Episode 22: Visiting the Sick 24/7 | With Chana Turkov, Chabad shlucha at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa

00:01 Speaker 1 What does the moment look like when a couple decides to devote their lives to shlichus in the medical field? What was the most unusual request they received on shlichus? How does a shlucha explain that she gave birth two days ago and won’t be able to host this Shabbos? And how do you stay strong when you encounter unbearably difficult stories every day? Join me for a fascinating conversation with Chana Turkov, the Chabad shlucha at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. A reminder: if you liked this content, please share it, spread it, subscribe to the channel, and give it a like. That will help me spread this content further. Intro, and we’ll begin. 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 different women who will share their shlichus in a range of fields and, through their stories, 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 thing there is. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting now. Hello, Chana Turkov.

01:13 Speaker 2 Hello, hello.

01:14 Speaker 1 You’ve come from Haifa. Well, I’ve already told everyone everything about you. Go ahead, introduce yourself.

01:21 Speaker 2 My name is Chana Turkov, and I live in Haifa. Let’s start with the fact that I’m the mother of five sweet children, and we’re shluchim at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. That pretty much fills our lives, and that’s more or less it.

01:40 Speaker 1 That’s it? That’s all?

01:42 Speaker 2 Really.

01:42 Speaker 1 We’ve finished the podcast. Tell me, where are you originally from?

01:46 Speaker 2 Rechovot.

01:46 Speaker 1 Rechovot. And your husband?

01:48 Speaker 2 My husband is from Tzfas.

01:49 Speaker 1 Oh, so there’s some northern connection there...

01:52 Speaker 2 Uh...

01:52 Speaker 1 Though it’s a different direction.

01:53 Speaker 2 Yes, Tzfas and Haifa. Haifa is much more—I call it the northern part of the center.

01:59 Speaker 1 Right. So how did you get there? How did you get to Haifa? How did you get into shlichus, or did those things happen together?

02:04 Speaker 2 It was a chain of events. All hashgacha pratis. Right after our wedding, my husband enlisted in the army and was stationed at a naval base in the Rambam neighborhood. We were looking for somewhere close to the base, which is in Haifa. At first we lived in Kiryat Ata, near my sister-in-law. While my husband was serving on the base, he did various mivtzoim. He was a shliach there on the base.

02:32 Speaker 1 Explain what mivtzoim are for anyone who doesn’t know.

02:34 Speaker 2 For example, on Chanukah he would light menorahs all over the base, he would do things for every holiday, and he would put tefillin on the soldiers. That led to a lot of cooperation with the neighborhood’s shliach, Rabbi Yishai Keli. Sufganiyot here, something else there—they were in touch about all sorts of things. Then, some time later, we were a young couple in the delivery room. While I was there with my eldest daughter, Rabbi Yishai Keli called my husband to offer him the shlichus at Rambam Medical Center.

03:12 Speaker 1 Right in the middle of it? I have to know what stage you were at.

03:15 Speaker 2 I’d come in with contractions, I think. It was still early on; I wasn’t actually in active labor yet.

03:23 Speaker 1 You could still think clearly and sanely.

03:25 Speaker 2 But I told him, “Wait, wait, wait. Let me give birth, and afterward we’ll figure out what a medical center even is and what this shlichus would mean. Where did this whole thing suddenly come from?” But it was incredible. It felt like a sign from Heaven—like a birth, when something is born, something begins. It was just wow. Really, wow. Incredible.

03:43 Speaker 1 So after the birth, you decided to go for it.

03:46 Speaker 2 Well, after the birth, it actually took us about a year to move to Haifa, near Rambam. It was a process before we really moved. At first we’d just come to Rambam now and then and get a feel for the place. One Shabbos we stayed with Rabbi Yishai and his family and walked around the area. It took a year before we actually moved.

04:10 Speaker 1 How does that work officially? Through the shliach? Does he approach the medical center and say, “Hello, there’s a couple here”? I’m realizing that shlichus keeps branching out. First a shliach comes to a city, and then it’s, “Wait, there are several neighborhoods here,” so it branches out into the neighborhoods. You need another couple, and another couple, and another couple. Then, within a neighborhood, you realize, “Wait, there’s a medical center here, and there’s this.” It’s amazing—there’s no end to the needs.

04:29 Speaker 2 That’s exactly it. We came to understand that Rambam is like an entire city. It’s huge, with several buildings, each with multiple floors. There are a thousand inpatient beds alone. Then you have the turnover of patients, the patients’ families, and the staff—multiply it by three. There are something like three thousand staff members.

04:50 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:50 Speaker 2 And the staff includes everyone from cleaners to nurses, doctors, and department heads. There’s an IT department, a medical records department, a logistics department. In short, an endless number of staff. Staff doesn’t just mean doctors and nurses; it’s so much more. Rambam has a print shop, a textile department, a nursery.

05:09 Speaker 1 That’s incredible.

05:10 Speaker 2 It’s enormous. There’s just no—

05:11 Speaker 1 And meat, presumably.

05:13 Speaker 2 Everything. Every profession is represented among the staff, and it’s really incredible. So there truly is an endless number of people. I think about Rabbi Yishai, who, on Rosh Hashanah, also had to come to Rambam because it was in his neighborhood. After covering his entire neighborhood and all his activities, how much could he manage to do at Rambam, blowing the shofar? He could only reach a tiny fraction of the people.

05:36 Speaker 1 So he found the right couple to do it.

05:38 Speaker 2 Truly hashgacha pratis.

05:40 Speaker 1 And around that time, people were seeing this need in other places around the country too. It became a realization: wait, medical centers need shluchim of their own.

05:48 Speaker 2 Exactly. We’re part of what’s called Lev Chabad, which is Chabad in medical centers. There are nineteen shluchim with us, and I think there are even more by now.

05:58 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:58 Speaker 2 Recently, more people from medical centers have joined too. Now you have a shliach working under another shliach.

06:02 Speaker 1 Wow.

06:03 Speaker 2 Because when you think about it, a medical center is huge, and its shliach has to be busy with so many things.

06:09 Speaker 1 Rambam is one of the biggest.

06:10 Speaker 2 Right. It’s the largest medical center in the north, and the leading one in the north.

06:14 Speaker 1 Wow.

06:15 Speaker 2 People come to us from all over the north—from Tiberias, from Tzfas. Even from farther away, people come. So there really was a need.

06:25 Speaker 1 So how many years have you been there?

06:26 Speaker 2 Seven and a half years, boruch Hashem.

06:32 Speaker 1 What’s it like moving north from Rechovot, from the plain, little lowlands?

06:37 Speaker 2 Honestly, it was challenging, mainly because I arrived and didn’t know anything.

06:42 Speaker 1 It’s a little like going abroad, I think, apart from the language people speak.

