. Absolutely. Wow. Chani, tell us what a day in your life looks like. Well, every day—no two days look alike. But in general. It really depends on the period, because right now, for example, I’m in the period after giving birth, which is a time when I... You’re often in the period after giving birth, Chani. True. Boruch Hashem, boruch Hashem. It’s an immense blessing that... So you already have, in your mind, a kind of routine for the periods after giving birth. Yes, but that changes too, because it simply depends on the ages of the other children at home. It depends on the season. Giving birth around the Yom Tov season, like now, is different. Actually, during Yom Tov I’m still somewhat on duty, because you can’t just say, “That’s it, leave it.” Just the cooking and the household, with the intensity of this year—Yom Tov, Shabbos, Yom Tov, Shabbos. I know what it’s like to give birth during the Yom Tov season. Exactly, so you understand what I... Even with

33:14 Speaker 2 all the help around you, there are still things you have to do yourself. Yom Tov still comes around. Exactly. And there has to be cooking. You can’t put it aside. There are preparations and shopping and things to do. You can’t say, “That can wait.” But before that, I want to share something my mother always used to tell me—and still tells me, may she be well—which I’ve passed on, so to speak. Women really connected with it and took it to heart. She said it to me early on, when I wanted to take on the whole world and do everything. She said, “Listen, you can be anything you want in your life. You can be a mother, you can have a career, you can be learned in many things. You can do it all. But remember: not in the same decade. Not in the same decade.” And the more decades I go through, the more I understand it. Yes, as King Shlomo says, there is a time for everything, and a season for every purpose. There are things I could do when I was between twenty and thirty. There’s, let’s say, parenting. After all, in our biological nature, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created us so that our best years are, let’s say, between twenty and thirty, thirty-five, forty—that twenty-year span. What do you mean by “best”? You mean in terms of... In terms of fertility, and also in terms of energy. The energy to care for young children. I mean, a mother of twenty-one isn’t the same as a woman who becomes a mother for the first time at thirty-five, even just in terms of physical strength. It’s true that at thirty-five she may have more insight. Every stage has its own qualities. But there’s something about the energy you have when you’re younger. Sometimes I look back and say, “Wow, my goodness, my older kids came practically one after another. How did I do

34:53 Speaker 2 that? How did I do it?” I had four very close together. My oldest was four and a half when I already had, boruch Hashem, four children. By the time he was five and a half, I had a fifth. I mean, how? How did that happen? First of all, Hakadosh Boruch Hu really gives you strength. But there’s also our own physical energy. Let’s say, when you’re twenty, you’re not the same as when you’re... Not the same, right. And you have energy. We get older—let’s put it plainly. But there’s an advantage then, too. Our parenting is different as well. There are things I was very, very strict about with my older children when they were little, whereas today, with the... with the... One day one of my older children came home and saw that one of the little ones was still awake at eight-thirty. He said to me, “What’s this? When we were his age, what is this? Eight-thirty? No way. By seven-thirty we were in bed and asleep.” No, it’s wonderful. The parents are different parents. So yes, I feel a bit bad about the sleep he’s losing, but on the other hand, is it worth insisting when the whole family is still awake and that’s keeping him up, and he feels he’s missing out? Is it worth getting into a struggle with him over it? That’s interesting. What you’re saying, then, is that it’s not just your age—the makeup of the family also has a big effect. Of course, of course, of course. A first child isn’t a tenth child, definitely. Of course. So my mother was an amazing example for us in this regard. When we were little, she really raised us at home. We had a mother at home who took us to kindergarten in the morning, picked us up, made lunch, and so on. In our house it’s more in the evenings, but never mind—the general idea is...

36:19 Speaker 2 That Mom was at home. Of course she did things—of course she was active alongside my father in all kinds of ways—but not in a defined role. It just didn’t work out that she would... She was present. Yes, very, very present during the day, too. And when my youngest sister grew up and started preschool, my mother began running the Chabad preschools. Until then there had been another director, who retired around that time, and then my mother started. Baruch Hashem, she still does it today, and she’s an amazing director. She brought to it everything she’d gained from being a parent and already a grandmother. Life experience. Incredible life experience, and the ability to listen. People really, really, really love her. They do. Without an ayin hara, they really need to open a few more of those preschools, because registration closes before it even opens, baruch Hashem. She truly pays attention to everyone, she cares about everyone, and with the staff she’s like... she comes from a motherly place. So her age is really a great advantage in that respect. So what she was telling you, essentially, was that maybe you have dreams, but wait. Wait with them. Wait; you don’t have to push everything at once. That’s interesting. So your daily routine today isn’t what it was before the holidays, and certainly not what it was five years ago. No, no, it changes. It’s very dynamic. But there is one thing. Um, for the first twelve years I was a schoolteacher, so if you’re asking about my daily routine, it was getting up and so on, and dealing with everything connected to school. Add the family on top of all that, and then add the Chabad House, which is a whole story in itself. I look back and say, wow, how did I do it? How did I manage

37:49 Speaker 2 it? How did I fit in this and that and the other thing? Getting up and going out with the children. Yes, yes, and getting everyone organized and leaving together with them. And in a moment I’ll tell you something about how I did it, when we talk a little about help at home. So at a certain point, Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent me a gift. At the time it was very hard, but looking back, I say it was a gift. During my seventh pregnancy, I had appendicitis. They had me sign a waiver concerning the baby, and they said they would do everything they could to... What month were you in? I was in my third month, and it was an emergency operation. On Friday night, they rushed me by ambulance. It’s a whole story. Anyway, they operated, and baruch Hashem, they saved the baby too—our miracle child, sweet India, who’s thirteen today, baruch Hashem. After I came home, I developed a complication that’s fairly common after appendix surgery: an abscess, a buildup of pus in the area. The thing is, the usual treatment is done with imaging guidance: they insert a drain and remove it. I don’t know exactly. But I was pregnant, and baruch Hashem they’d managed to preserve the pregnancy, so they couldn’t treat it the usual way. In short, a whole ordeal began. I was hospitalized during the holiday season. You can’t imagine what it was like at the Chabad House with the shlucha in the hospital—and in Tel Aviv, at Ichilov—and the shliach running back and forth. It was such a complicated case that department heads were involved: surgery, gynecology, ultrasound. I told you you were extraordinary. It was... And I really was in a room, a sort of VIP room, where they kept placing women who were... And how many children were at home? Six. Wow. That was... that was my seventh pregnancy. I was twenty-nine then, baruch Hashem. And there I was, in that room.

39:37 Speaker 2 First of all, I was weak, weak, weak, weak, with no strength to move, almost unable to eat. I was getting most of my nourishment through an IV, and an amazing friend of mine, Mindy Schmerling, who lived nearby, would bring me soups and other things from time to time. May Hashem bless her. I was very, very weak, and each time it was, wait, let’s try this, let’s do that, let’s see what works, what happens, what’s going on. Basically, the doctors were trying to monitor me. Different antibiotics. But there wasn’t much they could do. Right, so they tried different antibiotics, and there’s no need to get into all of it, but abscesses are often resistant to antibiotics. They tried. I also had a real mofes connected with my mother going to the Rebbe. At the time, she had traveled to be with her own mother, who was ill, and she told me, “I’m going to the Ohel now especially for you. I’ll say a chapter of Tehillim for you.” And sure enough, when she came back, that same week they allowed me to go home for Shabbos and return on Sunday. This was after more than a month. And when I returned on Sunday, they did another test and said, “Listen, we can see that the antibiotics are starting to work.” Wow. “Stay here a few more days. We’ll keep an eye on you, and then we’ll discharge you to continue treatment at home.” That’s how it went. Oh, so during that time, in the room, in the bed next to mine... It was a sort of VIP situation, so they put all kinds of VIP women there—women in senior positions and the like. One was hospitalized because of, I don’t know, adhesions. Another was hospitalized because of a fracture that also needed surgical observation; it doesn’t matter. And each time there were these conversations... We’re talking about before smartphones, before everyone was absorbed in their phone, thirteen years ago. Just before. Right on the cusp. Yes, it was still

41:06 Speaker 2 the days of text messages, when texts cost a lot of money and all that. Let’s squeeze as much as we can into one, without spaces. Exactly. And abbreviate everything. So I had conversations there, and everyone... Ah, all the women beside me came and went—over a month and a half, quite a few rotated through. Every time it was, “Wow, a seventh pregnancy? Really? If I’d had the sense back then that I have today, I would have had more children,” and so on. Each said it in her own words, but they all said the same thing. So first of all, for me it was a kind of “Wow, you’re doing the right thing.” I mean, besides knowing that the Rebbe speaks about having a large family, and besides having grown up in a large family myself and knowing how much fun it is, and besides seeing it myself... suddenly you hear it from someone on the outside. These were women who were a bit older, in their forties or fifties and so on, saying, “If only I’d known back then, I would have had more children, I would have given birth to more. I have two and it isn’t enough. This one lives here and that one lives there.” Most of them had at least one child abroad, too. So they really, really drew me into thinking about family and greatly strengthened my appreciation of it. Suddenly you treasured it from a different... Very, very much. And another thing was that, as I said, I had no strength. I lay in bed, and I had a lot of time to think, and to read and think. Those were the two things I did during that time. And... I remember thinking then and saying to myself, “Chani, you aren’t happy with what you’re doing.” I loved teaching. I really, really loved teaching at school, but everything around it was too much for me. All the tests and parents and afternoons

42:35 Speaker 2 And meetings, and it never ends. It wears you down. Teachers—I admire, admire, admire every single teacher who keeps going. And I’m truly blessed that my children, baruch Hashem, are in Chabad schools in Ashdod. They have an amazing staff, every one of them. I admire them for the incredible shlichus they do, and for their dedication and sacrifice. I just realized that, for me, it was too much. And at the same time, we also have the Chabad House, and the Chabad House was missing out because I was so busy with school. There was something else that really, really bothered me. It’s changed a bit now, but for years the Ministry of Education almost never allowed teachers to travel to the Kinus Hashluchos in the middle of the school year. Now it’s more organized, and they allow it, with teachers taking turns at each school. Right. So the whole staff won’t be... It’s like there’s a set quota... As far as I know, at every school, two teachers are allowed to be absent each year. They get a certain number of days and submit a proper form through the school network. Today it all works in an orderly way. It wasn’t like that. For several years I submitted a request and they wouldn’t let me go. I felt very frustrated. You know, you want to go to the Kinus, you want to go to the Rebbe in the middle of the year, not only in the summer, when it’s unbearably hot. Yes. And you can’t. So, amid all these thoughts, I said, okay, I’m starting to make a change. I’m going to change this. And the first change I made was to stop being a homeroom teacher and just teach subjects. I taught English, I taught remedial classes in various subjects, and then I took a sabbatical. After the sabbatical, I took unpaid leave; I had a baby, baruch Hashem, and that was it. That was it. I closed that chapter of teaching in my life, for now. Yes, you never know. No

44:14 Speaker 2 one can know what will happen later. And then I started... How many years ago was that? Twelve already. Right, twelve, or twelve... Oh yes. No, maybe less, maybe eleven. Yes, because, with Hashem’s help, we’re marking twenty-three. Yes. So, yes. That’s it. And then I really began that chapter of... And wait, the people around me were saying, “What are you doing? The Ministry of Education? How can you leave? The Ministry of Education pays on the first of every month.” And it was right when they were about to introduce Ofek Chadash, and there was all this talk about raising salaries. I said, the Ministry of Education isn’t G-d; Hakadosh Boruch Hu is. Hakadosh Boruch Hu has a thousand and one ways to send money, and I’m here to testify that it happens, that it really works that way, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu truly has... So you really set out on your own, so to speak. In a way, yes, because... You already had the Chabad House; you could just invest in it. Expand what you were doing there. Yes. Yes, absolutely. This is also something people don’t always know: shluchim around the world work independently. Each location is responsible for its own resources. I don’t know how it was for you in Kharkov. I’m sure some shluchim did receive salaries because they worked... Usually it’s a bit of both. I mean... But that’s when a shliach works under another shliach, or comes in with a particular defined role—say, I don’t know, running the store and the bar mitzvah programs. Then maybe he receives a salary. But the vast majority of shluchim have to take care of their own income, their own income. It really is like being self-employed. Exactly. And there are months that are better,

45:44 Speaker 2 and months that are worse. All the time, it’s like a farmer waiting for rain, looking up to the heavens—only instead of rain, we’re waiting for material blessings. We look up, hoping that our material needs will be met and that abundance will come down to us from Above. And you also have to do your part for that money to come in. You have to reach out to people, tell them what we do, show them our activities, make them feel part of it, make them want to give. That’s a lot of work. It’s... At the same time, you must also have felt, “I’ve left teaching and now I have time, so I need to step up the activities themselves.” Exactly, exactly. To make it worthwhile that I left. To justify that step by what I’m doing instead. So we started by renovating an office. We made a small, nice office. First of all, people had a more orderly place to come to, because until then they would come into the shul. So we had a proper place, and we started bringing in seforim. There are lots of Jewish bookstores in Ashdod, but Chabad books—that meant Chitas and Tanya. At the time, Rabbi Yoram Abergel, alav hashalom, used to give a Tanya class in Ashdod on Monday evenings. Every Tuesday morning, people would come. It was like clockwork: people who had attended his class the night before would come the next day to buy copies of Tanya. Wow. It was amazing. After a few times, I realized it was happening regularly... So you worked with that, yes. On Tuesdays, I had to make sure we were fully stocked. And Tanyas of all kinds—small ones, large ones. The rabbi spoke a lot about keeping one in your bag for protection. Mothers of soldiers bought the small Tanyas for entire units, and the large ones too, and editions with commentary, all sorts. Really, a lot. That’s just an aside, but yes.

47:15 Speaker 2 So there was a proper place to come to, because before that there really wasn’t one. It was more a matter of coming and going, school, institutions, things like that. But now there was an actual office people could come to, with reception hours. In our district, people could contact us and get an organized response to anything a Jew might need. Yes, but instead of it happening haphazardly, it became organized. So presumably you can divide everything at your Chabad House into before you left teaching and after you left teaching. Definitely, because before I left, I wasn’t able to do any of this meeting with the public. My husband also had—my husband also runs Ashdod’s soup kitchen, so there were times he was there and times he wasn’t. He mainly focused on the times for davening and classes during the day. If he could, he would come. If not, he had obligations at the other place. So sometimes people would come and there wasn’t necessarily anyone available to help them. And because the Chabad House is in the city center, people are always looking for it. They come to the office: “Where’s the Chabad House? Where can I...?” They might have time while they’re waiting for an appointment, or something in between. That happens with us a lot now. We moved—it’s in... in the mall. We’ve now moved somewhere else. When I first started this, it was in an office building on the first floor. We had to explain to people a little where to find it. Today it’s on a main street, in the mall, on the outside of the mall, near Gan Ha’ir. It’s a little hard to see from the road because buses block it. That’s actually where the buses enter, the bus drop-off platform. It’s right next to

48:43 Speaker 2 To the bank. Such a central location—I can’t even explain just how central, or how much it increased the number of people who simply walk into the Chabad House. People go, “Oh, wait, there’s a Chabad House here. I wanted to…” They want to ask for a blessing, buy a mezuzah, have a mezuzah checked, or even daven. Yes, things like that. The location—there are also a lot of bus drivers for whom it’s really a second home. Yes. They come in, they daven, they sit and learn. There’s Chok L’Yisrael and Dvar Malchus, and lots of things like that. It’s just amazing. And on Sukkos, do you actually build a sukkah right out on the street? Oh, we have a huge sukkah, sixteen meters long, and people just come in. Families arrange with us to come sit there while they’re out on trips. During bein hazmanim, for example, in the summer, and also the week after Sukkos and the week after Pesach, it’s absolutely bustling with people on outings who stop by, because we’re near all the parks and right where you get off the—Right. Where you get off the bus, for example, the bus from Jerusalem. If you want to get to Ashdod-Yam Park, you have to pass us. So people are really happy to discover there’s a Chabad House here too, somewhere that can give them what they need. In the summer we put a drinking-water station outside so anyone who wants can take some. In the Ashdod heat. Even—Yes, and even things like bathrooms, women’s needs. If I can say this, yes, we have a box in the bathroom. This is a podcast for women. So it’s a box with bedikah cloths and all sorts of things like that, so if a woman gets—Caught without what she needs. Caught without what she needs, she can take some. By the way, I saw this at the International Conference of Shluchos. They always have them in the—Did you notice that they have them in the bathroom stalls? So the bathroom stalls—Is that where you got the idea? Yes. They put all the—they put there anything you could possibly think of. Diapers,

