Episode 21: Mixing Up Shlichus 🧴 | With Chani Zonenfeld, aromatherapist++

00:01 Speaker 1 Come with me for a fascinating conversation with aromatherapist—and much more—Chani Sonnenfeld. She takes us on a journey through oil blends, childbirth, a club for seniors, and, along the way, her personal story and amazing tips for every girl and woman. A reminder: if you enjoy the content, please share it, spread the word, subscribe to the channel, and give it a like. That will help me get this content out to more people. First, the intro, and then we’ll begin. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet women who have brought their shlichus into a variety of fields. Through their stories, they’ll help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created for is the best there is. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting now. So today we’re here... I’m here with dear Chani Sonnenfeld. It took us a long time to get together, but they say that when there are lots of obstacles and delays, it means what you’re doing is very, very important. So, Chani, introduce yourself.

01:21 Speaker 2 I’m Chani Sonnenfeld, a mother of six, and I live in Kiryat Malachi. I’ve been in natural remedies for about twenty years. I started as a doula twenty years ago, and from there I moved into natural medicine, reflexology, aromatherapy, and various medicinal herbs. Today, what I mainly do is teach. I take what I know and give talks all over the country and abroad about aromatherapy—basically, how to live healthier lives with simple, inexpensive tips that give you million-dollar results. Whenever I start showing a recipe, I tell people, “Listen, I’ve been in this field for twenty years. I can’t tell you exactly how things are made behind the scenes.”

02:21 Speaker 1 Wow, so you just go by eye?

02:23 Speaker 2 I mean, you walk into a store today, and I see things for sale and think, “People sell this?” So let me show you how to make it yourself, in a way that’s much more genuine and gives you much better results.

02:38 Speaker 1 Wait, so the workshops are basically like a cooking class? You bring ingredients—

02:42 Speaker 2 I tell people: some people make chocolate, melt chocolate; I melt oils.

02:46 Speaker 1 Wow.

02:47 Speaker 2 I mix and heat oils.

02:48 Speaker 1 The smell at your workshops must be something else—

02:50 Speaker 2 It’s lovely.

02:50 Speaker 1 Amazing.

02:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:52 Speaker 1 Wow.

02:52 Speaker 2 Addictive.

02:53 Speaker 1 Tell me, how did you get into this?

02:55 Speaker 2 How did I get into it?

02:56 Speaker 1 Did you wake up one morning and say, “Okay, I’m going to be a doula”?

02:59 Speaker 2 That’s pretty close. It was something that felt right. Twenty years ago I was thirty-nine—sorry, thirty... Going back twenty years: I’m thirty-nine now, so I was nineteen then.

03:11 Speaker 1 Wow, right after you finished high school.

03:13 Speaker 2 I spent six months on shlichus in Cape Town, South Africa. I lived there, and I guess that’s where I was exposed to natural medicine, because in Israel it was considered very, very strange. It was like, “What are you going to do with that nonsense? What do you mean, a doula? Accompany women in childbirth? You’re single! What nonsense. You’ve never given birth; you don’t understand any of this.” But something inside drew me to it, along with the confidence I got at home from my parents and from my upbringing. Because throughout my childhood, I went through what felt like a nightmare at one point, when I went through all the—

03:57 Speaker 1 Right, start there. Tell me how it all began.

03:59 Speaker 2 How it all began. I was diagnosed with a learning disability, dyslexia, at the start of eighth grade. Until then, I was different. Very different from everyone else. I had friends—that was my good fortune. I had wonderful friends, and we’re still best friends today. But I was a huge failure.

04:23 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s so hard.

04:23 Speaker 2 It’s awful to say it, but yes, I was a failure. I came from a bilingual home. My family—my parents—don’t speak Hebrew; they speak English, and English is my first language. I would go to school, study in Hebrew, of course, and understand the material perfectly. There was no problem there. Then I’d take a test and simply fail, again and again. And reading and writing—I could barely learn them. They couldn’t manage to teach me. That’s how I went through first grade, second grade, and third grade. It was awful. Awful. I remember things people would sometimes say to me. They were very painful things—

05:05 Speaker 1 Teachers?

05:05 Speaker 2 Sometimes.

05:07 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:07 Speaker 2 They didn’t mean it that way. Today I truly appreciate my teachers. But it was as though I came to school without learning anything. I understood everything, but then I’d have to take a test, and, you know, I was different from everyone else. Everyone else could read and write, and I couldn’t. It was awful. And they had no idea—no idea at all—that there might be something going on besides the two languages. That was always what they blamed: “She speaks two languages, so she fails her tests.”

05:34 Speaker 1 Right, they latched onto that.

05:35 Speaker 2 They did.

05:35 Speaker 1 So they didn’t look any further to find out why. I also think there was less awareness back then.

05:38 Speaker 2 There was no awareness, really. It wasn’t that they latched onto it; they simply didn’t know. They didn’t know. My good fortune was that at the end of seventh grade, they suddenly decided to open a junior high school. I was in the year when they came to tell us two weeks before the end of school. I don’t know if you remember that period.

05:55 Speaker 1 Wait.

05:55 Speaker 2 When they opened the junior high.

05:56 Speaker 1 Before that, it went up to—

05:57 Speaker 2 Eighth grade.

05:57 Speaker 1 Eighth grade, right. By my time it only went up to sixth.

05:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. So two weeks before the end of seventh grade, they told us, “Okay, in two weeks you won’t be coming back here for eighth grade. You’re moving to another school, changing everything.” It was a shock. I had been looking forward so much to being in eighth grade! Because eighth grade was when you got to express yourself. You could take part in organizing all the school events. Eighth grade was in charge of this event and that event, and I was so eager to get there. I told myself, “That’s where I’ll be good.”

06:21 Speaker 1 You’d be the oldest girls in the school, basically.

06:22 Speaker 2 Responsibility, organizing events—just let me organize events! So they simply moved us to another school, without much choice. And that’s where my good fortune came in: I arrived at your grandmother’s school.

06:36 Speaker 1 Right.

06:37 Speaker 2 An incredible, amazing woman.

06:40 Speaker 1 I need to do a podcast with her too.

06:42 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

06:42 Speaker 1 Wait, I should mention that this is my other grandmother. I did a podcast with my grandmother Bas Sheva.

06:46 Speaker 2 Okay, she was involved in my life too.

06:48 Speaker 1 I need to do one with my other grandmother. Yes, with Grandma—

06:50 Speaker 2 Right. So Grandma Bas Sheva was involved with me in elementary school too.

06:54 Speaker 1 A Nachlas Har Chabad girl.

06:54 Speaker 2 Completely. We’re very good friends. Honestly, what kept me coming to school every day was that I loved the teachers. With Bas Sheva and the rest of the teaching staff, I came because I enjoyed it. The social warmth at school went far beyond the lessons. The principal made sure there were always lots of activities that brought everyone together. So I had somewhere I could express myself.

07:17 Speaker 1 That’s so important. Think about it: how many hours are girls at school every day? At least six—six or seven. And if a girl has some kind of difficulty with learning, there has to be another area where she can find her place.

07:30 Speaker 2 Right.

07:31 Speaker 1 So investing that much in their social development is so important. It really is.

07:34 Speaker 2 It’s an education for life.

07:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

07:36 Speaker 2 Absolutely. That’s what will give them... In the end, they’ll take much more from that about what kind of person to be than from one more math problem.

07:46 Speaker 1 Right. Wait, so when you started eighth grade, seventh grade suddenly joined you too?

07:51 Speaker 2 Seventh, eighth, and ninth. All three grades moved up together.

07:53 Speaker 1 How interesting. Was that building new then?

07:56 Speaker 2 No.

07:56 Speaker 1 Right, it’s practically an antique.

07:58 Speaker 2 We were in—

07:59 Speaker 1 It still is today.

07:59 Speaker 2 Yes. We were in the junior high. I think they were building that purple building then.

08:02 Speaker 1 The high school.

08:04 Speaker 2 Yes. They built everything in no time.

08:06 Speaker 1 Wow. And then you got there.

08:08 Speaker 2 I got there and went to class as usual, to learn. My hashgachah pratis was that they hadn’t had time to pass information on to one another—to pass on the records. So when I arrived in class, I think your family was involved there too, the teacher came in and... As usual, I took the test, and of course I failed. What else was new? The teacher said to me, “Chani, what’s this grade?” I looked at her and said, “I see nobody told you about me.”