06:46 Speaker 2 No, that makes a big difference. The spoken language and the mentality—

06:49 Speaker 1 Of course.

06:50 Speaker 2 They make a big difference. But yes, I really had to get used to so many things. Even the most basic things: where’s the grocery store? Where do I find... I don’t know. My whole life.

07:01 Speaker 1 Because often, even when someone moves within the country, they move to a community where they already have friends or family. They have people to turn to, and it feels settled for them.

07:10 Speaker 2 No. I do have to say that we lived near my sister-in-law, and she’s absolutely amazing.

07:14 Speaker 1 Oh, at first you lived in Kiryat Ata.

07:15 Speaker 2 Yes, we lived in Kiryat Ata, so that made the adjustment a little easier, you know.

07:19 Speaker 1 It made it gradual.

07:19 Speaker 2 And she was there for us. She’s wonderful. But it was still hard. I had a new job, we were a young couple, and boruch Hashem I became pregnant right away. There were so many new things, boruch Hashem.

07:34 Speaker 1 So afterward you moved from Kiryat Ata to Haifa.

07:36 Speaker 2 To Haifa, near Rambam. We lived in a really tiny apartment; the living room was our room. I called it a matchbox.

07:45 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

07:45 Speaker 2 And we still hosted people. When guests came to us for Shabbos, the whole place became part of the setup—the children’s room, the kitchen, even the laundry room—because it was so small.

07:55 Speaker 1 Wow.

07:55 Speaker 2 Every bit of space was put to use for—

07:58 Speaker 1 That must have been chaotic.

07:59 Speaker 2 —this event called the Shabbos meal, and it was incredible. Then, at a certain point, we had a truly remarkable story of hashgacha pratis on shlichus. When I was pregnant with our third child, I told my husband, “That’s it. One more birth, and I don’t know how I’ll manage in this tiny place.” It’s very hard to find apartments in our area. We searched and searched and searched, and we were already despairing. We even started looking farther into the neighborhood, a ten-minute walk away, but that wasn’t right, because if we wanted to host patients...

08:30 Speaker 3 You had to be very close.

08:31 Speaker 2 Yes, really close, just a stone’s throw away. But we had no choice; we simply couldn’t find anything. Then my husband was walking down the street, and an elderly woman approached him. She saw someone religious and said, “Tell me, do you live around here? I need help. I need someone to replace my mezuzahs.”

08:48 Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

08:49 Speaker 2 So he told her, “All right. You’ve come to the right person.”

08:53 Speaker 3 She snagged him.

08:54 Speaker 2 Exactly. Anyway, he went to her home and replaced her mezuzos, and she lives right across from Rambam Hospital. It’s this building, I don’t know, kind of unusual. No, we hadn’t gone into it. He said, “Tell me, there’s a door here... Who lives there now?” She said, “It’s vacant.” A couple of doctors who had also been living in that building had just gone back abroad. They were American doctors, and the apartment was empty. So he told her, “Get me the number, quickly.” He called the landlord, who hadn’t even advertised it on Yad2. He wasn’t interested in dealing with it. And that was it. We got an apartment with a huge living room. Granted, it has two bedrooms, but the living room is enormous. We said, “This is exactly the kind of place where we can host loads of guests.” It was crazy. It was hashgachah pratis.

09:38 Speaker 3 And you still live there today.

09:39 Speaker 2 And we still live there today, five years later.

09:41 Speaker 3 Wow, how amazing! Oh my goodness.

09:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:44 Speaker 3 So you live right across from Rambam. It’s practically your neighbor.

09:48 Speaker 2 Yes, we can see Rambam from the window.

09:51 Speaker 3 That’s the view from your window.

09:53 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

09:54 Speaker 3 So can you see the sea?

09:55 Speaker 2 Not from our apartment, but if I walk a little way down the street, I can see it. It’s very, very close. A pleasure.

10:02 Speaker 3 The sea is such a...

10:03 Speaker 2 A gift.

10:04 Speaker 3 Yes. So tell me, how do you manage it all? Is it just the two of you, or do you have other people helping with the work?

10:11 Speaker 2 First of all, we really came to the conclusion that we couldn’t handle all this alone. We have a team of volunteers—amazing, wonderful volunteers—who are our ambassadors, who are also shluchim at Rambam. They’re truly part of this shlichus.

10:27 Speaker 3 Men and women volunteers.

10:28 Speaker 2 Men and women volunteers.

10:30 Speaker 3 Wow. How do you build a team like that? You have to recruit them, coordinate them and train them.

10:35 Speaker 2 In the beginning, the volunteer program really was a project. I remember that when my husband was setting it up—the cart, all the volunteers and everything—he was so busy with it that he was hardly home. It took a great deal of work. Once it got going, it became much easier to run. We learned how to do it, and I became much more involved too. When he first set up the project, I was working at a job that took a lot of my time and energy. Now I’m much more on top of it. I’m on it, as they say. That’s my role.

11:12 Speaker 3 So how do the volunteers find you?

11:14 Speaker 2 Well, that has evolved too. At first it was word of mouth. People saw us at Rambam, a friend of someone... That’s how it spread. Then we started making it more organized. For example, today we have two shifts of soldiers from a naval base. Two shifts come every Thursday. There’s a website called Ruach Tova, which is basically like a matchmaking site: it matches nonprofits with people who want to volunteer. We’re listed there, and several volunteers have come to us through it. We also signed up for a site called Vee, which is a kind of app geared more toward people in high-tech. That worked less well. Only one person contacted us through it.

11:53 Speaker 3 Who knows what it meant to that person?

11:54 Speaker 2 But we also need to keep updating our information there, because I still have to figure out how it works. And there are wonderful high school girls too.

12:03 Speaker 3 Which high school?

12:03 Speaker 2 Beis Chaya High School.

12:05 Speaker 3 In the Krayot.

12:06 Speaker 2 In the Krayot. They do it as part of their required community-service hours. They work more with children—that’s their volunteer role. There are lots of craft supplies and games.

12:16 Speaker 3 Like an activity program for hospitalized children.

12:18 Speaker 2 Exactly. They keep them occupied and sit with them.

12:20 Speaker 3 Like a little kids’ club.

12:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:22 Speaker 3 Aw, how sweet. And what do the other volunteers do? They go around and...

12:25 Speaker 2 We have a coffee cart. We call it a mobile café. It has a really professional coffee machine on it, like the ones in cafés, with beans that it grinds on the spot. The smell alone brings the whole ward over.

12:42 Speaker 3 Yes. You know, as the saying goes, when you set up a lantern, those seeking its light gather around it. So when you set up a coffee machine, people gather...

12:48 Speaker 2 Oh, you could make something out of that. Come up with a...

12:52 Speaker 3 Yes, a new saying.