50:29 Speaker 2 sewing kits, spray. It’s amazing. Because really, what does it take? In terms of the effort, compared with the impact. And the cost is so negligible—you can get everything for a hundred shekels. You could really help someone out. Wow, it gives other women so much—even at the conference itself. Good to know. Listen, we’re in Ashdod a lot. Yes, you’re welcome anytime. Wait, so what does a day in your life look like now? Well, first of all, I’m someone who really, really likes getting up early in the morning. Really, really likes it. How early? Early means five. Wow. I see the sun come up. If I manage to—I mean, I haven’t quite gotten back into a regular routine yet, but I have a friend and we go walking together, and we even started running. Wow. In the morning, twice a week. By the sea. Sometimes by the sea. Other times there’s a promenade on the east side of the city, closer to—there are lots of wide streets there. Yes, I’m built for sports. And the parks are amazing. Wow. Built for sports. Oh, I’m still looking for where. There’s exercise equipment scattered all over the place. Right. Yes, it’s really built for that. A city that invites you to get out and do it. Ride a bike. Yes, it makes you want to. Yes, it’s very, very inviting, especially in weather like this. Wow, it’s perfect. Wow. Not too hot, not too cold, it’s so nice. A pleasant breeze and… Absolutely. Yes. So I’m slowly getting back to it now. Wait, if you get up at five, how many hours do you sleep? I’m curious. I really try to go to sleep between eleven and twelve. Well, including getting up for the baby, that comes to—Let me tell you something. A secret. I take an afternoon nap. I wasn’t sure whether I was allowed to say that. No,

52:06 Speaker 2 you are. Look, a lot of times I want to sleep, but I don’t fall asleep easily—I make myself do it. I feel like I have to. Sometimes my body really demands it. And the children know that I’m going into my room for half an hour, and if they knock on my door, I start—But can you fall asleep for half an hour? I can sleep for half an hour, especially if one of the older kids is home and can, say, watch the little one. I can, I can. I set a timer, and somehow it frees up my mind when I don’t have to wake up on my own—the timer will wake me. Yes, so that—There’s something about it—Lets you relax. Yes, it helps me relax more. And you know what? Even if I don’t actually manage to fall asleep, just switching to a vertical position, so to speak—I’ve read and heard a lot about how even twenty minutes at midday gives you a boost. Of closing your—Exactly, closing your eyes, a little quiet, obviously no phone or anything, and just being in a vertical position, so to speak. Yes, horizontal. Oh, sorry. Horizontal, yes. You spend the whole day upright, and then you lie down, and you just get your strength back. Afterward, I get up and… I later read a business book entirely about timing. They studied all sorts of things: when agreements were signed, whether they were signed before or after noon, how that affects things. All sorts of things—really, really fascinating. There was—I had a—They showed all sorts of things that failed because they were done in the afternoon, at three or four, after hours of—I mean, they really have… Like they say, if you want to talk to someone, have a meeting with someone because you need something from them, do it when they’ve eaten. When they’ve eaten, but—

53:34 Speaker 2 But not right after lunch, because lunch is usually a heavy meal, and it weighs you down and makes you sleepy. For example, if you’re running a big professional conference and want to have lectures, you can’t schedule a lecture right after lunch. You have to put on something lighter. Interesting. Only afterward can you go back to lectures, because the meal weighs people down and makes them sleepy. You have to get them out of that… Yes. Out of that… I read a whole book about it. It was interesting. Yes, it’s something I felt intuitively—that feeling that I have to rest, that I can’t function without that break. And—So you’re making a rational decision. Right, and then seeing it in a book afterward was a kind of confirmation. That’s it. So then I come back home, and it takes about an hour or so to get all the children out. We dress them together and get them organized. Today it’s much easier. When they were little, it was really—you know, I’d prepare piles of clothes and dress them like an assembly line. One, two, three, socks. No, here, get dressed from head to toe. This one, this one, this one can already put on his shoes by himself. That’s how it was. A checklist. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. And sometimes we still do that now. Yes, I need to. Right, you have little ones, but you also have older ones. Right, and—and that bothers me. Do you pair up an older child with a younger one, like a mentor and a mentee? No, I actually try not to do that. I don’t like it when… Responsibility. I very much like giving them responsibility. I don’t like it when they take on the—I mean, when it becomes their responsibility. So when people tell me, “The older ones are raising the younger ones for you,” no, no, no,

54:54 Speaker 2 Absolutely not. I’m not willing for that to happen. I’m not willing to accept it, and I tell the children so explicitly. They come to me and say, “Oh, so-and-so did this and that,” and I say, “Excuse me, you’re not responsible for him. You’re not his mother or father.” Yes. Of course, if something happens, that’s different. If you see him doing something dangerous, you certainly shouldn’t say, “I’m not responsible for him.” Yes, of course. But you’re not his father. His homework isn’t your burden. You can help. For example, in first grade they often have to cut out pictures for a particular letter. No problem—help her, gladly. But it isn’t your responsibility to make sure her notebook is complete. That’s my responsibility. Yes. That stays with me, or with her father. It isn’t your job. So yes, they can help in the morning, and if it’s a rushed morning and we’ve gotten up late—which definitely happens too—then I ask them to help. I wish I could really get to the point of being up at five every morning. For now, I manage about twice a week. Otherwise it’s six-thirty, quarter to seven. So if I need to, I call on them: “Come help out.” But I try not to. And when there are older siblings, the younger ones want to copy them sooner. I don’t know if you’ve seen that with yours, but the age at which they get dressed on their own has gone down. Yes. Say, the four-year-old—they join in, as it were. She sees them doing it, so she wants to do it too, and she feels grown-up. No, I see lots of things the younger ones start

56:15 Speaker 2 doing much earlier. Right. It happened on its own, because they see the older ones. Bathing on their own earlier—everything. Exactly, exactly. With your oldest child, you have to decide for yourself when to hand that over to him, and here it just happens. Well, as for deciding for myself, Hakadosh Boruch Hu decided for me and sent more children, so I had to hand it over to him. And suddenly you think, “Wait, she can bathe on her own already? At what age do they do that?” Right, right. And the younger ones are already asking for it. “Yes! I bathed on my own today!” They’re delighted; they tell everyone. Or, “I got dressed by myself.” Sometimes you can see it. I try not to spoil it for them, so I don’t correct it too much. But, say, their choices—putting their shoes on the wrong feet, or choosing clothes—you do need to do a check before... Yes, but there are things I’ll leave alone. “I made a ponytail by myself!” Okay, the ponytail looks—Hashem help us. But you can live with it. She has that feeling that she did it, that she managed to do something on her own. Yes. And I think the kindergarten teachers know me well enough to know I didn’t send her like that because I’m a neglectful mother. It’s because I wanted to give her the feeling that she’d succeeded on her own. Yes. Wait, do all of them go to school in the city? So, for the girls, we have schools in the city through eighth grade, baruch Hashem. After that, they go out of town. For the boys, until this year we had through sixth grade, and this year a seventh grade opened, with the aim of continuing through eighth grade. That’s the year before yeshiva, when they all leave the city. So what did they do in that gap between

57:41 Speaker 2 the two? For those two years they studied outside the city, at a mesivta in Kiryat Gat. Every morning they made the trip. Wow, every morning. Yes, and I also have a daughter in high school now, in tenth grade. She travels every morning, and next year too. We very much hope, with Hashem’s help, to open a high school in Ashdod as well, because there’s enormous demand. Maybe fifty girls leave the city every day. Wow. For Kiryat Malachi, for Kiryat Gat. Some study here, some in Kiryat Gat. Well, a lot of high schools are opening now, because I really think that... So it really is time. Once the boys’ division moves to a place of its own, with Hashem’s help, the plan is to continue with ninth and tenth grades. That’s big news. Yes, definitely, with Hashem’s help. Wow. May Hashem bless us and the municipality give us a building for the boys, and may everything work out as it should. With Hashem’s help, yes. L’chaim, l’chaim, may there be blessing. Yes, amen. So each child gets sent somewhere different—one to Kiryat Gat and one here? No. First of all, some of the boys are in yeshivas full-time. There’s also one son in the United States, with the group at the Rebbe’s. One daughter leaves the city for Kiryat Gat, and all the others are currently in the city. Baruch Hashem, all our institutions are concentrated in one place. Oh, how nice! That’s an enormous blessing. There’s a large campus with a daycare center and kindergartens—How nice!—for ages three, four and five, and a school. Everything’s in the same place. And it really is a lovely, beautiful place, in Ashdod’s Yud-Gimmel district. Wait, the daycare center too? The daycare center too, yes. I’m here picking up the children; we spend all day on it. I believe you. I know what that’s like. My daughter finishes elementary school at quarter past three, and then there’s kindergarten at quarter to four. But between quarter past three and quarter to four, I have to drive to the daycare center, which is on the other side. It isn’t that far, but there’s traffic and congestion, and my son finishes at four. You try doing that. You try doing that. And one day there’s an extracurricular activity, another day there’s Beis Melech, another day something else, and another day they finish early. Yes, yes, yes, it’s a whole operation. Right, and when the oldest child isn’t yet old enough to go on their own—Right. Then it really doesn’t work. What’s such a blessing for us is that we also have transportation throughout the day. Wow, that’s so convenient. Transportation with a proper escort. My father takes care of that, and he’s incredible. I’m always saying he’s like the Baal Shem Tov, who used to escort the children. Yes, I think that really attracts parents to send their children, because transportation is something that takes up so much of your time. It solves a real problem. Exactly. So baruch Hashem, there are organized rides home too. I do need to bring the youngest one, who’s in daycare, back in the afternoon. They made an exception for me and let her ride in the morning, because they don’t usually take daycare-age children on the bus. So in the morning they let her ride with the other children, with her siblings. In the afternoon, you know, the rides are more... it’s the end of the day, and things are hectic. So I pick her up in the afternoon. That’s the one trip I have to make. But that’s just one child. How far is it, really? It’s maybe a five-minute drive, but it’s during rush hour in the city center. Wow, sometimes just getting out of our street can be quite an operation. So what do you do in between? The children leave, the children come back.

59:20 Speaker 2 Okay, the children leave. Well, right now I’m more or less on maternity leave. Yes. So first of all, in the morning I have the Shifra and Puah project. We make breakfasts for women who’ve given birth throughout the district. We try very hard to provide every new mother, regardless of which community she belongs to, with a tasty, nutritious breakfast for two weeks, with salad, hot food and so on. It isn’t on the level of Kfar Chabad or Nachlas Har Chabad in terms of presentation and effort—their breakfasts look like something from a luxury restaurant. But it definitely looks lovely and inviting, and it warms your heart to receive it. How does it work? Is it really only in the district? We only do it in our district. There are other shluchos around the city who do it in their districts. Interesting. Sometimes people ask me, “I live here or there—is there a Shifra and Puah there?” Yes, in Ashdod there is coverage for the whole city. It really depends on the place. No, the whole city is covered, but exactly what’s provided depends on the shlucha in that area. In the end, she’s the one running it, with the energy and people she has available. Someone has to prepare it. It doesn’t happen by itself. Exactly. And there’s a whole system involved in coordinating volunteers. Yes—finding the right women, making sure the food meets the new mothers’ kashrus standards, finding people to deliver it from the homes. It’s logistics. It’s a lot of logistics. I spend a lot of time on it. I mean, it isn’t just that hour in the morning when... Right now I have one set day a week when I prepare the food. When I gave birth, my wonderful women gave me a break, and not only that—they treated me for longer than usual. It was your turn to receive. How amazing! How amazing! I was privileged to receive breakfast every morning for almost a whole month. And when there are women whose standards of kashrus at home aren’t yet at the level that I

1:00:53 Speaker 2 Okay, the kids are off. Right. Now, at the moment I’m more or less on maternity leave. Yes. So first of all, in the morning I have the Shifra and Puah project, where we make breakfasts for new mothers throughout the neighborhood. We really try to give every new mother, no matter what community she belongs to, a tasty, nutritious breakfast for two weeks, with a salad, hot dishes, and so on. It’s not on the level of Kfar Chabad or Nachlas Har Chabad in terms of how lavish and elaborate it is, because theirs really look like luxury restaurants. But it’s certainly lovely, inviting, and heartwarming to receive. How does it work? Is it really only in your neighborhood? We only do our neighborhood. There are... there are others across the city. A few other shluchos do it in other parts of the city. Interesting. Sometimes people ask me, “I live here or there—is there Shifra and Puah there?” Yes, in Ashdod there is coverage throughout the city. It really depends on the place. No, the whole city is covered, but what’s available depends on the shlucha in that area. Because at the end of the day, she’s the one running it; it depends on her energy, her volunteers, and... someone has to prepare the food. It doesn’t happen by itself. Exactly. And there’s a whole system involved in coordinating volunteers, too. Yes, finding the right women, making sure their kashrus standards suit the new mothers, finding people to transport the meals from the homes. It’s logistics. It’s quite a logistical operation. I spend a lot of time on it. I mean, it’s not just that hour in the morning when... Right now I have one regular day a week when I prepare the food. When I gave birth, my wonderful women gave me time off, and not only that, they also treated me for longer than usual. It was your turn to receive. They’re amazing! They’re amazing! For almost a whole month, I was fortunate to receive breakfast every morning. And when there are women whose kashrus standards at home, let’s say, aren’t yet at the level that I

1:02:29 Speaker 2 I ate from it myself, especially during the Shemitah year, so they made sure to order. Every day, it was someone else. The woman in charge would tell me, “Today so-and-so ordered your meal from this place. Enjoy!” Being on the receiving end made me want to get back to doing it even more, because it’s... Yes, absolutely. Wow, you can’t describe how much strength it gives you. It’s what a woman who’s just given birth needs. Really, really, really. You wake up in the morning with a hole in your stomach after the whole night. Yes, and otherwise you’ll grab something from the cereal bowl, a croissant. Are you really going to stand there and chop yourself a salad? You won’t even make the simplest salad. I wouldn’t. I don’t know, maybe you would. Not a week after giving birth. You’re into healthy food and all that, so... No, listen, this starts right after the birth. You really don’t have the strength yet. We provide it until roughly a month after the birth. During COVID, of course, we didn’t provide it. There was all that fear of infection, and it took time before we started again. Then we made it available even to women up to six months after giving birth, because I know that women who gave birth during COVID... Wow, that’s a lot. Women who gave birth during COVID didn’t have maternity leave, with all the stress around them and everything. So we simply provided it for them too. We had so, so many at that time. Wait, so someone who’s given birth again since then gets two meals. Wow. And then it takes up your morning, the start of your morning. It takes up the beginning of the morning. There’s one day a week when I prepare the food, and I also try to drive over and deliver it myself, because I want to meet the new mothers. There are some mothers who just...

1:03:52 Speaker 2 You bring it to them and say goodbye. Do you know how they do it here? How? Every new mother has to make sure her family name is written on the door and leave a chair outside. Oh, really? Yes, so they don’t have to trouble her. Because often in the morning she’s in pajamas, and some women feel uncomfortable opening the door and all that. Right. But for you it’s different, because it’s also your Chabad House. It’s not like here, where it’s really a neighborhood operation. Yes, but still... So you have to ask them. There are still mothers who feel embarrassed to open the door and so on. So we say, “No problem, absolutely. We’ll leave it by your door and ring the bell so you know it’s there,” or we open the door for a second. But there are also mothers who want you to look them in the eye. They really do. They want you to say hello and see them. Because that’s what the world has become today. You know, many of them don’t live near their mothers, and right away... Whereas in the old days, when a woman gave birth, she was treated like a queen. She had a whole circle around her—her mother, grandmother, aunt. They cooked for her and did things for her and folded her laundry. And for... People used to say, “You’re not allowed to get out of bed for forty days,” or six weeks, I don’t know. Today, mothers come home and immediately have to get back to everything: getting the children out, putting on loads of laundry, doing things. It’s all so impersonal. Wait, where am I in all this? It’s only been two weeks since you gave birth. Exactly. And where’s the strength? Where am I? What about my feelings? And all those raging hormones? There are definitely mothers who want, how do you put it, someone to look at them, to... Every new mother wants to be seen. It’s just that not all of them have someone who... No, but there are some who, when you bring them the meal...

1:05:17 Speaker 2 There are some who, when you bring them breakfast, say, “Just leave it, please. Bring it over; I’m going back to sleep.” But those are probably usually the ones who have someone to look after them. Yes, probably. It’s simply a matter of what they need. Exactly. So sometimes it’s about recognizing that need, seeing them, and coming over to say good morning. I really try to do that. Something beyond the meal. To come once a week. Afterwards, I add them to a mailing list where I send updates about various things we do for children. I offer it to anyone who wants it; it’s not... [unclear] or for the other children at home. Some thought on the weekly parsha in the morning. By the way, women who aren’t observant of Torah and mitzvos are also very happy to receive it. Of course. It’s like a little reminder. There are a lot of... You know there are organizations today doing something similar? Yes, there’s... I’ve heard of Sirei Leida. Yes, Sirei Leida. Em La’em. I was somewhere, in Caesarea, I think, and there was a Sirei Leida initiative. I thought, wow. It really is... But I’ll tell you something: Sirei Leida focuses more on lunch and dinner, taking care of the whole family, which is amazing and nourishing. Breakfast is purely for the new mother. It’s strength just for her. Sometimes that breakfast gives her the strength to get through the whole day. And there’s the thought: Somebody else thought of me. A woman stood in her kitchen and fried a really tasty omelet for me and chopped a salad for me. I make a real effort. I’m very particular about the homes preparing the food, that everything should be clean and look nice. Women... And to start the day properly. Especially when, let’s face it, a night for a woman who’s just given birth usually isn’t much of a night. Do you know what kind of responses I get? Women write, “Wow, I didn’t sleep all night, and then Shifra’s angel arrived.” One woman called them Puah and Zilpah. It was...

