Episode 23: To Weather and to Grow | With Reizy Zuckles, Chabad shlucha in Croatia

00:01 Speaker 1 How does a young shlucha cope with challenges completely different from what she imagined? How does a young couple build something magnificent in a country whose language she couldn’t speak until recently? What is logotherapy, and how does it give us strength to get through life’s challenges? You’re invited to join me for a fun philosophical conversation with Raizy Zaklas, a Chabad shlucha in Zagreb, Croatia. A reminder: if you enjoyed the 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? This is Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who have brought their shlichus into a range of fields, and through their stories, they’ll help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created to live is the best there is. Shlichus as a way of life. Starting now. Hello to Raizy Zaklas from Croatia. Surprising.

01:13 Speaker 2 Hello.

01:15 Speaker 1 Raizy, I’ll just let you introduce yourself.

01:18 Speaker 2 Okay. My name is Raizy Zaklas. I’m forty, married, and the mother of six, may they be well. Four of them were born after we’d already moved to Croatia.

01:29 Speaker 1 Wait, a shlucha in Croatia—that’s the headline.

01:33 Speaker 2 Okay, yes. We came to Croatia with six-month-old twins.

01:41 Speaker 1 Twins? A boy and a girl, right?

01:43 Speaker 2 A boy and a girl. Right. Eighteen years ago.

01:46 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:47 Speaker 2 And you jump in. You still don’t know how deep the water is, and you jump. Then you sink, and sink, and sink. You say, “When are we going to reach the bottom?” And yes, eventually you do reach the bottom, as things go, and learn to gauge the depth of the reality you’re in.

02:07 Speaker 1 In hindsight.

02:08 Speaker 2 Yes. So I always say that to take that step, you probably have to be very young, and maybe a little crazy—in a good way. And yes—

02:21 Speaker 1 I think that really is a factor. I read somewhere that up to age twenty-four, people are more willing to take risks. That’s why young couples usually go out on shlichus more easily, because a family—

02:33 Speaker 2 Right, and they get married more easily too.

02:34 Speaker 1 Yes, right, because you don’t overthink it. You just say, “Let’s go; we’ll deal with it.”

02:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:40 Speaker 1 Wait, but how did you end up in Croatia specifically?

02:43 Speaker 2 Well, the truth is, we were looking for a place somewhere in the world. Both of us—my husband and I—had aspired to that even before we met. So we got married and started looking into it. My uncle was working at Tzeirei Agudas Chabad at the time, and he received a fax. People got faxes in those days. It was from a Jew originally from Croatia who was already living in Israel. He’d gone on a trip to explore his roots, come back, and expressed his opinion that there ought to be Chabad in Croatia. He sent that to Tzeirei Agudas Chabad. My uncle knew we were looking for a shlichus, so he passed the fax on to us. We then brought the idea to Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch. They accepted the idea, but opened it up to other couples as well. After we were interviewed, we got an answer: the green light.

03:42 Speaker 1 That was at a point when most of Europe already had shluchim.

03:47 Speaker 2 Yes, but not the former Yugoslavia. After us, the Kaminetzkys went to Serbia and Montenegro, and to this day there’s still a country or two that—

03:54 Speaker 1 Why? It’s a more sparsely populated area in terms of its Jewish population, isn’t it?

03:58 Speaker 2 Yes. In terms of numbers, it’s not like Hungary—

04:02 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:02 Speaker 2 —where there are tens of thousands. It’s not like Vienna, which isn’t far from us, or Italy. So yes, it was probably left until the end.

04:13 Speaker 1 Yes. Earlier, Raizy told me about the shlichus—no, I wouldn’t say your first shlichus, because a Jew is a shliach from the moment they’re born—but that you spent time on shlichus in Kharkiv.

04:25 Speaker 2 That’s absolutely right. Yes, four months that left their mark on me.

04:32 Speaker 1 That was before I was there, okay? For anyone who—wait, let’s get the timeline straight. Raizy was there twenty years ago, right? Twenty years. I went out on shlichus eight years ago. So we’re talking about a different period.

04:46 Speaker 2 Completely.

