Episode 18: Inside the Dormitory | With Chana Rivka Greenberg

00:00 Speaker 1 Why does a fourteen-year-old girl need to move into a dorm? What awaits her there? What challenges are there, and how do you grow from them? And what can you do to make the most of that time? Whether you’re a mother preparing to send your daughter to a dorm, you already have a daughter in one, or you’re a girl living in a dorm yourself right now, you’re invited to listen to this fascinating episode, full of insights, with Chana Rivka Greenberg. How do 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 women who have brought their shlichus into a variety of fields, and through their stories, they’ll help each of us find and define our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live is the best there is. Shlichus as a way of life. Let’s begin. Hello, Chana Rivka.

00:58 Speaker 2 Hello.

00:59 Speaker 1 You’ve come to us straight from—

01:01 Speaker 2 Maale Efraim.

01:02 Speaker 1 No less! Come on, tell us about yourself. You start.

01:05 Speaker 2 Okay. My name is Chana Rivka Greenberg. I’m from Maale Efraim. It’s basically a bit of a hole in the middle of nowhere.

01:13 Speaker 1 A bit of one.

01:14 Speaker 2 So all my life, I went to schools that were relatively close by.

01:21 Speaker 1 Maybe describe roughly where this “hole” is, for anyone who doesn’t know.

01:24 Speaker 2 So this “hole,” in quotation marks, is on the edge of the Jordan Valley. It’s right at the beginning of the valley. And it’s kind of an oasis in the desert. You can see that when you arrive. So it’s near Shomron, near Binyamin, near the valley. We have our own local council. That’s where it is. You can type Maale Efraim into Google.

01:49 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:50 Speaker 2 And find it.

01:50 Speaker 1 Type it in and…

01:51 Speaker 2 Yes. So, yes.

01:56 Speaker 1 And because you live there—

01:57 Speaker 2 Okay.

01:58 Speaker 1 You went to schools…

02:01 Speaker 2 Yes. I didn’t go to a Chabad school. We’re Chabad at home, but somehow it just didn’t work out. I get very, very carsick. My parents and I thought about it, and my mother just said to me, “It’s not right. It makes no sense for a girl to travel two hours each way every morning and afternoon.” That sounds a bit excessive, and I’m very sensitive to car rides. My mother always says that when I rode in a car as a little girl, as a baby, I would suddenly start screaming.

02:27 Speaker 1 Wow.

02:28 Speaker 2 And no one understood why I was screaming. And—

02:32 Speaker 1 It’s often the opposite, actually.

02:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:34 Speaker 1 When you want a child to fall asleep, you get in the car.

02:36 Speaker 2 My older brother—you’d put him in the car. But me, the moment I got in, I’d—

02:39 Speaker 1 Right. And then they wake up at a traffic light.

02:41 Speaker 2 Yes. So with me it really was strange, and you simply couldn’t drive anywhere with me. When I got older, we realized it was nausea, and I really suffered from it. So sending me to the distant Chabad school that all the girls from our community went to wasn’t an option.

03:00 Speaker 1 Which was the closest one?

03:02 Speaker 2 Jerusalem was the closest.

03:04 Speaker 1 How long a drive?

03:05 Speaker 2 Two hours. It’s an hour and forty minutes, but by the time you get there and everything, it’s two hours in practice.

03:09 Speaker 1 That’s crazy.

03:10 Speaker 2 And they’re really difficult drives. It’s not a flat road; it’s steep, with climbs and descents.

03:15 Speaker 1 Between mountains and rocks.

03:16 Speaker 2 I really admire the girls who made those trips, but I just wasn’t made for it.

03:20 Speaker 1 That’s four hours of traveling a day.

03:22 Speaker 2 Exactly.

03:23 Speaker 1 Two hours there, two hours back.

03:24 Speaker 2 That sounds insane. Getting up early enough to arrive on time—and expecting a child to get up that early.

03:30 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:31 Speaker 2 So my mother sent me to a nearby school, in a community about twenty minutes away, half an hour at most, which is reasonable. Even children—

03:42 Speaker 1 Lots of children do that.

03:43 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s a manageable drive. I went to school there, a lovely religious-Zionist school called Ahavat Yitzchak in Kochav HaShachar. By the time I reached eighth grade, I’d spent a long time there as the shlucha. They gave me that role, that title. Everyone knew: Chana Rivka is the shlucha in the class. I really appreciated that recognition.

04:07 Speaker 1 How many girls were in the class? Was it a small, close-knit school, or—

04:11 Speaker 2 It was. Yes, there was one class per grade, though at one point there were two classes in a grade. But yes, it was a really warm school, with so much to offer the children, so much love and so many values. I just know that I really enjoyed that school. I remember such good experiences there. It was a truly lovely school.

04:36 Speaker 1 That’s not something to take for granted.

04:37 Speaker 2 Not at all. The teachers from that school are still part of my life to this day. I see them at…

04:42 Speaker 1 Wow. That’s elementary school—quite a long way back to remember.

04:45 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a long way back. But then you reach a certain point, eighth grade, the end of elementary school, middle school, and the question really is whether to continue on to high school there or go to Chabad. High school is already an age when you’re growing up. It shapes what you want to be later in life. If you go to an ulpana, chances are that’s the path you’ll follow. But at the end of the day, I’m Chabad, and I want to go—and my soul wants to go—to a place where I truly belong.

05:24 Speaker 1 So commuting wasn’t an option. You had to find some solution.

05:27 Speaker 2 A dorm.

05:29 Speaker 1 A dorm.

05:30 Speaker 2 Yes, a dorm. That’s a word that frightens a lot of people. I hear it from everyone.

05:35 Speaker 1 It really is such a young age. How old were you?

05:37 Speaker 2 Fourteen.

05:38 Speaker 1 Fourteen.

05:39 Speaker 2 Fourteen is an age…

05:40 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:41 Speaker 2 Just the beginning.

05:42 Speaker 1 Granted, most boys leave for yeshiva at that age, but, well, we’re girls.

05:46 Speaker 2 True, but even—

05:47 Speaker 1 It’s hard for them too. Yes.

05:48 Speaker 2 I think it’s also…

05:50 Speaker 1 Right.

05:51 Speaker 2 Hard for the parents, mainly, I think.

05:53 Speaker 1 Right, the house starts to empty out.

05:55 Speaker 2 Right. Little by little, just poof.

05:57 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:58 Speaker 2 They leave home.

05:59 Speaker 1 So you realized you needed to take that step.

06:01 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s what it came down to. My mother looked at the options and said, “Okay, what can we do here, or there?” She thought about it a lot. Then she heard about a dorm in the north and said, “Let’s try this one.” I went, checked it out, and felt it suited me.

06:26 Speaker 1 What do you mean, you went and checked it out? Had you already started the school year there, or did you go beforehand to see it and get a feel for it?

06:33 Speaker 2 I went for an interview beforehand, of course, and visited the dorm. I saw the girls, the general style, the atmosphere—I saw what it was actually like. I arrived at the dorm just as all the girls were coming back from school, so I got a sense of it. You can tell whether it’s right for you or not.

06:56 Speaker 1 So you could picture yourself there?

06:58 Speaker 2 Yes. I even looked at the room and said, “Okay, I could sleep here. I could live here.” And over time I realized that this was my choice.

07:10 Speaker 1 Right.

07:10 Speaker 2 Period.

07:11 Speaker 1 Even though, supposedly, you didn’t have another option.

07:16 Speaker 2 There really wasn’t another option, but I think they made me feel that it was my choice.

07:21 Speaker 1 It’s interesting—while you’re talking, something else comes to mind. What is Chabad, after all? Chabad is a body of Torah teachings, a particular approach. And often, when people say “Chabad,” they mean a community, a style of people that has developed around it. In other words, when you say, “I grew up in a Chabad home, I went to a particular school, and moving to Chabad was a transition”—wait, but you’re from a Chabad home.

07:45 Speaker 2 Right.

07:45 Speaker 1 It shows that Chabad really is a body of teachings.

07:50 Speaker 2 Right.

07:50 Speaker 1 A Chabad home is a home raised on Chabad principles, and a Chabad school has those principles too. But there’s also much more to it: every community develops its own style, its own way of doing things. So moving from one setting to another, even when you come from a Chabad home, is a real transition.

08:08 Speaker 2 Right. And within Chabad there’s everything—there are people of all kinds. People have their own challenges too, and you experience all sorts of things. But there’s the Rebbe. We look directly to the Rebbe, to what he says.

08:23 Speaker 1 Right.

08:24 Speaker 2 At least for me, that’s what really guided me throughout…

08:29 Speaker 1 So in that sense there was a consistent line from your home to the school, but suddenly you had to get used to a different style. Because it is a different style.

08:35 Speaker 2 A different world.

08:36 Speaker 1 Interesting.

08:36 Speaker 2 A completely different world. You see the difference in very small, basic things at school. And besides living in a dorm, you’re also going to a different school.

08:49 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:49 Speaker 2 That’s two institutions.

08:51 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. And I’m only talking about changing schools so far, before even getting to the dorm.

08:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:55 Speaker 1 I should say here that I’m the least dorm-type person in the world. When I finished high school, I briefly considered living in a dorm, and about two minutes later I dismissed the idea. I said, “No, I’m a home person.” So everything you’re saying really is a completely different, new world to me. I’m curious: how do you pack the first time you’re leaving for a dorm? What do you put in your bag? You basically need everything.

09:21 Speaker 2 Everything.

09:22 Speaker 1 Everything. But for how long at a time? How often did you come home in ninth grade?

09:27 Speaker 2 Every two weeks. One week, you stay at the dorm for Shabbos; the next week, you go home on Thursday. So you pack for two weeks. You basically take everything.

09:36 Speaker 1 Wait, so you spend one Shabbos at the dorm?

09:38 Speaker 2 Yes, and that’s a whole—

09:41 Speaker 1 The day before yesterday.

09:41 Speaker 2 —story in itself. But you really do pack everything you need and don’t need for two weeks. Anything you can imagine you might need. If it’s Purim, you put all your costumes in the... You really think of every little thing you might need, and then you find your closet at home empty and your closet at the dorm full. Like, what?

10:05 Speaker 1 Because you took everything. What can you do? You’d need two of everything.

10:08 Speaker 2 Think about it: you’re only going home for Friday and Shabbos.

10:11 Speaker 1 And you have to pack. You end up packing to go home.

10:14 Speaker 2 Right.