08:37 Speaker 1 She picked up on the gap between the girl who sat in her lessons—

08:40 Speaker 2 who understands. She said to me, “But I can see that you understand me. So what’s with this grade?” And she wouldn’t give up. I was in a class of thirty-six girls, and she simply wouldn’t give up on me. She picked me out. She saved my life. That teacher saved my life, and she knows it. And I—already then, I realized she had saved me. I didn’t have to wait until I grew up to understand what she’d done. I was only in eighth grade. She sent me for an assessment. She said, “This doesn’t make sense,” because she took the test and started reading the questions aloud to me.

09:07 Speaker 1 Wow.

09:07 Speaker 2 And I knew the answers. She said, “Come on, Chani, you can see the question right there, so why aren’t you writing anything?” I looked at her and said—I thought I had written something. I’d improvise, but, well, that improvising just didn’t work. She sent me for an assessment, and when I got there, it took them a minute and a half to realize I was dyslexic. From then on, my life changed. I mean, I was born again.

09:28 Speaker 1 Wow. It’s like, finally there was a name for it.

09:31 Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. It’s like when someone is sick and nobody knows what’s going on with them or what medicine to give them. Once there’s a diagnosis, it’s simply a blessing to have a diagnosis. And once they understood I was dyslexic, tests, practice exams, matriculation exams—everything was oral. That was it. I didn’t have to read and write anymore. I can’t fight something that’s really, really hard for me. To take—to read a text, I need to really get into it, have quiet, and concentrate. And of course, the reason I can read and write today is that as soon as I was diagnosed, I had an amazing remedial teacher who taught me to read and write in eighth grade.

10:07 Speaker 1 Oh my goodness, that’s incredible.

10:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:10 Speaker 1 It’s like your life really divides into two, as they say.

10:13 Speaker 2 Completely. I was born again that year. From a failure, a loser of a kid—sorry, but that’s the reality—to—

10:21 Speaker 1 A young woman.

10:22 Speaker 2 Suddenly, yes. Suddenly I was getting nineties and hundreds. It had been a dream for Chani to get grades like that.

10:28 Speaker 1 Wow.

10:28 Speaker 2 The same tests as everyone else. Everything was the same, not a different question—just having them read aloud and someone write down my answers.

10:35 Speaker 1 Incredible. How were your parents through all this?

10:38 Speaker 2 Amazing. Amazing. I grew up in a home where there was no “poor you.” It wasn’t, “Oh, it’s hard for you. Oh, well, never mind.” There was no self-pity. Quite the opposite: how wonderful that we know where your difficulties are. Now there’s no reason—we’ll give you the tools to succeed.

10:59 Speaker 1 Amazing.

11:00 Speaker 2 Whether it was remedial teaching or whatever else was needed, “We’ll give you the tools.” That was the approach. Very, very positive. No “poor you.” It simply wasn’t part of the way we spoke, thought, or acted, ever. Think about it: an ordinary child who went through the childhood I had—I’m not sure she would have managed to get to school. I don’t know if she would even have made it to eighth grade.

11:19 Speaker 1 Right. How much frustration can a person experience? Every day, every day, for years.

11:25 Speaker 2 Right.

11:26 Speaker 1 Incredible.

11:26 Speaker 2 It’s hard.

11:27 Speaker 1 It’s good you got to a happy ending.

11:30 Speaker 2 Thank G-d, truly. Hashem knows how to send the right people at the right time. I’m telling you, it was real hashgachah pratis, because they figured it out just before the practice exams and matriculation exams.

11:41 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:42 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

11:43 Speaker 1 So you finished high school, and then you flew straight to South Africa.

11:45 Speaker 2 Are you kidding? I finished high school with such a good matriculation certificate. Wow, it was a dream. The certificate doesn’t even say that my exams were read aloud to me. Nobody cares about that.

11:55 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:56 Speaker 2 It’s... That’s why, when it comes to someone with a learning disability, I sometimes meet people at workshops who say to me, “What? Aren’t you embarrassed that you have a learning disability, that you take exams orally, that they call you into a separate room?” After all, you don’t take the exams in the classroom; they invite you into a room off to the side. And I said, “What do I have to be embarrassed about? Did I choose this? Hashem gave me this—this supposed talent-slash-failing, which today is the greatest gift. Because from there, I discovered that there are other things in life besides everyone having to study the same subject and everyone having to succeed at the same subject. What a boring world it would be if we all did the same thing.” Right. It’s like you discovered what’s unique about you, that being unique isn’t... Because of it, it made me—yes, it made me realize, wait a second, there are other things in the world. Yes. Wow, it opens your mind. Yes, everyone has the gift Hashem gave them, the light Hashem gave them. And to stop that social pressure—not let it in. Right. If I’d been embarrassed to go take an exam, then maybe at the time I would have been embarrassed because I cared what someone thought. Nobody cares. Think how many dreams girls and women must want to fulfill, and that “what will people say?” blocks them so much. Oh, it’s sad. Yes. It’s sad. And you’re the opposite example. But that’s thanks to the teachers. I’m telling you, I remember one day—I’d had a run-in with one of the teachers. She’d backed me into a corner. Now, you have to understand, I don’t take notes, so I have to remember everything by heart. Wow. And I got to a point where my head felt like it would explode from frustration and from all the information I needed for an exam. And I went in—

13:33 Speaker 2 to the counselor’s office, to Mrs. Sarah Zaklas, and started crying. I said, “Sarah, I’m just stupid. What’s going to become of me? I can’t do this.” And that teacher had pushed me into a corner with my challenges, with my memory and everything. I don’t know—she’d made me cry. By then I was in ninth or tenth grade; she’d made an older girl cry. And Sarah Zaklas didn’t get worked up. She closed the door, took out my file, and started reading me the qualities the diagnostician had written about me. Wow. She said, “Do you see a stupid girl here? Do you see someone with a high IQ who’s stupid? So wipe away your tears, go back to class, and go succeed. No excuses. Go on.” How amazing. And that was the approach. That’s why the—the school taught us about life. It really was your grandmother’s school. It went far beyond arithmetic and language and English and I don’t know what. It was an education, a lot of education for life. Wow. How did you actually study for exams? With recordings? I had—with friends. Wonderful friends. I surrounded myself with them. I really do have amazing friends. There was also—I couldn’t listen to a friend reading aloud, because it would break my concentration. I’d tell her, “Don’t read out loud.” She would read quietly to herself, understand the material, and then tell it to me as a story. That’s how I learned all of history. Wow. All of civics, everything. The whole story of the Jewish people as a story. Wow. Yes. Interesting. Is it the same with numbers? No, just the opposite. Numbers are a different area, right? Just the opposite. I’m crazy about arithmetic. I love arithmetic. I think there’s another name for... There’s dyslexia, and there’s another name for a difficulty with— Right, letters are one thing and numbers are another. Yes,

15:10 Speaker 2 Yes. With numbers, actually, it’s the other way around for me. Again, someone has to read word problems aloud to me. Right, because it’s a story again. It goes back to the... Yes, but a regular exercise that’s just numbers? No problem. It’s the opposite. Right. You know, most people say, “Don’t send me voice messages on WhatsApp,” but with you it’s the other way around: “Send me voice messages on WhatsApp; don’t write to me.” Exactly. Wow, that’s something. Yes. Good thing they added the speed-up option, so you can play them faster now. You’ve got me. Tell me, then—wait, how old were you the first time you accompanied someone through a birth? Twenty. That’s wild. Wow, before you’d given birth yourself. Before, before. They were friends of mine. That’s something. Yes. I think you might be the only one in the field who—actually, even during my studies. I was nineteen or twenty, still studying, and I was even single. I did an internship at Laniado. So you really had a connection to the field, because that’s remarkable. I really fell in love with it. You know, classes were twice a week in Ramat Aviv Gimmel, at the Israeli Center for Childbirth Education, and I was free the rest of the week. And again, with my parents, there’s no such thing as doing nothing. So I went to volunteer at Barzilai, also at that age. Now, back then I wasn’t Israeli. Even though I lived in Israel, I had American citizenship. Today, thank G-d, I’m Israeli. About time. Raising Israeli children and everything. So I came to Barzilai and said, “Listen, I’m not obligated to do national service, but I’m free and I only study twice a week. So what do you need me to do? I’m here.” They probably had no idea where you’d come from. Exactly. They gave me one of the elderly volunteers’ coats. How great. No, I didn’t care. I didn’t mind. I just wanted to get a feel for the hospital. I wanted to get a feel for that world, to understand whether this field really interested