1:06:50 Speaker 2 So sweet. She wasn’t even someone familiar with the faith—she didn’t come from an observant home—and she left us a note. She’d asked us to leave the food outside, and then she left a note on the door: “To Shifra’s angels.” How sweet. “Thank you so much. Because of you, I...” Just the thought that a meal would be waiting for her in the morning. It’s special. It’s really, really special. It’s quite a project, because you also have to manage volunteers for it. Boruch Hashem, every month we have between eight and ten new mothers in the neighborhood, and each one receives it for two weeks. Over time, more women from the community have joined in to take on parts of it. For example, there’s someone in charge of intake. She calls the new mothers and has that first conversation with them, which is also very, very important. I used to send them a link to fill in their details, and then I realized that new mothers want someone to talk to them. Yes, sometimes they tell her things. She’s such an amazing, attentive woman, and sometimes the mothers share their birth stories with her, or certain experiences, or something about the baby. That conversation alone is already... Wow, that’s huge. She’s such an amazing woman, sweet Efrat—there’s just no one like her. Mothers have told me afterward how lovely it was to talk to her. She really is wonderful. Then Efrat takes all their details: name, address, door entry code, which floor. Because some of our buildings are twenty-story skyscrapers. There’s even one that’s nearly thirty stories. Actually two—two big ones that are nearly thirty stories. Oh, the ones above the K, and another one beside it. Really tall buildings. And where... The mother’s name, date of birth, the baby’s date of birth, where... how many siblings there are, and so on. She organizes it all and passes the...

1:08:28 Speaker 2 That comes to me, and then... I work with the women who prepare the meals. I want to say, it connects me very, very much with other women in the community who love to volunteer. By the way, we don’t call them volunteers; we call them “the women who pamper.” Cute. You know, getting to that point was a whole process, because I was very frustrated. Women would say: This is a fairly upscale neighborhood—not fairly, it is upscale. The homes here are very expensive. The people who live here... And then they’d say: Take the meal and give it to someone else who needs it. They took it as... as... Yes, “I’m not needy. Don’t... You don’t need to. You’re taking from me.” After a big brainstorming session about it with a networking group, we concluded that we had to change all the terminology to revolve around pampering. How interesting. P-A-M-P-E-R. So we don’t call them volunteers; we call them the women who pamper. “One of our women left this for you,” “One of our women prepared this for you,” “The woman who pampered you dropped it off; she’ll call you,” right? Because the word “volunteer” really suggests... Yes, because it has that connotation. An organization, a charity. Someone needy. Yes. Yes. And this puts it in a different place. “We sent you a treat for Shabbos.” Yes, how interesting. Everything revolves around pampering, and once we switched to that term, it changed the way a lot of women saw it. There are still some who need an explanation of how it works. I tell some of them, “I received it myself when I gave birth, even though I’m the one who organizes it.” So it’s not as though I’m sending it only to, you know, people in need and so on. Also, yes, if there’s a special situation. It’s for everyone. Of course. If there’s a special situation—twins, a C-section, or a family that lives very, very far away,

1:10:03 Speaker 2 say, a woman who’s given birth and is from abroad, whose whole family is overseas and she’s here alone, or things like that—then we can provide meals for longer than two weeks, even three. You really tailor it to the situation. We try. Look, the standard is two weeks. Yes. Not including Friday, because we discovered that on Fridays almost all the husbands here are off work. We’d make the effort to bring meals, even on a winter Friday, and then discover they were going out to a restaurant. Yes. So Friday is a time when there’s food at home. Yes. Even if it’s for Shabbos and all that. So on Friday we bring a cake, a cake in honor of Shabbos. We try to make sure the cake suits the children’s ages. Not one covered in candies or a crunch cake. Yes, all sorts of things—not those cakes... Yes, yes. We try to make it something that really appeals to the children. Homemade. So that’s it: it’s an entire operation, figuring out who can prepare something and when. Transport. Finding someone to deliver it. So it’s much, much more than that hour in the morning. There’s planning it and keeping track of it. Now we have a woman who handles intake, and a woman in charge of the Shabbos cakes. I used to do all of that by myself. Sometimes I’d even bake the cakes myself, together with the other shlucha, Chana Binyamin. That’s a full-time job, practically. It was quite an undertaking. Over time, and through what I learned in my studies and elsewhere, I learned that I had to bring more women into the work. And thank G-d, I did. So there’s the woman in charge of intake, the one in charge of cakes, another who helps find people to make deliveries, and two more who are backups if we get stuck. There’s also a restaurant nearby, Café Ne’eman, that has an arrangement with us to provide food at a very, very reduced price.

1:11:42 Speaker 2 Sometimes even at—if we get stuck, you know. Yes, if we’re stuck, we can always get a salad and focaccia from them. Nice. And send it over. We’d rather not, because it’s something the new mother could buy herself. We want something that... Oh, so it’s a backup. A homemade treat. But having that backup option really... So what time has everyone been fed? Around ten. Say we pick up the meals at nine, okay? And then the deliveries. And the deliveries, listen, it’s... And the packing. Just within the neighborhood, it can take forty minutes to an hour, sometimes, by the time you find parking. There are buildings where you can never... Right, you have to park, search around, go up. Think, for example, if we have a new mother at the Zimmer Center—you know where the Interior Ministry office and Beit Hanassi are? Yes. Yes, there are three tall buildings there, seventeen stories each. We had a new mother there just this week. There’s no parking. You can go crazy trying to find a spot. So sometimes we bring another woman along to... Right, that’s what you do here. For a new mother, you bring someone who gets out of the car with the meal and goes up, while the other one... Yes. But that doesn’t always work out, because then you have to find two women who can come. Right, right. There is one woman with a disabled parking permit, so she can park. Oh, okay... Anyway, it’s logistics; it’s quite a story. Quite a story. And then there’s the time it takes to go up, wait for the elevator, wait for someone to open the door. Sometimes the new mother wants to chat for a few minutes, sometimes not. It takes time. Just within the neighborhood, it takes time. That’s why we switched to doing it—not

1:13:03 Speaker 2 only for that reason. We also very much wanted to focus on our neighborhood. At first, the shlichus work in Ashdod focused only on the Chabad institutions and people who came to the shuls. The French shlucha and I wanted to expand within our neighborhood. So that’s why we separated it from the citywide operation. Ah. And today I see, wow, how enormous it is. I don’t know how we could have done it together with the whole city. Just driving around the neighborhood is... Amazing, wow. If we had to drive to other places too... Oh, so there are other branches. Yes, yes, there are definitely others who provide this service, but not everyone provides what we do. Each place does what it can. We’ve been at it for ten years already, as they say, with experience. Wow. With women who are actively involved. You could say there are around fifty women in the circle of people doing the work—baking cakes, driving, the... Quite an organization in its own right. Breakfasts. I mean, it’s... Yes. Listen, managing volunteers, as it’s called, is quite a project. Throughout the year I also try to pamper them. They give so much, so I send them a gift before a Yom Tov, give them a book, chocolates, hold an event. Well, we haven’t done that since COVID. It’s basically a staff. Except they’re not employees. They... Yes, I mean it’s like a staff. Right, but with employees you have financial compensation that keeps them there. Yes. Here there’s no compensation, so you have to put a lot of work into showing them the value and importance of what they do. Whenever I get a message from a new mother expressing appreciation, I immediately forward it to the group of women who pamper, so they can see it and enjoy it too. Yes,

1:14:25 Speaker 2 To get a little feedback. To get responses, get feedback, send them gifts before Yom Tov, hold some special event just for them. Yes. That stopped somewhat during COVID, and I still haven’t restarted it—for example, I haven’t restarted it yet, what with all the births, baruch Hashem. But yes, it’s an operation to run. So that’s one thing I work on a great deal. The second thing I’m very involved in is the birthday campaign. I collect birthdays, and of course my husband also brings me dates from throughout the community—aliyahs to the Torah and occasions like that. So people give us their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, and as a birthday approaches, we make a real effort to give them a small gift. What’s in the gift? It’s a package with a sheet listing the ten birthday customs the Rebbe established. Yes—davening, tzedakah, an aliyah to the Torah, a good resolution, your personal chapter of Tehillim, all those things. It’s beautifully written and designed, with a lovely blessing. For adults, we add a chocolate bar, also wrapped very nicely. It has writing on it—a designed wrapper, yes. Yes, a designed wrapper. A little bottle of wine from the Rebbe that we— Wow. Drink from each time for a blessing. It has a nicely designed label too. Now, the rest varies. It depends on how close we are to the person. For some people we’ll add a cake; for some, a larger bottle of wine; for some, we’ll buy a gift. But you know what? It doesn’t matter what it is. If someone, say, donates a lot to the Chabad House, we’ll use their birthday as an opportunity to show our appreciation and give them something extra, a sefer or something. But I’ve seen that even

1:16:00 Speaker 2 that little chocolate bar, and the fact that you remembered someone’s personal birthday—that’s what matters. Wow, people love it. And we also have the privilege of reminding them about the birthday customs. So I take care of that, and when it’s a man, my husband of course takes it and delivers it. My husband—I mentioned that he was one of the shluchim—has a Tehillim that he merited to receive from the Rebbe. On their birthday, he offers people who appreciate what that means—not everyone does—the chance to say their new chapter of Tehillim from the Rebbe’s Tehillim. So that gives it a special added dimension. And for children too, especially children from the regular families in our community who daven at the Chabad House, we prepare a gift. There’s a small personal Tehillim, a bracelet that says, “Today my mazal is strong,” a special chocolate bar for them, and a small tzedakah box.

1:16:48 Speaker 4 Cute.

1:16:49 Speaker 2 Even during COVID, at first I would just send WhatsApp messages with a picture. People were happy about that too. Everyone likes having their birthday remembered.

1:16:58 Speaker 4 Right, the very fact that you remembered. Bringing something is a bonus, but that’s the point.

1:17:05 Speaker 2 Exactly. So I really stay on top of that too.

1:17:07 Speaker 4 And some people actually need to be reminded. For us, it’s more about the Hebrew date.

1:17:11 Speaker 2 Of course, of course. Most people around us don’t know it.

1:17:15 Speaker 4 Because you’re reminding them of their birthday.

1:17:16 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. It’s their birthday, their Hebrew birthday, and it’s a special date—and what it means. Now, there are different circles, so for some people it’s just a message, a reminder and a “mazal tov.” For others, we come and give them that symbolic gift. And for others, it’s a more substantial gift. Yes.

1:17:34 Speaker 4 Yes, tailored to the individual.

1:17:35 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. But I’m very involved in it. I prepare everything, including the packages for my husband, and then he goes.

1:17:40 Speaker 4 It also means keeping track and following up all the time.

1:17:42 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:17:42 Speaker 4 It’s one specific day, and that’s it.

1:17:44 Speaker 2 Right, right. So this past year I discovered a Hebrew-calendar app.

1:17:49 Speaker 4 So it reminds you.

1:17:50 Speaker 2 Listen, with the Hebrew calendar you can set a reminder for once a year. That means if I enter a date—say, someone’s birthday is on 14 Cheshvan, and someone else’s is on 15 Cheshvan—it automatically marks their birthdays for the following year too and sends me a reminder. But yes, I usually check at the beginning of the week to see who has a birthday, and before Shabbos I check again. I make that list for my husband. I take care of it. He also often wishes people well in shul on Shabbos if they’re regulars there: “Mazal tov, it’s your birthday,” or “Mazal tov on your wedding anniversary.” Incidentally, I’ve seen the Rebbe mention people’s wedding anniversaries to them several times—to pay attention to it, not overlook it. There’s a well-known video of someone passing by the Rebbe, and the Rebbe says, “Mazal tov.” Then he asks him, “Isn’t today your wedding anniversary?” As if the Rebbe was saying, “Make sure you get a cake, make sure…”

1:18:38 Speaker 4 That’s amazing.

1:18:39 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

1:18:41 Speaker 4 So he says it in shul. That must really bring people together.

1:18:44 Speaker 2 And again, all of us—I’m also very, very happy when people remember my birthday. It feels really good.

1:18:50 Speaker 4 Right, because it reaches you on a personal level.

1:18:53 Speaker 2 Yes, and it’s also an opportunity for us to bless people with the things you know they need. Their mazal is strong, which is something the Rebbe very much emphasized. We tell them, “Today your mazal is strong. You have the power to give blessings; you have the power to influence others.” That’s something quite new for them.

1:19:10 Speaker 4 So at least once a year, you have some personal contact with each person.

1:19:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, absolutely. We try very, very hard not to forget anyone and to keep collecting dates.

1:19:18 Speaker 4 Lovely. A lovely project.

1:19:20 Speaker 2 That deserves a mention in its own right. Now we’re in that in-between period, the month of Cheshvan. We’ve finished the intensity of the Yom Tov season, and we haven’t reached Chanukah yet. But we also have activities around the Jewish holidays in the neighborhood’s preschools and schools. The rabbi comes to blow the shofar, for example, or brings the four species. On Chanukah he comes with a large menorah, and we have activities we do in the classrooms. So I generally prepare the activities and coordinate the schedules and so on with the preschools and schools.

1:19:52 Speaker 4 For all the different groups?

1:19:53 Speaker 2 There are two very large public schools in the neighborhood, with six or seven hundred students each. There’s also one public religious school with about five hundred students. And thirty-five preschools.

1:20:06 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:20:06 Speaker 2 I mean, it’s like a town in its own right. It really is. So just getting to all of them before the holidays is already…

1:20:12 Speaker 4 Was the door wide open to you from the start?

1:20:15 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem, the preschool teachers are happy to see us. They tell us, “We’re waiting for Rabbi Yossi to come.”

1:20:21 Speaker 4 You know, with all the talk about religious coercion and so on, that isn’t something you can take for granted today.

1:20:24 Speaker 2 We’ve seen some change in these things over the years, but we’re constantly showing people that that’s not who we are. We’re not coming from that place. We’re here to make Judaism accessible, as I said, to strengthen the bridge, to bring it all with an open heart and with love, not through coercion. First of all, if you don’t want it, then no—but you’re missing out.

1:20:42 Speaker 4 No, I was wondering whether there had been opposition—

1:20:43 Speaker 2 You’re missing out. There has been.

1:20:44 Speaker 4 Because of the…

1:20:45 Speaker 2 Here and there, let’s say. We’re also very, very careful. With everything we do, all the content, we show it to the coordinator and the principal so they know what it is.

1:20:55 Speaker 4 So everything’s transparent.

1:20:56 Speaker 2 Everything, absolutely everything. I’ll give you an example of something we stopped doing. In the early years, we would bring chickens for kapparos. It was an attraction. The children still remember it today.

1:21:04 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:21:06 Speaker 2 At one meeting with the education authorities, when we presented the program to a new supervisor, she said, “I don’t agree to having live chickens in a preschool,” even though we explained that we’re very careful—

1:21:13 Speaker 4 About preventing cruelty to animals too.

1:21:15 Speaker 2 We’re careful about preventing cruelty to animals. And there are programs that bring animals in.

1:21:18 Speaker 4 Of course. There’s an official program that introduces children to animals.

1:21:20 Speaker 2 It’s called “Animals in the Preschool.”

1:21:22 Speaker 4 Yes, yes, they bring them every week.

1:21:24 Speaker 2 Right, so it would be done the same way. But they didn’t want it. Fine.

1:21:27 Speaker 4 Because there had been a whole uproar about it, and…

1:21:29 Speaker 2 Okay, fine. So that’s a shame.

1:21:31 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:21:31 Speaker 2 It’s a shame, because it’s a Jewish custom with deeply sacred roots, as they say, and the children remember it so well. So we do it another way.

1:21:37 Speaker 4 You have to find ways to navigate things like that.

1:21:38 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, because we really don’t want that. But as I said at the beginning, Ashdod’s population, by and large, has a strong connection to tradition. And listen, at the end of the day, people want the truth. People want the truth. All the noise is in the media. When you talk to people on the ground, even among immigrants from the former Soviet Union—who are sometimes portrayed as being against religion—you find that when you dig a little deeper, everyone wants that connection. I’m talking about the Jews among them. Those who aren’t Jewish are a different story.

1:22:10 Speaker 4 Right, that’s exactly what I was about to ask you—

1:22:12 Speaker 2 Is—

1:22:13 Speaker 4 Do you run into situations where you need documents, like they do abroad?

1:22:16 Speaker 2 We don’t deal with weddings and kiddushin. Those things go through the Rabbinate, and the Rabbinate is very, very, very particular about it.

1:22:22 Speaker 4 So that’s their job.

1:22:23 Speaker 2 That’s their job, yes. We don’t ask people who come into our—

1:22:27 Speaker 4 No.

1:22:27 Speaker 2 —shul.

1:22:28 Speaker 4 Right, I mean...

1:22:29 Speaker 2 Oh, we have started checking a little for bar mitzvahs, but nothing like the investigation into someone’s roots that they do to approve a marriage. And I’ve also noticed that in recent years, people who aren’t Jewish—although during the first wave of immigration everyone hid it—today have no problem admitting it. “I’m not Jewish. This isn’t for me. Goodbye.” I remember something that happened one year. I went into a school for a Pesach activity. Now, the Pesach activity runs in stations. Okay, there’s a matzah-baking station, there’s a Seder-plate station. By the way, I have a book.

1:22:57 Speaker 4 I once came to one of your school activities in Ashdod. I was at the matzah station, I remember.

1:23:02 Speaker 2 Oh, really?

1:23:04 Speaker 4 I don’t remember you there, but...

1:23:06 Speaker 2 Well, as I said, there are lots of other Chabad Houses too.