10:15 Speaker 1 Like, everything’s at the dorm, and you pack for trips home.

10:18 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember one of the girls at the dorm was a shliach’s daughter from Ukraine. She said, “Ugh, it’s so annoying. Every time I go away for Shabbos, I have to take things out of my closet.” But we told her, “Think about it: we have two closets to manage. You have one closet, and you just need to pack for a Shabbos away.”

10:39 Speaker 1 Your suitcase is your closet, basically.

10:40 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:41 Speaker 1 A temporary one.

10:41 Speaker 2 So yes, that was our argument.

10:44 Speaker 1 Wait, you mentioned a shliach’s daughter from Ukraine. What other girls besides you came to the dorm? Daughters of shluchim from abroad, first of all.

10:51 Speaker 2 Yes, first and foremost it was for the daughters of the Rebbe’s shluchim. But there were also girls like me who lived far from a school and wanted to attend that particular high school, which was an amazing high school. We really wanted that school. The dorm was just a way to make it possible.

11:12 Speaker 1 Were there girls who came just... I mean, a girl who did have a high school near home but came to the dorm just to attend this one, or for the dorm experience?

11:21 Speaker 2 It was more about the high school, because the dorm was an apartment. It wasn’t some grand boarding-school setup. No, it was a small apartment for—

11:29 Speaker 1 Just a practical option for whoever needed it.

11:30 Speaker 2 Exactly. It was a small apartment for girls, a real apartment, with a kitchen. No dining hall—just a kitchen, a bathroom, everything there. Simply an apartment, a home. You just came home. But...

11:43 Speaker 1 You know, the word “dorm” really conjures up, at least for me, these long corridors and doors, doors, doors. Like—

11:50 Speaker 2 Right, with lots of girls.

11:51 Speaker 1 No, not a prison. But...

11:52 Speaker 2 Yes, but that’s how I pictured it too.

11:53 Speaker 1 A bit of an association.

11:54 Speaker 2 I was sure I’d arrive at the kind of place you read about in books, with a dorm mother.

11:58 Speaker 1 Like a boarding-school kid.

12:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:00 Speaker 1 With that huge jangling bunch of keys.

12:02 Speaker 2 Yes. And some dorm mother comes over and says, “Why didn’t you do this?”

12:07 Speaker 1 So your place was different.

12:09 Speaker 2 Completely different. It was a group of girls, eleven girls in an apartment. It was crowded, but it was simply a group of girls sharing an apartment and experiencing everything together, really together. Like...

12:23 Speaker 1 You did all the upkeep yourselves.

12:26 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

12:26 Speaker 1 You divided it among yourselves.

12:28 Speaker 2 Chores, everything. The kitchen, the bathroom, the trash, the dishes—everything.

12:34 Speaker 1 Real life.

12:35 Speaker 2 Exactly. Suddenly you’re like, okay.

12:38 Speaker 1 And who decided who slept with whom, and all that?

12:41 Speaker 2 The administration decided that. They didn’t want conflicts between the girls. They wanted to prevent as many fights as possible, when there was some little disagreement every minute anyway.

12:50 Speaker 1 Fights like sisters have? How did that work?

12:52 Speaker 2 Yes, fights like sisters have. I don’t have sisters.

12:54 Speaker 1 At some point you end up hiding from each other in the bathroom.

12:57 Speaker 2 Yes. Just imagine—

12:58 Speaker 1 Oh, you don’t have sisters, so you got to experience that.

13:01 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I just arrived at the dorm, and then...

13:03 Speaker 1 They had to teach you how to live.

13:04 Speaker 2 Absolutely. But I was the little sister, so it’s like, the little ones always know what to do to their older siblings.

13:11 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

13:11 Speaker 2 Instigating things.

13:13 Speaker 1 Wow. So girls come to the dorm and leave home behind, which is a lot. It’s not just a house.

13:19 Speaker 2 Exactly.

13:20 Speaker 1 It’s not just four walls.

13:21 Speaker 2 Right.

13:21 Speaker 1 It’s your parents, your siblings, experiences, Shabbos, holidays. Well, for holidays you go home.

13:27 Speaker 2 Right.

13:28 Speaker 1 Presumably. Girls from abroad don’t actually go home for every holiday. So what do they do, go to relatives?

13:35 Speaker 2 They came to us.

13:36 Speaker 1 To your family, for example.

13:37 Speaker 2 Friends came to us...

13:40 Speaker 1 Right, on Shabbos too.

13:41 Speaker 2 They also had families; it’s not as if they—

13:43 Speaker 1 Most of the girls, right.

13:43 Speaker 2 But there were a few girls who didn’t have anyone nearby, so they would just come to us. We hosted them because they were really like sisters to us, part of us. It was...

13:54 Speaker 1 Right, it really sounds like being a lone soldier, in a way.

13:57 Speaker 2 Right.

13:58 Speaker 1 When my husband came to Israel for yeshiva and didn’t yet have family here—he has more family here now—he actually had to ask his friends if he could go with them to their cousins’ homes. It was that sort of thing...

14:08 Speaker 2 Wow. Yes, that really is uncomfortable. Sometimes you encounter that in Tishrei, when you want to go to... I mean, when you come to the Rebbe, you...

14:17 Speaker 1 You’re a friend of a friend of a friend.

14:19 Speaker 2 You find yourself in an uncomfortable position. But yes, that situation really is uncomfortable. We always took the initiative and invited them to come to us so they’d feel welcome. It always felt good.

14:33 Speaker 1 Yes.

14:33 Speaker 2 There was never anything awkward like that.

14:35 Speaker 1 So you saw your parents once every two weeks, and then, I think, you had breaks for Chanukah and Pesach, right?

14:41 Speaker 2 Yes, those were pretty long breaks, but you still just...

14:44 Speaker 1 It’s the stretches in between that...

14:46 Speaker 2 Exactly. They were long stretches.

14:49 Speaker 1 Wow.

14:49 Speaker 2 Exactly.

14:50 Speaker 1 I’m sure there were times you forgot to pack something?

14:53 Speaker 2 Of course.

14:55 Speaker 1 Tell me about that.

14:56 Speaker 2 Most of the time I forgot something. You’d suddenly realize that something you’d even planned to bring—you’d put a bag by the door and told yourself, “Remember, remember”—simply wasn’t in your suitcase. It was so frustrating. You’d be in shock, not knowing what to do. You could turn to a sweet teacher who opened her heart to us, or just cry to your mother on the phone about how annoying it was. Those moments could really break you. Say there was a school play and they told you, “Now you need to bring an orange-and-yellow plaid shirt.” Where am I supposed to get an orange-and-yellow plaid shirt now? I’d have to go home.

15:46 Speaker 1 Maybe there should have been a little exception noted for the dorm girls?

15:48 Speaker 2 Right, I always said—

15:49 Speaker 1 What percentage of the high school were you?

15:51 Speaker 2 Not many at all, like...

15:52 Speaker 1 Right, you said eleven girls.

15:53 Speaker 2 Eleven girls. It wasn’t a significant number.

15:57 Speaker 1 So they didn’t accommodate you to that extent...

15:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. I mean, the school had classes on Fridays, and on the weeks we went home for Shabbos, we didn’t attend on Friday. So there was always the problem of catching up. We constantly had to make up Friday’s material.

16:11 Speaker 1 But in high school, that’s significant.

16:12 Speaker 2 Very. And you’d say, “Wait, what about us? Think of us.” True, they didn’t mark us absent, but still. It was very, very, very, very hard, having to catch up on Sunday with material that really mattered. But then again, if we missed a gym class on Friday, that was...

16:38 Speaker 1 Pros and cons. It depends which classes you like.

16:41 Speaker 2 Yes, I really liked gym, but yes. You just realize you don’t have what’s always available to you at home, even something as small as a hair tie or a bobby pin. You can pop out and buy one, but at home you can get one in a second, just take a pin or a hair tie. And even if you get one from the friend who sleeps next to you in the room, it isn’t the same as taking one out of your own box.

17:08 Speaker 1 Right, it’s like... I remember traveling—say you travel to the Rebbe, you go away... My first substantial trip was when I went to a camp in Russia with my aunt. I remembered to pack pretty much everything, but there were moments during the day that were so hard. I just missed home. And I was older, almost seventeen already.

17:27 Speaker 2 Wow.

17:28 Speaker 1 I was just such a homebody. I wasn’t missing any particular practical thing, but I remember how hard it was, and I think, oh my goodness, doing that from age fourteen.

17:38 Speaker 2 Right. So it was very hard for me too, because I was a homebody as well. A lot of people were shocked that I left—and I didn’t really leave home, of course.

17:48 Speaker 1 Yes.

17:48 Speaker 2 I went away to boarding school. People were like, “You’re going to boarding school? What happened? Is everything okay?” Everything was okay. Sometimes circumstances just bring you to a place like that, and nothing really changes. But the homesickness takes up so much space, and it can get you down for the whole day. If I missed home terribly in the morning, it would affect me all day—in class and right through the evening. It could make things really hard. The first year was very challenging, because you really don’t have anyone. You learn to make a family for yourself there: people who have your back, people you need in a crisis. And when something makes you happy, you want to run and tell someone, but there’s no one to tell. So you find someone.

18:49 Speaker 1 Aren’t the girls in the dorm more able to relate to one another? They’re basically like sisters to each other. Maybe you can find someone there who’ll listen.

19:01 Speaker 2 Right.

19:01 Speaker 1 Or is everyone caught up in her own problems?

19:03 Speaker 2 Right. I mean, you could see it with the laundry, when it was your turn to do laundry. You’d come to put your laundry in, and it was, “I was here before you.” “No, I was here before you.” It could turn into a bit of a mess. But I understand what it’s like when you urgently need to do laundry and have nothing clean, so you find ways to give way to each other. That’s actually where you saw it happening. You live together as a group, so you learn to recognize what’s going on. You also know how the other person feels. I could tell when a friend was going through something upsetting, whether it was because of laundry or anything else.

19:35 Speaker 1 Any other trigger, yes.

19:36 Speaker 2 Absolutely. So we really were there for each other, and that’s also what made me more empathetic and more sensitive to the people around me. I’d see someone and think, “Wow, I recognize what’s going on here.” You learn to recognize these things. It really prepares you for life, emotionally too.

19:58 Speaker 1 Really, growing up in one space with four other women is the best preparation for life. After all—

20:04 Speaker 2 Very much so.