16:52 Speaker 2 me, whether I wasn’t just wasting my time studying something I didn’t even like. And I would simply clean the nursery. I wasn’t allowed to actually touch the babies, but I could clean the incubators in the neonatal unit. I worked there too. I would fold the cloth diapers and organize all their cupboards, and with the bigger babies they did let me bring bottles. Like a sort of assistant. Exactly. Whatever they needed, they could tell me. Then I was in the women’s ward, in maternity, changing sheets, cleaning the bedside cabinets—whatever was needed. I wanted to get a feel for that world. The staff knew I really wanted to train as a doula. So one day a doctor said to me, “Chani, come on, I’m going in for a C-section. Would you like to watch?” I said, “Of course.” Wow, how amazing. She took me and let me stay in the room—not in the operating room itself, but in the preparation room, where they wash their hands, with the big glass window. The prep room. Oh, right. So she let me stand there and watch the surgery. I was, what, nineteen or twenty? I don’t remember, something like that. You watched it straight on. I looked, and I just said, G-d. It’s simply seeing G-dliness, seeing... Wow. A baby being born. Because when a baby comes out, it doesn’t always breathe right away. Sometimes there’s a little mucus, it’s struggling to breathe, there’s fluid inside, and they give it a moment of help with its breathing, just a tiny bit. And from a baby that seems not to be alive, you see a soul come down into the world. I mean, what could be greater than that? What could be greater? That’s what I see. Incredible. It’s a miracle. And when I’m at a birth, I don’t stand at the front. I’m with the woman giving birth. I’m there to do whatever she needs, to see how I can help her through the birth—for her sake.

18:32 Speaker 2 And again, you see the baby come out. One moment it isn’t here, and suddenly it is. It’s arrived. G-dliness, truly. Yes. Incredible. Wait, and then did you get into aromatherapy at the same time, or...? How did that transition happen? Our doula studies introduced us to the fact that aromatherapy exists, which is a method that works through the scent of oils. And reflexology, where the whole body is reflected in the sole of the foot. Right. Suddenly I discovered wonderful methods, methods where I don’t need to read or write. I just need to touch people, help them heal, and blend things—whether it’s with oils, skincare products, or health products. You did massages too, didn’t you? I had a clinic for eighteen years. I stopped seeing people at the clinic at the start of COVID. At the clinic I did everything—massage, shiatsu, reflexology. I would see women to help prepare them for birth. That came later. Sometimes people came to me after accidents, or simply to relax. People were trying to conceive, and their bodies were just tense. So the best way to relax the body was through oils, touch, and shiatsu. I had a lot of cases like that too. But since the start of COVID—I live near my parents, and I’m the first person there if anything happens to them. At the start of COVID, when the whole world shut down and my parents shut themselves inside their house, I stayed home for their sake. I said that if anything happened, I’d rush straight in. So to protect them, I wouldn’t see anyone at the clinic, because I couldn’t expose myself to other people. Because if I

20:21 Speaker 2 was exposed to other people, then I couldn’t... Right. Take care of my parents. So my parents came first. I said work could wait—everything could wait. Incredible. I stopped everything. Even now it sounds a little unbelievable, although it wasn’t that long ago, but it really was so... The world stopped. Yes. We were afraid. It was an overwhelming fear. Right. I remember someone from Hatzalah came and brought me... He explained exactly how to do CPR, how to administer oxygen, all the first aid. I had basic equipment; I bought basic equipment so that if anything happened, I could run in. To your parents? Yes, because at their age, they wouldn’t let us in. They’d shut themselves inside the house. It was frightening. Wow. For months, you mean? A very long time. Really? Wow. Yes, it was... How hard. It was a terrible period, especially for the elderly. Right. So you were at home. Yes, blending products. I didn’t stop doing that. I kept blending them, but I would leave the products outside the house, bags labeled with names. People would come and pick them up. It was like takeaway. Takeaway, off to the side. Right. Wow. No direct contact. And then, basically, that was it—you made that transition. Right. Since then, I haven’t seen clients at the clinic. That’s it. And I remember going to the child-health clinic with my baby, who’d been born a few years ago. I’d switched health funds, so the nurse didn’t know me, and I introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Chani Sonnenfeld. This is my baby.” And she said, “No, there’s a Chani Sonnenfeld in the neighborhood. I’ve been hearing about her here for years and years. She treats babies, she does baby massage, and she blends products and all that.” I told her, “Oh yes, that’s me.”

21:56 Speaker 2 She says to me, “No, no, no. An older woman. I’ve been hearing about her for years.” Listen, you’re only twenty even now—it’s really unbelievable. So I told her, “No, no, that’s me. I’ve just been in this field since I was really young.” It sounds crazy, but yes, I really have been doing this since I was young. She couldn’t believe it. Then she says, “So wait, what do you do now?” I tell her, “These days I don’t treat patients anymore.” She says, “So wait, what do you do with all your knowledge?” These days I use my knowledge in workshops. I take what I know and pass it on. She told me, “You have to pass it on. You can’t keep all that knowledge to yourself.” And that’s what I do today. I simply take the knowledge I have, and I honestly think—I don’t understand how anyone can live without it. Sometimes people come here to pick up drops for a baby’s gas, or oil for children’s respiratory systems. You also do infant massage, right? Yes, we do that in groups, too, not one-on-one in the clinic. I have groups where I meet with women after they’ve given birth and teach them how to care for their babies, how to establish a daily routine for a baby. Because, again, it all started with people coming to me and calling me. A woman who’s just given birth hasn’t slept, she’s weak, and she has to care for a baby when she doesn’t even know where to start calming him. Sometimes I’ll say to her, “Okay, I have the gas drops; I’ll put them outside for you.” And she’ll say, “Okay, I’m starting to nurse now. I’ll finish in an hour and a half and come over.” An hour and a half? How long are you nursing for? I hear about so many mistakes young mothers make.

23:19 Speaker 2 And they end up filling their babies with gas and air, putting them on the wrong schedule, and then the baby doesn’t sleep at night because he hasn’t been exposed to daylight. All sorts of tips like that. So I put together a program, a talk where I teach mothers how to set up a daily routine for their baby, so the baby learns to sleep through the night, and how the mother can care for herself. And along the way, when I explain how important it is to keep the baby on a schedule, that he has to eat and sleep in order to grow, I also say, “Wait, what about us mothers? If we don’t sleep and we get sick, who’s going to take care of us? If we fall into postpartum depression, who’s going to take care of us?” Think of the poor children at home. And the poor husband who comes home to a wife who’s frustrated and unhappy. That’s really what the workshop is about. It’s like on an airplane, when they tell you to put the oxygen mask on the adult first and then on the child, because we have to be able to function before we can care for others. Right. So even in the workshops I do for babies, on infant massage, I’m really reaching the mother through the baby. I help the mother understand that she has to take care of herself. And that’s what I do here, too. In our community in Kiryat Malachi, in Nachlas Har Chabad, we have a new mothers’ club, and I also work in the surrounding area. I’m invited to lots of nearby cities, to Shifra and Puah groups and various other organizations, to teach mothers how to set up a daily routine for their babies. And along the way we do a hands-on section. We learn how to help a baby with constipation, gas, or congestion. Just think: through the soles of the feet, with three minutes of touch, a mother can give her baby so much relief. She’ll have a healthier, happier child in the end. So I really can’t understand how anyone can live without this knowledge. Give us a few tips—I’m too curious.