1:23:08 Speaker 4 Yes. Wait, you must have been about fifteen, something like that.

1:23:10 Speaker 2 Yes, that could be. There was a time when I brought girls from Kiryat Malachi. Today, baruch Hashem, we have enough [unclear]...

1:23:15 Speaker 4 I was going to say something about that sweet book.

1:23:17 Speaker 2 So yes, actually, I published a book that grew out of the activities. For Pesach, we have “The Story of a Seder Plate,” about the Seder plate and all its symbolic foods.

1:23:25 Speaker 4 By the way, lots of people already know the book.

1:23:26 Speaker 2 Okay, I imagine some of you know “The Story of a Seder Plate,” which I published together with the shlucha Chani Kelly. We both started it as a project in our shlichus. Chani made Seder plates and used them in schools and kindergartens in Ramat Gan, where she’s a shlucha, and I wrote a story about a big Seder plate we had. I started writing it, and from year to year I revised and improved it. Then Chani and I got together and said, “Let’s do it,” and made a whole project of publishing the book. By the way, we have more books in the works, waiting to come out.

1:23:56 Speaker 4 Excellent.

1:23:57 Speaker 2 About Shabbos, the holidays, Chanukah—all in that style, because it’s a very innovative book. There’s a part where children take the items from the Seder plate and attach them with Velcro to the right place in the story as it goes along, and there are activities afterward.

1:24:11 Speaker 4 In the end, the successful things are the ones that come from the field, from a real need.

1:24:14 Speaker 2 Absolutely, absolutely. All the kindergarten teachers received it as a gift from us, and they’re always waiting for the big Seder plate.

1:24:18 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:24:18 Speaker 2 Because it comes with a huge Seder plate that makes everything very tangible and easy to explain. I know the story by heart, and of course all the children do too—even the children who help run the activity know it already.

1:24:28 Speaker 4 They know it. So it really grew out of the holiday activities.

1:24:32 Speaker 2 By the way, we translated it into English, and it—

1:24:34 Speaker 4 Oh, really?

1:24:34 Speaker 2 Yes, we translated it into English too, and we have the text in Russian, but somehow the printing still hasn’t happened. I imagine we’ll do that as well, because there was a great deal of demand for it.

1:24:45 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:24:45 Speaker 2 I mean, we already worked on the translation. It’s been translated and proofread and everything. But it hasn’t gone—

1:24:50 Speaker 4 The final approval.

1:24:51 Speaker 2 It hasn’t gone to print yet. Maybe this will encourage me to do it, because there is demand for it. It really covers slavery and freedom, the items on the Seder plate, and so on, and it’s very beautiful. It grew out of the activities. And then, baruch Hashem, I have the privilege of seeing many other shluchos around the world, and families in general, enjoy this story. Every year before Pesach, I get a message saying they’ve taken the book off the shelf: “Here’s the book.”

1:25:12 Speaker 4 How lovely.

1:25:13 Speaker 2 So, on one of those occasions, we had stations for the Seder night and matzah baking, and another one where we acted out the Exodus from Egypt. With the older classes, we did something like a “third truth” game. I remember going into one classroom and saying, “The Seder night is coming up.” And one of the children said to me, “All Saints’ Day.” I was shocked.

1:25:34 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:25:35 Speaker 2 That was...

1:25:36 Speaker 4 By the way, he wasn’t even accurate, because they aren’t at the same time of year.

1:25:39 Speaker 2 Yes, all right, but in his mind that was...

1:25:42 Speaker 4 That was what filled in the blank for him.

1:25:43 Speaker 2 It made me really sad to see that.

1:25:44 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:25:46 Speaker 2 I want to hope that he didn’t come from a Jewish home. Okay, and we’ve also had a few incidents—really very few. But there were a couple of times, for example, when children came to a gathering at the shul before Shavuos and their parents refused to let them go inside. Between us, I think that as a parent, you’re doing your child a disservice too. Okay, you don’t agree with it. But those children might grow up and, just the opposite, become even more curious about it. Like, “Why was my father so...”

1:26:08 Speaker 4 Stolen waters are sweet.

1:26:09 Speaker 2 “Why was he so adamant that I couldn’t go in?” It didn’t happen often, but it did happen a few times.

1:26:14 Speaker 4 You encountered that.

1:26:14 Speaker 2 Yes. And I remember going to a... There was a year when there was a huge uproar around Lag BaOmer, “religious indoctrination,” Yuval Hamevulbal—I don’t know what it was all about.

1:26:21 Speaker 4 Yes, right.

1:26:22 Speaker 2 And I started getting nervous. I thought, “What if some parents’ committee comes after me?” But actually, the parents all wanted it. Then I went up to one of the principals with the book and showed her the book we wanted to give the children. She said, “No, it’s perfectly fine. By the way, anyone who doesn’t like the Jewish values I bring into my school has forty other schools in the city.” That’s what she said: “There are forty other schools in the city. They don’t have to come here. Yes, it’s true, this isn’t a religious school, but I want my students to have Jewish values and a connection to our heritage.” I think it was a story about Dama ben Nesina, or something like that. “That’s what I want for my students, and it’s what most of my parents want, and I’m not giving in to the people who shout the loudest.” That was the principal’s speech.

1:26:57 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:26:57 Speaker 2 Then I said to myself, maybe I’d been a little too intimidated to worry like that. After all, what are we bringing? We never come to force anything on anyone. Let’s put it this way: no child became observant because of an activity I did at their school. But maybe when Pesach came, that child ate matzah. Maybe they did a mitzvah. That’s what matters to us. We don’t count how many people become observant. That’s not it. We don’t have some year-end report to submit saying, “I brought this many people back to observance this year.” No. The report I have to give myself and the Rebbe is how many Jews I had the privilege of helping become a little more connected than they were before. Whether that’s through lighting Shabbos candles, putting on tefillin, Shabbos, or meals through Shifra and Puah, which encourages families to have children—that’s a subject in its own right. Yes, all these things. We aren’t measured by the results; we’re measured by what we do.

1:27:40 Speaker 4 It really is sad that people have this fear: “Now they’re going to make my child religious,” as if...

1:27:43 Speaker 2 No, that’s really not it. Not at all.

1:27:45 Speaker 4 As if even a little...

1:27:46 Speaker 2 Really, when we first came to live in the neighborhood, I remember getting some unpleasant reactions. But today everyone, everyone...

1:27:53 Speaker 4 Knows you.

1:27:54 Speaker 2 Yes. Well...

1:27:54 Speaker 4 You’ve done the groundwork.

1:27:56 Speaker 2 Not only that. We’re sort of living in a glass house; we stand out so much. Everyone around knows who we are and where we live. A friend of mine came over on Shabbos and got lost. She asked, “Where do the Friedmans from Chabad live, the ones with lots of children?” And they told her, “Right there, just go that way.”

1:28:07 Speaker 4 They knew immediately.

1:28:08 Speaker 2 Immediately, immediately.

1:28:10 Speaker 4 There are a few redheads too, so...

1:28:11 Speaker 2 Yes, well, that certainly...

1:28:12 Speaker 4 The family with the redheads, that...

1:28:14 Speaker 2 Stands out, stands out. Yes, that helps.

1:28:15 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:28:16 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:28:17 Speaker 4 Wow. Chani, where do you find time for yourself in the middle of all this?

1:28:19 Speaker 2 Well, I have a very clear motto—a very well-defined approach to this.

1:28:24 Speaker 4 Let’s hear it.

1:28:24 Speaker 2 And it’s this: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

1:28:27 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:27 Speaker 2 And first of all, I’ll take care of myself so that I’m doing well. When people ask me what my secret is to having a large family, I think I can divide it into two parts. First, of course, there’s help from Heaven and Hashem’s blessing. You can’t take a step without that. But beyond that, I can divide it into two things: knowing how to accept help, and knowing how to make time for myself. What does making time for myself mean? Simply finding the things I love and giving myself time to do them. It might mean making plans to meet up with friends. It might be the walks I told you I take. Sometimes, if I’ve gone out in the morning, finished visiting the new mothers and gotten everything done, I can go to the beach, sit there and daven, and answer emails and WhatsApp messages and all those things. And... planning the Shifra and Puah duty roster on the beach is already...

1:29:18 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:29:18 Speaker 2 And every time, like I told you at the beginning about living in Ashdod, I say to myself, “Why don’t you do this more often? It’s so refreshing.”

1:29:25 Speaker 4 You need to open an office on the beach.

1:29:27 Speaker 2 Yes. So it’s simply a matter of paying attention to... paying attention to the mother, first of all. At home, for instance, I let myself buy chocolate that’s just for me, and it’s set aside for me. Or a particular cake. Well, that’s on the... physical side of things...

1:29:43 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:29:43 Speaker 2 The physical side. But yes...

1:29:45 Speaker 4 Listen, the two are connected.

1:29:46 Speaker 2 Completely.

1:29:47 Speaker 4 There’s no separating them. It’s body and soul.

1:29:47 Speaker 2 Absolutely—listening to myself. There are times, for instance, when I can say after the holidays, “Listen, I’ve been working intensely, I’ve worked hard, I need to sit down with a good friend.” So we go out and meet up. Honestly, I have a few friends who think along the same lines. We meet somewhere, sit together for a few hours, laugh, you know, eat, enjoy ourselves...

1:30:06 Speaker 4 Good for the soul.

1:30:06 Speaker 2 Something like that, to unwind. And then you come home with energy. There’s a parable about someone chopping wood. His axe was worn down, but he kept chopping and working and struggling away. They told him, “Stop for a moment and sharpen your saw.” “No, I don’t have time. I have to chop wood. I have to chop wood.” But wait a second: if you sharpen your saw, it’ll be easier to cut. So if I have energy as a mother, I’ll find it much more enjoyable to handle all the routine work of laundry and cooking.

1:30:41 Speaker 4 You have to understand that you may need to rethink your priorities.

1:30:46 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:30:46 Speaker 4 What helps what? What needs to come first?

1:30:49 Speaker 2 Now, I’m not talking about being selfish, spending the whole day absorbed in myself and only taking care of myself...

1:30:53 Speaker 4 Of course.

1:30:53 Speaker 2 And forgetting the children along the way. G-d forbid, that’s absolutely not what I mean. But I am saying we need to remember the mother. One thing that really stayed with me was a video they showed one year at the Kinus Hashluchos. You know those airline safety videos they show when you board a plane?

1:31:08 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:31:08 Speaker 2 That year they showed one, I think from an Australian airline, with little children demonstrating everything. It was really cute. They say, “In case of an emergency,” and show the oxygen mask dropping from above. You have to put it on yourself first, and then, if there’s a passenger who needs help, say a child or something like that—

1:31:27 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:31:27 Speaker 2 Only then can you help them. They spoke about it at great length at that Kinus: we have to give ourselves oxygen. We have to, we have to, we have to. If we, as mothers and as shluchos, don’t have oxygen, if we aren’t recharged, how can we recharge others? How will we have any energy at all? How will we even...? I really took that to heart that year. Not that it was new to me—I’d always understood it—but it reinforced that understanding.

1:31:50 Speaker 4 I think making that investment in yourself comes more naturally to some people, less so to... yes.

1:31:53 Speaker 2 Right, so that’s what it did—it reinforced it.

1:31:54 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:31:54 Speaker 2 That Kinus really gave me permission to say, yes, I have to give myself that time. I can go study something for my own sake.

1:32:02 Speaker 4 By the way, you mentioned the physical side.

1:32:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:32:04 Speaker 4 I started with the chocolate. I think that, on a physical level, many women don’t even get around to taking the vitamins they need, or getting tests done.

1:32:11 Speaker 2 Right.

1:32:12 Speaker 4 The bare minimum of looking after my health. I mean, I need to be a healthy mother who’s there for her children.

1:32:19 Speaker 2 Exactly. The Maggid of Mezritch writes about this: “A small hole in the body is a big hole in the soul.” That’s what happens when a mother isn’t well. By the way, I don’t know if you know this, but I spoke about it publicly at the Kinus Hashluchos, and I don’t mind saying it here now, either. If it bothers someone when it comes to my children’s shidduchim, then that family is too perfect for us. After one of my births, I had postpartum depression. Not acute depression at the level of hospitalization or medication, thank G-d. My husband and I managed to recognize what was going on. There’s always some dip after giving birth—

1:32:55 Speaker 4 A low mood.

1:32:56 Speaker 2 A low mood, yes. But this one went on for too long. I’d go back to sleep every morning, and my level of activity dropped. Someone looking at me from the outside—and I’m not saying which birth it was—might have thought it was business as usual, because I kept teaching my class. I had a regular Tanya class. It always lifts me up; I love it. When I come home afterward, I find it hard to sleep. The class continued, and most of my activities continued, but with so many things I felt this heaviness, this lack of motivation. I was forcing myself to do things, and...

1:33:26 Speaker 4 It all felt like it was going downhill.

1:33:27 Speaker 2 I had very negative thoughts about myself and things like that. Hashem sent us good messengers who helped us realize what the problem was. The first thing my doctor said when I went to see her—and going to her and saying how I felt was itself a big step—was... You know, when I filled out the postpartum depression questionnaire at the well-baby clinic, I would never have admitted it. What do you mean? I have a blessed family, I’m...

1:33:49 Speaker 4 Everything’s fine. I know that feeling.

1:33:51 Speaker 2 Everything’s perfect, everyone’s taken care of, everything’s fine. But it wasn’t. So one of the first things my doctor told me was, “Please go and get comprehensive blood tests.” Listen, I had deficiencies. Oh, how embarrassing.

1:34:03 Speaker 4 In many cases, that’s actually what’s behind it—

1:34:05 Speaker 2 A lot of the time it starts with physical deficiencies, and then there’s... Look, those feelings are always there to some degree. We have our days—some sweet, some not so sweet, right?

1:34:14 Speaker 4 Hormones.

1:34:14 Speaker 2 Hormones after giving birth and all that. And those feelings are always there: something didn’t go right, something didn’t work out, I yelled at the children when I didn’t want to...

1:34:21 Speaker 4 That’s certainly normal.

1:34:22 Speaker 2 Exactly. But when that’s compounded by accumulated exhaustion and an iron deficiency that really weighs down your body—listen, it knocks you down. Completely. For me, once we identified it and I started taking vitamins and other things again, I went to speak with a professional. Just a few sessions helped me find my way back. Around that time I also became very diligent about exercising—I mean walking. Later, I signed up for a gym, which I still go to today, thank G-d. It’s close to the Chabad House, and they have classes during the day. So I can slip out for an hour...

1:35:02 Speaker 4 Pop over.

1:35:02 Speaker 2 And come back—yes, just pop over. I really enjoy it. It’s a lovely little studio with a very women-friendly atmosphere, very social. It’s great.

1:35:10 Speaker 4 A healthy mother.

1:35:11 Speaker 2 I’m trying. I’m doing my best to pay atten—

1:35:13 Speaker 4 We’re all trying and doing our best.

1:35:14 Speaker 2 Yes, of course there are...

1:35:15 Speaker 4 Perfect.

1:35:16 Speaker 2 Ups and downs. But yes, I make sure to include myself, to take care of myself. So during that period, I don’t know whether it was somewhere between a low mood and depression. It didn’t reach the acute point where I couldn’t get up in the morning. But listen, for me, being active is... it’s different for everyone. Some women are quieter, and some are more active.

1:35:37 Speaker 4 Relative to your own usual self.

1:35:37 Speaker 2 So compared with another woman, someone might still look at me and say, “Wow, she’s going out and doing things—how can she be depressed?” But yes, because compared with my usual self, my level of activity had dropped.

1:35:46 Speaker 4 And it’s not only what people see from the outside. It’s how you feel inside.

1:35:49 Speaker 2 Inside, I felt as though I had no energy for the children, no energy to cook, no energy to do anything. I just wanted to get things over with and go back to sleep as soon as possible. There’s a normal range for going back to sleep after giving birth, and then there’s a point where it starts to become excessive.

1:36:03 Speaker 4 When it starts heading in that direction.

1:36:04 Speaker 2 So since then, I’ve felt a sense of shlichus about this. A good few years ago, I stood up at the International Kinus Hashluchos. We held a workshop specifically about difficulties. Because, you know, you come to the Kinus and there’s this feeling of, wow, they have a building like that, and those people have this, and those people have that—

1:36:20 Speaker 4 A competition of successes.

1:36:22 Speaker 2 They make the slightest move and millions come pouring in from donors. No—nobody knows how many difficulties lie behind it all. So that year we decided to bring the difficulties to the fore, but not from a place of, okay, let’s sink into them. At that Kinus we really talked about difficulties. There were all kinds of stories; women shared experiences ranging from personal losses to being expelled from their place of shlichus. I remember you, from Sochi, then.

1:36:41 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:36:42 Speaker 2 And other women shared their experiences too. But we didn’t want it to come from a place of self-pity, where we’d all sit there crying over their difficulties. We wanted to hear where they had grown, how those experiences had helped them grow, and what insights they could share with everyone.

1:36:57 Speaker 4 And maybe to normalize it too, right?

1:36:58 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. When a shlucha knows—

1:37:00 Speaker 4 That everyone goes through things.