20:04 Speaker 1 Yes. You grow up at home, maybe sharing a room with a sister or brother, at most. Let’s face it, we’re all pretty spoiled in the end. Boarding school is a slap in the face, so to speak.

20:16 Speaker 2 It absolutely is. You get there and have to deal with someone coming into the room while someone else is sleeping, and you need things just the way you do at home. But you can’t act as though you’re at home. You just can’t. You have to—

20:29 Speaker 1 And she’s not your sister, after all.

20:30 Speaker 2 Right, she’s not your sister, and you can’t just do whatever you want. But you learn to live with things. Even if a situation doesn’t suit you and you don’t like it, eventually you get used to it, and that’s okay. I was used to sleeping with light coming in from the hallway, but some of the girls in my room wanted the door shut and complete darkness. So I learned to live with it. To this day, I sleep with the room completely dark because of that time—

21:02 Speaker 1 With one of those sleep masks, or... Oh, the other way around—you liked the light.

21:06 Speaker 2 Yes, I liked the light. But they wanted it dark, and that’s okay. You compromise. You learn to give way.

21:12 Speaker 1 Not to mention the temperature. That must be another—

21:14 Speaker 2 The air conditioner.

21:14 Speaker 1 A saga of its own. Yes.

21:16 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:16 Speaker 1 The air conditioner, the window, all that.

21:18 Speaker 2 But you learn to give way, even when it comes at the expense of your personal preferences. You learn to get along and compromise. So we won’t set it to twenty-five; we’ll set it to twenty-two.

21:29 Speaker 1 Working on your middos.

21:30 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly.

21:31 Speaker 1 Did anything really frustrating ever happen to you? Did someone, say, take something from your closet?

21:37 Speaker 2 Well, I can tell you someone used my shampoo.

21:41 Speaker 1 Okay.

21:41 Speaker 2 It was a special product for my hair, and I was really upset because I’d spent a lot of money on it. It was this very special hair mask. I got to the shower, and it had been spilled.

21:54 Speaker 1 Oh no.

21:55 Speaker 2 I was really angry. I said, “What is this? I can’t believe it.” Everyone was shocked, and I was like, “I’m going to catch whoever did this.”

22:03 Speaker 1 You need to put up a camera.

22:03 Speaker 2 But it always ended in laughter. It always ended on a good note.

22:06 Speaker 1 Because you don’t have a choice.

22:08 Speaker 2 You don’t. What am I going to do, go outside and cry? Though I won’t tell you I never went outside to cry.

22:11 Speaker 1 No, you can go outside and cry, but you can’t have a fight that ends everything. These are the girls you’ll be sleeping in the same room with that night. What can you do?

22:18 Speaker 2 Of course we sometimes had huge fights. Sometimes there were really big blowups.

22:22 Speaker 1 No, by “ends everything,” I mean leaving boarding school.

22:25 Speaker 2 No, no, that never happened. But there were times when things really exploded, and there was nothing you could do. There were things where you’d say, “There’s no way I’m giving in. There’s no way I’m letting her have the last word.” Sometimes I got up, ran outside and cried to my mother on the phone. I’d say, “Enough! What is this place?” It happened to everyone. Everyone did it. But I remember that eventually I learned to deal with the thing itself instead of running to the phone to cry to my mother. If there was a blowup between girls, I learned to stand up for myself. It wasn’t pleasant, certainly not the first or second time. But then you get used to dealing with it, because as a group we all wanted the same thing. We wanted—

23:06 Speaker 1 A dynamic develops where—

23:08 Speaker 2 Right.

23:08 Speaker 1 Everyone does their part so there can be—

23:12 Speaker 2 Right.

23:12 Speaker 1 Normal communication.

23:13 Speaker 2 Exactly.

23:14 Speaker 1 But in the end, those blowups are normal.

23:16 Speaker 2 Right, so—

23:17 Speaker 1 Like between brothers and sisters.

23:18 Speaker 2 Yes, but we all want the same thing. We all want things to be good. We all want to have a pleasant time. Each person just expresses it differently, but—

23:28 Speaker 1 Yes.

23:28 Speaker 2 We find a better way to get there.

23:30 Speaker 1 Did you ever say harsh things to your parents on the phone that made them feel how hard things were for you in that moment? They must have thought, “Where have we sent our daughter? What kind of parents are we?” Looking back now, you probably see it very differently.

23:46 Speaker 2 Right.

23:47 Speaker 1 Maybe you think, “Wow, how could I have said those things to my parents?” More generally, what would you say to parents who send their daughter to boarding school and lie awake worrying about her?

23:56 Speaker 2 First of all, know where you’re sending your daughter. Check out the place and keep a close eye on it. Really look into it from every angle.

24:05 Speaker 1 I think everyone checks—or knows about it, or thinks they’re checking. The question is what they might have missed. From your inside perspective, what’s important to check that not everyone thinks of?

24:17 Speaker 2 Is the girl really emotionally able to handle something like this? Have you actually talked it through with her? Is she ready for it? Explain a little about what it will be like before she goes to boarding school. Something that can be overlooked, I think, is how you welcome your daughter when she comes home.

24:36 Speaker 1 So you’re not talking about the boarding school itself.

24:38 Speaker 2 Right. How you respond when she comes home, and how you communicate with her while she’s at boarding school. Boarding school is something that toughens you up. Yes, it’s hard, and it’s good in many ways. But I did say to my mother, “What is this? Why did you put me in this boarding school? Don’t you know what these girls are like? What’s with this staff?” You always find something to be upset about.

25:05 Speaker 1 Maybe there really is a difference between the adjustment period, when of course you feel, “What am I doing here, and how can I stay?” and a few months later, when things have probably settled down.

25:13 Speaker 2 Right.

25:14 Speaker 1 You get used to it to some extent, don’t you?

25:16 Speaker 2 Every beginning is hard.

25:17 Speaker 1 So a parent has to take some of that in and really believe, “I’m doing what’s best for my child.”

25:22 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

25:23 Speaker 1 Rather than go by how it sounds right now: “Wow, this is so hard.”

25:26 Speaker 2 I remember my mother telling me, “Finish the year. It’ll be okay, everything’s okay.” In the end, it’s not all darkness and suffering and hell, or whatever.

25:37 Speaker 1 But to a fourteen-year-old, it’s your whole life. Right now, it’s your friends and what’s happening around you, and whether you feel comfortable or not.

25:44 Speaker 2 Because at that age, that really is all you care about.

25:46 Speaker 1 Right, and schoolwork too. It’s all mixed together.

25:49 Speaker 2 I remember my mother telling me, “Your goal is to finish one year, and do your best.” I remember someone making this pointed remark to me. She said, “You’ll see, you won’t stay here in the end.”

26:02 Speaker 1 “You won’t survive here.”

26:03 Speaker 2 Right, because she saw that I took everything to heart and was starting to get hurt by every little thing. And I really think boarding school was good for me.

26:09 Speaker 1 The only daughter, right?

26:10 Speaker 2 Exactly. I have lots of brothers, but I’m the only daughter. And I remember her saying, “Just wait and see, you won’t stay here.” I told my mother on the phone, crying, and she said, “Well, now prove her wrong. Prove to her that you’re staying.” And I did. I finished all four years at boarding school.

26:29 Speaker 1 Not just one year. Right.

26:30 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember that the big goal was just to finish one year, and after that I was okay with going back. By then I understood that it was okay for the first year to be hard. When you’re young, the first year is always hard, and for a young girl it’s very, very hard. There’s no getting around it. Another important thing is that when a girl comes to boarding school, she tries to find out what things will be like. What’s going to happen? What?

26:56 Speaker 1 In advance, you mean.

26:57 Speaker 2 Yes. What there is and what there isn’t. Come without expectations—or with the lowest expectations possible.

27:04 Speaker 1 I call it below-zero expectations.

27:06 Speaker 2 Exactly. The lowest expectations possible, about the good things and the less good things. Come with a clean slate, as though you haven’t heard anything. Whatever happens is okay—within reason, of course. If I was promised something specific, I might get it in a different form, not the way I expected.

27:31 Speaker 1 Yes, and I think, in a way, nobody’s promising anything. They might say, “Well, we have these kinds of lunches.”

27:37 Speaker 2 Right.

27:37 Speaker 1 And you know, everyone imagines things differently, based on different experiences.

27:41 Speaker 2 Right. You picture it in your mind.

27:43 Speaker 1 Yes.

27:44 Speaker 2 You imagine what it looks like at home, but you’re not at home. I remember once, when I got there, someone said, “I made tuna patties.” I looked at them and thought, “Those aren’t tuna patties. What are they?”

27:55 Speaker 1 Neither patties nor tuna.

27:57 Speaker 2 It was strange. But that’s how they make them in her home. And then you realize, wait, how do you think tuna patties are made? So you really have to come with the lowest expectations possible. Really low.

28:11 Speaker 1 No expectations, no disappointments.

28:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

28:13 Speaker 1 That’s an approach to life in general, by the way.

28:15 Speaker 2 Right.

28:15 Speaker 1 I remember when my sister-in-law got married in New York. We traveled to the Rebbe with all the children. “All the children”—I had three children, but that felt like a lot at the time. However many you have always feels like a lot at that stage. Now it seems like nothing to me. I remember us saying, “No expectations, no expectations, no expectations. We’ll have a hard time, and that’s okay.” We weren’t expecting anything. In the end, we enjoyed it so much because we’d come without expectations. Every little good thing felt like, “Wow!”

28:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

28:48 Speaker 1 But it really is an approach to life. You could debate it, but broadly speaking, no expectations, no disappointments.

28:56 Speaker 2 Right. And don’t build up some spectacular thing that’s supposedly going to happen.

29:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

29:00 Speaker 2 Because nothing spectacular is going to happen. That’s an illusion. Where do you think you’re going, a palace? No. You’re not going to a palace. You’re going somewhere very, very basic, and you need to remember the purpose that brought us here. So...

29:16 Speaker 1 Yes.

29:16 Speaker 2 Fewer expectations. Be more focused on what you want.

29:19 Speaker 1 So there must be girls whose picture of boarding school was shattered when they arrived.

29:23 Speaker 2 And that led to a lot of trouble.

29:25 Speaker 1 A lot more difficulty.

29:26 Speaker 2 Yes, I remember it clearly. There were so many complaints.

29:30 Speaker 1 There’s a gap between what you thought it would be and what it actually was.