25:07 Speaker 2 Yes. Ours will be three months old tomorrow; is it still relevant? Absolutely. Like what? Something involving touch, or something for a new mother in general? I think something every woman who’s just given birth needs to hear. If someone asked you for one sentence or one tip that you think every new mother absolutely needs to hear, what would it be? You’ll laugh. As part of my wedding preparations, I took a course. My kallah teacher was Mrs. Esther Piekarski—Rebbetzin Esther Piekarski—an incredible woman. She prepared me for my wedding, and even then she told me, “Chani, I’m telling you now: with Hashem’s help, you’ll get married, become pregnant, and give birth. Here’s one tip I can give you: after you give birth, get dressed. Dress nicely. Don’t put on a robe.” She said, “A robe takes up the same amount of space in the laundry as a skirt and blouse. Put on a nice headscarf and some lipstick. Take care of yourself. When you feel good about how you look, you’ll smile and welcome your baby. And,” she told me, “it’s good for shalom bayis, too. Think about it: a husband comes home. When does his wife look beautiful? When she’s gone out with her friends, or when they’re going to an event—and then they get to the event and the seating is separate.” Yes. So she told me, “It’s the same after giving birth. A woman is so tired, and she’s in pain, and everything else. But if she gets dressed as though she’s feeling wonderful, as though she slept all night and ate well—if she dresses nicely and likes how she looks, she’ll feel good, and that happiness will naturally show on the outside.” How amazing. She told me that when I was a kallah, and I’ve lived by it ever since. So when I prepare women for birth, I always tell them, “First of all, tell your husbands that you’re going to cry after giving birth, and that it’s okay to cry. But”

26:59 Speaker 2 to keep from crying too much, we have to sleep and eat. We can’t let ourselves run down. We have to. Those are two tips. I mean, at the hospital nursery, the nursing times are posted on the door. They tell you: every three hours—nine, twelve, three—the baby needs to eat. Okay, the same goes for us. Don’t we need to eat a little something every three hours? That’s one of the amazing things the Rebbe did with the Shifra and Puah organization: those breakfasts. Oh, they’re a lifesaver. I got one from you, you know? With the oil you put in. That’s how I knew. That’s funny—I didn’t even tell you. It was delicious. It’s amazing. Really amazing. Oh, it’s essential. I said, the Rebbe was such a genius. Yes, breakfast for a new mother—from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of all people. But this is where it starts. It’s the foundation of a Jewish family, of a mother’s strength. And for every woman to be able to fulfill her shlichus, she needs to take care of precisely these supposedly little things. The physical needs. Yes. Our bodies. We have to nourish our bodies so they can be open to spirituality and to giving. First, the body needs to be fed. Absolutely. So Shifra and Puah and its breakfast program are simply amazing. A lifesaver. Amazing. It’s interesting that she told you this before your wedding and you remember it so clearly. I really think, you know, in seminary, in high school, they should drop one or two unnecessary classes and teach a class on life: on pregnancy, childbirth, relationships, caring for yourself. Wow. Instead of sitting and learning about—never mind. About things that are so unnecessary. Think about a woman coming home. Think about your husband

28:46 Speaker 2 He comes home after a day at work. You’ve had a day too; we’ve all had a day’s work. But imagine he walks in and the house is upside down, and you’re a mess too. Then the day just keeps going that way. Right. But if you smile and you put on—always put on lipstick. When we’d come to my grandmother’s, she was always like, “Where is my lipstick?” She always had lipstick by the door. She was always smiling, and she always had lipstick on. It was lovely to look at. And as someone with a learning disability, I remember the beautiful teachers at school. You had time to look. I would listen, but I wasn’t looking at my work. I’d look at the teachers and think—the teachers who were well-groomed, neat, beautiful. Right, it radiates vitality. So I really enjoyed listening to them. Right, that’s something. No, that’s an amazing tip. Wow. Wait, and what about aromatherapy? So these days, Chani, what do you do? You go and run workshops... All over the country. Right. You said around the world. Yes. You were in Europe, I think. Right. A while ago—I remember you were. I was there six months ago. Six months. How amazing. And that was also—I was there for a variety of audiences. Not necessarily a Charedi or religious audience. After all, making these products and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, practical tips and great recipes—we always want to know and learn how to make them. All the secrets. And whenever I start a workshop, I tell them, “Get ready to become addicted. Your lives are really going to change.” They look at me like, “Yeah, right. What? What could you possibly teach us? What am I going to get out of this?” And when I finish the workshop, with everyone gathered around me, I say, “You’re hooked, aren’t you?” They tell me, “Completely.” What do you make, for example? So in the workshop itself, we work on... I start the workshop with

30:28 Speaker 2 First of all, I tell them about myself, because I say, “This isn’t a crafts class. If you want crafts, open YouTube, go to a crafts class, take a crafts course.” So first I briefly tell them how I got into this field. Not like—just very briefly, how I got into it. Because if there’s a mother in the audience who’s dealing with a child with a learning disability, who can’t grasp language or numbers, and she stops for just a moment, stops yelling at him or saying, “What’s going to become of you? What’s going to become of you?”—and suddenly she hears someone here saying, “I have spelling mistakes from here to G-d knows where,” and yet she’s succeeding—then she’ll see her child differently. She’ll be a better mother; she’ll be more understanding of him. She’ll understand that if she gives him love and room to express his own light, he’ll be happier and he really will succeed. He’ll prove it to her. Wow, that’s beautiful! So you don’t actually come there for that, but it happens along the way. So, when I say I started the workshops—for years I treated people in my clinic. Years and years and years. And all my knowledge and my workshops simply grew out of people asking me. “Chani, you make these products—would you mind coming and showing us how?” That’s simply how I started. Sometimes I’d come to schools and make natural lip balms and natural cosmetics with the girls, and I’d spot the ones who were struggling in the group. The ones sitting there feeling they weren’t worth much. I’d spot them very quickly because I’d been there. So I know how to recognize it. And suddenly I understood that I had to speak up. I had to. I remember thinking at first, “I’m going to tell them I’m

32:05 Speaker 2 dyslexic.” It felt a little uncomfortable. It really did, and I wasn’t sure—people around me were saying, “What, you’re really going to say that?” I remember that at first it was hard for me, even if my husband or the kids heard about it, because I was supposedly presenting this picture where everything was perfect. But no, not at all. At first I was embarrassed to talk about it. But when I got to the workshops and recognized those girls, I thought, if I just tell them I’m like them, that I really do have a learning disability too, then maybe they’ll understand that everything is okay.

32:40 Speaker 3 Right.

32:41 Speaker 2 And it’ll give them strength to cope.

32:44 Speaker 3 Right. Sometimes just knowing you’re normal is enough. I think people sometimes live in this bubble of “It’s just me, just me, and everyone around me is perfect.” And then suddenly hearing you, seeing you—it really...

32:55 Speaker 2 So, simply...

32:56 Speaker 3 It’s an incredible shlichus. Listen, it’s...

32:57 Speaker 2 That’s it. It took me time. It took me about two years of running workshops to understand that what I’d been through was something I had to share, embarrassing as it felt. I had to share it because...

33:11 Speaker 3 It isn’t embarrassing. Because it isn’t embarrassing.

33:14 Speaker 2 Because I didn’t choose it. Hashem chose it for me.

33:16 Speaker 3 Right. He knew whom to give it to.

33:18 Speaker 2 I said, “How lucky that He made me dyslexic, because otherwise what would I be doing? Another job I wasn’t happy in.”

33:23 Speaker 3 Right.

33:24 Speaker 2 Because of it, I discovered a whole world—a world of touch and healing.

33:28 Speaker 3 Wow. Do you do that for your kids all day? Someone does one bit of homework and immediately gets a massage?

33:35 Speaker 2 In every corner of the house. Yes, my husband works with electricity, so everywhere I have electric screwdrivers and voltage testers, and on the other side are the oils.

33:45 Speaker 3 How cool. Chani, you have to tell us about something else you’ve started doing recently. We can’t skip it.

33:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

33:52 Speaker 3 Here in Nachlas Har Chabad—when we say “Nachla,” we mean the Chabad neighborhood in Kiryat Malachi. We’re just talking as though everybody knows. Yes, exactly. So what did you start doing? And how long has it been, actually?

34:03 Speaker 2 When I was in South Africa on shlichus after high school, at nineteen, what was special about the program was that it wasn’t school. We studied for two hours a day, and spent the rest of the day simply giving to the community. I used to go to a day center there where people also slept, so it was more like a residential care home.

34:22 Speaker 3 A nursing home, yes.

34:24 Speaker 2 I would go there to volunteer. Some people are put off by that. “What, go into a place like that?” The people there are sometimes sitting around, not looking very happy, or... But I fell in love with older people. I fell in love with them. I’d come and sit with them and talk, and suddenly I discovered that their lives were the most interesting thing. If I just listened to them, I could spare myself so many—how should I put it—bumps along the way.

34:50 Speaker 3 Yes, learning from other people’s mistakes.

34:52 Speaker 2 Completely.

34:53 Speaker 3 Right.

34:54 Speaker 2 From what—

34:54 Speaker 3 Lessons from their journey.