12:53 Speaker 2 Exactly. But that really is how it works. As soon as we arrive with the cart, it draws people in...

12:58 Speaker 3 Yes. It calls everyone over.

13:00 Speaker 2 It’s really amazing. And...

13:02 Speaker 3 Is there a pastry to go with the coffee?

13:03 Speaker 2 Yes. There are women—more volunteers—wonderful, righteous women who bake homemade cakes. They send them to us at Rambam every week, and we put them on the cart.

13:13 Speaker 3 That’s so lovely.

13:13 Speaker 2 You have no idea how wonderful they are. I don’t remind them every week. I don’t... They take care of everything. They bake, arrange the delivery and bring the cakes. They’re incredible, truly righteous women.

13:23 Speaker 3 Just women from Haifa who stepped up to help.

13:25 Speaker 2 Women from Haifa who stepped up to help. And I say, these are righteous women—“in the merit of righteous women.” You wouldn’t believe how many righteous women I see through this shlichus. I say, that’s it, just bring Moshiach already. There are such wonderful women here.

13:35 Speaker 3 I’m thinking how amazing it is that, first of all, you’re a shlucha and you’re doing this shlichus. But part of what the Rebbe wanted was that no shliach should work alone. They can’t do it alone; they need to make more shluchim, so to speak, because we’re all shluchim—we just need to discover it. So you have the privilege of bringing out that sense of shlichus in so many other people who work with you, under you, or alongside you. How would you put it?

13:58 Speaker 2 Alongside me. They’re our partners in this shlichus.

14:01 Speaker 3 Right? Wow. That’s an incredible privilege.

14:05 Speaker 2 Wow, it really is. I think it’s one of the most fulfilling parts of this shlichus for me. When a volunteer sends me a message—I should read you the messages they send me, or play you their voice notes. “Chana, that was the most meaningful moment of my life. I’m telling you, I’ll treasure that moment forever.” A volunteer sent me a voice note yesterday.

14:23 Speaker 3 Wow.

14:23 Speaker 2 “That moment will stay in my heart forever.”

14:26 Speaker 3 How long do they do this for? A year?

14:28 Speaker 2 It really varies. I have volunteers who came when they were in, say, high school.

14:33 Speaker 3 The high school girls, for example, yes.

14:34 Speaker 2 Yes. They came in tenth grade, and then stayed through tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades, and then—

14:38 Speaker 3 That’s incredible. Do you realize what three years means at such a crucial age?

14:41 Speaker 2 They spend a very, very long time with us.

14:43 Speaker 3 It’s an incredible process they go through. I mean—

14:45 Speaker 2 They can already sense what the children need.

14:46 Speaker 3 They wouldn’t be the same people without it, I’m sure.

14:48 Speaker 2 They’re amazing. You have no idea how amazing they really are.

14:50 Speaker 3 How moving.

14:51 Speaker 2 Wonderful. Truly.

14:53 Speaker 3 In general, at that age you’re so focused on yourself—my grades, my friends—and then suddenly you step outside yourself. That’s an amazing thing. These required community-service hours, is that something all the... I’m not up to date on this.

15:05 Speaker 2 The school system of the... uh, the Ministry of Education, education, uh...

15:09 Speaker 3 Do they have that where you are?

15:10 Speaker 2 Yes, they do.

15:11 Speaker 3 No, because we also volunteered, but without that requirement.

15:13 Speaker 2 They didn’t have it in our day.

15:14 Speaker 3 Yes. We’re so old.

15:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:16 Speaker 3 We’re the same age, by the way, for anyone who doesn’t know.

15:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:18 Speaker 3 We studied together in seminary. We had an after-school club, Tzivos Hashem. We did lots of good things, but I don’t remember this.

15:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:26 Speaker 3 It’s strange that it’s a requirement, uh...

15:28 Speaker 2 But I think it’s a tremendous blessing. I think the fact that the Ministry of Education made it something official, hours toward the matriculation certificate...

15:35 Speaker 3 It gets everyone out of...

15:37 Speaker 2 Wow.

15:37 Speaker 3 Their general comfort zone.

15:38 Speaker 2 Exactly. And they gain from it. I think it’s a very, very positive thing that they did.

15:42 Speaker 3 Yes, it’s wonderful. You know, we’re always saying the school curriculum is so disconnected from real life, and here’s something they did that’s all about real life.

15:51 Speaker 2 Do you know how much a high school girl learns from going into a hospital ward? She encounters a situation that’s very, very different from the world she lives in, and it teaches her so much. So much.

16:00 Speaker 3 Yes, and she doesn’t just observe. You know, sometimes they take students on tours. I remember in seminary we went on tours here and there. It made an impression on us, but at the end of the day we went home. Here, the girls are active participants too. They have to do something. It’s amazing.

16:14 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

16:15 Speaker 3 Wow. Tell me, how did... You know, somehow we get to COVID in every podcast. What did COVID do to your work? What was it like before, and what happened afterward? Or have things gone back to normal?

16:27 Speaker 2 The year COVID began was actually when we started holding Shabbos meals right inside Rambam, in the staff dining room.

16:36 Speaker 3 Wait, at first you held them at home?

16:37 Speaker 2 At first they were at home. Then we moved into Rambam, and when COVID came, we went back home.

16:42 Speaker 3 They sent you back home.

16:43 Speaker 2 That’s one thing. During COVID itself, there was an incredible amount of activity in the COVID ward. We had—

16:49 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s right. It was as though a whole new shlichus opened up for you.

16:52 Speaker 2 That was... the volunteers who were inside the COVID ward were really part of the team, because they were medical personnel. The medical team... it was incredible.

17:02 Speaker 3 Yes.

17:02 Speaker 2 And they simply saved lives.

17:04 Speaker 3 Wow.

17:04 Speaker 2 They would go in and bring—

17:06 Speaker 3 Gives me chills.

17:08 Speaker 2 There were unbelievable stories there. One volunteer said Vidui with someone in his final moments. And people were thirsty, their mouths were dry, and no one had come over to them for hours—just giving them something to drink through a straw, you know, like—

17:22 Speaker 3 There just weren’t enough staff, because...

17:24 Speaker 2 Not enough staff. You know, video calls with their families—people hadn’t spoken to their families for hours, and no one really had the time to make that happen. So the volunteers would set up video calls, WhatsApp calls. The ward had a phone. You weren’t allowed to bring anything in. You know, everything was—

17:36 Speaker 3 They must have worn those isolation suits too.

17:37 Speaker 2 Oh, the heat was unbearable. You have no idea how hot it was. They were dripping with sweat. But they stayed there for hours. They were amazing, amazing. They were truly doing holy work.

17:48 Speaker 3 Wow. Were these the high school girls too, or more the...

17:50 Speaker 2 More the older girls.

17:51 Speaker 3 The older ones.