04:47 Speaker 1 When my husband was thirteen.

04:49 Speaker 2 Completely. We arrived just after his bar mitzvah—the eldest son. Yes, I remember that we landed in Kyiv, then drove for six hours and reached the city before dawn. Everything was gray. These big apartment buildings.

05:06 Speaker 1 Kyiv, yes.

05:06 Speaker 2 People were just getting up, waking up. At five in the morning they were already heading to work. Everything was cold and gray. It was right before Purim. Then we went into the Moskowitz family’s basement, and I said to my friend, “Oh my goodness, I can’t wait to see the wonderful family who lives here.”

05:28 Speaker 1 The family we were staying with, actually.

05:31 Speaker 2 Yes. Who are these amazing people?

05:31 Speaker 1 On Chubla[?] Street, number six.

05:34 Speaker 2 You drive for six hours between rows of trees on both sides, and it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere. So, yes.

05:42 Speaker 1 Totally. Especially in winter, everything looks the same, right? It’s all sort of black and white.

05:46 Speaker 2 It’s a sight an Israeli isn’t...

05:49 Speaker 1 Was that your first time in the former Soviet Union, or had you been there before?

05:52 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

05:53 Speaker 1 The first time.

05:53 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. Awe, awe. Yes, completely.

05:57 Speaker 1 Incredible. No, it was a different time, too. You know, there was no WhatsApp, there wasn’t the—it was a deeper kind of loneliness...

06:04 Speaker 2 Right.

06:05 Speaker 1 Even virtually, there wasn’t an easy way to communicate. I think that was the Messenger era.

06:10 Speaker 2 Yes. They gave us time to write emails.

06:14 Speaker 1 Yes, even that was in its early days. Wow, that’s really—

06:20 Speaker 2 But the reason I went on shlichus was definitely that I wanted to test out the possibility. As a theory, it sounds beautiful. But before you take it on as your life’s work, you want to experience it. So we did go to Kharkiv. I have to say, I see it as a privilege. I was fortunate. I think Rabbi Moshe and his wife Miriam set a personal example for me through their authenticity, their simplicity, and their seriousness. They made me love the idea.

06:55 Speaker 1 What’s interesting—and a lot of girls don’t know this either—is that every Chabad House is a different story. You know, sometimes you arrive at a Chabad House thinking, “Hey, I’ve seen pictures from the Chabad House in Thailand, with a hundred tourists sitting together and playing guitar,” and suddenly you arrive and there are four people connected to the Chabad House in the shul, some wearing a kippah and some not. In Kharkiv, let’s say, people know a little more about it because I’ve talked about how there’s a large Jewish community and many Jews. But where you are, it’s a different story.

07:23 Speaker 2 Right. In Kharkiv, there really is more than enough to do. When we arrived in Zagreb, first of all, we arrived as uninvited guests. No one had asked us to come. I remember there were rumors—actual rumors. We later understood that people were saying an Orthodox family had arrived, chassidim. It was like saying an alien family had landed. You really have to understand that. The gap was enormous. You have to understand that the Jewish community in Croatia was Neolog, and they weren’t—they had Jewish symbols, but they hadn’t been observant even before World War II.

08:12 Speaker 1 So even back then, they didn’t have those communities that...

08:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:15 Speaker 1 In other words, it isn’t that the community disappeared. It was never really there, to any great extent.

08:19 Speaker 2 It probably had existed at some point, but the breakdown of traditional Jewish life had happened generations earlier. I always remember that, compared with the former Soviet Union, where Grandma still spoke Yiddish and people remembered lighting candles, Croatia wasn’t like that. Somewhere along the way, that last thread had gradually dissolved. And it wasn’t easy. People talked about us a lot and warned others not to come, not to get close. I remember that a week after we landed and settled in, I said to my husband, “Bring me a face. I want to see a face. I don’t care if it’s a dog or a cat, but let me see a face.” Here I was, twenty-two years old.

09:15 Speaker 1 That’s so intense.