34:55 Speaker 2 Yes. I thought, let’s learn from it instead of my having to go through it myself. Let’s listen to them.

34:59 Speaker 3 Completely.

34:59 Speaker 2 And I fell in love with older people. When I came to Israel, also at nineteen, I was studying to be a doula twice a week and working at a hospital, but I still had Thursdays free. So I went to the senior day center here in Kiryat Malachi. I walked in, knocked, and said, “Listen, I’m free every Thursday. Do you need help with anything?” They said, “You know what? Sure, come on in.” So I’d bring Shabbos candles from Mrs. Lerner, and the women would pack them in plastic bags.

35:28 Speaker 3 That’s incredible!

35:30 Speaker 2 I’d sit with them, and while we packed the Shabbos candles we’d talk. And again, the recipes! Listen, I may be Ashkenazi, but I make kubbeh, and I make couscous like a Moroccan woman—all from their recipes. They’d teach me: “Chani, not like that. Like this.”

35:45 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s amazing!

35:47 Speaker 2 I’ve loved it since I was nineteen.

35:49 Speaker 3 You know, I think I interrupted you for a second, but as you’re talking, I’m thinking how cool your boldness is. Like, “Come on, let’s knock on the door of a nursing home. Hello, do you need me?” When that boldness comes from a positive place, it really pays off. Besides what you give, you receive so much too. It’s amazing.

36:08 Speaker 2 That’s the secret. I recently came across Manis Friedman’s new book, I Didn’t Ask to Be Born.

36:14 Speaker 3 Right.

36:16 Speaker 2 I listen to recordings about it on YouTube. He talks about it a lot. And the coauthor is... Elad, the one who actually wrote the Israeli book.

36:26 Speaker 3 Yes.

36:26 Speaker 2 He, uh...

36:27 Speaker 3 Elad, Elad.

36:28 Speaker 2 Dr. Elad, uh, something.

36:29 Speaker 3 Ben Elul, yes.

36:30 Speaker 2 So there’s a lot on YouTube that you can just listen to. They talk about the book and also read parts of it aloud. And the book explains that a person’s purpose isn’t to be preoccupied with himself, with his own existence. “What do I need? I need water, I need food right now, and I need clothes, and I need this and I need that.” I’m raising a teenager now, and it’s not... G-d help me. I have a seventeen-year-old son.

36:56 Speaker 3 Boys, girls—you have all kinds.

36:58 Speaker 2 Oh wow, but especially the boys. It’s tough, really tough. I don’t know where to start. I just pray to Hashem that I don’t make too many mistakes.

37:05 Speaker 3 Wow.

37:05 Speaker 2 And I’m raising two boys in yeshivos. I’m genuinely looking for tips on how to do it, if anyone has any. I don’t know.

37:11 Speaker 3 That’s it, we need to—if someone can do a podcast episode with me about this, get in touch.

37:16 Speaker 2 Oh wow, absolutely.

37:17 Speaker 3 And it should go both ways, you know. If you’re giving tips, you need to receive some too.

37:22 Speaker 2 Absolutely. It’s a tough world.

37:24 Speaker 3 Wow.

37:24 Speaker 2 It’s tough sending a child away from home to yeshiva, and you can’t—

37:28 Speaker 3 Can you imagine? From the age of thirteen.

37:30 Speaker 2 It’s hard. Fourteen. I brought one of them back home. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And I enrolled my oldest, and I’m still dealing with it every day, with the phone calls. You’re not there beside him, and you can’t—and he has to sleep there too. So you deal with very, very difficult things, and personally, it’s not easy for me at all. So really, if anyone has tips for me on how to navigate the world of yeshivos, get in touch.

37:54 Speaker 3 Wait, how did we get onto this?

37:55 Speaker 2 So what I’m saying is, with this book—I’m raising a teenager now, and it’s always, “They need this,” and “I need this,” and “He told me this,” and “They told me that.” So I told him, “Dovid, do me a favor. Go downstairs, the book’s on the table, and bring it up to the room for a second.” We’re having a conversation with a teenager at twelve at night. That’s the only time he makes time for me. So I told him, “Read the first chapter.” The first chapter talks about a boy who wanted to take his own life, even though he had everything in life, everything. And Manis Friedman came to him and said—

38:25 Speaker 3 The priest—I read that.

38:27 Speaker 2 Right. The mother comes and says, “I’ll send Manis Friedman to talk to the boy,” to give him a reason to live. And the boy says to Manis Friedman, “Go away, it’s fine. The priest was already here, and nothing. It won’t help. He said things that made no sense, and you won’t help either.” So he says, “I can’t imagine what the priest said that made so little sense to you.” The boy says, “That Hashem loves me, and that’s why I shouldn’t take my own life.” So he tells him, “That really makes no sense. You’re right. I agree with you.” He says, “Hashem doesn’t love you. Hashem is stuck with you.” I gave my son that to read, and essentially, this book says: stop looking for what you need, need, need, and look at what you can give to the people around you. Where can you give back to life? That’s where your responsibility lies. When we give, the people who gain the most are we ourselves. That’s what I was trying to help my seventeen-year-old son understand. I’ll give you what you need, but stop taking and taking and taking. Start giving back, and you’ll see the good Hashem has done for you.

39:27 Speaker 3 Absolutely. It lifts us up, and we also stop—we’ve got to stop dwelling on our own problems. Everyone has problems. We get involved in bigger things and immerse ourselves in them.

39:35 Speaker 2 Right.

39:36 Speaker 3 And when we’re involved with other people, we rise above it. We—

39:38 Speaker 2 And that’s exactly what happened to me at nineteen. Throughout school, I had learning difficulties. People had to help me; they always had to help me. They had to teach me to read, to write, how to remember things, and help me study for tests. I always needed help from the people around me. I was already tired of taking. Then suddenly, at nineteen, when I finished school, I started giving back, and something happened. So when I came across this book, I understood exactly what had happened to me that year. I started giving back to the world, and I found my place.

40:09 Speaker 3 It was like something burst out of you.

40:10 Speaker 2 Exactly. I just wanted to give more and more. What else could I give? Because I felt I wasn’t only taking from the world—

40:16 Speaker 3 Beautiful.

40:16 Speaker 2 And now I understand what happened to me then.

40:19 Speaker 3 Yes, that’s amazing.

40:19 Speaker 2 And that’s why I wasn’t embarrassed. What I got from giving filled me up so much that I didn’t care if people laughed at me for going to sit with elderly people. It made me feel good.

40:33 Speaker 3 That really is the secret too: doing things without being swayed by the people around you, staying true to what you believe, and following your intuition. You felt connected to it and went for it. That’s beautiful. Wow.

40:46 Speaker 2 But again, at home, my parents made room for my quirks, and they really encouraged that side of me.

40:53 Speaker 3 Yes.

40:54 Speaker 2 And for years I always said, “What, here in the community, in Nachlas Har Chabad, in Kiryat Malachi—how is there no place for the older people?” I have lots of friends who are grandmothers, lots of—

41:04 Speaker 3 Right. Wait, so I did that when I was nineteen.

41:06 Speaker 2 I volunteered there for a few years.

41:07 Speaker 3 And then you moved into the whole field of births and all that, so—

41:10 Speaker 2 Yes, I was busy—

41:11 Speaker 3 So it kind of got left behind.

41:12 Speaker 2 I was busy with the clinic. I was busy raising six children, so I stopped going to the day center. Just an occasional hello, nothing more. Not really. And I started becoming friends with a lot of grandmothers here in our community. I’d notice a grandmother sitting on the bench outside the clinic, notice one sitting by the shops. They’re looking for that hello. So I simply started paying attention to them, and I ended up with lots of friends like that. And I always said, “What? How is there no place like that?” Because I work with medicinal herbs and all that, people would always come to pick up remedies or order them—for young women, for fertility, for long menstrual cycles, for children’s respiratory systems. And I often noticed older women coming to get herbal remedies for depression.

41:54 Speaker 3 Wow.

41:54 Speaker 2 I’d say, “But why do you need this?” One woman told me, “Listen, I used to work, and now that’s it. We closed the shop, and we don’t work anymore. My husband and I are at home.” So I said, “Then go do something. Go to a club.” She said, “But where?” I said, “Maybe take a course.” She said, “But I don’t drive.” And suddenly I realized we really needed something here.

42:12 Speaker 3 Wow, right. It’s like the neighborhood takes care of everyone until—

42:15 Speaker 2 Until a certain age, and that’s it.