17:52 Speaker 2 They were around twenty-one, and there were married women and men too. The youngest were about twenty-one.

18:00 Speaker 3 Wow. So the—so the Shabbos meals moved back into your home, and baruch Hashem, you were already in the big house.

18:06 Speaker 2 Yes, we were already in the big house.

18:07 Speaker 3 That’s wild. It’s a whole production. I say that because I sometimes host Shabbos meals for dozens of people at home, and you have to start on Wednesday—do the shopping on Tuesday and start cooking on Wednesday.

18:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:19 Speaker 3 How do you do it? Are the children part of it too?

18:22 Speaker 2 Oh, of course they’re part of it. I should mention that I’ve recently given birth, and I’m not cooking the food. Even though I really love cooking—I do love cooking—I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to do it with joy.

18:37 Speaker 3 Even things we love doing take energy.

18:39 Speaker 2 Exactly. And...

18:40 Speaker 3 We have to prioritize where we put our energy.

18:42 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I decided I have to put my energy in the right places and come into Shabbos calm with the children. Hosting is a lot of work even without preparing the food. So I order catering, and that puts people at ease too. They ask me, “Where’s the food from?” “A caterer.” And you can see them breathe a sigh of relief.

18:59 Speaker 3 Yes.

18:59 Speaker 2 Like, okay, she’s just had a baby, but we haven’t put too much on her.

19:02 Speaker 3 Yes.

19:02 Speaker 2 It’s good. It’s good for everyone.

19:05 Speaker 3 Right, and then you have the energy, because ultimately, when you’re hosting, nobody cares who made the chicken. What matters is that you can listen, that someone is calm, that there’s a good atmosphere, and—

19:15 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

19:16 Speaker 3 In the end, when you prepare a meal for dozens of people, even if you have help, you arrive at Shabbos completely exhausted, like...

19:21 Speaker 2 Right.

19:22 Speaker 3 There’s no getting around it.

19:23 Speaker 2 Right. And if I arrive at the meal totally worn out, and things were hard with the children because I was so stressed...

19:30 Speaker 3 Right.

19:32 Speaker 2 That’s a big price to pay.

19:33 Speaker 3 So people come over. I’m trying to picture how it works when hospitalized patients come to you. Are they allowed out for the Shabbos meal?

19:40 Speaker 2 Yes. A lot of the patients—mainly those who aren’t in serious condition, of course—ask to go out for a few hours and simply come to our home. Quite often they’ve come in wheelchairs and things like that.

19:55 Speaker 3 That’s something. And their companions come too?

19:57 Speaker 2 Of course, yes. They need someone to bring them.

20:00 Speaker 3 Do hospital staff come to the meal too?

20:02 Speaker 2 Less often. Not so much.

20:03 Speaker 3 They’re busy working, and when they do have time, they probably go home.

20:06 Speaker 2 Actually, recently there was someone very high up in the administration, a religious man who was stuck here for Shabbos because his mother—never mind, I don’t want to reveal too many details. It wasn’t his mother. I said it was his mother, but it wasn’t. Someone in his family was hospitalized, and he did come to us for Shabbos. It was so moving that someone like that experienced it. You know, he can tell the administration about it.

20:30 Speaker 3 Right, someone on the inside?

20:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:33 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s lovely. So the children are basically hosting people every Shabbos. You know, it’s wild—on the one hand, we’re always thinking about the price our children pay for shlichus. On the other hand, they’re the ones who gain from it. I remember people often asking me, “What about your children? Poor things, they don’t have friends.” Now I say, what do you mean? We’ve been back in Israel for ten months, and I miss that aspect so much. Of course, we’re busy with shlichus and everything, but specifically that part—when it happens right inside your home, so naturally, and you don’t have to say a word. The child simply experiences it and feels it.

21:12 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely. That’s exactly how it is. I can see that my children find it much, much easier to connect with people. Because there’s such a constant turnover of people, and they’re always meeting someone new, it’s very easy for them to start a new friendship. And on this shlichus, they see our personal example—giving, Ahavas Yisroel, accepting people without judging them. I see them doing it automatically. They just do it. A child comes to our home... A few Shabbosim ago, a girl came over, and from an adult perspective I could see that she was an unusual child. But I watched my children from the side and saw that they simply didn’t judge her.

22:04 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

22:04 Speaker 2 They treated her completely normally. I just wanted to hug them. I thought, how sweet they are—what beautiful souls. They simply didn’t see her as different. And I hope that’s really what we’re managing to convey to them: to accept everyone, to give, to have Ahavas Yisroel. Baruch Hashem, they find it very easy to share their toys. And I think it’s like this with everything in life. If we want to instill something in our children, the first thing is the ultimate cliché. But it’s frustrating because that really is how it works.

22:33 Speaker 3 Clichés are true in the end. We just don’t want to do what they say.

22:35 Speaker 2 I like clichés, but it’s... I mean, it’s the truth.

22:39 Speaker 3 Right, it’s how things really are.

22:40 Speaker 2 Yes. If we want to instill something in them, they see it at home every Shabbos, every day. It’s really twenty-four seven, so it sinks in. I hope it really does sink in and become part of them.

22:53 Speaker 3 In the end, a child imitates their surroundings. So if the parents open their home and host people and—

22:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

22:57 Speaker 3 Are focused on giving, the child sees that too. Children are incredibly perceptive; they have these deep sensors. They see what matters to their parents, they see what gets a reaction out of us, they see what moves us and what...

23:12 Speaker 2 They’re really smart.

23:13 Speaker 3 They pick up on it.

23:14 Speaker 2 Very much.

23:15 Speaker 3 So they do gain from the shlichus. But I imagine that because your work is also in a medical setting, you have to be very careful too.

23:23 Speaker 2 Right. They’re exposed to a lot. They see many things other children don’t see. We’re around the hospital, and they see things there that aren’t really for children. We don’t take them there often, I should say, but on Yom Tov they do end up going there. And all kinds of people come into our home, so sometimes they may hear things that are beyond our control. At a Shabbos meal, my daughter might suddenly hear a woman talking about something I wouldn’t want her to hear.

23:56 Speaker 3 Right, you can’t even prepare for that.

23:58 Speaker 2 I really can’t control everything. But my job is to stay alert and pay attention to how they’re doing emotionally. And I truly daven to Hashem to help me, because no matter how attentive I am, I can’t always know. I really daven that Hashem guides me to notice those things.

24:21 Speaker 3 Not everything is in our control, so davening always comes first.

24:24 Speaker 2 Right. I can tell you something that happened to me personally. A young woman came to stay with us for a Shabbos meal. She was lovely, very pretty, a really sweet young woman. She was going through something difficult, and I was talking with her when she suddenly started crying.

24:44 Speaker 3 She was a patient, then.