1:37:00 Speaker 2 That shluchos go through things like this. So when we were putting the program together, I said to my friend Leah, who was working with me on the Kinus in those years, “You know what? I’m going to tell my own story. I feel it’s my shlichus.” I’m so glad I did it. So glad, because I brought it out into the open. I have to say that according to the professional literature, any woman with more than three children is considered to be in an at-risk group.

1:37:28 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:37:28 Speaker 2 It’s an at-risk group. Why? First of all, they’re considered multiple births. Okay, in the wider world they talk about the effects of childbirth. And then there are the drops in hormones, the exhaustion after giving birth. A woman herself is in a more vulnerable position, and you have to be aware of that. Sometimes women don’t understand what’s happening to them. And it isn’t just depression; it’s anxiety too. Anxiety after childbirth. Women suddenly have all kinds of nightmares. Now, we all have certain fears, right? That the children will come home safely, that everything will be all right when they finish their army service.

1:38:02 Speaker 4 That’s already something that—

1:38:02 Speaker 2 But here you’re talking about women who don’t sleep through the night because of it. After giving birth, they’re under a real assault of anxiety. That’s another—

1:38:11 Speaker 4 The body is out of balance.

1:38:12 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:38:12 Speaker 4 It’s a trigger for all these things.

1:38:14 Speaker 2 Now, if there’s some other trigger in her surroundings—say, a difficult relationship with her parents, siblings, children, or husband, or something happened at work—add her weakened physical state to that. Add that, and wow, it’s a sure recipe for a crash. Absolutely. And women don’t understand what’s happening to them. They don’t know what it is. Today we live in a society where appearances matter so, so much: “Wow, I’m perfect, and my Facebook and my status and everything about me looks perfect.” Everything looks wonderful, and women don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about the difficulty. As if it’s all fun. And every child truly is an incredible blessing, thank G-d—there’s no question about that. But there’s difficulty too. There is difficulty, and we have to make room for it and normalize it. And now we come back to Shifra and Puah. Look how brilliant the Rebbe was about this.

1:39:02 Speaker 4 I was going to say, it connects so closely.

1:39:03 Speaker 2 It’s just amazing. Because once upon a time, everyone was around the new mother, and her own mother would come in and help. She’d put a pot of soup on for you and take care of things. But now people live alone in these high-rises, each person in their own world. G-d forbid, someone could die in the building and nobody would know, right?

1:39:22 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:39:23 Speaker 2 Nobody would notice. There are four elevators—who even sees anyone else? One person goes down to the parking garage, another leaves this way, another that way. Hello and goodbye, right?

1:39:30 Speaker 4 The world is smaller, but you’re more alone.

1:39:32 Speaker 2 More isolated.

1:39:33 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:39:33 Speaker 2 Smaller and lonelier. In a way, those things come together.

1:39:38 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:39:38 Speaker 2 And everyone shows only the good things. So I think that when I came to the Kinus and spoke about it openly, it really helped normalize it. A great many shluchos approached me. Some approached me about other shluchos—you couldn’t know whether they were actually talking about themselves. And I know there were others who didn’t approach me, but they simply heard it and—

1:39:57 Speaker 4 The sharing itself.

1:39:58 Speaker 2 And they felt validated. Because when I spoke about it, I also explained the symptoms, what can be done, how you can help yourself, how you can move forward—

1:40:11 Speaker 4 Bringing anything into awareness really—

1:40:13 Speaker 2 Suddenly—

1:40:13 Speaker 4 Makes it easier. I think just—

1:40:15 Speaker 2 Normalizing it.

1:40:16 Speaker 4 Knowing what the illness is is half the cure, too, and—

1:40:18 Speaker 2 And normalizing it. I’m not the only one. I’m not.

1:40:20 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:40:20 Speaker 2 And it was also a call to shluchos: pay attention to the shluchos around you. You have a friend—well, in some places abroad, the nearest shlucha is a six-hour drive away, ten hours away, or even a flight away. But still, sometimes people travel from one place to another. Shluchos told me, “After you said that, this woman gave birth, and I quickly baked a few cakes and sent them to her.” It doesn’t matter whether she needs the cakes or not. She needs that feeling.

1:40:40 Speaker 4 Yes, yes.

1:40:40 Speaker 2 She needs that. And often it turns out to be exactly the right thing at the right time. So just pay attention to the people around you. By the way, at the Kinus Hashluchos in Israel this past Shabbos, we spoke about it at length on Motzaei Shabbos: open your eyes to the shluchos around you, notice them, send something, show you care. Because this shlichus of bringing another child into the world is real. And as for me, these noises don’t bother me at all. I do everything, everything, everything. I know people say to me, “Ah, so here’s the current baby.” Yes.

1:41:15 Speaker 4 Sometimes the pacifier works, sometimes it doesn’t.

1:41:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:41:18 Speaker 4 Right? We have a few youngsters here in the room, so don’t think it’s just the two of us.

1:41:21 Speaker 2 We’ve practically opened a—

1:41:23 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:41:23 Speaker 2 Nursery here. But that’s part of it. I do so many things together with my children. I studied with them along, went to classes with them, and I take them to weddings.

1:41:34 Speaker 4 You travel to conferences with your children.

1:41:35 Speaker 2 I’ve gone to conferences with them. Yes.

1:41:37 Speaker 4 That’s something I still haven’t decided about.

1:41:39 Speaker 2 Well, I approach it like this: whatever I manage to do, I manage to do. The main thing is that I had the privilege of coming to the Rebbe and being by the Rebbe.

1:41:45 Speaker 4 Do you find it’s a skill you’ve improved over the years? That you’ve refined it?

1:41:48 Speaker 2 Yes, definitely. I learned how to travel. I used to bring lots of layers and things, and then you go inside the buildings and it’s unbelievably hot. So I learned that you need a really good rain cover for the stroller, a stroller with good wheels, and everything else is a bonus.

1:42:03 Speaker 4 One coat.

1:42:04 Speaker 2 One warm coat, and that’s it.

1:42:05 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:42:06 Speaker 2 Not all those—

1:42:06 Speaker 4 Right, that’s true abroad in general.

1:42:08 Speaker 2 Right, but when—

1:42:09 Speaker 4 For adults too.

1:42:09 Speaker 2 But for someone coming from Israel—

1:42:11 Speaker 4 Exactly. It takes time to realize that.

1:42:12 Speaker 2 It takes time to realize that. And again, to let myself off the hook: you won’t be at every program, you won’t get to everything. That’s okay. I’m busy with the greatest shlichus. The Rebbe speaks about it endlessly.

1:42:22 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:42:22 Speaker 2 In the Rebbe’s sichos, about the greatest shlichus of bringing another child into the world. So right now, I’ve had the privilege of coming to the Rebbe with this child. And baruch Hashem, I’ve had the privilege of bringing all of them to the Rebbe, which is far from something to take for granted. And that’s it. If I get something else out of the trip along the way, wonderful. Otherwise, we sit together, set up a little nursing room off to the side—

1:42:36 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:42:36 Speaker 2 And all the friends chat. By the way, apart from the big programs, I think the main benefit of the Kinus is meeting up with friends.

1:42:42 Speaker 4 Of course. It’s a social gathering.

1:42:43 Speaker 2 That’s the best part: meeting friends who are raising children like I am. So to me, the two go hand in hand. You lower your expectations a little.

1:42:54 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:42:54 Speaker 2 As far as I’m concerned, I’ve come to the Kinus. Everything else is a bonus.

1:42:57 Speaker 4 Yes, and having children hasn’t meant giving up on other things, either. Tell us a little about what you’ve studied over the years. It’s interesting.

1:43:03 Speaker 2 Okay, so it’s not—

1:43:03 Speaker 4 About the [unclear].

1:43:04 Speaker 2 Ah, yes. First of all, I finished my bachelor’s degree. I studied the laws of family purity. Actually, when I studied that, I was just a young woman of twenty-two.

1:43:15 Speaker 4 To become a bridal instructor, essentially.

1:43:16 Speaker 2 Bridal instruction, yes. I was in the second class of Razei Tohar. I felt so embarrassed. All the senior Rebbetzins were there—Peggy Wolf, Sarit, all of them were there at the time.

1:43:27 Speaker 4 And in walks this young girl.

1:43:28 Speaker 2 I mean—yes, I could have been their daughter. But my mother, who, as I said, is the head shlucha, doesn’t speak Hebrew as her first language. She told me, “Listen, there’s a need here. We’re short of bridal instructors. I want to help pay for your studies.” And she did. We needed someone here to provide bridal instruction. Now, I went, and I barely even knew what a mikveh looked like inside. I didn’t know anything about it. I sat in class, studied, listened carefully. First of all, I gained so much for myself—from it for my home, for my own observance of the halachos. Then I started teaching brides and giving classes to women. With both my first bride and my first class, I had really incredible stories. In that first class, there was a woman who had been immersing a day early, before the proper time, because she counted the day of her hefsek taharah as one of the days. It was a mistake—

1:44:16 Speaker 4 She’d missed that, yes.

1:44:17 Speaker 2 She really had. Today, at most mikvaos, either they ask you or there’s a sign on the wall saying, “Today is the immersion date for anyone who did a hefsek on such-and-such a day.” But back then there was nothing like that. And the whole system in Israel has changed tremendously. The Rabbinate also took it very seriously: they replaced mikveh attendants, made many, many changes, and mikvaos have been upgraded. Boruch Hashem, it’s really undergoing a transformation. There’s a lot of momentum in this area.

1:44:38 Speaker 4 You’re talking about a long time ago.

1:44:39 Speaker 2 I’m talking about, say, twenty years ago. Yes, the son who was born around then is twenty now. So I would bring him to class and sit with him on the side. When I needed to—if the lecturer was a woman, I’d sit to the side and nurse him; if it was a man, I’d step out for a few minutes, nurse him, and come back. I think that when a child is close to his mother, he’s generally calmer.

1:44:58 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:44:59 Speaker 2 There’s a certain calmness. So that’s where I started: teaching and guiding women on family purity. And over the years—I really, really love learning. I really love it. I’m a serial learner, both from books and through courses. Almost every year, I looked for something to study. Even when I worked as a teacher, I studied something on my day off.

1:45:25 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:45:25 Speaker 2 Some subject or other. I know people say to me, “What? On your day off?” Listen, one year I said to myself, everyone talks about having a day off; let’s take one. Because when I started teaching, I went straight into fourth year, when I didn’t have a day off.

1:45:35 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:45:35 Speaker 2 I had to go to classes, so it wasn’t really a day off, and then I just kept going. I said, fine, this year I won’t study. Listen, I didn’t feel fulfilled on that day off. True, okay, I had time at home to do things, but I had the same amount of time anyway. Work shrinks to fit the time you have.

1:45:49 Speaker 4 Yes. You got up in the morning thinking, “What am I learning today?”

1:45:51 Speaker 2 “Okay, what am I doing today? Fine, I’ll clean the house. Okay, I’ll tidy up. Okay, I’ll prepare the program for the Rosh Chodesh party.” Fine, okay, but I would have done all of that anyway.

1:45:59 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:45:59 Speaker 2 And it was a shame; I was missing out. I love interacting with other women, learning new things, and broadening my knowledge in all sorts of areas. So over the years, a lot of it really was about family purity and marriage. All kinds of courses. For example, instruction for brides who have experienced abuse. I took a course, a course in—

1:46:16 Speaker 4 Which is a specialty in its own right.

1:46:18 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. But because I’m at a Chabad House, I also encounter women like that.

1:46:23 Speaker 4 You encounter everything.

1:46:23 Speaker 2 And it’s important to know how to approach them, what to watch for, where the boundaries of what I can help with are, and what needs to be referred for further treatment.

1:46:31 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:46:32 Speaker 2 That’s very, very important in this area. I also studied all sorts of other things, or sometimes went to classes just for fun. There was a period when I was under a great deal of stress, so I signed up for an art class. Now, art and I aren’t exactly close friends. I don’t consider myself particularly good with my hands. So why did I go? I went with my sister, who is also a shlucha, in Ashdod. It was a course through Beis Hamorah in Ashdod, and for us it was simply three hours a week of sitting together, you know, working with materials. There’s something incredibly calming about that. Even if the things we made went straight into the trash afterward, I didn’t mind.

1:47:08 Speaker 4 Therapeutic, really therapeutic.

1:47:08 Speaker 2 Something very—

1:47:09 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:47:10 Speaker 2 Liberating, somehow. It was simply fun. Fun. And along the way I got to know different materials. Again, I’m not an artist who works with them, but it’s interesting to know about them, or to occasionally bring a workshop to our Chabad House for the women.

1:47:22 Speaker 4 Every field you’re exposed to somehow comes back into your life eventually.

1:47:24 Speaker 2 It broadens your mind.

1:47:25 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:47:25 Speaker 2 It broadens your mind. It opens your eyes; it really does. One year, I was in the first class of the Maaleh School of Film’s chareidi program, because I really, really love production.

1:47:36 Speaker 4 So you studied film production?

1:47:38 Speaker 2 Film production and documentary directing. I made a documentary.

1:47:43 Speaker 4 About what?

1:47:44 Speaker 2 I didn’t release it. It was the personal story of—

1:47:47 Speaker 4 Wow, interesting.

1:47:48 Speaker 2 A transition from health to—anyway, it’s actually a project I’d still like to refine and polish a little more. But in any case, I learned so much there and was exposed to so much. Incidentally, it also showed me the kinds of manipulation that happen in the media. What manipulation! You can’t imagine! The choice of camera angle, the choice of camera, a long shot or a close-up, showing someone’s profile from this side or that side, having them speak here or there, deciding which sentences to cut. Wow, wow, wow. I can show you—

1:48:16 Speaker 4 How much meaning those choices carry.

1:48:17 Speaker 2 I can point things out in films I watch today—what the filmmaker planned, what they’re trying to get from the person speaking. Even in a documentary, where it’s supposedly a real person speaking from their own life—listen, that can be steered too—

1:48:32 Speaker 4 All of it. Wow.

1:48:32 Speaker 2 Steered to fit an agenda.

1:48:34 Speaker 4 And especially in the editing.

1:48:35 Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely! Putting one sentence over a particular shot. He walks over here, so they arrange it this way. Really—

1:48:40 Speaker 4 A whole world.

1:48:41 Speaker 2 A whole world. Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. So first of all, it was enjoyable for me, and again—

1:48:47 Speaker 4 How long did you study it—a year?

1:48:48 Speaker 2 A year. Two days a week.

1:48:50 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:48:50 Speaker 2 Yes, it was a bit intensive. If I could have, I might have cut it down to one day, but it was the first class of the program. I was so happy that a suitable, high-quality program had opened, so I went for it, despite how crazy the schedule was. It was very, very fascinating. And personally, it helped me because I love making films for my children for their bar mitzvahs, when they turn three, for bas mitzvahs, and things like that. It even saved me money, because I learned to focus on what to film, how to film it, where to film it—to book the photographer for the specific hours I needed, prepare an organized plan for her in advance, get everything ready, make a lineup for it. Maybe that comes naturally to you—

1:49:25 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:49:25 Speaker 2 Maybe it comes naturally to some people—

1:49:26 Speaker 4 No, it’s familiar to me, but yes, it takes work. It’s knowledge.

1:49:29 Speaker 2 It didn’t come naturally to me. And there’s always more to learn. When you hear professionals, even major producers, sit down and explain things and show you how they work, it really, really opens your mind.

1:49:41 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:49:41 Speaker 2 Even if we commission a promotional film for the Chabad House, I know what to look for and what to ask for. It’s very interesting. That’s it. Now, the field I’m really... I also trained as a doula. I don’t actually do it on a regular—

1:49:57 Speaker 4 Really? You qualified for a certificate? Because—

1:49:58 Speaker 2 —daily basis. I have a certificate. That means that if I issue a proper receipt, the woman can get reimbursed by her health fund; they’re very involved in that today. What did I do with it? A few friends asked me to accompany them during childbirth. I’d shared a birth story here and there, and they really liked my approach. A few friends said, “Come be with me at the birth.” It was intuitive. I came, and... First of all, it was a G-dly experience that I can’t describe. I mean, of course I already knew what a delivery room looked like, but—

1:50:26 Speaker 4 From the other side.

1:50:27 Speaker 2 From the other side.

1:50:28 Speaker 4 I think it’s a completely different experience.

1:50:29 Speaker 2 And all the friends said, “Wow, you helped us so much,” and I thought to myself, What did I do? I massaged her back a little and stroked her face. I said encouraging things to her. I mean, things that came to me intuitively.

1:50:40 Speaker 4 You realized you had a knack for it.

1:50:41 Speaker 2 And then I understood that apparently I had something here, perhaps from my own experiences, from the way my mother accompanied me through my births and the support she gave me. She has an incredible knack for it, even without any training. And I realized there were a lot of tools to learn. So I went and took a course.

1:50:59 Speaker 4 Wow, the next thing I’m studying is how to be a doula. I mean...

1:51:01 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And I took a course with an amazing midwife who was also a doula. Her name is Chana Borer, from Modiin Illit. An amazing course. Because she came straight from hands-on experience, there wasn’t much theory. It was about why certain things happen, how you can help, examples, where to massage, what to do, what not to do, what’s advisable, and so on. First of all, it helped me with my own births, with all sorts of things. They talk a lot about the importance of movement.

1:51:27 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:51:27 Speaker 2 How much it helps, using gravity, different positions during labor, all sorts of things like that.