42:17 Speaker 3 That’s something.

42:17 Speaker 2 It hurt me to see them coming to me to buy things for situations like these. So a few years ago, I tried—I approached a woman who had a day center here; her name doesn’t matter. I said, “Tell me, you’re right here in the neighborhood and you have a center. Could you take in a few women?” I went to her myself. She told me, “Chani, listen, I don’t have room. It’s full. There’s no more space here.” I said, “But these are women from our community, and your building is in our community. Maybe just a few women? I just need somewhere for a few women who are bored at home.” She said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t take them.” I tried approaching another person or two, and I gave up. I don’t know why I gave up. Then, with my workshops, I started doing workshops for different ages—for young women, for babies, and also for older women. I went to Kfar Chabad, where there’s a club for older women, and I walked in. Now, people picture a place for elderly people as somewhere unpleasant, probably dirty and smelly. But I got there and found beautiful women, women who took care of themselves, women who had given their whole lives to raising children, building a community, building up a city. And then they were simply done. They hadn’t retired by choice; they’d been pushed into retirement. They hadn’t chosen to stay home. I did a workshop for them and had such a good time with them, and they invited me back several times. Each time we did something different. Then I came home and told my mother, “Listen, I was here and there, in a few places like that. Why don’t we have this in our city?” So my mother said, “Chani, I don’t understand. You see there’s a problem here, so what are you waiting for? Do it, do it.” That’s my mother’s approach: just do it. I said, “Okay, but where do I start? I’ve only just—

43:52 Speaker 2 I’d only just given birth, and all that... I said, “Okay, I tried a few years ago. It’s not that I didn’t try. I tried and had a lot of doors closed on me. All right, I’ll try again. The worst they can say is yes—no, the worst they can say is no.”

44:04 Speaker 3 The worst that can happen is we succeed. Yes.

44:06 Speaker 2 Exactly. That’s the approach. I turned to my friend, my sister-in-law Sheina, and said, “Sheina, what do you think? I—there’s a problem here.” I’d gone and checked things out. I’d been to Chamo, looked around there. I came to her having already done my homework. I said, “I want to go to the social services department about this. Could you come with me? I need your support. Come on, let’s do this together.” And she said, “Whatever you need, I’m here. Let’s do it.” So I turned to her, and we did it—we went to social services. And they said, “But there’s already a club.” I said, “True, there’s a club here, but there’s also a kindergarten. When there are more children in town, you open another kindergarten. There are more older women here, so we need to open another club. We have to have another club—a club of our own.” She said to me, “What’s the problem? Sit in a café in the town center.” I said, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. These are special women.”

44:49 Speaker 3 Besides, there isn’t even a decent café here.

44:51 Speaker 2 That’s just an aside.

44:52 Speaker 3 In parentheses.

44:53 Speaker 2 Just an aside. [unclear]

44:55 Speaker 3 Yes.

44:56 Speaker 2 And I told her, “That won’t do. These are special women, elegant women. We’re not going to sit out on the street or meet in shops. I need a place. What would that look like?” Afterward, I approached the Nachla committee. I said to them, “Listen, you’re the Nachla committee. I’m willing to do this, but I need you to understand the need and join me in this. Let’s do it.” They said, “All right, we’re in, Chani. What do you need?”

45:22 Speaker 3 Wow, listen to this.

45:24 Speaker 2 I drove them crazy, I drove them crazy. I really knocked on doors.

45:25 Speaker 3 Your persistence paid off.

45:28 Speaker 2 But because I could see what the result would be, I didn’t care. I said, “I’m doing this,” and I really surrounded myself with good friends. So I turned to another friend. I said to Chani, “Chani, come on, you’re coming. I have another meeting, and I just need you to come with me. Sit next to me. If you see me starting to get nervous”—because suddenly I was sitting across from a team of four women from social services: the director, the person in charge of this, the person in charge of that. I was suddenly afraid my mind would go blank and I wouldn’t know what to say. I said, “I need you to come. Just sit with me and back me up. I need you to go... I mean, to understand what we’re doing. We’re going into battle together.” And through one meeting, then another, then another, we succeeded. I opened a club.

46:07 Speaker 3 Oh my goodness, that’s incredible.

46:09 Speaker 2 I remember a woman called me. She said, “Hi, I got your number from social services. They’ve approved art classes for you. I’m only available on Tuesdays—that’s all I can offer right now. But where? Where am I going to do it? I don’t have a place, I don’t have anything.” So I told her, “Tuesday it is.” I didn’t have a place, but I said, “Okay, Tuesday is tomorrow, right?” It was either tomorrow or the day after, something like that. I had a day and a half to get organized. I said, “Oh, okay—in my living room.” I told her, “Come, I have a place. Come.”

46:37 Speaker 3 Make yourselves at home.

46:39 Speaker 2 I called a few of the older women I know here in the community. I told them, “Listen, this is it, we’re doing it. Tell your friends to come to my house.” Right away, Sheina and I baked cakes and made them breakfast. They came, we had an art class, and afterward we sat and talked.

46:55 Speaker 3 So, so beautiful.

46:55 Speaker 2 And from there, it just took off. I couldn’t stop smiling that day. And as they say, appetite comes with eating. I said, “Wait, we need exercise too. What about exercise?” Then we met someone, or someone sent her to us. I went back to social services too. I said, “Listen, thank you so, so much for the art class, but it’s not enough. It’s only one hour, and then we have breakfast. That’s not enough. I don’t want them to go home. I want them to stay longer. I need another class.” “Okay, you’ve got exercise.” So now they have a full day of activities.

47:23 Speaker 3 Once a week, then.

47:24 Speaker 2 Right now it’s once a week. Hopefully, with Hashem’s help, I want to add another day. I see how it lights people up.

47:31 Speaker 3 How beautiful.

47:32 Speaker 2 Wow, it’s incredible.

47:33 Speaker 3 And it really hurts to think about it: a woman is active her whole life, and suddenly she reaches a stage where it’s as if nobody needs her.

47:39 Speaker 2 A potted plant. They become... My grandmother always used to call it “minora.”

47:42 Speaker 3 Oh, that’s awful.

47:42 Speaker 2 A potted plant. Now I already have a place. We’ve only been...

47:46 Speaker 3 Where? Where is it?

47:47 Speaker 2 Well, it started in my living room, and...

47:50 Speaker 3 Can we say where?

47:50 Speaker 2 No, no—today it’s in the building at Chamo[?]. They built a space for teenage girls, which is amazing too. It’s also a wonderful organization they started so the girls wouldn’t have to look for somewhere to sit after school. “Come to us.” They opened a beautiful, bright, fresh room there, all funded by donations from the community.

48:11 Speaker 3 Yes, they ran a campaign.

48:12 Speaker 2 They really did.

48:13 Speaker 3 They did it for the recovery of... I can’t remember the name of the girl who was hurt in an accident. She was critically injured, and now she’s back on her feet.

48:20 Speaker 2 She’s back on her feet, and from there...

48:21 Speaker 3 It’s amazing! It’s amazing! They held a fundraiser in her merit, and how do you put it? It worked, so to speak.

48:26 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a gorgeous place, with a piano, a beautiful couch, and a kitchenette. Every evening, teenage girls are there doing activities. So I approached them too, through the committee. I told them, “Listen, I need... My home is lovely, but once this is in a communal space, the women will feel differently. I don’t want them to feel like guests in my home. I want it to be their home.”

48:47 Speaker 3 Yes.

48:48 Speaker 2 And for the past three weeks, we’ve been in that space in the Chamo[?] building. It’s outside. First of all, there are no stairs, so women who come in wheelchairs or with walkers have no problem. They can roll right in, and a hot meal is waiting for them there. And lately I’ve said... We’ve started getting the women involved. I told them, “Who wants to help us prepare things?” They can bring cheese, too—whatever they like, so they feel that it’s their home. And of course, we prepare all their food, with hot food and everything. They have a whole day of activities. It starts with breakfast, then art, then an exercise class. At twelve o’clock, we bring in talented people from our community. I reached out to a few women, and each time we approach more women with something to offer the community. Everyone has something. There’s so much talent here in Nachla. I told them, “I need you to come at twelve for forty minutes and give us an interesting talk or workshop.” These are women who want to broaden their knowledge. Just because they’re older doesn’t mean they don’t want to learn. They want to...