24:45 Speaker 2 Yes, she opened up, and suddenly she started crying, and that was it. After the Shabbos meal she went home. Then, on Motzaei Shabbos, I was walking down the street and suddenly saw her sitting on a bench. There was a commotion on the street, with police there, and I thought, okay. I went over and asked her, “What’s going on? Are you going home?” She said, “No, I don’t have anywhere to go back to,” something like that. I talked with her, and it was already late. It was a summer Motzaei Shabbos, and there was no transportation. She lived in—anyway, there was no transportation. So I asked her permission to see her discharge letter. I called a nurse I know at Rambam, and she—of course, everything was with her consent—asked her a few questions. Then she told me, “Chani, it’s okay. She’s doing absolutely fine; you have nothing to worry about.” So I took her home, and she slept at my place that night. In the morning she was only in the house for about five minutes. I gave her money for travel, and she went back. My children went to school that morning. My daughter didn’t see her in the morning—or maybe for two minutes. She left at around seven. Then my daughter came home from school, and I saw she was so emotional. It wasn’t normal. Sometimes children cry or get upset, but this was different. I couldn’t calm her down. She cried about one thing, then got upset about another. I thought, wow, what’s going on? Why is she so distressed? Then she really started crying, and I asked, “Yaffa, what happened?” She told me, “Mommy, I’m scared of that woman who was at our house yesterday.”

26:24 Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

26:25 Speaker 2 Oh my goodness. I thought, wow, I never would have imagined it had affected her so much. It wasn’t as though the woman had a wound or anything. She sat with me at the meal, and then suddenly burst into tears, and that simply frightened my daughter.

26:39 Speaker 3 Who was that woman who...

26:40 Speaker 2 Something about it affected her. So I explained that the woman was absolutely fine. She’d already gone home and was with her mother, and so on. I told her everything was okay with her.

26:53 Speaker 3 So you really have to keep your finger on the pulse all the time.

26:54 Speaker 2 Really. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was connected. As far as I was concerned, it had happened, it was over, and I’d moved on.

27:01 Speaker 3 I think sometimes we also make a kind of separation: we’re busy with our own things, our shlichus, our work, and then there are the children. And suddenly you realize it’s all connected, and the children experience everything...

27:10 Speaker 2 Everything, everything. They’re right there. They’re present; they see it.

27:13 Speaker 3 They absorb everything.

27:15 Speaker 2 Everything.

27:16 Speaker 3 Wow. What a responsibility.

27:17 Speaker 2 Very much so.

27:18 Speaker 3 Tell me, you also have apartments for guests, right?

27:22 Speaker 2 Right. We have guest apartments right across from Rambam.

27:27 Speaker 3 What are they actually for?

27:28 Speaker 2 They’re for hosting both families of hospitalized patients and patients themselves. It varies a lot depending on the situation. There may be people who live very far away and simply need to care for someone in the hospital, so they need to stay nearby.

27:45 Speaker 3 For practical reasons—they need a bed.

27:46 Speaker 2 Yes. They can’t make that whole trip back and forth. There was a man from the south of the country whose son lived in the north. His son had been in a very serious accident and was in intensive care. My husband happened to meet him near the intensive care unit, and the man told him he’d been sleeping in his car for two weeks.

28:07 Speaker 3 Oh, wow. Oh my goodness.

28:09 Speaker 2 So my husband simply took him and brought him to a guest apartment.

28:12 Speaker 3 Wow.

28:13 Speaker 2 For him, it was a lifesaver. He and his family stayed in one of our guest apartments for a few months. It was a very, very serious accident.

28:20 Speaker 3 So how do people find out that these apartments exist?

28:22 Speaker 2 Well, there’s—

28:23 Speaker 3 Word of mouth in the hospital.

28:24 Speaker 2 Word of mouth.

28:25 Speaker 3 The staff know about them.

28:25 Speaker 2 Exactly. And social workers from many, many departments know us and refer people to us. We also have a website. You can search for Lev Chabad at Rambam and find us. And Facebook.

28:40 Speaker 3 How interesting.

28:41 Speaker 2 Yes.

28:41 Speaker 3 He just missed hearing about it from every direction.

28:43 Speaker 2 Yes. You know, sometimes a person is so focused on just surviving what’s happening.

28:47 Speaker 3 Yes. Wow. Tell me, Chana, we’ve just come out of Chanukah, so I’m curious: what are the holidays like at the hospital? Not just Chanukah, of course, but throughout the year.

28:59 Speaker 2 Yes, baruch Hashem, we try to be there for every holiday, to provide what’s needed and bring the holiday into the hospital.

29:08 Speaker 3 I’m thinking how important that is. On the one hand, you have two kinds of people. There are those who observe mitzvos and suddenly find themselves thinking, “Wait, I’m not at home; I need to celebrate Chanukah here.” So you provide that for them. And then there are those who, because they’re there, get to encounter Judaism through you in a different way. And of course you’re not only bringing them Judaism, but support in general.

29:28 Speaker 2 Honestly, it’s remarkable. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say during our shlichus, “This is my first time in a Chabad House.”

29:38 Speaker 3 Wow.

29:38 Speaker 2 “My first time in a Chabad House.”

29:40 Speaker 3 And they’re actually in a hospital.

29:41 Speaker 2 Yes. Because, you know, Chabad doesn’t interest them. They don’t...

29:47 Speaker 3 No, I also think that when you’re living your life, caught up in the rush of it all, and you’re doing fine, you’re not looking for it, you know?

29:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

29:53 Speaker 3 So why would you end up there?

29:55 Speaker 2 Right. Judaism isn’t really part of their life, and they’re not connected to that community.

29:59 Speaker 3 It’s the situation.

30:00 Speaker 2 Or they’ve never encountered Chabad Houses because they’ve never traveled, and suddenly they’re in a Chabad House.

30:06 Speaker 3 As I say, if you don’t come to the Chabad House, the Chabad House comes to you.

30:08 Speaker 2 Absolutely. That’s exactly how it is.

30:10 Speaker 3 May it always be for happy reasons.

30:11 Speaker 2 Amen. Amen.

30:13 Speaker 3 So a person ends up in the hospital, and suddenly encounters it there. During the holidays, you must have that opportunity each time to reach everyone. Because, I don’t know, lighting the candles, for example—it touches every heart. It’s not—

30:29 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I really need a lot of help for that. It isn’t simple to cover all the departments. During Chanukah, for example, we had twenty volunteers every day, and they worked very, very hard. Every evening they’d spend several hours on their feet. It isn’t simple to invite women and men from every department, light the candles, sing, and bring people joy. It’s hard work.

30:51 Speaker 3 Yes.

30:53 Speaker 2 And speaking of Chanukah, we had an incredible amount of activity. We also try very hard to do something for the staff on the holidays. We held parties for the departments, for each team separately. And we had singers who gave them little performances, about twenty minutes each.