29:34 Speaker 2 Exactly. And you say to yourself, “This is what you were talking about? Okay, it doesn’t really suit me.” But “it doesn’t suit me” isn’t an option. You have to be there even if it doesn’t suit you.

29:44 Speaker 1 So little by little, you come to terms with reality.

29:47 Speaker 2 Yes. And you have to remember that it’s an institution in every sense. Even when you come back from high school to the dorm, you’re still in an institutional setting. You never really have that kind of freedom.

30:02 Speaker 1 Yes.

30:02 Speaker 2 Freedom from the institution itself. And that’s okay. Some people like it and some like it less.

30:07 Speaker 1 Right. I also think that if a boarding school isn’t top-notch in terms of physical comforts, in some way it prepares you for life. Not “prepares you for life” exactly, but, you know, you get used to what you have. People who live with a high standard of comfort can become very spoiled. Then you find yourself saying, “Come on, I was in boarding school! I went through this and that—it was really tough.”

30:30 Speaker 2 That’s what we say too.

30:31 Speaker 1 Yes.

30:32 Speaker 2 We absolutely brag about it.

30:34 Speaker 1 Like, “What? I went through boarding school.” It’s a kind of badge of honor.

30:38 Speaker 2 Right.

30:39 Speaker 1 “I’m not like you people.”

30:41 Speaker 2 Yes, we ate some terrible things too.

30:45 Speaker 1 Yes. Though it’s not as if every child growing up in a regular home has hotel-like conditions. Every home has its own lacks and shortcomings. And sometimes I think we should also talk about the group of children who go to boarding school because their home—

31:03 Speaker 2 Right.

31:04 Speaker 1 —isn’t a suitable place for them to live. That’s a different story.

31:07 Speaker 2 We encountered that. Of course we did.

31:10 Speaker 1 Yes.

31:10 Speaker 2 But you see that they just aren’t suited to that setting.

31:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

31:12 Speaker 2 Eventually they leave on their own, because they realize it isn’t the place for them. We welcomed them, embraced them, and always made room for them. But they understand that it doesn’t meet their needs, and the staff don’t always have the tools to give a child everything they need.

31:30 Speaker 1 There are specific boarding schools—

31:31 Speaker 2 Exactly.

31:32 Speaker 1 —that accept...

31:33 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely.

31:35 Speaker 1 So girls from ninth through twelfth grade are living together.

31:39 Speaker 2 Right.

31:40 Speaker 1 When you came back for your second and third years, did you feel a little like a mentor to the younger girls coming in?

31:44 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:45 Speaker 1 Like, “Let me explain how everything works and how it’ll all be okay...”

31:49 Speaker 2 Yes, I’d explain things to them. And with chores, I’d take a little advantage of my experience and choose the less difficult ones, but—

31:57 Speaker 1 Sometimes it’s also about what each person likes. Some people—

31:58 Speaker 2 Right.

31:59 Speaker 1 I remember being on shlichus with friends, and my friend said, “Listen, you cook and I’ll wash the dishes afterward. Just make the delicious food.” That worked great for me, because I enjoy cooking. Washing dishes, not so much.

32:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

32:10 Speaker 1 So sometimes it isn’t a division between easy and hard. It’s about each person finding what she likes.

32:16 Speaker 2 Right.

32:16 Speaker 1 But it’s like a Sudoku puzzle when you have one who’s patient and—

32:18 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. You have to figure out what each person wants so that most of them are happy. You hear, “No, I’m not doing that chore. No way, no way.” And you say, “It’s only a month, only a week, only a day.” You really try to find a place for each girl where she feels comfortable and at home, and things work for her.

32:36 Speaker 1 What was contact with your parents like? You didn’t have WhatsApp at that age.

32:41 Speaker 2 We did have WhatsApp.

32:41 Speaker 1 You did?

32:42 Speaker 2 We did.

32:43 Speaker 1 So what, were you messaging your mother every hour, “Come get me out of here”? You know, there used to be schools where you weren’t allowed to just pick up the phone—

32:51 Speaker 2 Right.

32:51 Speaker 1 There was a set time, once a day. Or was it once a week? Once a day, no?

32:55 Speaker 2 No, of course we could call once a day. They didn’t let us use our phones every minute, but we had phones. They weren’t forbidden or anything, though they had filters and all that. My mother was available to me all the time.

33:10 Speaker 1 Right.

33:10 Speaker 2 Even at night. As time went on, the boarding school changed its policy. At night they started taking the phones away so the girls could get up early in the morning.

33:30 Speaker 1 Wow, I need someone to do that for me now. Wait, what time do they take them? What counts as night?

33:37 Speaker 2 Ten.

33:38 Speaker 1 Oh, that’s good. I thought you meant eight.

33:39 Speaker 2 No.

33:40 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s brilliant.

33:41 Speaker 2 It is brilliant. But as a girl, it’s not fun.

33:44 Speaker 1 Yes, because—

33:44 Speaker 2 You can’t share things with anyone.

33:45 Speaker 1 It’s hard to accept authority. Yes.

33:46 Speaker 2 But when was it hard for me? In the morning? That’s when everyone’s laughing and joking.

33:50 Speaker 1 Right. At midnight, you want to cry to your mother.

33:51 Speaker 2 At midnight, I want to say, “Mom, Mom, come get me.”

33:54 Speaker 1 Exactly.

33:54 Speaker 2 But no, they only started that when I was in twelfth grade, so it bothered me less.

33:58 Speaker 1 Did a staff member actually sleep there with you? I mean, not just any staff member—a counselor.

34:02 Speaker 2 The counselors.

34:03 Speaker 1 They slept there with you—

34:04 Speaker 2 Every year we had two counselors, and I’m still in regular contact with them to this day. They’re married with children. I visit them now and then; we get together. Really, I’m in touch with most of the counselors I had. But—

34:24 Speaker 1 They choose people very carefully.

34:25 Speaker 2 Really, I enjoyed being with every counselor I had so much, and they liked me too, so it was fun.

34:33 Speaker 1 Wow. Because it really becomes a family. Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine myself in that situation.

34:40 Speaker 2 But think about it: everyone sits in the living room and talks, and—

34:44 Speaker 1 No, it’s fun. But it’s twenty-four seven for several years.

34:47 Speaker 2 Right, and sometimes you’ve had enough. You want to switch off from it all—

34:50 Speaker 1 Say Shabbos comes around.

34:52 Speaker 2 Right.

34:52 Speaker 1 And you’re still there.

34:54 Speaker 2 Right. But honestly, those situations that seemed the most frustrating—when you wanted to be home—were when I enjoyed Shabbos there the most. Those were the Shabboses I enjoyed most.

35:05 Speaker 1 Wow.

35:06 Speaker 2 It was Shabbos with friends, with laughter and fun and food. We had such a good time there.

35:11 Speaker 1 You spent Shabbos with the counselors.

35:13 Speaker 2 Yes, and in the evening we’d go to families who hosted us, and suddenly you’d see the incredible hospitality they showed us.

35:24 Speaker 1 That’s beautiful, because it isn’t something they’re used to.

35:27 Speaker 2 Right.

35:27 Speaker 1 In Kharkov, for example, so many people come through. People are used to having an open home. Here, it was arranged for the dormitory, with regular guests.

35:37 Speaker 2 Right. They also made us feel part of the community. They didn’t say, “Those dormitory girls, stuck in that building.” No. We babysat, and they really made us feel part of the community. We held gatherings and farbrengens that all the women actually came to. Yes, we were truly part of the community, and that helped us—

35:57 Speaker 1 That’s lovely.

35:57 Speaker 2 Not feel like neglected girls out there.

36:00 Speaker 1 Right, because a community is part of your identity, ultimately. Wait, so do you feel like you belong to two communities, in a way?

36:07 Speaker 2 Honestly, I don’t anymore—

36:09 Speaker 1 A double agent.

36:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:13 Speaker 1 Do you feel you’re part of both, or that you’re gradually growing apart, and [unclear] isn’t home anymore?

36:17 Speaker 2 I really have grown apart. I’m not ashamed to say it, because I have. For four years, I haven’t shared any experiences with them. When I see the friends I had in the community, it’s “Hi, how are you?” But that closeness didn’t last. I remember really trying to maintain it, and then realizing I didn’t have to, and that was okay.

36:36 Speaker 1 No, it’s a different kind of connection.

36:38 Speaker 2 Right. They could throw me a birthday party, and an hour later we wouldn’t be talking, and that would be fine. They’re friends from kindergarten.

36:46 Speaker 1 Yes.

36:46 Speaker 2 Kindergarten friends.

36:47 Speaker 1 No, it’s like when you finish high school. You’re still in the seminary framework now, but I’ve suddenly realized there are girls from my class whom I haven’t spoken to in, say, a full ten years.

36:57 Speaker 2 Wow.

36:57 Speaker 1 But it’s fun to see each other. So maybe you don’t speak day to day, but it doesn’t mean you’ve cut ties. It’s a completely different kind of connection.

37:04 Speaker 2 Right. It’s the kind of connection where I can call her and say, “Come over to my house, Beinish.”

37:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

37:08 Speaker 2 Come over. I really do feel less a part of my home community, and that’s not a bad thing. Now I feel much more connected to the community here.

37:18 Speaker 1 Which makes perfect sense. It’s a result of...

37:20 Speaker 2 Right. You live there twenty-four seven. Everything you experience happens there, and sometimes the people there help you much more than people back home. So yes, that’s what it leads to.

37:33 Speaker 1 At the end of the day, that’s where you are.

37:34 Speaker 2 At the end of the day, that’s where I am, yes.

37:36 Speaker 1 Tell me, earlier I asked what you’d say to parents, and it got me thinking. You’re saying that sometimes there really are difficult feelings, and there’s no getting around it—that’s part of it, and it makes you stronger. But what would be a red flag? Say I’m the mother of a girl in a dormitory. Maybe one day I really will be; I don’t know yet what’s in store for us, but anything’s possible. Say my daughter calls and says, “Why did you put me here?” Okay, it’s the beginning. When does it become a red flag? When do you say, “Wait, maybe something really is wrong”?

38:04 Speaker 2 A red flag.

38:05 Speaker 1 Maybe there’s a girl there who’s making her life miserable to the point that—

38:08 Speaker 2 Right.

38:08 Speaker 1 I mean, difficult things can happen, just like anywhere else.