49:51 Speaker 3 Right.

49:51 Speaker 2 If anything, this is a wonderful time to learn.

49:52 Speaker 3 An opportunity. Now there’s time...

49:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

49:54 Speaker 3 To do everything. To fulfill all those dreams. Wow.

49:56 Speaker 2 So after exercise, we invite talented people from our community, and the women are happy to do it. They said, “Chani, we’re in. What do you need?”

50:05 Speaker 3 Beautiful.

50:06 Speaker 2 “When do you need us? We’ll be there.” That’s... Nachla is a family.

50:10 Speaker 3 That’s it. All the organizations are built on that kind of give-and-take: you give and you receive, and...

50:16 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s...

50:16 Speaker 3 Everyone working together.

50:18 Speaker 2 Exactly. I’ve cleared Tuesdays in my calendar. To me, it’s like a workday, but it’s the greatest contribution I can make to my community.

50:26 Speaker 3 That’s so beautiful.

50:27 Speaker 2 And I’ve been privileged...

50:28 Speaker 3 What age does it start at? You’re making me want to join. It sounds fun.

50:33 Speaker 2 The Nachla Club is for ages sixty-two and up.

50:36 Speaker 3 Wow.

50:36 Speaker 2 And we’re only three months into the club, meeting every Tuesday, and we already have close to thirty people.

50:44 Speaker 3 Wow. That’s beautiful—it’s like a whole class.

50:47 Speaker 2 And they enjoy it. They really enjoy it. You can’t imagine how much they love coming there.

50:52 Speaker 3 Of course. It really sounds like an experience.

50:54 Speaker 2 You know, until this week, I hadn’t managed to get my mother to come.

50:58 Speaker 3 Still?

50:59 Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. She came the day before yesterday! She always tells me no. She’s over seventy, but at that age there’s something about not wanting to be seen as belonging to that group. “I’m not—I’m young, I can manage.”

51:12 Speaker 3 Yes, that’s true.

51:12 Speaker 2 I told her, “No, no, you don’t have to come to everything. But come, just come see what I’m doing.” And she—no, having a social life is essential.

51:22 Speaker 3 Right.

51:23 Speaker 2 And she came—this week, she suddenly called me first thing in the morning. I was getting ready, in the kitchen cooking on Tuesday morning. I start at quarter to ten. I told them, “Listen, I’m a mother. I have to send the kids to school, and then I have to get back to the kitchen and put the finishing touches on all the food. I can’t get it done any earlier.” So the club only starts at quarter to ten. Fine. Then my mother suddenly calls me that morning. I say, “What?” She says, “What time is the club today? I want to come.” I was stunned. She came to the club and told me, “Chani, I enjoyed it. I had such a good time.” So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve—

51:55 Speaker 3 That is amazing. Wow, wow, wow. Chani, I’m honestly stunned. You told me a couple of words about the club, but hearing this... Listen, it sounds fun for anyone, at any age. You’d clear your day to come. So at that age, it’s—

52:12 Speaker 2 You’re saving—

52:13 Speaker 3 Wow, it’s like a trip abroad.

52:14 Speaker 2 You’re not—you’re practically taking medications off their shelves.

52:18 Speaker 3 Mental health.

52:19 Speaker 2 You’re taking—

52:20 Speaker 3 Yes, it’s mind and body.

52:22 Speaker 2 It’s, uh—

52:23 Speaker 3 How amazing. Amazing.

52:24 Speaker 2 And the feedback from the daughters of the older women. These women were our teachers, our kindergarten teachers.

52:29 Speaker 3 Right.

52:30 Speaker 2 So I get lots of warm messages from their granddaughters and daughters, messages that really give me strength. “Chani, listen, my mother loves the club.” And every time I get a message, it means something to me. It really gives me strength. I go to sleep at night thinking, okay, yesterday... next week... One Tuesday was during Chanukah. I said, “I’m going to throw the older women a really great party.” Now, I was sure—what with Sukkos, grandchildren and all that—maybe they wouldn’t have time.

53:01 Speaker 3 There are eight days. There’s enough time for everything.

53:02 Speaker 2 But they turned up in droves, and we threw them a Chanukah party. I also arranged a workshop for them there about oils. Each woman made herself a therapeutic heat pillow. I taught them how to make it, and then I invited my sister Chayka. I told her, “Chayka, listen, you have to come. You’re going to make them sfenj.”

53:19 Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

53:20 Speaker 2 And we set it all up there. I came with a portable gas burner and a pot—you have no idea. She ran it and taught them how to make them from the dough, so they wouldn’t be afraid to go into the kitchen and make them themselves. It was just such a fun party.

53:34 Speaker 3 Beautiful. And it’s also a way of giving back to them for everything they did.

53:37 Speaker 2 Exactly. Exactly. Who was there for me, if not them?

53:40 Speaker 3 Right. You know, today I’ll be walking down the street—and I wasn’t here for eight years, so there’s this sort of gap for me. I’ll see someone I last saw eight years ago, and it’s a jump. Suddenly I see someone who was, say, my elementary-school teacher, and I think, wow, she’s aged, and—

53:54 Speaker 2 It’s scary. Scary.

53:54 Speaker 3 I said hello to her on the street and she didn’t answer. I don’t know if she didn’t recognize me, or didn’t understand where I’d suddenly appeared from, or didn’t hear me. And you’re just like, wow, this is the generation that raised us.

54:07 Speaker 2 Right.

54:07 Speaker 3 It’s incredible.

54:08 Speaker 2 No, but I’m telling you, I’m lucky that I really surround myself—the trick is to surround myself with good people. With this club, listen, Sheina Gazit, Sheina Hoffman and Chani Steinmetz joined me in it. We have another meeting this week, and we’re going to add another day. So we need the funding.

54:30 Speaker 3 Wow, what amazing women.

54:30 Speaker 2 We don’t want to start bothering people. We don’t. When we sat down with social services, they said, “We’ll help you, but only if every older woman who comes pays.” We said, “No, we’re not taking money from them. We owe them.”

54:42 Speaker 3 Right. They deserve it.

54:43 Speaker 2 Yes. So we prepare the food each time. We make sure there’s a hot meal there. One of the daughters said something to me: “Listen, my mother is a widow.” Sadly, I have a lot of widows in the group—young widows. I mean, they’re barely seventy and they’re already widows. You don’t feel like cooking. “We’re a very close family and everything, but we can’t come here every day. We live here and there; we have our lives, our work.” So when they come to the club, they also have food. We make delicious food.

55:19 Speaker 3 Yay, yay, yay. I can imagine.

55:21 Speaker 2 Oh, Chana and Sheina and Chani are champions. We put out soups and quiches and cheeses, and—yum. We do everything to a high standard.

55:31 Speaker 3 We were talking about there not being a café. Well, here’s the café this place is going to have.

55:34 Speaker 2 No, no, it’s the best café.

55:35 Speaker 3 The very best.

55:36 Speaker 2 The very best. And we use beautiful dishes for everything, with tablecloths on the tables. None of those sad disposable tablecloths, those flimsy nonwoven ones. No—a beautiful tablecloth. They come to a lovely club, a club that values them and respects them. It gives them a place where they really feel—I value people of that age and everything they are. Think about it. They were there for me throughout my childhood. How could I not give back to them? That’s how I feel. I think it’s my obligation. And believe me, they tell me, “Oh, Chani, thank you so much, thank you so much, you’re wonderful.” I say, “No, no, no, no. I enjoy it more.”

56:18 Speaker 3 Wow. Right.

56:18 Speaker 2 I really enjoy being with you more.

56:20 Speaker 3 How do they hear about it? Word of mouth?

56:22 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, I also reach out to their daughters. I say, “You know your mother is at home. It’s hard for her to go out.” She says to me, “What do you mean, hard for her?” “How do we get your mother to come to our club? Do you want me to pick her up? Do you want us to send someone to pick her up?” So I spread the word through the daughters. And the older women in the neighborhood have some kind of WhatsApp group, and we post it there too. Mainly, if I notice someone isn’t coming, I contact her daughter to help get her out of the house.

56:50 Speaker 3 Yes.

56:50 Speaker 2 We figure out how to do it. That’s just what I—

56:53 Speaker 3 Beautiful. I’m sure there are women listening to you who are suddenly getting an idea, because this is something that, in the rush of life, I think it’s really hard to suddenly notice—to notice a need like this.