31:18 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s really a lot of activity.

31:19 Speaker 2 I always say that many people come to volunteer with the hospitalized patients and cheer them up, and they truly deserve it. It’s a mitzvah. But the staff are no less important. They give constantly. When I gave birth, I was in the delivery room for thirty-six hours, and there was a doctor who was there for almost my entire labor. Do you know how intense that work is?

31:41 Speaker 3 Two shifts. Right.

31:43 Speaker 2 Intense. I thought, oh my goodness, that really is hard work.

31:47 Speaker 3 I think they call it a twenty-six-hour shift.

31:50 Speaker 2 I don’t remember exactly, but I think it’s more than twenty-four hours.

31:53 Speaker 3 I remember when I recently went in to give birth, I had a checkup in the morning and then came back that night to deliver.

31:59 Speaker 2 That’s more for doctors.

31:59 Speaker 3 And the next day, at about five in the morning, the doctor came in. I said, “Hi, you’re back? You were here yesterday morning.” She said, “What do you mean, back? I’m still here from yesterday!”

32:07 Speaker 2 It really is unbelievable. Because...

32:09 Speaker 3 I think it’s twenty-six hours.

32:11 Speaker 2 Really. And the staff—the work itself involves so much giving. So it’s also part of the shlichus to give to them.

32:18 Speaker 3 It must be something when you suddenly...

32:19 Speaker 2 What do I mean by “give to them”? I don’t want to... I mean, they deserve it. They do holy work.

32:26 Speaker 3 No, and just being able to relax for a moment and be on the receiving end can recharge you too.

32:31 Speaker 2 Right, really recharge you. You know, with the songs and encouraging words.

32:36 Speaker 3 Tell me, I assume not all the staff are Jewish.

32:38 Speaker 2 Right. And we’re always there, and we try to...

32:42 Speaker 3 Everyone hears the shofar and joins in.

32:45 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

32:46 Speaker 3 Right.

32:47 Speaker 2 There’s a great deal of coexistence there. If you want to see coexistence, come to Rambam.

32:52 Speaker 3 Yes, Haifa in general is also very diverse, with...

32:54 Speaker 2 It really has...

32:55 Speaker 3 People of every kind.

32:57 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

32:58 Speaker 3 That’s interesting. Tell me, on Pesach, for example, I imagine it’s less...

33:02 Speaker 2 Yes, there are holidays that...

33:03 Speaker 3 Is the Seder at your home?

33:05 Speaker 2 So the Seder night and the Rosh Hashanah meal are two holiday meals we hold at Rambam Medical Center, so that everyone can take part. People who are seriously ill, or have more complex conditions, wouldn’t come to our home for a Shabbos meal, for example. But on Rosh Hashanah, they can come with their beds.

33:23 Speaker 3 Wow.

33:24 Speaker 2 That must be so moving, or...

33:25 Speaker 3 It’s the highlight of the year.

33:27 Speaker 2 It’s really incredible. You know, tears, crying, emotion. It’s just incredible.

33:34 Speaker 3 Wow. And do you do something for Lag BaOmer?

33:37 Speaker 2 No, so for every holiday we really try...

33:38 Speaker 3 Is there a shul there, inside the...?

33:40 Speaker 2 Yes, there’s a shul in the medical center. You know, there are minyanim there, so there is a shul.

33:46 Speaker 3 Right.

33:47 Speaker 2 A lot of people won’t come, also because it’s a hospital, and there’s so much more going on. It’s like, “I just can’t get there.” It’s...

33:57 Speaker 3 Right.

33:58 Speaker 2 So we really try to make it accessible to them, to bring it to them.

34:01 Speaker 3 Right to their room, right to their bed.

34:03 Speaker 2 A lot of them can’t physically get there, either. They physically can’t.

34:06 Speaker 3 Wow. Do you also visit departments like the maternity ward? Something a little happier?

34:12 Speaker 2 Right. Um...

34:13 Speaker 3 And in general, what’s it like to experience this all the time? You have to protect your own emotional well-being. Every day, you’re seeing and hearing difficult stories. It seems like something you have to learn how to do without hurting yourself.

34:29 Speaker 2 Right. The truth is, I went through a really long, significant process. At the beginning of our shlichus, I arrived and was incredibly sensitive. I remember one time going to a ward with my husband. At the beginning of our shlichus, we were a young couple with a little girl, and every Shabbos we would make Kiddush in the oncology ward. We’d pack up our daughter and go there, make Kiddush, and bring refreshments. I remember the first time I went with my husband, I couldn’t sleep that whole night after the Kiddush. The people there had gotten so deeply into my heart. I kept thinking about the young woman, and this person and that person, and someone who had been groaning in pain. It was awful for me. Then I realized I couldn’t let them into my heart quite that deeply, because I wouldn’t be able to live like that. I wouldn’t survive. I had to learn to separate things, to leave it outside the door when I came home. But on the other hand, I couldn’t become apathetic. You can’t be apathetic.

35:29 Speaker 3 It’s such a delicate balance, such a fine line.

35:30 Speaker 2 A fine line. On one hand, yes, I’m sensitive to it, it gets into my heart, and it shakes me. On the other hand, I stop it there. It happened. It hurts, but now you have to function.

35:42 Speaker 3 To protect yourself.

35:43 Speaker 2 Yes, to take care of yourself.

35:45 Speaker 3 Of course. That’s a process every member of a medical team goes through.

35:47 Speaker 2 Right.

35:48 Speaker 3 At first, you have no choice. Otherwise, you won’t be able to function, either there or afterward.

35:52 Speaker 2 Right. I think you go through a process, but I can say for myself that there are periods when I’m very, very sensitive, when I can feel that it’s getting to me. I can tell there are times when I need to say, “Hana, you...”

36:05 Speaker 3 Need to scale back.

36:06 Speaker 2 “Come on, you’re really sensitive today.”

36:09 Speaker 3 Wow.

36:10 Speaker 2 It’s hard for me to separate things. Sometimes it’s hard; that’s just how it is.

36:12 Speaker 3 Yes, but the fact that you’re aware of it means you can step back for a moment and say, “Okay, nothing happened here. You’re just sensitive today, and...”

36:20 Speaker 2 Exactly. For example, I gave birth not long ago, and there was a woman who was hospitalized. I knew in advance that it would be hard for me to handle her situation. So I told myself, “Hana, wait. Give yourself a little more time to recover and feel emotionally strong, and then do what you can. Right now, you’re not in a place where you can.”

36:40 Speaker 3 That’s amazing. Because our whole lives are really a kind of work: knowing what’s right to do, knowing how to take care of ourselves, knowing our boundaries, knowing when to say yes and when to say no.