1:51:33 Speaker 4 So many things you yourself can use as the woman giving birth—

1:51:35 Speaker 2 Yes, draw on them. Absolutely. My births afterward were different.

1:51:40 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:51:41 Speaker 2 They really were. Even more so, baruch Hashem. Some things had come to me intuitively. I mean, that movement was something my body demanded, but I didn’t know just how right it was, how much—

1:51:55 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:51:55 Speaker 2 Because labor rooms are changing today. But let’s say twenty years ago, the approach in labor rooms was: a woman comes in, they strap her down, how do you say it, legs up on the... and that’s that.

1:52:03 Speaker 4 Stopping all the progress.

1:52:04 Speaker 2 And that’s exactly what stops the progress. It’s the exact opposite of gravity and of the nature Hakadosh Boruch Hu created for us. And suddenly I was getting confirmation, a kind of validation... And all the books about childbirth took that approach. In recent years there’s been a big movement back toward more natural approaches. It had always felt wrong to me.

1:52:20 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:52:20 Speaker 2 So when I heard about it and read about it, it took on—

1:52:23 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:52:24 Speaker 2 A stronger significance.

1:52:25 Speaker 4 Wait, was this before you went into organizational consulting and all of that?

1:52:28 Speaker 2 Yes. It was all sort of interspersed, you could say. The organizational consulting came out of a basic need on the ground. I’ll tell you about that in a second. But with the doula work, I didn’t take it on as a profession where I’d have five women giving birth every month and be on call all the time. Rather, I accompany women who are close to me, friends who ask me, friends from the community, or sometimes when someone asks for a doula for a woman who has no family or something like that. So I do that sometimes too. I’m very selective, because it means being on call and alert all the time, and your phone has to be on during Shabbos. I even attended a birth on Shavuos, for example.

1:53:06 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:53:06 Speaker 2 Yes, Shavuos with rockets flying—that was... But baruch Hashem, it was really intimate and amazing. And because I have young children, ever since Assuta opened here in Ashdod, I only accompany births there.

1:53:20 Speaker 4 So it’s a little more manageable.

1:53:21 Speaker 2 I brought that up right away... Yes, because then, even if I have a nursing baby, someone can bring the baby to me.

1:53:25 Speaker 4 Is it walking distance from you?

1:53:27 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, about ten minutes.

1:53:29 Speaker 4 Oh, wow. I’m trying to picture the distance in my head, actually.

1:53:33 Speaker 2 Yes, think about it—it’s three intersections.

1:53:37 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:53:37 Speaker 2 Three intersections along Begin. I live right at the corner of Begin and Bnei Bris. So yes, that was... So I do it from time to time. Now—

1:53:47 Speaker 4 Something on the side.

1:53:48 Speaker 2 For the experience, for the enjoyment. It’s another skill I’ve added to my repertoire, but it was so much fun to study. Now I notice that when I go out to study, my whole week becomes more organized. Everything is more orderly. I have a schedule—I’m in charge of my own schedule, after all—so I know that on this day I study, on this day I visit my parents, on this day I have a class here, and on this day I have something else. It gives me structure. So these studies give my week a kind of structure, and as I said, they broaden my horizons and open up space for me. Listen, once I studied to be a doula and learned how important it is to support a woman giving birth, that went straight into my work with Shifra and Puah—

1:54:21 Speaker 4 It connects.

1:54:21 Speaker 2 With the whole system of support we want to build around it, and so on.

1:54:25 Speaker 4 I think what’s so nice to hear about this is that some women have this dream: “I’d love to study that, but I’m not going to work in the field. It won’t be my job anyway, so what’s the point?” And here you are—you can do it.

1:54:38 Speaker 2 Well, look—

1:54:39 Speaker 4 Just a little, for the fun of it.

1:54:39 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you something else. My husband and I made an agreement so it wouldn’t weigh on the family budget: if there’s—

1:54:46 Speaker 4 Right, because it costs money too.

1:54:47 Speaker 2 Yes. Whenever I study something—and there was a period when I studied photography too—I’ll work in that field until I’ve covered the cost, and anything beyond that is a bonus. Because I realized over the years, and this understanding gradually developed, that I like variety. I really, really like variety. I really like... Some people would call it ADHD. Maybe if I were a child today, they’d diagnose me that way. I really like being involved in several fields. I get bored managing just one thing. By the way, that’s why running a Chabad House is so interesting: you can constantly reinvent yourself with different things.

1:55:22 Speaker 4 Right, you have room to do that.

1:55:23 Speaker 2 Yes, because the holidays are the same holidays, but the activities can be different every time, and things can be different. So that’s the agreement between us. I work in the field and bring in the amount needed to cover the cost, and whatever comes after that—fine if it does, fine if it doesn’t. But it has always—

1:55:41 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:55:41 Speaker 2 Broadened my horizons. Now, how did I get into the whole area of organizational work and consulting? We had a crisis, a turning point at the Chabad House, seven years ago. We were in a space in an office building. I won’t go into the whole story. We were thrown out in a very, very unpleasant way, in a way that really knocked us flat. For two months, people davened in our home because there was nowhere else to daven.

1:56:06 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:56:06 Speaker 2 And I was at the end of my pregnancy then. Wow, every Shabbos we had to bring the tables and chairs outside. Luckily we live on the ground floor, right? And luckily the neighbors didn’t get upset with us over it, because honestly, it started as just one Shabbos, then another Shabbos, then another, and it went on for two months until we found another place—the place we’re in now. And with the move to the new place, we suddenly had to raise ten times as much money as we’d been used to raising. Like going from fifty thousand to half a million.

1:56:35 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:56:37 Speaker 2 Because of the rent on the new place, all the maintenance, payments to the mall, and everything else—new furnishings, everything, everything. We basically had to start from scratch. And how do you do that? Up to that point, we’d been used to a certain way of doing things. We’d been in the same place for twelve, thirteen years. Thirteen years, and suddenly you have to do this. So we began a process of approaching professionals who could help us build a budget plan. How do we approach people?

1:57:05 Speaker 4 Really rethink your whole approach.

1:57:07 Speaker 2 Really, really. But listen, it was rethinking our whole approach from a different starting point. It wasn’t like when we first started. We were a young couple; I had only just given birth to our third daughter. We were ready for all kinds of challenges and everything—

1:57:20 Speaker 4 Starting over, but not for the first time—

1:57:22 Speaker 2 It’s completely different.

1:57:24 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:57:24 Speaker 2 And wait, now suddenly there’s already a community. Back then we started from zero. Now there are suddenly sixty or seventy families who came along with us and came to daven in our home, and you have to provide for them, and...

1:57:35 Speaker 4 On the other hand, you already know what the needs are. You know what to aim for.

1:57:38 Speaker 2 But you know, what I saw—and it was really striking during the COVID period too—is that restarting something you’ve stopped is harder than...

1:57:47 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:57:47 Speaker 2 Sorry, resuming something you’ve already stopped.

1:57:50 Speaker 4 You don’t have that initial excitement.

1:57:51 Speaker 2 It’s harder. Exactly, you don’t have that initial excitement, and you have expectations based on what you had before. It’s like, it’s—

1:57:57 Speaker 4 Harder to get it going again.

1:57:57 Speaker 2 Let’s say there are things that are hard to get going again after COVID. Even I have things I still haven’t brought back.

1:58:03 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:58:03 Speaker 2 Back into our activities. I hear this from so many shluchos—or really, the whole world changed after COVID.

1:58:09 Speaker 4 To scrape together again the...

1:58:11 Speaker 2 It means starting over, finding the strength within ourselves. We got used to being at home and focusing on so many things inside the home, and then having to start going out again. There have been new developments too. For example, we started broadcasting my Tanya class on Zoom. Before, if someone couldn’t make it, she missed the class. But now, on the other hand, if it’s on Zoom, why should I bother coming to the in-person class?

1:58:31 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:58:31 Speaker 2 Right? All of that—

1:58:32 Speaker 4 Is complicated.

1:58:33 Speaker 2 That kind of conflict.

1:58:34 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:58:35 Speaker 2 Yes. In short, we began a process with professionals. We got help from Maof, which exists in every city to help small businesses, because we simply realized we needed it. And a Chabad House—a Chabad House is like a business in some respects. I mean, yes, it’s a nonprofit with no profit motive, but you have to run it.

1:58:50 Speaker 4 An organization that...

1:58:51 Speaker 2 An organization you have to run like a business in that respect. First, as we said, Chabad Houses have to generate their own income. Second, we have marketing considerations. I mean, you advertise an activity—do you want people to come to your activity? Do you want people to come to your classes? What appeals to them? What will get them to come? What wording will prompt them to take action and come to your class? There’s also a kind of—I'll call it “customer retention,” in quotes. If a woman has already come to one class, I want her to come to the next. I want her to bring her child. I want her child to come learn with us for his bar mitzvah. We want them to come to shul. We want them to continue on their path, so we need to keep them engaged. How do we do that? It may sound a little unseemly when I use the business term, but the business world has studied this very, very thoroughly. There are so many books about management, entire departments at universities and colleges devoted to management and marketing management, public relations, working with volunteers. Right? How do you motivate people to act? Speaking of Shifrah and Puah, what do you do? You have to see what motivates them. Incidentally, money isn’t always what motivates people. People, especially today, are very motivated by a sense of purpose. And when you show them the value of what they’re contributing, when you praise them and highlight the kindness they’ve done, what they’ve given to someone else, and the good it brings into the world, people want to be part of that. They want to connect with it.

2:00:10 Speaker 4 So there are so many areas here—there’s no end to what you could learn to do better and become more efficient.

2:00:14 Speaker 2 Exactly. Time management, for example.

2:00:17 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:00:17 Speaker 2 Dividing your time between home and work. There’s a lot of discussion about it in the Chareidi community. Today there really are many advisers, but it started with Temech in Jerusalem, who really brought attention to this issue of balance. Yael Zaltz talked about the balance between home and business. And suddenly I started studying and reading. Then, whenever I read or hear or learn something, I say, “Wait, let’s do that here at the Chabad House.” Now, we brought in outside consultants, and they didn’t always understand the complexity. From their point of view, say you run an activity and charge a certain amount for it, but that amount doesn’t cover the cost. Close it down. Because in a business, if something isn’t profitable, you close it down. Unless you’ve calculated that you might lose money here but make it back elsewhere. Like Rami Levy’s one-shekel chicken. Right? He lost money on the chicken and made money on everything else. That’s a different kind of calculation. But you have to be aware that you may be losing money on this and making it back in...

2:01:08 Speaker 4 No, and maybe this is really where a Chabad House differs from a business.

2:01:12 Speaker 2 Because we don’t measure our business only by how much money came in and whether we covered the costs. If that were how we measured it, three-quarters of the Chabad Houses in the world would close up shop. Maybe more. Even us. That isn’t how we measure it. We measure it by whether a Jew had the opportunity to do another mitzvah. A woman heard another Torah teaching, another... something more.

2:01:30 Speaker 4 You need someone from the inside, so to speak.

2:01:32 Speaker 2 Exactly. So when someone from the outside comes and tells you that, you need to listen for a moment and say, “Okay, that’s true from a business perspective, but I’m not running only a business. That’s one aspect of what I do.” A very large part of what I do is giving every Jew, wholeheartedly, whatever help I can, connecting them to Judaism—as we said, being that bridge and giving them that response. So I can’t follow a consultant completely on these things. Those consultants helped us a great deal and gave us a lot of direction, but we still had to find our own niche, our own place, and decide where to listen. It’s like, you know, when you have a baby and everyone gives you advice. Sometimes the advice is contradictory.

2:02:12 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:02:12 Speaker 2 And in the end, you have to listen to your intuition.

2:02:16 Speaker 4 You have to be the adviser.

2:02:17 Speaker 2 Exactly. No, you can listen, and sometimes the advice is very good, but in the end, you have to know what’s truly right for your baby. One thing may be right for this baby, and something else for another. She may have raised all ten of her children wonderfully in a certain way, but something else may suit you. It’s the same with the business side. As I said, it’s been studied extensively. Go into a bookstore—Steimatzky, Tzomet Sfarim, places like that—and they have shelves of books on management, marketing, business, and so on. You can read them and learn so, so much from them. A lot.

2:02:50 Speaker 4 It’s fascinating.

2:02:51 Speaker 2 First of all, it’s incredibly fascinating. And second, it really helped us with the Chabad House’s activities. In very practical ways: how to manage things, how to bring in volunteers, how to make sure things get done. I’ll give you one example. We can’t always answer the phone at the Chabad House, so we signed up for a service, a kind of answering service. What’s it called? Like one of those call-center services that provides an answer around the clock, twenty-four hours a day. The phone rings at the Chabad House. If one of us answers within the first six rings, great. If not, it goes to a human operator. Yes, a real person.

2:03:31 Speaker 4 It’s one of those services I’ve tried.

2:03:32 Speaker 2 Right. Today it’s very common in businesses: someone answers you immediately when the call gets transferred. But for a Chabad House, it was fairly new to adopt that. Today they already have lots of nonprofits as clients.

2:03:42 Speaker 4 They take a message for you. They write it down.

2:03:46 Speaker 2 As an inquiry. They answer for us: “Hello, Chabad House. How can I help?” The caller says what they need, and then they take down the inquiry and phone number and send it to us by email or message.

2:03:58 Speaker 4 A change that seems small.

2:03:59 Speaker 2 But it is a small change. And you know what? It didn’t cost very much either—not like employing a secretary twenty-four hours a day.

2:04:06 Speaker 4 That’s probably where it began, as an economical solution like that.

2:04:09 Speaker 2 Yes, and it means people get an answer. Everyone who calls gets a human response. And I made it a practice for us to try to get back to the caller within twenty-four hours—if possible, the same day, and if not, within twenty-four hours—so people feel... I mean, not, “I called, left a message, and they forgot about me.” Right? I had to instill that in myself: “Wait, a message came in. Call her back; see how you can help.” Now, I might be sitting in the Chabad House talking with someone—a woman has come in, a bride I’m studying with—and the phone rings. I’ll let it keep ringing so the answering service picks up, and then I’ll call the person back. But they get a human answer. It’s not just leaving a message, because when people have to leave a message, they don’t do it. People don’t use voicemail.

2:04:57 Speaker 4 Right.

2:04:57 Speaker 2 No, no.

2:04:57 Speaker 4 Me neither.

2:04:58 Speaker 2 No.

2:04:59 Speaker 4 Who’s going to listen to it? Bye.

2:05:00 Speaker 2 Yes, bye, goodbye.

2:05:01 Speaker 4 Right, and then you feel as though nobody was waiting for you on the other end.

2:05:03 Speaker 2 No, and for me too—I don’t want to miss them.

2:05:05 Speaker 4 Right.

2:05:06 Speaker 2 Exactly now he’s been inspired to bring his tefillin in to be checked. I don’t want to miss that. No, no, that would be a shame. She wants a Torah class. She wants to know the times of the prayers. We try very hard. I won’t say we always, always manage it, because we’re human; we can’t always.

2:05:19 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:05:20 Speaker 2 Sometimes it’s like that, but it definitely gave us a much, much better ability to—what’s the word?—follow up on leads.

2:05:27 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:05:28 Speaker 2 While they’re still warm.

2:05:29 Speaker 4 And that’s really just one small example.

2:05:31 Speaker 2 It’s a small example of something I took from the world of marketing: the importance of responding. Another thing is, say someone is looking for a different Chabad House. I’ll give them the phone number, but I’ll also contact the shliach or shlucha there and say, “This person needs you. Please get back to them.” It’s much more professional, much more respectful.

2:05:51 Speaker 4 To you.

2:05:51 Speaker 2 Much more... Yes, yes, they’ll get back to you, G-d willing, about that. I can’t always promise that. It depends on the context of the inquiry. But suddenly you think, wait a second, why send them from one person to another, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, with each one passing them on? Just a second—I can do it. By the way, sometimes people just need a phone number for the Chabad House in a particular place. It’s true that everything is online today, but sometimes people aren’t sure, or they’re older and don’t use it. They want to know the place is active. And when we can, I try to send the shliach or shlucha there a little something now and then, a small chocolate.

2:06:25 Speaker 4 To connect.

2:06:26 Speaker 2 To make that connection from us. So there’s a great deal to talk about. We could go on forever: adapting to different audiences, changing course as you go, how to lead change, how to move these things forward. I learned about all of that in Yael Zalts’s organizational consulting course over the course of a year. I gained so much from it. And little by little, I started seeing that I was becoming someone other Chabad Houses could turn to. They’d call and ask questions.

2:06:50 Speaker 4 So here’s a woman who trained in organizational consulting and adapted it—

2:06:55 Speaker 2 For Chabad Houses.

2:06:56 Speaker 4 For Chabad Houses, basically.

2:06:57 Speaker 2 For shluchos.

2:06:57 Speaker 4 So let’s call her.

2:06:59 Speaker 2 Right. I’m happy to help. Usually, with shluchos, I say that— And it took me a while to work up the courage to charge for it.

2:07:08 Speaker 4 Oh, and now you have the course.

2:07:09 Speaker 2 No, I’m doing a course now, but besides that, I also help shluchos through consulting sessions. Some only need one hour to get their thoughts in order and see what’s working.

2:07:19 Speaker 4 Listen, because if you do it for free, there’s really no end to it.