57:04 Speaker 2 I remember when social services told me, “Listen, there’s already this and that.” So I said to them, “Listen, what are you—” Excuse my words. Sometimes I had to be the bad one. Chani and Sheina had to calm me down; we were playing good cop, bad cop. I would say to them, “I don’t understand. Does someone have to die before a place opens up in the existing club for another woman? Do you hear what you’re saying?”

57:26 Speaker 3 Exactly.

57:26 Speaker 2 “What do you want? What am I asking for? I want to keep them alive and happy. That’s what I want.”

57:31 Speaker 3 When they said there was an existing club, did they mean the senior day center?

57:35 Speaker 2 No, no, that’s something else. There’s an existing club.

57:39 Speaker 3 Right. What existing club?

57:40 Speaker 2 Well, no—and there’s no room there. That’s the point. There’s no room. So someone has to leave before they can let another woman in.

57:48 Speaker 3 Oh, that’s awful.

57:48 Speaker 2 I said, “No. No, no. Just as you open another kindergarten, you’re going to open another club for me.”

57:52 Speaker 3 Beautiful. Compulsory education until the age of—until, uh—

57:56 Speaker 2 To my mind, it’s even more—

57:57 Speaker 3 For every age.

57:58 Speaker 2 I think it’s even more essential. Sometimes I think it’s more essential—

58:01 Speaker 3 Absolutely.

58:02 Speaker 2 Because at that age, they can shut themselves away at home in an instant, and we don’t even know they’ve done it because we’re so busy, while they’re home alone.

58:10 Speaker 3 Wow. Do you realize what you’re doing? From the outside, it’s incredible. Sometimes I think that when you’re doing something, you’re already caught up in doing it, and then suddenly—from the outside, it’s easier to grasp just how remarkable it is. I don’t think you fully realize how amazing this is.

58:26 Speaker 2 Not yet, because I still haven’t managed to—I’ll tell you why. I’m very critical of myself, because I know there are still women I haven’t managed to bring in. They can’t walk, they just can’t. And I think, okay, but then what do we need to do? I have a friend who actually lives in Russia, Devorah. I tell her, “Devory, your mother still isn’t coming to the club.” I’m trying to bring her, but she can’t walk. So I said, “But what do we need? How do I get her out of the house? There has to be a way. How do we get them out of the house?” And I have a few other women who’ve said to me, “Chani, could you open on another day? Because Tuesday is our day to volunteer in the community.” So I still feel like—

59:02 Speaker 3 There’s still so much more to do.

59:02 Speaker 2 Exactly. I still feel like I’m not doing enough.

59:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

59:08 Speaker 2 So I’m still not... But when I’m at the club itself, and I’m sitting there while they’re exercising, I sit on the couch with my friends, Chani and Shani, and we look at each other and just enjoy what we’ve accomplished. We sit down like that once we’ve finished serving the food and getting everything organized, and the activity begins. That’s our moment to—

59:28 Speaker 3 Sit back and enjoy some nachas.

59:29 Speaker 2 We sit there on the couch. We always take our couch picture, and then we’re like, “Okay, but what do we do next?” And right away it’s, “Okay, who are we calling? Who can we help?” We don’t rest for a moment.

59:40 Speaker 3 That’s so beautiful. And it’s fun, too. Listen, the work you do is so enjoyable and amazing.

59:44 Speaker 2 Yes.

59:44 Speaker 3 Everything you do is about helping other people—working with people, helping, giving, meeting them. It’s beautiful.

59:54 Speaker 2 It gives me life.

59:54 Speaker 3 You can see it in you. You’re so full of life. We should call you Chaya! Wow. Amazing, Chani. Fascinating.

1:00:01 Speaker 2 Yes. I’ll tell you something. Many years ago, when I had my clinic, I went to Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu for a bracha. After the Rebbe’s passing, you know, he had said to “make for yourself a rabbi,” and my father chose Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu as his rabbi. So I was privileged to visit him many times. One time I came and said, “Rabbi, I’d like a bracha for my work, please.” I told him, “I treat people,” and he asked me what I do. Then he looked at me and said, “Do you love what you do?” I said yes. He told me, “Then if you love what you do, you’ll succeed.”

1:00:33 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s wonderful. It’s so true.

1:00:36 Speaker 2 That was the bracha the rabbi gave me. And I truly believe that getting to do what you love is a bracha from Hashem. It’s a bracha; it’s not something to take for granted.

1:00:47 Speaker 3 When we do what we love, we succeed at it, and then we help others. It becomes this kind of cycle of...

1:00:53 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:00:53 Speaker 3 Amazing, amazing, amazing. Chani, how can people reach you? I feel like after everything you’ve said, women just want to follow you and see what you’re doing.

1:01:00 Speaker 2 Follow me.

1:01:00 Speaker 3 You post status updates, right?

1:01:01 Speaker 2 Yes, on my status I often post where... first of all, where I am, and my workshops. I give talks all over the country.

1:01:09 Speaker 3 People can invite you to give workshops, too.

1:01:11 Speaker 2 Right.

1:01:11 Speaker 3 Maybe just give us your number. Zero five... Go ahead and say it. Let them write it down.

1:01:17 Speaker 2 Okay, my phone number is 052-542-0888.

1:01:24 Speaker 3 Great, I’ll write it down too.

1:01:25 Speaker 2 Yes, so I come to wherever I’m invited. Whether it’s for babies, teenagers, women... I work a lot with community centers. I work with schools. I’m working now on getting into the Gefen program. I remember I applied last year too, and in their response they wrote that they hadn’t approved me because it wasn’t... because it wasn’t related to natural medicine.

1:01:49 Speaker 3 What a hassle.

1:01:50 Speaker 2 So I said, apparently I need someone who... I hired someone to help with it, but I still need someone to take care of it for me.

1:01:55 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:01:56 Speaker 2 Because—

1:01:56 Speaker 3 I’ve heard it’s quite a process to get into that, yes.

1:01:58 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Because I work a lot with teenagers. Through making natural products, through the fun workshop of making lip balms and blending oils and making cocktails, I first reach their hearts. I give them strength—the strength to want to get up in the morning and be better.

1:02:18 Speaker 3 Absolutely.

1:02:18 Speaker 2 First and foremost.

1:02:19 Speaker 3 Beautiful. And it really speaks to every age and every stage of life—a woman after giving birth, a lost eighth-grade girl, and—

1:02:27 Speaker 2 Right.

1:02:27 Speaker 3 Everyone needs it. Everyone needs to get involved in making something, to take care of themselves and to hear a few kind words. It sounds like an amazing workshop. How have I not been to one yet, Chani?

1:02:36 Speaker 2 For the new mothers. You haven’t been to one for the new mothers?

1:02:38 Speaker 3 No, no.

1:02:38 Speaker 2 We held one right here in Nachlawi.

1:02:39 Speaker 3 There was one, but I had something else that day.

1:02:41 Speaker 2 A month ago.

1:02:41 Speaker 3 Yes, I had something that day, and—

1:02:42 Speaker 2 Right, we held it here. Here in Nachlawi, every three months—

1:02:45 Speaker 3 Maybe I was added too late for the previous group.

1:02:48 Speaker 2 Ah, then yes, you have to catch the next one. Every quarter, we bring together the women who’ve given birth and hold an event for them. Shifra[?] organizes breakfast here, and I bring the workshop.

1:02:58 Speaker 3 It’s just amazing. Do you realize how much good you do in the world? The ripples just keep spreading. It’s incredible.

1:03:05 Speaker 2 I hope so. I hope Hashem gives me the strength to keep doing this work. I always tell my children, “If you don’t do it, Hashem will put someone else there to do it. So grab the opportunity and do it—

1:03:15 Speaker 3 Grab the zechus.

1:03:16 Speaker 2 Yes, you do it. Why should someone else have to do it? Do it yourselves.”

1:03:21 Speaker 3 Right.

1:03:21 Speaker 2 And that’s how I feel.

1:03:22 Speaker 3 To be on the giving side, to have a positive influence, and—

1:03:24 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:03:25 Speaker 3 May Hashem give you the strength for it.

1:03:26 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:03:27 Speaker 3 Wow, Chani, you’re wonderful.

1:03:28 Speaker 2 Ah.

1:03:28 Speaker 3 Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking with you.

1:03:30 Speaker 2 With you too. Thank you so, so much.

1:03:32 Speaker 3 Thank you, Chani.