36:50 Speaker 2 Wow, I really think our shlichus is that work.

36:54 Speaker 3 Yes.

36:54 Speaker 2 It really is. And I think that’s the most significant thing I’ve gone through personally during our shlichus.

37:02 Speaker 3 Is there a particular story that stayed with you, that you couldn’t let go of?

37:06 Speaker 2 Um, in what sense? Like...

37:09 Speaker 3 Someone you took home with you, in your heart.

37:13 Speaker 2 Oh, so many. I mean, look, almost...

37:16 Speaker 3 I understand that you can’t always just stop it. You hear a story, and it stays with you.

37:21 Speaker 2 I can tell you that, in general, my fears are more concrete, because I’ve heard so many things. So if my son has a headache, I find myself thinking...

37:32 Speaker 3 You know so many possibilities.

37:32 Speaker 2 Yes. “Wait, maybe it’s what that person had, or what...” And then I tell myself, “Okay, okay, okay, calm down.”

37:38 Speaker 3 You have medical knowledge.

37:41 Speaker 2 Yes, I’ve heard so, so many things. I know a lot of things.

37:43 Speaker 3 So people can consult you.

37:45 Speaker 2 No.

37:45 Speaker 3 “For consultations, contact...” Just kidding, of course not. You can’t take on the...

37:50 Speaker 2 I don’t take on that responsibility. Actually, it’s the opposite. Once I’d heard so many stories, with so much variety—even stories that seemed similar—I realized how little ability I have to know and understand any particular case. Only a doctor who can read the medical information and understand exactly what all the terms mean can give advice. I realized how much I really don’t know.

38:12 Speaker 3 Right, precisely because you’ve seen so much.

38:14 Speaker 2 Exactly.

38:14 Speaker 3 Wow. Tell me, we talked earlier about giving birth. It’s interesting: when you go in to give birth, the staff know you, don’t they?

38:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

38:22 Speaker 3 In a way, that’s a privilege, but there’s also...

38:26 Speaker 2 With my previous births, I didn’t really mind. But with this last birth, because lately I’ve been doing a lot of activities in the women’s department, I’d gotten to know so many of the staff. Suddenly I felt apprehensive. I thought, “This is such an intimate, deeply personal moment, and the midwife delivering my baby could be a friend of mine. How am I going to do this?” You understand? I felt like going somewhere where maybe...

38:54 Speaker 3 You’d be a little more anonymous.

38:55 Speaker 2 Yes. I’d arrive, she’d be the midwife, and that would be that. I really thought about it and struggled with the decision. I even got outside help, because I felt this was something I couldn’t work through on my own. I spoke with a woman who runs birth-preparation sessions, and talking it over with her helped me deal with it. I decided that the possibility of someone knowing me was a price I could live with. And baruch Hashem, the staff were wonderful. In the end, the fact that they knew me helped. I can’t deny that it helped me.

39:31 Speaker 3 They were there for you a little more.

39:33 Speaker 2 Look, I don’t want to suggest... They’re truly amazing. There are wonderful midwives there, and they’re there for every woman. But I can say that after the birth, I had a little more freedom to choose where I would be, you know, and some other practical things.

39:46 Speaker 3 Little things they could do.

39:48 Speaker 2 Yes, and that was very, very welcome. Just a blessing.

39:50 Speaker 3 After giving birth, every little thing is...

39:52 Speaker 2 Yes, you understand—yes.

39:53 Speaker 3 Significant. Tell me, Hana, a few words to close. You’ve shared so many deeply moving messages about life.

40:01 Speaker 2 There’s actually a message that’s very, very important to me to share, about giving and about shlichus. It’s another very significant process I went through during our shlichus. I think it’s important to talk about, because it touches every mother and anyone who... In my life, I was giving, giving, giving, endlessly. On shlichus, at work, and to my children as a mother. I had babies one after another. At a certain point, I felt like there was no room left for me as a person—there was only giving. Yes, yes, of course, of course.

40:36 Speaker 3 Like you were running out.

40:37 Speaker 2 But—and I have to emphasize this—we’re very, very grateful for our shlichus. I always felt it was an enormous privilege, and this shlichus has always moved me. But at the same time, I suddenly felt as though there was no room left for me. It was something very, very...

40:53 Speaker 3 You’d given up yourself for the sake of others.

40:55 Speaker 2 Completely.

40:55 Speaker 3 Totally.

40:56 Speaker 2 Completely, totally. I wasn’t listening to what I wanted or to what I was capable of. Everything was, “Yes, yes, of course, absolutely.” Then I took Alon Gal’s coaching course and really learned to set boundaries. Now, I want to explain what setting boundaries means. It doesn’t mean telling someone else, “No, no, no, you’re in the wrong. I’m setting boundaries with you now. I’m putting you in your place.” Just the opposite. The boundaries are mine. I learned to look at myself and listen to what I’m capable of, to the strength I actually have. To stop for a moment and say, “Wait, am I really capable of this? Do I really have the strength for it?” To think about that and allow myself to take it seriously. Something really special happened to me recently. A lovely woman contacted me about someone she knew at Rambam Hospital who was really suffering and needed help. Helping meant physically going up to the ward, and it was already evening. I had recently given birth, and my husband was out of the country. At first, my heart went out to her. This lovely woman calls you and tells you the whole situation. Of course. You understand? Of course you say yes. How can you refuse? You want to help.

42:09 Speaker 3 It’s hard.

42:10 Speaker 2 Then I stopped. That pause, that space between wanting to jump in and— I looked at the situation and said, “Wait, is this right? Look at yourself.” Given everything, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t within my boundaries or my capabilities. I told her, “I’m sorry, I can’t. I simply can’t.” And through hashgachah pratis, I happened to know the ward. It wasn’t a well-known ward, like the maternity ward or something like that. It was quite out of the way. I have to say, it really was hashgachah pratis. I knew an amazing, amazing, amazing nurse there. I told her, “Listen, contact her—let’s call her Gabriella. Contact Gabriella. She’ll help you. She’s just amazing.” At ten the next morning, she messaged me: “Chana, you have no idea. This Gabriella is an angel in human form.”

42:53 Speaker 3 Wow.

42:54 Speaker 2 “We discovered that we’re relatives. I have no idea what the chances of that are. And not only that: we’d been waiting a week for a special medical test, and she managed to get it moved up for us by two hours.” She got their relative in for that test. She was simply amazing. For me, it was a sign from Heaven. I thought, I could have just gone to the ward, done the obvious thing to help her, and that would have been the end of it. But that wasn’t right for me. And how did Hashem show me it was the right decision? They gained three times over. They discovered they were relatives, and the help came from someone right there on the ward. It was much, much more meaningful help.

43:38 Speaker 3 Wow. You actually brought them together.

43:40 Speaker 2 Yes.