38:11 Speaker 2 A red flag is when you hear that the staff aren’t intervening, or you see the staff doing something wrong. When it comes from the staff, it’s harder to accept, and you say, “Okay, something isn’t right here.” But also when your daughter tells you that something is happening repeatedly with another girl. Of course you can teach your daughter how to handle it, but there are things that make you say, “Okay, this is where we draw the line.” If your daughter comes and tells you she’s being hit—first of all, physical violence.

38:37 Speaker 1 Wow. Did that happen?

38:38 Speaker 2 No.

38:39 Speaker 1 Of course, baruch Hashem.

38:40 Speaker 2 No, there was one incident I remember vividly. Ninth grade.

38:43 Speaker 1 But that’s already out of the ordinary.

38:45 Speaker 2 Right, it’s not normal. But I remember in ninth grade there was a serious argument between two girls, and one simply raised her hand against the other. I remember everyone going silent. Everyone was shocked, and she was saying, “It didn’t come from—I didn’t mean to.” Everyone was in shock. It was a very, very strange moment. Suddenly everyone went to their rooms, and everything was quiet.

39:07 Speaker 1 Then they started over.

39:09 Speaker 2 Yes. And I remember the girl calling her mother in tears because another girl had raised her hand against her. In the end, they worked it out and cleared the air, and I remember her mother getting somewhat involved. I think parents should intervene when there’s violence, including verbal violence, of course.

39:28 Speaker 1 Right, that’s harder to recognize.

39:29 Speaker 2 It’s really hard to recognize.

39:30 Speaker 1 Hitting someone is hitting someone, but with verbal abuse, the line isn’t always clear.

39:34 Speaker 2 Just ask what it is, what she’s saying. If you see that your daughter can handle what she’s saying and it doesn’t bother her much, that’s one thing. But there are words that make you say, “Whoa, this needs to stop.” And yes, there were girls who were, shall we say, asked to leave the dormitory—

39:48 Speaker 1 It reached that point.

39:49 Speaker 2 Yes, because certain ways of behaving just aren’t appropriate, whether from a Chassidic standpoint or a social one. Each girl and...

39:59 Speaker 1 You’re essentially living in a melting pot with girls who aren’t from the same—sisters from different mothers, so to speak—and you don’t get to choose them, right? When you arrive at the dormitory, you don’t know who else is coming. You can—

40:13 Speaker 2 I had no idea.

40:13 Speaker 1 You can ask around and check, but basically it’s a surprise.

40:17 Speaker 2 A complete surprise.

40:18 Speaker 1 So it’s interesting: as a mother, I put my daughter in a dormitory and have no idea whom she’ll be living with. I trust the institution.

40:24 Speaker 2 Completely. I—

40:25 Speaker 1 It’s interesting what level of screening—

40:27 Speaker 2 Wow.

40:28 Speaker 1 I expect the institution to do. On the one hand, I want them to accept my daughter. Maybe she didn’t score a hundred on every test, or she isn’t the most outstanding girl of her generation in some other respect, but she deserves a place. She’s a great kid. Ultimately, every girl deserves one. On the other hand, every mother wants her daughter to have friends who lift her up, because the people around you have such an influence. This is someone you live with twenty-four seven, in the same room. It has an enormous effect.

40:54 Speaker 2 Right. So first of all, you try to connect with the good girls, the girls you feel more—

41:03 Speaker 1 Who make you want to be better.

41:05 Speaker 2 Right. You see how your surroundings affect you. As soon as you arrive, you see the power of your environment and why it’s so important to be somewhere supportive and uplifting, somewhere that helps you grow in a positive, moral way. I don’t know quite what to call it. But you really can see that—and you can tell your daughter, or speak to the girls in general, and say, “Okay, everywhere there’s a girl who’s a better influence and one who’s less so, and we always have a choice about whom to befriend.” And yes, I had complete freedom to choose my friends there. But in practice, you find that you don’t really know what’s going on with your daughter. She can hide things; she can say nothing. It depends on how close your relationship is, and...

41:54 Speaker 1 That’s another thing you need to start working on years earlier.

41:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

41:57 Speaker 1 From the moment the child is born, really.

41:58 Speaker 2 Right.

41:59 Speaker 1 Build open communication, so the child feels comfortable sharing things even at that age.

42:02 Speaker 2 Right.

42:02 Speaker 1 Which is an age when children usually become much more closed off toward their parents.

42:06 Speaker 2 Right. There really is a kind of difficulty in adolescence, with everything. Suddenly you start developing an identity of your own. Suddenly you want things you didn’t want when you were twelve.

42:23 Speaker 1 Right.

42:24 Speaker 2 And you’re surrounded by people who want those things too. Sometimes you talk it over with someone who’s going through the same process as you, not with an adult who’s already past it.

42:34 Speaker 1 Because those adults don’t understand us at all.

42:37 Speaker 2 What do they know, anyway?

42:38 Speaker 1 They’re so primitive.

42:40 Speaker 2 Right. So that really was how it was. I remember talking things over with friends, but nobody really knew what to do. So we made mistakes together.

42:49 Speaker 1 Well, there’s something good in that. On the one hand, making mistakes...

42:51 Speaker 2 On the other hand...

42:53 Speaker 1 On the other hand, it’s interesting. You’re growing up without adults, in a way. How old are the dorm counselors?

42:57 Speaker 2 The counselors are in their fourth year, sometimes even their second. I mean, there aren’t—

43:02 Speaker 1 They’re kids too. They’ve been through adolescence, but...

43:05 Speaker 2 They’re still kids. I remember one of our counselors coming back from work, giving me a quick glance as she opened the door, going into her room, and basically saying, “Leave me alone right now.”

43:19 Speaker 1 And you’re like, “Okay, I guess we’re the adults now.”

43:21 Speaker 2 Maybe there. Yes, because at the end of the day, you can have a laugh with a counselor, but she’s not really your mother. No one can replace your mother or father.

43:29 Speaker 1 But you spend ninety percent of your time growing up, as it were—G-d forbid—without your parents.

43:33 Speaker 2 Without your parents, yes. But I never felt anything was missing, because my mother was always there on the phone, or just...

43:41 Speaker 1 In the background.

43:41 Speaker 2 She was always there. I never felt she wasn’t there. And my father too—I always had their support. I could always call, and they always answered. I never felt like a burden to them. At some point you think, “Maybe I’m calling them too much.” And sometimes you really don’t feel so comfortable bringing up certain subjects. I remember girls telling me, “I don’t know, I’m not going to tell my mother about this.” To me it was so obvious that I would tell my mother too.

44:09 Speaker 1 But doesn’t the distance create some difficulty? I mean, obviously it does, but in this sense: there are things it’s nice to tell your mother face-to-face, and over the phone it feels a little different. A phone conversation isn’t a face-to-face conversation. Some things just aren’t for the phone. You know how people say, “This isn’t for the phone. I’ll tell you when we meet.”

44:26 Speaker 2 When we meet.

44:27 Speaker 1 And then what does “when we meet” mean? Once every two weeks.

44:30 Speaker 2 Right. Okay, but then suddenly, on Shabbos evening after the meal, all sorts of subjects come up. So many things come out on the table.

44:39 Speaker 1 You catch up, basically.

44:40 Speaker 2 Yes, we catch up. But it made my relationship with my mother closer. And with my father too—the bond grows stronger, because after not seeing each other for such a long time, suddenly you do. And then it’s all joy and excitement and a wonderful time.

44:55 Speaker 1 In a way, you appreciate home more. You know, like the advantage of light over darkness. There’s no home, and suddenly there is a home.

45:00 Speaker 2 Completely. I always appreciated home, of course, but not that much. Suddenly you appreciate food—food! Suddenly you...

45:10 Speaker 1 Wait, did you cook for yourselves?

45:12 Speaker 2 In the mornings we made our own breakfast. There was a kitchen, everything. At lunchtime we got lunch, and in the evening we made dinner. We had a rota—a pair of girls would make dinner.

45:26 Speaker 1 Like an actual chart.

45:28 Speaker 2 Yes, there was a chart.

45:29 Speaker 1 Wow!

45:30 Speaker 2 So yes, there was...

45:35 Speaker 1 A routine for meals and all that.

45:37 Speaker 2 Right.

45:39 Speaker 1 Wow. So you get home and you’re like, “My precious home!” Whereas I just come home from high school every day, and I pretty much take it for granted.

45:47 Speaker 2 You jump into bed and go to sleep.

45:49 Speaker 1 So even while you’re in the dorm, home is in your heart. You miss it because you develop stronger feelings for it.

45:55 Speaker 2 Very much so. I remember making myself a countdown of the days. “When am I going back?” That was during the really hard days at the beginning. I remember counting down: “When am I going back?” I was marking off days with X’s from the very first day.

46:08 Speaker 1 Did you go back by bus?

46:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

46:10 Speaker 1 How many hours?

46:11 Speaker 2 Three hours.

46:12 Speaker 1 Wow.

46:12 Speaker 2 Or more—three and a half hours.

46:14 Speaker 1 Home is three hours away from me, but I’ll get there.

46:16 Speaker 2 I’ll get there. Yes, that hope that we’ll eventually arrive. I mean, those are hours and hours of travel. Suddenly you understand why it’s okay to go home once every two weeks. But yes, I don’t know how I made that trip home every time, with that distance. It doesn’t seem sane to me at all.

46:37 Speaker 1 It really is hard. But did you often travel with friends?

46:42 Speaker 2 No.

46:42 Speaker 1 I mean girls from abroad who needed a place to stay for Shabbos.

46:45 Speaker 2 Somehow there were always girls coming, but we’d end up traveling together to their grandmothers’ homes, on the same buses.

46:54 Speaker 1 Ah.

46:55 Speaker 2 But no, it didn’t really happen that they’d come to my place. I remember always loving my quiet time.

47:01 Speaker 1 Right, because you come home once every two weeks, and then a friend comes with you. It’s like you brought the dorm home with you.

47:06 Speaker 2 Completely. As if it wasn’t enough that I took high school back to the dorm with me, now the dorm would come home with me too. I remember that being really hard for me. In the first year, I just couldn’t do it. I was always happy to help everyone with whatever they needed, but I couldn’t bring the dorm into my home. It was very hard. After tenth grade, when there weren’t any girls from out of town, it was easier for me, but by then it wasn’t really an issue anymore.

47:35 Speaker 1 What do you mean there weren’t any girls from out of town?

47:36 Speaker 2 Because during COVID the dorm closed, and there were three of us—three girls. So it was really...