2:07:22 Speaker 2 So I do give— No, of course there are things I do for free, and I’m part of WhatsApp groups, because there’s so much collective wisdom there.

2:07:28 Speaker 4 Right.

2:07:29 Speaker 2 An incredible amount.

2:07:30 Speaker 4 I see that.

2:07:30 Speaker 2 The amount of work going on there is amazing. And of course I’ll share what I know and contribute, because they share with me and give to me too. But if shluchos really want help, I say, “I’m happy to give you half an hour as a gift. If you want more than that, we’ll set a time.”

2:07:45 Speaker 4 Because I think that if you really want to help in a meaningful way, you need to sit for a few hours and hear the whole... Like you said, you need to know the nuances for someone from outside to be able to help and advise.

2:07:56 Speaker 2 Yes, and it’s also so complex. There are so many interconnected things. What about the husband? What about the couple? Where do the children go to school? Do they have to drive them out of town? There are so many, many things. Look, I believe there are excellent organizational consultants who work with this and can understand shluchim. But ultimately, when someone comes from within the system and understands it, it’s completely different. And when someone pays, she’s committed.

2:08:24 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:08:24 Speaker 2 In other words, it commits her to the process. She thinks, “I’ve already spent money on this. Am I not going to put these things into practice?” Sometimes one hour is enough for a shlucha to get her thoughts in order.

2:08:34 Speaker 4 Sometimes you’re paying just for the commitment.

2:08:36 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

2:08:37 Speaker 4 Like with a diet. Someone tells me what to do, and I’ll...

2:08:39 Speaker 2 And so many—exactly. So many people have told me that. Or you already know what to do, but you join a group anyway so the group will push you to do it. That’s what’s going to happen now with the networking. G-d willing, I’m starting next week. Many thanks to Temech for agreeing and for understanding how this can help shluchos. It took me a little while...

2:08:59 Speaker 4 So you’re doing it on their behalf, basically? How does it work?

2:09:01 Speaker 2 Temech has networking groups throughout the country for business owners and self-employed Charedi and religious women. They’re there to empower them, give them strength, a peer group, a place to discuss professional challenges, and opportunities to learn and develop professionally. They have groups all over the country now, some based on location and some on field. For example, there’s a group for graphic designers and a group for architects. You might think a group like that would mean competition between them. But what’s amazing is that today the whole world has moved toward this idea of abundance.

2:09:28 Speaker 4 An abundance mindset.

2:09:28 Speaker 2 You have an abundance mindset. Share, share. They say they gain so much from it. For example, “I have a client I can’t take, so I’m referring him to you.” They consult with one another, and everyone benefits. Not only do they not lose income by sharing their tips with friends; on the contrary, it helps them grow even more. You hear such remarkable things from them. You can really feel how the world is moving toward Moshiach—how people are sharing, expanding, and coming together in unity. So those things too—

2:09:56 Speaker 4 Abundance from Above.

2:09:56 Speaker 2 You can really see it in those things too. It’s truly amazing. You could do a whole podcast just about that, just about this idea.

2:10:05 Speaker 4 So you came to them and said, “Listen, there’s a group you haven’t thought of.”

2:10:09 Speaker 2 I myself took part in a group like that for almost three years. When—

2:10:14 Speaker 4 A group for what?

2:10:14 Speaker 2 A networking group for business owners and self-employed women. There was, for example, a parenting instructor, someone with a graphic design studio, a designer...

2:10:22 Speaker 4 So it was a mix of fields.

2:10:22 Speaker 2 A very broad mix, very broad. One woman ran workshops and programs in schools. There were various consultants. One worked in mod—modeling, building models. All sorts of very interesting things, and I gained so much from it. At first, they all raised an eyebrow: “What’s a Chabad shlucha doing here?” Then I explained that I’d realized we have marketing needs too. And by the way, we also do some buying and selling, like tefillin and mezuzos, and we need to know how to price them. You decide whether to charge an appropriate price.

2:10:57 Speaker 4 It’s amazing how many fields there really are in shlichus—what am I saying, in a Chabad House—and subfields and sub-subfields. You really need to know so much. So this professional training helps you a great deal.

2:11:08 Speaker 2 Very much, very much. And today there’s so much knowledge available. The Rebbe also talks a lot in his letters about operating like a business owner. We also have the expression “whoever engages in Torah.” Some people say in the morning blessings over the Torah, “Who has sanctified us to engage in the words of Torah.” The Chabad wording is a little different—“concerning the words of Torah”—but it’s the same idea. What does it mean to engage? A business isn’t someone sitting back, resting on their laurels, while customers come to them on their own. That will never happen. Look at Coca-Cola, for example. Look how much they invest in advertising and branding.

2:11:40 Speaker 4 Who doesn’t know you?

2:11:41 Speaker 2 Who doesn’t know what Coca-Cola is and what a brand it is? Every summer they run a summer campaign and connect themselves with music, so that whenever you walk into a store and see a selection of brands, Coca-Cola will always come to mind.

2:11:52 Speaker 4 Yesterday, Hayom Yom said that earning a spiritual livelihood should be like earning a material livelihood.

2:11:56 Speaker 2 Right.

2:11:57 Speaker 4 If you have merchandise, sell it.

2:11:59 Speaker 2 Sell it. Don’t keep it to yourself.

2:12:01 Speaker 4 Wherever you are, yes.

2:12:01 Speaker 2 In general, the Rebbe’s approach to these things is: if you know aleph, teach aleph. Don’t wait until you become a great rabbi before you start teaching. You went to a class, heard a Torah thought, gained some insight—share it with your friends at work, with a neighbor, with your husband, with the children, with anyone.

2:12:18 Speaker 4 We work in marketing.

2:12:18 Speaker 2 All the time.

2:12:19 Speaker 4 Marketing Yiddishkeit.

2:12:19 Speaker 2 We’re all sharing Yiddishkeit and Chassidus all the time. Don’t wait until you become some... You don’t have to be a great, distinguished rebbetzin. There are women who know more than I do, who understand far more than I do. Sometimes I listen to classes given by shluchos and think, wow. I’m not at that level; I’m at a lower level. But I can take what I do know, share it, and give it to others. Every single woman can. I try to say this in my classes all the time: Did you hear a good idea? Did you pick up an insight that spoke to you? Pass it on. Spread it. Be ambassadors of light. You have something to share. Shluchos aren’t the only ones with the privilege of giving a class.

2:12:58 Speaker 4 On the contrary. You don’t have the privilege of keeping it to yourselves.

2:13:00 Speaker 2 Exactly. If you heard something good, you have to share it. You have to pass the light on. Of course, in a way the other person can receive it, and at the right time and in the right manner. But share it, share it. The world is waiting for it, and people are thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. It might happen while you’re waiting in line at the well-baby clinic. Or, I don’t know, waiting at some frustrating government office, dealing with bureaucracy, and you strike up a conversation with the woman next to you.

2:13:26 Speaker 4 Once it’s on your mind, you find more opportunities.

2:13:29 Speaker 2 You wouldn’t believe how much light you can spread that way.

2:13:33 Speaker 4 Right.

2:13:33 Speaker 2 You say just the right sentence to someone, and later you hear how it stayed with her, changed something for her, made her think differently. Every single woman has this shlichus. “Shlichus as a way of life” really means just that: taking what we know and sharing it.

2:13:50 Speaker 4 And running with it.

2:13:50 Speaker 2 And running with it, exactly.

2:13:51 Speaker 4 The Rebbe actually uses the word “run.” I saw the Rebbe write somewhere: You know the letter alef? Run through the streets and tell everyone what alef is.

2:13:59 Speaker 2 Really.

2:13:59 Speaker 4 It’s amazing.

2:14:00 Speaker 2 You also hear people talk about their meetings with the Rebbe. They say, “Rebbe, I was in such-and-such a situation,” and still the Rebbe told them, “Be a leader.” There’s the very well-known story of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who was...

2:14:10 Speaker 4 He turned him into a shliach.

2:14:11 Speaker 2 He really turned him into a leader.

2:14:13 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:14:13 Speaker 2 He made him into somebody, essentially, and told him, “Yes.” In a sense, that’s what the Rebbe did for us shluchim.

2:14:19 Speaker 4 Right.

2:14:19 Speaker 2 Yes. Instead of just being Chani, living my own life, the Rebbe told us, “That’s not enough. Go out and spread it.” But it’s not only us. The Rebbe also spoke about how every Jew is a shliach. Wherever you are—you arrive at work, and you can have an incredible influence on people. First of all, by your own example. People see you, starting with how you dress. By the way, this year we did a Selichos tour. I took two of my daughters with me to Jerusalem, and we did this nighttime tour. It was very special. One of the women who came with us said to my daughters, “You know, I dress modestly today because of you.” We said, “What do you mean?” She said that she used to pass us with her son in the morning, on the way to school, while we were waiting for the bus on the main road. Every time she’d see us—a whole group of children, boruch Hashem, standing outside, let’s say.

2:15:13 Speaker 4 You couldn’t miss us.

2:15:13 Speaker 2 Most of the time, no. I do try very hard to make sure they go out looking neat, though there are times when they run back and forth: “Oh, I forgot my water bottle!” “Oh, I forgot this!” There are those times too. But Hakadosh Boruch Hu apparently arranged for her to see us on the good days, or she didn’t notice the little dramas as they ran back and forth to the bus stop. She said, “Every time I saw how you girls and your mother were dressed...” I only go outside wearing a sheitel and properly dressed. And she would say to herself each time, “Why don’t I dress like that? Maybe I should? Look how beautiful it is.” It was a conversation she was having with herself.

2:15:47 Speaker 4 Yes.

2:15:48 Speaker 2 And I knew nothing about it. I knew she had gradually started coming closer, that she was learning and had begun coming to classes. But what had prompted it? Just seeing us. Seeing us every morning. And if she hadn’t told us, we never would have known. On the way to Selichos, she simply chose to share it. First of all, I thanked her. It was really moving, because you can never know what effect you’re having. But it drove this point home for me even more. And by the way, sometimes I’m invited to speak to charedi women—for example, Belz women or at a Ger seminary—who face their own challenges. For us it’s like a battle over colors; for them it’s the struggle to earn a living. I’ve been invited to a few events like that, and I always try to focus on this point. You don’t have to be... Of course, all credit to you for coming. But the Rebbe taught us that this is our way of life. And the Rebbe, our holy Rebbe, wants every Jew to recognize that the people around you see you. You have the privilege of making a kiddush Hashem. You have the privilege of bringing a little more Yiddishkeit into another Jew’s life, even through small things. No one is asking you to leave your whole life behind right now and devote yourself to this. Going off like that really is challenging—like those women, like you, for example, in Kharkiv, or even like me, not living in a charedi neighborhood and all that.

2:17:05 Speaker 5 Around the clock, as the Rebbe says.

2:17:07 Speaker 2 Exactly. So wherever you are—at work, at a clinic, on the way somewhere. How do you get on the bus? How do you speak to the driver? How do you speak to your children? How do you... Yes. We hand out Shabbos candles on Fridays and go into different shops. One day we went into a candy store, one of the Tasa chain’s stores. The saleswoman and I started talking; I don’t even remember about what. Then she said to me, “I noticed something. You tell your children, ‘That isn’t our hechsher,’ and they put it straight back. You should know, a candy store is a place where you learn how parents raise their children.” That’s what the saleswoman told me.

2:17:43 Speaker 5 Oh, that’s interesting.

2:17:44 Speaker 2 She said, “I can tell exactly how they’re being raised, how their parents handle things, and so on. And I noticed that when you tell your children, ‘That isn’t our hechsher,’ they put it back on the shelf without a word of protest.” Now, it’s not as though I stood there making an announcement: “We won’t eat this because it doesn’t have a hechsher we accept.” Unfortunately, they also have things there that aren’t kosher, or that contain non-cholov Yisroel milk. It wasn’t an announcement or anything like that. It was a little conversation with them. Yes, even with two- or three-year-olds: “That isn’t our hechsher. Put it back.” Or if someone in a store gives them a candy that isn’t for us, I make it up to them and buy them a different one. She said, “I noticed the way you do that.” People say, “Wow, what an upbringing!” Now, to me it doesn’t seem like anything so special. I believe every woman who keeps Torah and mitzvos... Well, maybe in more religious areas...

2:18:41 Speaker 5 It has an effect, because you also meet...

2:18:43 Speaker 2 In more religious areas, naturally, perhaps you face this less, because all the products are... You know what? Even this year, with Tapuchips—they’re all... You know what I mean.

2:18:53 Speaker 5 Right.

2:18:53 Speaker 2 You have to pay attention. In the charedi community, the Tapuchips aren’t...

2:18:57 Speaker 5 Yes.

2:18:58 Speaker 2 Some Magnum ice creams have the hechsher of the Badatz Eidah Hachareidis, and some—I had an unfortunate mix-up with one—contain non-cholov Yisroel milk. Now, in charedi areas they don’t sell those in the first place. So a child growing up somewhere like that knows from the start that he needs to... It’s ingrained in him to look for the hechsher. Sometimes my children come home with things they got at preschool, where of course the teacher checks them. “Sweetheart, does this have our hechsher?”

2:19:21 Speaker 5 They’re used to it already.

2:19:22 Speaker 2 Exactly. And that saleswoman noticed. I didn’t say anything to her or make an announcement, but for her you could say it was a kind of kashrus campaign. Wait, she’s aware that there are different hechsherim, different considerations. Maybe now she can mention things to other customers.

2:19:35 Speaker 5 I’m sure there are lots of other things you don’t even know you’ve done—people you’ve influenced, things people have seen or heard...

2:19:40 Speaker 2 Everyone has that effect. But the point is that each woman can’t know. You can’t know, unless Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives you the privilege of being told.

2:19:47 Speaker 5 Like that woman did.

2:19:48 Speaker 2 Like that woman. But I’m sure there are others. And I’m sure every woman listening now has had situations like that: something she said, something she told a friend at work. Even if you work somewhere that isn’t religious, people come to you: “Can you help me with my mezuzos? Do you know someone who can do hafrashas challah?” They look to you as...

2:20:03 Speaker 5 We talked about marketing, so how about some subtle advertising?

2:20:06 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We need to pause for a moment... We are Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s ambassadors in the world. By the way, Chabad Houses in Israel have actually started an amazing initiative called “Ambassadors”: taking people and turning them into shluchim in their own buildings. They organize Chanukah menorah lightings in their buildings and distribute things for the holidays to their neighbors. Really.

2:20:26 Speaker 5 Because what is shlichus, really? The Rebbe sent shluchim so that they would make more shluchim. It’s not that you’ll be putting tefillin on people forever, but—

2:20:37 Speaker 2 Hopefully, one day, with Hashem’s help, he’ll start putting them on himself. Actually, just this Shabbos I heard from a friend in Ashkelon who told me they have several stands run by people her husband originally helped put on tefillin. Today, not only do they put on tefillin themselves, they also run the stands on Fridays. It’s really amazing. You see things like that and say, “Wow, what G-dliness, what power, what a gift the Rebbe gave us,” to see this too. And ultimately, he brought it to the entire Jewish people. Before the Rebbe gave this such momentum, no one talked about shlichus, about going out and doing this. Today you see it in all the organizations and all the communities.

2:21:20 Speaker 5 It’s become so common and widespread.

2:21:22 Speaker 2 Wonderful. That’s what we want. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem”—the more, the better. And believe me, no matter how much there is, there’s still more to give. Beyond that basic level of observing mitzvos, there’s Chassidus, the added depth, everything beyond it. Yes, all of us always have more room to grow, more to learn and more to do. So that’s something I want to—

2:21:44 Speaker 5 The niche of shlichus.

2:21:45 Speaker 2 I feel like I want to tell everyone: Wherever you are, Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed you there through hashgachah pratis. Look for the added value you can bring there, the kind word you can offer. Sometimes it’s just in a conversation by the coffee corner. You’re making coffee, and you share something beautiful you heard yesterday. You can’t know what that will give that woman. You can’t know where it will affect her, or when it might lift her up, how it might suddenly give her something. You just can’t know.

2:22:10 Speaker 5 It’s about living with that awareness, looking outward.

2:22:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

2:22:12 Speaker 5 Looking around you. As the Rebbe says about Yosef Hatzaddik: when he was in prison, he could have been completely caught up in his own misery, in the bitter things he’d been through. But instead, he noticed that someone had woken up in a bad mood that day.

2:22:25 Speaker 2 And from that came all—

2:22:25 Speaker 5 And what came of it?

2:22:26 Speaker 2 The entire Jewish people, the whole world.

2:22:27 Speaker 5 The whole world was saved from famine.

2:22:29 Speaker 2 Right. He asked him, “Why do you look so troubled?”

2:22:31 Speaker 5 So really, it’s about opening our eyes and looking around us. And that’s amazing.

2:22:35 Speaker 2 And every woman has that power. You don’t need the title of Chabad shlucha to do it.

2:22:39 Speaker 5 Completely, completely. Chani, I have an interesting question: If someone told you that you could go on shlichus—you had to go on shlichus and open a Chabad House anywhere in the world you wanted, except Ashdod—where would you go?

2:22:52 Speaker 2 That really is an interesting question. Honestly, I think the answer changes. If you’d asked me, say, ten years ago—

2:23:01 Speaker 5 At the beginning of the journey.