43:41 Speaker 3 On the one hand, it starts with taking care of yourself, because to be a good shlucha, you need to be recharged.

43:47 Speaker 2 Exactly.

43:47 Speaker 3 You need to be— And I also think that part of shlichus is recognizing what your particular mission is in that situation.

43:55 Speaker 2 Right.

43:55 Speaker 3 Because going to see her might have been the simplest thing for you to do in practical terms, just doing the obvious thing. But wait—you have children at home, you have your own needs, and you can ask someone else to help.

44:04 Speaker 2 Exactly.

44:05 Speaker 3 The Lubavitcher Rebbe didn’t stand in the street putting tefillin on people, because he sent shluchim all over the world to do that, and they in turn sent other shluchim. In a way, you made that nurse a shlucha.

44:17 Speaker 2 Right.

44:17 Speaker 3 And you created something that—

44:18 Speaker 2 That’s exactly it. Sometimes you have to think a little bigger and understand who can really provide the help that’s needed there. I don’t have to do everything—

44:25 Speaker 3 Right.

44:25 Speaker 2 Because I can delegate.

44:27 Speaker 3 Not only do you not have to; you have—

44:29 Speaker 2 Of course.

44:29 Speaker 3 You’re in a position to involve other people, to make them—

44:32 Speaker 2 And it really does something for them. You can see it: they enjoy it, they really do, because it’s beautiful.

44:38 Speaker 3 Of course.

44:38 Speaker 2 You understand?

44:39 Speaker 3 It’s amazing.

44:39 Speaker 2 We’ve often seen that even patients, or patients’ families, feel really good when they can be shluchim right there, in the hospital, in the room.

44:48 Speaker 3 To play even a small part.

44:50 Speaker 2 Yes. To go and help someone put on tefillin, for example.

44:53 Speaker 3 I think another message really is: just go and do something. Give a little more of yourselves. A lot of people work in jobs that are truly a shlichus and live a life of shlichus, but that little extra for the soul really—

45:07 Speaker 2 It fills you up.

45:08 Speaker 3 For ourselves, it’s—

45:10 Speaker 2 It fills you up. It makes the whole week a different kind of week.

45:14 Speaker 3 It’s amazing.

45:14 Speaker 2 The moment you take the initiative to do something good beyond your hours, beyond your work, it brings light into your whole routine.

45:23 Speaker 3 It’s amazing.

45:24 Speaker 2 Just amazing.

45:25 Speaker 3 Do you have a message about being someone who’s constantly in a hospital and sees things people don’t normally see?

45:33 Speaker 2 I really see, again and again, how fragile life is. I know it sounds like something people say all the time, but I’ve seen countless times how people planned to be in one place, and in a single moment their lives were turned upside down. Their lives simply became something else. So on the one hand, live your life. Let your light shine as brightly as it can. If you’re good at something, gather all your courage and do it.

45:58 Speaker 3 Don’t wait until tomorrow. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.

46:00 Speaker 2 Exactly. You can’t know what will happen. And if it takes courage, even if someone says no, it’s all right. Try again.

46:09 Speaker 3 As they say, the worst that can happen is that it works out.

46:11 Speaker 2 Exactly. The worst that can happen is that it works out. Let your light shine as brightly as you can—sparkling as much as possible, illuminating as much as possible. And another thing I learned is to appreciate what I have very, very deeply. Because you see that even the most basic things you have can’t be taken for granted. I remember visiting a woman who had cancer. We had become quite close. May she rest in peace.

46:36 Speaker 3 Wow.

46:37 Speaker 2 May this be for the elevation of her soul. I don’t know, I was complaining about something. I remember saying, “Oh, there’s so much work, and the laundry…” I don’t remember exactly what I said. You know, just an ordinary conversation between women. She said, “Chana”—she was even upset with me. She looked at me very seriously and said, “Chana, listen. Your complaints are my prayers.”

46:59 Speaker 3 Wow.

46:59 Speaker 2 “I pray to Hashem that I’ll be at home, that I’ll have piles of laundry, that I’ll physically have the strength in my hands to fold it. Those are my prayers.” And truly, may this be for the elevation of her soul. She has since passed away. We were talking, and I thought, wow. It really shook me. And even though I say, yes, sometimes you can’t help it—that’s life. It’s okay to complain too.

47:22 Speaker 3 We get caught up in it, and that’s normal.

47:24 Speaker 2 Wow.

47:24 Speaker 3 But there’s also something about remembering—

47:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:27 Speaker 3 Yes, bringing ourselves back to that place of appreciation. Because that’s also the secret to happiness, I think: always thinking about what you have, about the glass being half full.

47:35 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

47:35 Speaker 3 And really remembering that being healthy is a gift. I heard a saying recently: when you’re healthy, you have a thousand worries, but when you’re sick, you have only one.

47:47 Speaker 2 That’s incredible. It’s so true.

47:48 Speaker 3 Because everything else stops mattering. It just doesn’t matter. Everything else comes to a standstill.

47:52 Speaker 2 About gratitude—actually living it: just this past Tuesday, I was in the women’s ward. I lead a workshop every Tuesday, and I handed things out. Each woman received a pretty little notebook, and we talked about happiness and gratitude, and how gratitude can bring happiness into our lives. Now, it sounds like we’re back to clichés again.

48:12 Speaker 3 Yes, it does sound that way.

48:14 Speaker 2 Yes, “Thank Hashem, keep a gratitude journal,” and all that. Then I got home and said, “Wait, you need to do this yourself.” I really committed to writing down ten things I’m grateful for every morning. It sounds so obvious. People talk about doing it all the time, and I see it in people’s statuses a lot, and that’s lovely. But I actually decided to write them down every morning, and it’s amazing. It brings so much joy. Try it. You see it everywhere, and it’s become so common, but actually doing it is truly worthwhile.

48:40 Speaker 3 Really doing it for yourself.

48:42 Speaker 2 Thinking about the particular things in your own life, and the particular things you’ve succeeded at and that have happened to you. It’s really strengthening.

48:49 Speaker 3 Wow, Chana Turkov, thank you so much. That’s it.

48:53 Speaker 2 You’re welcome.

48:53 Speaker 3 I’ll let you get back to your work. And for everyone at Rambam Hospital, that’s it—now there’s no saying, “I didn’t know, I hadn’t heard.”

48:59 Speaker 2 Absolutely. And may we see each other only at happy occasions.

49:01 Speaker 3 Right.

49:02 Speaker 2 Only at happy occasions.

49:02 Speaker 3 For good reasons.

49:03 Speaker 2 For good reasons.

49:04 Speaker 3 Thank you, Chana.

49:05 Speaker 2 My pleasure. Good news.

49:07 Speaker 3 Good news—that’s what we hope for.

49:08 Speaker 2 Yes.