47:46 Speaker 1 Okay, wait, we’ll come back to COVID in a moment. I just wanted to ask you something before I forget. Earlier you talked about how, in the end, you have to choose who you spend time with in the dorm. And it suddenly occurs to me that when any parent raises a child, they ultimately want to give that child tools for life, because at some point they won’t be right beside them. At some point the child spreads their wings.

48:10 Speaker 2 Right.

48:11 Speaker 1 Here, the difference is that it happens much earlier. I mean, if you know your child is going to a dorm, you really have to equip them with a whole set of tools: you’re going to live with people who aren’t exactly like you. You need to know how to get along with people and how to choose the friends who are right for you, even when those people sleep in the same room as you. You need to know what to take from them and what not to, how to be more of an influence and less influenced. I mean—

48:39 Speaker 2 You can have a conversation like that beforehand, but I really think it starts when they’re young.

48:43 Speaker 1 Yes, it’s something you have to nurture as they grow up.

48:46 Speaker 2 Yes. In my community, there are girls who don’t observe Torah and mitzvos, and I could become friends with them. But the question is how close a friendship would be right for me. So you know...

48:58 Speaker 1 How? How do you do that?

49:00 Speaker 2 I remember it was really hard. My roommate was in the same room as me. How could I not be friends with her? I needed to turn off the light, and what—was I going to ignore her? So it’s not that I—

49:10 Speaker 1 Right.

49:11 Speaker 2 You just learn to ease off a little. You build a much closer connection with someone else, and then the first friendship sort of shifts into reverse.

49:21 Speaker 1 Yes.

49:22 Speaker 2 The closer I get to someone else, or she gets to me, the other person automatically becomes less...

49:30 Speaker 1 Central.

49:30 Speaker 2 Significant.

49:31 Speaker 1 Right.

49:32 Speaker 2 That’s what helped me more. I grew closer and closer to other girls. But I didn’t actually have many situations like that. The girls with us were lovely, and I loved all of them. I’m still in touch with all of them today.

49:47 Speaker 1 That’s interesting. I’m thinking about friends from high school. For me, some of those girls are still my very best friends today. We were together every day from eight to four, and I’m thinking that if you were in a dorm, all the more so. You must still feel like sisters. “Still”—it’s not like you finished dorm ten years ago, but...

50:09 Speaker 2 Right. There are girls who finished dorm with me two or three years ago, and even now I can feel more comfortable with them than with any other friend I might meet.

50:17 Speaker 1 They know all your quirks.

50:19 Speaker 2 Completely.

50:20 Speaker 1 It’s just the closest kind of friendship. There are no barriers.

50:22 Speaker 2 Yes, they know that I don’t like a certain thing, and we’ll only come across it at night, or in the evening, or in the afternoon. It’s not something we encounter at school.

50:32 Speaker 1 Yes.

50:33 Speaker 2 So, for example, I have a really, really good friend who was with me for four years, and we were never, never, never apart. And suddenly you’re in shock because she’s leaving.

50:43 Speaker 1 Where is she? Where in Israel is she from, or is she from abroad?

50:46 Speaker 2 She’s from Israel.

50:48 Speaker 1 Okay, do you want to avoid giving away who she is?

50:49 Speaker 2 No, I won’t give away who she is.

50:51 Speaker 1 But she doesn’t live close to you, I assume.

50:53 Speaker 2 She actually lives pretty close.

50:54 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

50:55 Speaker 2 And, like—

50:56 Speaker 1 Because relatively speaking, nobody lives close to you.

50:58 Speaker 2 It’s all relative.

50:58 Speaker 1 It’s all relative.

50:58 Speaker 2 In Israel, it’s all relative.

51:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

51:00 Speaker 2 But yes, it was really hard, because suddenly we learned to make our own choices. We’re grown up, and each of us chooses what suits her and what doesn’t. And it was really hard for me that someone who’d been such a source of support wasn’t there.

51:17 Speaker 1 Right. Even more so once you were separated.

51:19 Speaker 2 Very much so. I remember coming back to seminary and just being in shock, because she was the only one who got the jokes. Suddenly I felt this absence, because she and I have the same sense of humor, and then when I’d joke with someone else—

51:36 Speaker 1 Nobody gets me.

51:37 Speaker 2 Strange.

51:38 Speaker 1 Yes.

51:39 Speaker 2 Totally.

51:39 Speaker 1 Right.

51:40 Speaker 2 And just saying to her, “Listen, you won’t believe what happened to me”—I’d feel much more comfortable telling her than telling someone who was in the dorm with me.

51:47 Speaker 1 Of course.

51:47 Speaker 2 But yes, it’s really significant.

51:50 Speaker 1 With people who know you well, sometimes you don’t even have to finish the sentence and—

51:53 Speaker 2 Exactly. I remember we’d just look at each other and understand everything.

51:55 Speaker 1 Yes.

51:56 Speaker 2 Everything, everything, everything. She’d look at me, I’d look at her, and we understood everything. Everything was okay. It was really something.

52:04 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s tough, suddenly—

52:05 Speaker 2 Really tough. It was pretty hard then, too.

52:08 Speaker 1 Yes. Oh, wait, I need a tissue.

52:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:12 Speaker 1 No, look, it happens eventually.

52:13 Speaker 2 Right.

52:14 Speaker 1 But still, listen, some girls get married and still live in the same community and keep in touch every day. And sometimes, as they say, each one ends up in a different country.

52:23 Speaker 2 Wow, wow, wow, right. I remember she spoke to me on the phone. She said, “But Chen, why do you miss me? Come on, we’ll get married, you’ll go somewhere, I’ll go somewhere. It can’t work like this.” And I was like, “Yes, but I miss you.” It’s a little difficult, you know. But yes, you learn to deal with it, and you really see that sometimes you manage on your own, and not just because of your friend. Like, when I’d take the bus home by myself, suddenly you realize that you yourself—

52:54 Speaker 1 Wow.

52:55 Speaker 2 —can manage.

52:55 Speaker 1 After being with friends twenty-four hours a day, suddenly it’s three hours alone. That must be a kind of buffer, like—

53:03 Speaker 2 It’s a kind of landing.

53:04 Speaker 1 Yes.

53:04 Speaker 2 It’s like a gradual transition, the best way to get home. It gives you time to process things.

53:09 Speaker 1 It’s good you had a long ride.

53:10 Speaker 2 Yes, it was good. It was time to think.

53:13 Speaker 1 Who am I? What am I?

53:14 Speaker 2 Who am I on my own?

53:15 Speaker 1 Yes.

53:17 Speaker 2 What can I do? What could I have answered her when we spoke? And, like—

53:20 Speaker 1 You replay the whole past two weeks.

53:22 Speaker 2 Yes, completely.

53:23 Speaker 1 It really highlights how significant friendship is, and here it makes it even more so. Where do you even find yourself as an individual in all of this? Only on the bus ride, like.

53:33 Speaker 2 Right.

53:34 Speaker 1 In a way, you needed to go off into the woods by yourself once in a while.

53:38 Speaker 2 Right. I remember a period in twelfth grade when almost every day we’d go to Tiberias, to the Kinneret, to the beach—or to Haifa, to the beach, to some beach. We’d sit there peacefully and relax. I remember that at seminary they told us, “Go to Tiberias, go to Haifa, go to the beach, go to the beach. Enjoy yourselves.”

53:58 Speaker 1 Yes.

53:59 Speaker 2 There’s something really calming about that.

54:01 Speaker 1 But not alone.

54:02 Speaker 2 Not alone.

54:03 Speaker 1 Were there times when you really felt you needed to be alone and just did it?

54:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

54:07 Speaker 1 You went out?

54:08 Speaker 2 Yes. I even went to the mall alone, just to be alone. I also remember asking the girls, “Can I have the room to myself for a minute?” And they’d say, “Yes.”

54:19 Speaker 1 Without offending anyone.

54:20 Speaker 2 No, they understood, and they’d ask me the same thing all the time. It was like, “Can I have a minute?” “Yes, of course.” It’s fine. Everything’s fine. You really need that moment on the phone, or that moment when you just want to breathe, to rest. You have a headache, so you go lie down for a bit, and it’s all fine.

54:36 Speaker 1 When you get home, what do you most want to do? Tell your parents everything about the past two weeks, or just go to sleep?

54:41 Speaker 2 Sleep. Just sleep. Give me my bed, my duvet cover, my pillow—everything that’s mine. Nobody’s touched it, sat on it, or done anything to it. That’s it.

54:53 Speaker 1 I’m trying to think about girls whose homes are Chabad Houses. They come back once every two weeks, or, if they’re from abroad, once every few months. And at the Shabbos meal, there are dozens of people, people sleeping on the couch in their home. Wow. I’m trying to imagine it. I wonder if the parents—I tend to think they do—when a child comes home from the dorm, maybe they take a Shabbos off from having guests. On the other hand, it’s often during the holidays, too.

55:23 Speaker 2 Right.

55:25 Speaker 1 Pesach is—

55:26 Speaker 2 Right, it really is—

55:27 Speaker 1 Sometimes people are guests at your house around the clock, for three meals a day. People who don’t have a kosher kitchen and things like that. You know, every place has its own situation. I’m speaking from my own experience. And where does the child find themselves in all of this? It’s crazy. You’re saying it makes finding that quiet space even harder.

55:43 Speaker 2 Right.

55:43 Speaker 1 Wow, there’s so much to take into account.

55:45 Speaker 2 Right. I remember someone who was on shlichus in Ukraine, and she was simply used to it in the dorm. Being somewhere quiet didn’t really interest her; she was used to the commotion. I remember girls would—

56:00 Speaker 1 Interesting.

56:00 Speaker 2 —be shocked by all the commotion. To her, a Shabbos meal was just a meal with friends. But yes, they had their own moments, I’m sure. They did find their place in all that.

56:12 Speaker 1 No, I think that as a parent, you really need to be more aware that your child is coming home from—

56:17 Speaker 2 Pause for a moment. Like—

56:19 Speaker 1 Make room for that need.

56:21 Speaker 2 You absolutely need that.

56:22 Speaker 1 Yes.

56:22 Speaker 2 You need that welcome. I remember when I’d arrive, my mother would make a bit of a fuss: “Come see who’s here!”

56:29 Speaker 1 Yes.

56:30 Speaker 2 That means so much to a child. It makes coming home so much better. It makes it much more fun.

56:39 Speaker 1 They waited for me, they wanted me, they missed me.

56:41 Speaker 2 Totally.

56:42 Speaker 1 Yes.