2:23:01 Speaker 2 At the beginning, I probably would have looked for a place abroad that serves travelers. I really love that whole scene, being around different kinds of people. That’s also something I really love: sitting in the Chabad House and simply talking with the people who come in.

2:23:14 Speaker 5 The whole Jewish people.

2:23:15 Speaker 2 All the tribes, all the types, all the different shades—in times of joy and, G-d forbid, the opposite. I really love it.

2:23:21 Speaker 5 You know, it’s interesting. They say in brain research that there’s a certain age—I think it’s twenty-four—when people’s willingness to take risks drops significantly.

2:23:30 Speaker 2 Right. With insurance, you know, car insurance changes once you’re over twenty-one.

2:23:34 Speaker 5 Right, that’s the age. And I really think that most shluchim who went to the more adventurous places, if you can call them that, did so because they were young. Younger people take more risks. Maybe that’s why your answer changes. You’re saying, “Once I would have gone somewhere like that, but today...”

2:23:52 Speaker 2 Could be. It could be that, as the years have gone by, if I had to go somewhere now—or even if I had to choose another neighborhood within Ashdod—I might choose a quieter area. Something more like a moshav, with one-on-one personal work. The big city is very busy, very crowded, and it’s also... You know, it brings a strong sense of responsibility. There are thousands and thousands of Jews living in the neighborhood. I have to, have to try to reach them all. I have to try to get to them.

2:24:17 Speaker 5 You can always tell yourself how many people you still haven’t reached.

2:24:20 Speaker 2 Yes, because, wow, if we have three hundred children at an activity—but wait, there are three thousand in the neighborhood. That’s not even ten percent.

2:24:27 Speaker 5 I think one of the most important parts of the work may be looking at the half-full glass, because otherwise there’s no end to it.

2:24:31 Speaker 2 Yes. Well, you know, that’s one of the things that really, really guides me, and I’ve been privileged to share it with the other shluchos too. Maybe I’ll tell you the story behind it. One Sukkos, I put on an activity for children at the Chabad House, with booths and everything. And not many came. Not many came. It was just one of those things, I don’t know. Sometimes, in the middle of the holiday, it goes one way; sometimes another. I was really down about it, because I’d put so much work in. What am I doing wrong? Why didn’t they come? Maybe I didn’t market it well? Speaking of marketing, yes.

2:25:03 Speaker 5 “I toiled and did not find.”

2:25:04 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, maybe I didn’t toil.

2:25:07 Speaker 5 “Don’t believe it.”

2:25:07 Speaker 2 Maybe I didn’t toil. So that really was what happened. Then I went inside—the activity was on the Chabad House grounds—and I went into the office area. I saw a package of books that had just been delivered. We’d received a gift from Maayanotecha: they’d sent every Chabad House three volumes of notes from the Rebbe. Okay, so there it is. I opened the... Just randomly, really. Though nothing is random in this world. I was sitting there, you know, feeling pretty low, and I opened the book. The first page said this. I can even read it to you, because it’s the picture for our shluchos group chat. That’s how much it... it...

2:25:45 Speaker 5 Right.

2:25:46 Speaker 2 And the picture says... The quote goes like this: “Regarding cases in which various flaws and shortcomings in a particular plan led to its cancellation,” the Rebbe wrote—meaning someone said, “The plan isn’t right, it won’t come out perfectly, so I’m canceling it.” The Rebbe wrote to them: “I have stated my opinion many, many times”—and the words “many, many” are underlined. By the way, the book includes a photograph of the Rebbe’s original handwritten note. “I have stated my opinion many, many times”—many, many—“that any good action, whatever it may be, is incomparably better”—and again, the words “incomparably better” are emphatically underlined—“than taking no action.” The Rebbe says: “I have stated my opinion many, many times that any good action, whatever it may be, is incomparably better than taking no action.”

2:26:33 Speaker 5 I got chills. And it wasn’t the first time.

2:26:37 Speaker 2 Listen, I have to say, I... There’s a reason we made that our group picture. There’s a reason I have it posted in my room.

2:26:42 Speaker 5 I have it written above my desk in Kharkov.

2:26:43 Speaker 2 Exactly. It’s like—none of that matters. So ten children came, and a hundred could have come. It’s still better than doing nothing. Better to do that small thing. True, I can’t go out now and distribute Shabbos candles to the whole neighborhood, but I can reach ten people. I can reach twenty. During the COVID period, for example, we couldn’t go out and distribute them. So we put a table with candles by the entrance to our home, and we were shocked to discover that people were taking them and the table kept emptying. Of course, since then it’s become a permanent fixture. But suddenly you think, “I can’t do it.” Oh—there’s the answer.

2:27:14 Speaker 5 It’s about changing your approach, allowing yourself to scale back, and knowing that’s okay.

2:27:19 Speaker 2 Look, and this is also so... If we were talking about parenting, it also depends very much on what’s happening in your life. There are times when I’ve just given birth; I can’t do everything I did before. It’s not possible. My first shlichus is at home. First and foremost, I’m a mother to my children. The Rebbe spoke about this all the time. He emphasized it to shluchim as well.

2:27:35 Speaker 5 Right.

2:27:35 Speaker 2 To shluchos. No activity you do outside can compare to bringing another Jewish child into the world. In other words, you can’t say, “If I have more children and I’m on maternity leave, I won’t manage to do the activities.” No—all your activities, with all due respect to them—

2:27:48 Speaker 5 You know, people talk about slowing down, but that isn’t really the right term, because you’re in high gear somewhere else.

2:27:53 Speaker 2 You’re in a different gear. That’s all. Maybe you’re recalculating your route.

2:27:56 Speaker 5 Yes.

2:27:57 Speaker 2 Or you’ve turned toward something else for now. You’ve made a kind of stop.

2:28:01 Speaker 5 Adjusted to the situation.

2:28:02 Speaker 2 Adjusted, yes, but that’s just it—it isn’t a stop. I don’t know, every child has what they bring and their own value. And I think that when people around us see how happy we are with our large family, they ask the children about it. They see that we’re happy with them and, baruch Hashem, that life with them is good. We really try to bring out each child’s potential, give each one room for their strengths, and pay attention to those things. That in itself is enormous. I personally know of several children in our city who, baruch Hashem, came into the world because their mothers looked at our family.

2:28:34 Speaker 5 Wow.

2:28:34 Speaker 2 And they said, “It’s possible.” They told me, which is how I know.

2:28:37 Speaker 5 Now you also have to tell them how.

2:28:39 Speaker 2 It’s okay, we talk all the time.

2:28:41 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

2:28:41 Speaker 2 Look, I also let people come over to my house. The house isn’t always one hundred percent perfect, and all that.

2:28:48 Speaker 5 Don’t look in the corners.

2:28:49 Speaker 2 Don’t look. Oh, that’s what we forgot.

2:28:51 Speaker 5 Right. So, let’s wrap up.

2:28:54 Speaker 2 To really wrap things up, yes—two tips, two things that help me a lot with being a mother to a large family and doing other things too. So, as I said earlier, one is time for myself. I have to have it.

2:29:04 Speaker 5 Oh, wow, that’s where we started.

2:29:05 Speaker 2 Right, and then we went off in other directions. The second thing is learning to accept help. Really learning to accept help. First of all, my mother always got help at home, so maybe, because she’s from abroad, it just came naturally to her. But I have an aunt, may she be well, Devorah Shmotkin, who has been a shlucha in Milwaukee for almost fifty years. She once told us a story at a farbrengen for shluchos. She told it, and afterward I heard the same thing from other shluchos too. So it seems to be a pattern.

2:29:32 Speaker 5 Yes, it was something that came up again and again.

2:29:33 Speaker 2 That came up again and again. She went into yechidus with the Rebbe at the beginning of their shlichus, and they’re among the veteran shluchim. They didn’t have everything we have today—all the knowledge and insights we have. They were the founding generation. Yes. She had four little boys who were quite mischievous, and an enormous workload. She also started preschools and hosted people. And to this day they have a huge, thriving Chabad House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the central United States, with many shluchim working alongside them, under their direction. So she told the Rebbe that it was hard for her. She couldn’t manage. What should she do, what should she give up, and how would she cope? The Rebbe asked her whether she had help at home. She told the Rebbe that someone came twice a week. The Rebbe told her, “Add another day, or even two, and don’t go checking the corners after her.”

2:30:14 Speaker 5 That’s interesting.

2:30:15 Speaker 2 First of all, it’s so sensitive. Look at that sensitivity. And since I’ve heard the Rebbe give this answer to several other shluchos, I think it can be considered guidance for everyone.

2:30:24 Speaker 5 Right.

2:30:25 Speaker 2 Get help. If you already have help, get more help. Don’t settle for what you have, and don’t go checking the corners after her, because she’ll never do it as perfectly as you would. But—

2:30:36 Speaker 5 It’s interesting that we need encouragement with this. I think, first, maybe a woman doesn’t give herself enough permission.

2:30:41 Speaker 2 She doesn’t give herself that permission.

2:30:42 Speaker 5 She doesn’t feel comfortable with it. And second, it’s an expense. So each woman can work out where she can fit it in and give it a higher priority.

2:30:49 Speaker 2 Look, help doesn’t always have to mean a cleaner coming to the house.

2:30:54 Speaker 5 Yes.

2:30:54 Speaker 2 For example, there was a time when my older children were little that I hired a young woman to help me on Thursday afternoons: peeling vegetables, you know, for all the food we had to prepare for the Chabad House, preparing the schnitzels, grating things. All kinds of practical kitchen tasks. It cost less than an hour of cleaning help, but the relief it gave me was tremendous.

2:31:17 Speaker 5 Yes.

2:31:17 Speaker 2 Another thing that has stayed with me is something my mother always used to say. She would tell me, “Nothing will happen to your floor if someone else washes it. Nothing will happen to the dishes—they won’t feel guilty, they won’t feel bad about themselves, and they won’t need a psychologist afterward.”

2:31:30 Speaker 5 Wow.

2:31:31 Speaker 2 But your children...

2:31:33 Speaker 5 Right.

2:31:33 Speaker 2 And your children—first of all, the children and the work you do are things that, generally, nobody else can do in your place.

2:31:40 Speaker 5 Right, no one can do it like you.

2:31:41 Speaker 2 Exactly. So take the things you can share with other people and make that a priority. For example, secondhand furniture doesn’t bother me personally—that’s just one example. Every couple, every family, sets its own priorities according to what it can manage. I can also say that Hakadosh Boruch Hu provides. Hakadosh Boruch Hu provides. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives gifts and helps. He doesn’t remain in anyone’s debt; He’s our partner in raising our children, too.

2:32:05 Speaker 5 We have to make a vessel, open the channel.

2:32:07 Speaker 2 Exactly.

2:32:08 Speaker 5 And changing your mindset is often really—

2:32:10 Speaker 2 So often it is the mindset: “I shouldn’t spend that on myself,” and “She won’t do it as well as I do.” True, she won’t do it as well as I do. Fine. But raising the children right now—having the strength for them, having the headspace for them, being able to notice what they need, even starting with the small things. Yes, whether it’s their eyesight and hearing, dental care and things like that, their emotional needs, giving them attention, taking each one out for a fun day like I do from time to time, or all sorts of things like that—

2:32:37 Speaker 5 Having the emotional space for it.

2:32:39 Speaker 2 You need that emotional space. If the burden of cleaning and laundry and all those never-ending things is on your mind all the time, you can’t do it. So look for what will work for you—if it isn’t simple, it simply won’t happen. Speaking of which—

2:32:52 Speaker 5 That’s a saying of yours that I... Where does it actually come from?

2:32:54 Speaker 2 I don’t know. I came across it once as a bit of wordplay and just adopted it. It’s a kind of way of life. By the way—

2:33:00 Speaker 5 It really is. There have been so many times when it guided me.

2:33:04 Speaker 2 In how to organize things for Chabad House activities, how to run classes.

2:33:07 Speaker 5 I’d start some project and think, okay, if it isn’t simple, it simply won’t happen. How can I do this at a level I know I can maintain, something I’ll be able to carry through?

2:33:16 Speaker 2 For example, I knew that if, with Shifra and Puah, I committed to preparing meals at the level they do in Kfar Chabad and Nachlas Har Chabad—really, really elaborate meals, involving so much work; it seems to me that practically professional cooks make them—I knew that if I had to meet that standard, our Shifra and Puah would collapse very quickly. So we worked out a standard. Ours is very nice, and we prepare plenty.

2:33:37 Speaker 5 By the way, they aren’t professional cooks. They’re women who—

2:33:39 Speaker 2 Yes, I know, but they’re people who are almost like professional cooks, I mean. They put so much into it, really love the kitchen, and do things to a very, very high standard, with a beautiful presentation. Now, I’m not saying our presentation isn’t beautiful. It is beautiful and very inviting, and women really, really enjoy it. But I knew that if I set myself that kind of standard, before long it wouldn’t happen.

2:34:01 Speaker 5 Right.

2:34:01 Speaker 2 Before long it wouldn’t happen, and other women wouldn’t want to join in either, because it would be too hard for them. So we looked for a way to simplify it. What could we buy? What could we prepare in advance? We made a sort of checklist of the things we needed. Needed, yes—but it’s not set in stone.

2:34:16 Speaker 5 Our basic requirements, so to speak.

2:34:18 Speaker 2 Because that was the way to find the simplest thing that would work for us. It’s the same when I work with shluchos who want to start a Shifra and Puah program in their communities. What would be simple for you? Is it easy for you to recruit women for things like this? Do you have observant women in your community? Don’t you?

2:34:31 Speaker 5 No, “simple” means something different for each person.

2:34:32 Speaker 2 Well, exactly.

2:34:33 Speaker 5 What’s simple for her.

2:34:34 Speaker 2 And listen, we’re always looking at Kfar Chabad and Nachlas Har Chabad. They, especially, are the model. Okay?

2:34:40 Speaker 5 Yes.

2:34:40 Speaker 2 They have so much. Their Shifra and Puah program is just wow.

2:34:44 Speaker 5 Yes, besides the breakfasts, there are lots of other things.

2:34:46 Speaker 2 And you know what? They have the playroom and the meals, help with Shabbos preparations, vouchers and cleaning help—it goes on and on.

2:34:52 Speaker 5 And that’s where it began. It began in Kfar Chabad.

2:34:54 Speaker 2 Look, that’s the original program.

2:34:54 Speaker 5 Yes.

2:34:55 Speaker 2 So we always have, how do you say, something to strive for. But we shouldn’t tell ourselves that if I don’t reach that level, then it’s not worth it.

2:35:02 Speaker 5 Right.

2:35:03 Speaker 2 It’s not worth it. If I don’t manage to prepare breakfasts for a whole month, then I haven’t done anything. Wait—a moment. Every breakfast stands on its own. You manage to make one? Good for you. All you can manage is a cake? Wonderful. You manage to bring a gift—and I’m just saying, it isn’t right for me to use the word “only.”

2:35:18 Speaker 5 Or “just,” yes.

2:35:19 Speaker 2 That’s not right. Not “just” and not “only.” You can manage it? Good for you. That’s amazing. And that’s what you need to look for: the way that will help you keep doing it.

2:35:26 Speaker 5 Exactly.

2:35:27 Speaker 2 By the way, that applies to anything, any change you’re trying to make. What will help me do it? How will I make it part of my system? That’s, that’s how—

2:35:33 Speaker 5 I think those two sentences make a beautiful ending.

2:35:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

2:35:36 Speaker 5 Write this down for yourselves: If it isn’t simple, it simply won’t happen. And the Rebbe’s words—

2:35:41 Speaker 2 One good action is incomparably better than no action. By the way, notice that he also uses the phrase “absence of action.” Not “not doing”—the Rebbe’s wording is always positive.

2:35:51 Speaker 5 Right. “Absence of action.”

2:35:53 Speaker 2 “Absence of action”—something is missing here.

2:35:54 Speaker 5 Yes, because one compared to zero really is something compared to nothing.

2:35:58 Speaker 2 Exactly. So one compared to zero is something versus nothing, while one and two are, like, more, more—

2:36:03 Speaker 5 It’s in our heads.

2:36:04 Speaker 2 It’s in our heads. So maybe I’ll quote it precisely for anyone who isn’t quite ready to wrap up: “I have already expressed my opinion many times that every good action, whatever it may be, is incomparably better than the absence of action.”

2:36:15 Speaker 5 And take that into every area of your lives, into your motherhood. You know, dinner: “Oh, I’m not going to make a meal.” No, make something small. I mean, really, it doesn’t have to be something small.

2:36:26 Speaker 2 The problem is that this drive for perfection, this perfectionism, sometimes puts us in a place where we think, “Then I won’t do it at all.”

2:36:32 Speaker 5 We’re also used to this approach of always striving for more and being disappointed in ourselves. And—

2:36:37 Speaker 2 Exactly.

2:36:37 Speaker 5 And then the Rebbe comes along and flips a switch in our heads, because—

2:36:40 Speaker 2 It’s better to do it. Going from zero to one—that’s what’s better.

2:36:43 Speaker 5 To focus on what matters most.

2:36:44 Speaker 2 Yes. So that’s it. Thank you for—

2:36:46 Speaker 5 Wow. Chani, thank you. That was such a pleasure. Wow, we really sat here and spent the morning together.

2:36:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

2:36:51 Speaker 5 And we hope you get as much as possible out of this podcast, because there was so much in it. All right, thank you, Chani, and have a safe trip.