56:42 Speaker 2 Totally. Never make them feel like a guest—not even by saying, without thinking, “Wow, look what a guest we have!” Don’t say that. Say, “Look who’s here!”

56:55 Speaker 1 You’re raising a very important point. If I don’t want my child to feel like a guest, it’s very important to keep their space for them at home.

57:04 Speaker 2 Right.

57:05 Speaker 1 Their bed. Nobody else sleeps there in the meantime.

57:08 Speaker 2 Right.

57:09 Speaker 1 For you, that probably wasn’t an issue because you were the youngest at home. But think of a big family where the oldest child leaves.

57:15 Speaker 2 No, I do remember—

57:16 Speaker 1 And meanwhile another child is born.

57:18 Speaker 2 Mm, wow.

57:19 Speaker 1 So he’s away at yeshivah, and it’s like, “Come on, let’s use the bed.”

57:22 Speaker 2 No, I do remember times when I came home and suddenly my things weren’t where I’d left them, and it really upset me. Like, I live here. I live here. What gives you the right to touch my things? Those are the kinds of things you notice. But I’m sure parents gradually go through this with us; they’re learning their way themselves.

57:45 Speaker 1 Yes.

57:46 Speaker 2 When a daughter goes away to a dorm for the first time, you learn your way together with her. You go through it with her. It’s always like that.

57:55 Speaker 1 It’s trial and error together.

57:57 Speaker 2 That too.

57:59 Speaker 1 Wow, do you feel like a different person? Do you think that if you’d stayed at home growing up, or gone to school and come back every day, you would have—I can’t say been less good—but are there things you worked on specifically because you lived in a dorm that made you stronger?

58:14 Speaker 2 Absolutely, yes, in every sense. Even if I’d gone back to my home in my community, I wouldn’t really have had a group of girls my age who were right for me. I also think the high school where I was just suited me better. And yes, I’m very glad I went through those four years. They were four years that were enjoyable, challenging, happy, sad—everything you can imagine. But I learned to become stronger through it, and I learned so much. Something I wouldn’t have been able to do back then would come much more easily to me today.

59:00 Speaker 1 It’s really like a training camp.

59:02 Speaker 2 Totally.

59:03 Speaker 1 I’m thinking that alongside all that, you had schoolwork, matriculation exams, everything. How did you actually combine it all? I mean, I studied for matriculation exams with friends too, but I could choose. One friend would come over to my house, or two or three, whatever. Sometimes we’d have a party instead of studying, but I could still steer things.

59:21 Speaker 2 Right.

59:22 Speaker 1 In other words, there you’re with eleven particular girls. Though actually, they weren’t all in your class. How many girls from your class were with you?

59:30 Speaker 2 Actually, there were quite a few of us. About four or five.

59:32 Speaker 1 Oh, you were the big year group.

59:34 Speaker 2 We were the biggest year group. At one point there were even seven girls, so we were the majority. And yes, we found ourselves studying for tests. You could also go home for Shabbos when you were studying for a test. But yes, you find yourself—

59:46 Speaker 1 If you feel like studying alone, I mean.

59:48 Speaker 2 Then you go to the playground and study alone.

59:50 Speaker 1 To the playground. Nice.

59:51 Speaker 2 You find solutions for yourself. You won’t always find privacy—in fact, you probably won’t. It’s a slim chance. Maybe everyone else has gone to high school and you’re not feeling well, so you stay behind and you’re alone. So—

1:00:07 Speaker 1 Oh, that’s interesting. Suddenly being home alone...

1:00:10 Speaker 2 Complete silence. You can hear the neighbors moving around.

1:00:13 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:00:14 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. So it really isn’t pleasant being sick in the dorm, but everyone there looks after you. “Come on, have you eaten? Have you had something to drink? Here, have some tea.”

1:00:25 Speaker 1 Instead of having one mother, you have eleven mothers.

1:00:27 Speaker 2 But it’s never the same thing.

1:00:28 Speaker 1 Yes, of course. I feel like girls in a dorm—this is just a guess, maybe I’m wrong—do better in school because that’s what they have. They don’t have family in the afternoon, cousins, commotion, some neighbor’s birthday. In a way, that’s where your focus is. You don’t have too much else going on. Or am I wrong? Maybe you had more to do than...

1:00:51 Speaker 2 I remember saying at one point, “Hey, we came here to study.”

1:00:57 Speaker 1 Yes, in the end you’re in the dorm because of the high school.

1:01:00 Speaker 2 Right. I’m not here because... I remember there was a workshop I wanted to attend, but I had a test, and I said, “Am I here for this workshop or for this test?” So I made a choice. I said, “Okay, I’m here for the test.” I had to ask permission not to take part in the workshop, even though it was a really well-planned, fun workshop, but—

1:01:21 Speaker 1 The workshop wasn’t run by the school?

1:01:23 Speaker 2 It was run by the dorm.

1:01:25 Speaker 1 Oh.

1:01:25 Speaker 2 The high school and the dorm aren’t the same thing.

1:01:27 Speaker 1 They’re in completely different buildings? I mean, yes, different buildings, but was it walking distance, or right next door?

1:01:33 Speaker 2 It was always close, but the dorm was never run by the high school. It was completely separate—two different worlds, different management. It was never the same thing. So yes, sometimes it was a little farther away and sometimes closer. It depended on the year and what was available at the time.

1:01:53 Speaker 1 Meaning you moved apartments.

1:01:54 Speaker 2 Yes, we moved apartments. We moved every year except for the last two years. I mean, yes.

1:02:00 Speaker 1 So tell me about COVID, actually.

1:02:02 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:02:02 Speaker 1 Wait, but how—one second. Wow, I keep trying. Listen, somehow COVID comes up in every podcast we do. It changed the world.

1:02:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:02:08 Speaker 1 You were—this was almost three years ago, so you were in tenth grade.

1:02:13 Speaker 2 I was in tenth grade. It was Purim. I remember we just went home and didn’t come back.

1:02:19 Speaker 1 Oh wow.

1:02:19 Speaker 2 I remember... Then I went back to the dorm to—

1:02:24 Speaker 1 To get your things.

1:02:25 Speaker 2 To get all my things. I just remember coming back, and then it was about half a year at home, having a good time. Everyone was shut inside their homes, enjoying themselves.

1:02:36 Speaker 1 Right. For girls who lived in a dorm, it was much more significant. We were living at home now instead of there. It wasn’t just, “Okay, there’s no school.”

1:02:42 Speaker 2 I really enjoyed it. But suddenly there was no dorm, and you were learning on Zoom, and suddenly I liked it. I really liked it. Of course I liked it there too, but I really liked learning on Zoom. I suddenly felt part of the group. Everyone was in the same boat; suddenly every girl knew what Zoom was like. You didn’t feel a little different from the other girls in class.

1:03:02 Speaker 1 Everyone was dealing with the same thing.

1:03:04 Speaker 2 Exactly. So I didn’t feel different; I felt like everyone else. Then the end-of-year matriculation exams came, and you had to be there in person, because you actually had to be there—

1:03:14 Speaker 1 How did that work, actually? During COVID, people came in to take matriculation exams?

1:03:18 Speaker 2 We came in to take the exams. So where would we sleep? Where would we stay?

1:03:21 Speaker 1 Meaning you had to isolate until the exams?

1:03:24 Speaker 2 They didn’t ease that requirement at all. Not at all.

1:03:27 Speaker 1 Oh, and there was no dorm.

1:03:28 Speaker 2 There was no dorm; it had closed. Everyone went back—all the shluchos went back to their homes abroad. So where would we stay? There were only a few of us. And some other girls simply left. With COVID, everyone chose their own path. A lot of people reconsidered their plans.

1:03:45 Speaker 1 Right.

1:03:46 Speaker 2 So there were just three of us left, not knowing where to stay or where to take our matriculation exams.

1:03:54 Speaker 1 Were you the same age? Girls from your class?

1:03:56 Speaker 2 There was me and a friend my age, and one girl a year above us. We really didn’t know what to do, and our wonderful dorm director took us into her home.

1:04:08 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:04:09 Speaker 2 On the second floor there was a daycare and a really, really sweet little apartment. Upstairs there was the daycare and a tiny room where the three of us squeezed in. It was the funniest, most enjoyable thing I did—actually living with your dorm director.

1:04:29 Speaker 1 Wait, was she—what? Were they a young couple?

1:04:32 Speaker 2 They weren’t a very young couple, but yes, they were young. I mean—

1:04:36 Speaker 1 Did they have children?

1:04:37 Speaker 2 They have four daughters.

1:04:39 Speaker 1 Oh.

1:04:40 Speaker 2 Four daughters.

1:04:40 Speaker 1 So the house was full.

1:04:42 Speaker 2 Yes, the house was full. Their oldest daughter was about twelve, and their youngest was two. They took us into their home, and we simply lived there. She made us food, she washed our clothes. Everything. She was so much more accessible because she was right there. It wasn’t some distant person who—

1:05:08 Speaker 1 Like a dorm mother in every sense of the word.

1:05:10 Speaker 2 In every sense of the word. And she wasn’t even the dorm mother; she was the director.

1:05:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:05:13 Speaker 2 But really, it all suddenly became so funny. You’re living with your dorm director.

1:05:20 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s incredible.

1:05:21 Speaker 2 Yes, it really was incredible. So we took seven matriculation exams there, and that’s how the beginning of eleventh grade went too. Then there was another lockdown in 5781, I think, and—

1:05:36 Speaker 1 Our lockdowns were at different times, so I don’t remember.

1:05:39 Speaker 2 So I—

1:05:39 Speaker 1 I think there was some wave around Chanukah.

1:05:41 Speaker 2 Yes, something like that. It was after the Yomim Tovim, around Cheshvan. I remember we weren’t learning in person. So I found myself at home, and then we spent some more time at her house, and then it was back to Zoom, and that was it—we didn’t return. And it really was a very, very difficult year for me. My father had a stroke. So—

1:06:12 Speaker 1 While you were at home.

1:06:13 Speaker 2 Yes, while I was at home, actually.

1:06:15 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:06:16 Speaker 2 On the one hand, that was very comforting, because I was home and could be there instead of being in the dorm. On the other hand, I really missed the girls. I suddenly understood how much that company meant to me and how much it supported me. And then, toward the end of eleventh grade, things went back to normal, so we returned to the dorm. There were three of us with a counselor in quite a large house. Just the three of us there—that was an incredible experience too. Really. Yes.

1:06:50 Speaker 1 How long did you go back for?

1:06:52 Speaker 2 Just—

1:06:53 Speaker 1 The end of the school year, basically.

1:06:54 Speaker 2 Yes. It was Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz—about three months.

1:06:57 Speaker 1 They just found an apartment and—

1:06:59 Speaker 2 Yes, in a Chareidi neighborhood.

1:07:01 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:07:02 Speaker 2 A Chareidi neighborhood.

1:07:02 Speaker 1 Something completely different.

1:07:03 Speaker 2 Completely cut off from the school we’d been at and from the whole area we’d been in. Really.

1:07:10 Speaker 1 And through all of this, that director was overseeing things—

1:07:13 Speaker 2 Yes, until the end of eleventh grade. In twelfth grade, she passed away from that terrible, well-known illness.

1:07:22 Speaker 1 Oh no.

1:07:22 Speaker 2 Ah, yes, she passed away, and the dorm was still there, right? And we continued through twelfth grade, and somehow, by hook or by crook, we kept it going. It was hard.

1:07:37 Speaker 1 So the girls themselves suddenly took on more.

1:07:40 Speaker 2 There was a time when I was a counselor because there wasn’t one.

1:07:43 Speaker 1 So you were both a student and a counselor.

1:07:45 Speaker 2 Right. There wasn’t—no one even knew the rules. Suddenly there was no staff, nothing, and everything was so complicated. So I found myself being a counselor.

1:07:54 Speaker 1 So there was basically a year-long gap.

1:07:57 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:57 Speaker 1 The principal was, um, gone.

1:07:59 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:00 Speaker 1 And emotionally, especially—someone whose home you lived in, who gave you her whole heart.

1:08:04 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:05 Speaker 1 Wow, what a loss.

1:08:07 Speaker 2 A tremendous loss. The way I heard about it, too. And I remember feeling disconnected from Israel as well. I wasn’t in the country at the time, and there was also the way it happened. You knew she was ill. We knew she was ill, but it didn’t feel real enough to understand what was actually happening.

1:08:29 Speaker 1 You didn’t realize how serious it was.

1:08:30 Speaker 2 I didn’t realize how serious it was until—until they said she had passed away. So that was really hard. But the dorm continued through twelfth grade, and suddenly I realized that only one friend and I knew the dorm rules. No one else knew, and no one was keeping things in order. This strange kind of chaos started. So we began finding our way again, paving the road from the beginning. It was very hard, but with all of us working together, we managed to get it to a really, really good place.

1:09:02 Speaker 1 Wow, you simply took the reins after two years of, uh...

1:09:06 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:09:07 Speaker 1 Wow. And that was last year, actually.

1:09:10 Speaker 2 Yes, that was last year.

1:09:12 Speaker 1 And throughout that time, how was your father doing?

1:09:15 Speaker 2 Um, wow. That was during eleventh and twelfth grade. Those were two very, very tough years, and even now, it’s very, very hard to process the situation in general. Suddenly, you lose your father while he’s still alive. He’s your father—your father is alive, but it’s almost as if he isn’t. Everything you know, everything you’re familiar with, suddenly disappears, because you can see that he’s alive. He’s sitting beside you, but suddenly you appreciate the ability to speak. Suddenly you appreciate the ability to walk normally. You start appreciating everything, even on a physical level. You learn to be thankful for every little thing.

1:09:52 Speaker 1 Because you see it right in front of you.

1:09:53 Speaker 2 You wake up in the morning and say thank you, because he doesn’t wake up normally in the morning. So it means a lot.

1:10:00 Speaker 1 And how does that affect you as his daughter? I mean, practically speaking, you had that at home, and in the dorm you had to be the one in charge, in a way...

1:10:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:10:10 Speaker 1 Wow. Listen, how old are you? I’m just thinking.

1:10:14 Speaker 2 I’m eighteen and a half.

1:10:15 Speaker 1 Good thing you told me that at the end, because that’s...

1:10:17 Speaker 2 I’m eighteen and a half.

1:10:19 Speaker 1 Wow. It’s amazing how each person has her own path in life.

1:10:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:10:24 Speaker 1 If you passed me on the street, I would never imagine what strengths you have inside you. What you know, what you have to give. I’m always amazed anew by how much each person has to give—treasures, life experience, and challenges. Not just experience in the sense of what I’ve done, but the challenges Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives me. You’re simply amazing.

1:10:51 Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Chani.

1:10:52 Speaker 1 Give us a thought to end with. Let’s go back to the dorm story. I think there are so many mothers all over the country and the world who send their daughters to a dorm. It’s one of the hardest things to do. Obviously it’s hard for the daughter, but let’s talk about the mothers for a moment. Give us one thought, some kind of winning line, from you as a girl who spent four years in a dorm and experienced it from every angle, in every kind of situation.

1:11:20 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:21 Speaker 1 For a mother sending her daughter away.

1:11:23 Speaker 2 A mother needs to know that no matter when and no matter how, you are always there for your daughter. And she knows it, too. She carries that knowledge in her mind: her mother is always there for her, no matter when or in what way. Whether it’s a phone call or face-to-face, a mother is always there for her—for me, for all of us. Her role is to make her presence felt even when her daughter can’t see her. And yes, you miss your parents terribly, but the key is knowing how to make your presence felt even when you’re not seen.

1:11:59 Speaker 1 Basically, to give her the feeling that “I’m always here with you, no matter what.”

1:12:02 Speaker 2 Always there.

1:12:02 Speaker 1 Even if you can’t see it.

1:12:04 Speaker 2 Even when you can’t see them. And yes, there are girls overseas who don’t see their mother and father. But—

1:12:10 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s hard.

1:12:11 Speaker 2 But yes. Suddenly you understand how the bond grows closer and stronger through keeping in touch. Because if there’s a good connection between parents and children, then things really are okay, and there isn’t anything they can’t get through. Yes, it’s hard, but hard can be good, and you can get through it.

1:12:37 Speaker 1 Be there for her, and only good will come of it for them.

1:12:39 Speaker 2 Absolutely—

1:12:40 Speaker 1 Hand in hand.

1:12:40 Speaker 2 Be there for her even if she’s going on and on to you at two in the morning because who knows what happened—there’s a power outage, or something else strange happened. Take the call.

1:12:53 Speaker 1 Now I want to open up a whole other topic about the power outage. What do you do?

1:12:56 Speaker 2 Oh, that’s another whole topic too.

1:12:58 Speaker 1 Each thing is a story of its own.

1:12:59 Speaker 2 I personally remember a power outage when there was no way to charge our phones, and we were down to almost no battery. I remember we just didn’t know what to do, but we turned it into one big joke, and to this day we laugh about that power outage. There was an earthquake too. We go through everything together—whatever happens, we go through it together.

1:13:18 Speaker 1 Sometimes, when you’re on your own... I remember taking a course in seminary on stressful situations. We learned that when you’re with other people, you feel responsible for those around you—even when you’re the responsible adult. I mean, when you’re an adult and responsible for others, but also when you’re among your peers. So it’s easier to function under stress. When you’re with friends, there’s more humor, you feel responsible for others, and you don’t withdraw into yourself. In a way, it’s easier to function. You have no choice; you can’t just curl up inside yourself and tremble. Somehow, you function. So maybe that really built you up—not just you, but everyone who goes through dorm life. In that respect, too, you go through so many things together. You take them more lightly, you have more fun with them, and there are friends surrounding you all the time.

1:14:03 Speaker 2 Right. Once, we put on a pot of pasta, and we had these electric hot plates, so when the power went out, we couldn’t cook it. We were waiting, and it was just so funny. If I’d been alone, with no pasta and hungry—

1:14:18 Speaker 1 You would have been crying.

1:14:19 Speaker 2 I would have been crying. But we were all rolling with laughter. We even made up a song about it. Everything was just so funny. Somehow, we always turn every situation into something funny. It always ends in laughter.

1:14:30 Speaker 1 Right, taking everything more easily, more lightly. Honestly, we all go through so many struggles and difficulties in life. Having that approach—knowing how to take things in stride and lighten the mood—is a key to succeeding in so many situations.

1:14:47 Speaker 2 I remember really learning that, in the end, everything passes. Everything comes to an end. Everything has its time limit.

1:14:52 Speaker 1 Right.

1:14:53 Speaker 2 Say I have a really big exam. Eventually, I’ll hand it in. I’ll have to write something—or even if I don’t, they’ll take the exam paper away from me. Everything passes. I get to choose what to do: whether to study for the exam, whether to write anything during it, whether to answer the questions. In the end, it will be over. Nothing stays stuck in one place. So even if a situation is difficult or gloomy, you can turn it into something enjoyable. Studying for exams was fun.

1:15:24 Speaker 1 Right. You’re going to spend that time studying for the exam anyway, so let’s choose to do it with joy and make it a good experience.

1:15:28 Speaker 2 Why be miserable about the material? Sure, civics is boring, but I remember three of us sitting in a room and just studying and studying, using all kinds of funny methods.

1:15:40 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:15:40 Speaker 2 And we’d even look—

1:15:41 Speaker 1 You’re taking me back.

1:15:43 Speaker 2 During the matriculation exam, we’d look at each other: “Remember what we studied?”

1:15:47 Speaker 1 “Oh, here’s that question that—”

1:15:49 Speaker 2 It was so funny.

1:15:51 Speaker 1 Oh, what a time. It’s like a dream. I wasn’t in a dorm, but you’ve just reminded me a little of studying for the matriculation exams—how you turn it into an experience and make it fun, and—

1:16:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:16:03 Speaker 1 That’s really the secret to life, I think. Making... I wouldn’t say making lemonade out of lemons, because baruch Hashem, we—

1:16:11 Speaker 2 Amen, if only those were our troubles.

1:16:12 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. But really, just take it all in stride and keep it easy. And when you grow up and develop surrounded by a community and friends and all that, I think you really learn more about it.

1:16:23 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:25 Speaker 1 Wow, Chana Rivka, it was so nice talking. We could sit and talk for hours, huh?

1:16:28 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely.

1:16:30 Speaker 1 Okay, let’s get back to the baby. Thank you for coming to the interview on such short notice.

1:16:34 Speaker 2 Thank you. I’m grateful to you.

1:16:35 Speaker 1 It was really nice talking.

1:16:36 Speaker 2 Same here.

1:16:37 Speaker 1 Bye.

1:16:38 Speaker 2 Bye.