09:15 Speaker 2 By nature, I’m a very active person. I had just finished my fourth year of studies, and I’d also been very active outside the formal framework. That was me. I loved being busy and doing things. And speaking of similarities or differences between shlichus assignments, this might sound like a harsh way to put it, but it illustrates it well: I felt as though I’d retired when I moved there on shlichus.

09:44 Speaker 1 Wow.

09:46 Speaker 2 Yes, I know. It sounds very dramatic.

09:47 Speaker 1 Like going from a hundred to zero.

09:48 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, absolutely. I see it now, baruch Hashem, with my parents and my husband’s parents. They’re at the age when people retire, and you can feel the challenge. Someone who has been active their whole life suddenly has to come up with a daily routine, hobbies, and things to do.

10:03 Speaker 1 When they retire.

10:04 Speaker 2 Yes. I think it was a little like that. I’m saying this now, after eighteen years. And yes, every place has its own challenge. It’s not that there’s no work to do or that it doesn’t bear fruit, but it’s different.

10:23 Speaker 1 So what was your day-to-day challenge? If you go back to when you were twenty-two, what did you start with?

10:30 Speaker 2 First of all, hosting people for Shabbos. So, first, shluchim told us—

10:34 Speaker 1 First, finding the Jews you’re going to host for Shabbos.

10:36 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. So, as I started to say, I told my husband—I took out the dinner set we’d received for our wedding for the first time. During the year and a half we were in Israel, my husband had said, “No, don’t cook. What for? You’ll have your whole life for that.” I remember taking out the dinner set we’d received from my uncles and aunts, with twins to look after. I didn’t have any help yet, but I was so excited. I think I prepared my first Shabbos meal ever, and my husband called. He’d already been on the phone several times. Because I was pregnant with twins, it was considered a high-risk pregnancy, and that delayed our departure for shlichus. In the meantime, he had started making contacts and had a list of phone numbers, but nothing came of it. It was strange. Then he said to me, “Reizy, don’t worry. I’m going to the community shul—there are Shabbos services there, after all. I’ll bring someone back.” In the end he came home and said, “I couldn’t get anyone to come.” Somehow, people avoided it. Six months later, there was a political incident within the community, nothing to do with us. As in any good Jewish community, there was some sort of dispute, and then a lot of dirt came out. Both sides were very eager to draw us into their camp, and suddenly we understood that he had said about us that we were... Anyway, for a month I had no guests. That first month was a real blow to our morale. But yes, slowly, slowly, slowly, one person at a time. For us, everything has been one-on-one. Connection and trust. Personal interaction in every possible way, whether it’s sitting down for a cup of coffee or helping someone find a job, really. It took us ten years to earn the trust of the people as a community, and that was built through one-on-one interactions. To earn the trust

12:39 Speaker 2 of people who simply—I believe that in places like these, people have probably been hurt. It’s probably not easy to earn people’s trust because of all kinds of experiences connected to the place, its history, everything it’s been through. But we did earn it, and that’s an enormous achievement.

13:01 Speaker 3 That’s amazing. So it’s less about quantity and more about quality. Really.

13:05 Speaker 2 Compared with other places, it’s definitely less in terms of numbers.

13:09 Speaker 3 You imagined that the Chabad House in Kharkov was basically like Chabad Houses throughout the former Soviet Union, where there are so many potential Jewish contacts. Is that what you imagined when you left for Croatia, or did you know you were heading into something different?

13:21 Speaker 2 That is what I imagined. Anyone who knows me can tell you I was born a teacher, and I do very well with structure. And no, I didn’t manage to... I mean, what do I mean, “didn’t manage”? I need to be careful saying that.

13:37 Speaker 3 No, it’s like finding yourself in a kind of vacuum and—

13:40 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

13:42 Speaker 3 Having to invent your own day.

13:43 Speaker 2 Right. When you have three brothers- and sisters-in-law in Russia, you think you’re also going to open an institution and—

13:53 Speaker 3 Wow.

13:54 Speaker 2 And that’s not what happens. For years you think you’re a failure. You see that it isn’t taking off, and it isn’t taking off, and it isn’t taking off, and you think: What am I doing badly? What am I doing wrong?

14:08 Speaker 3 Until you realize that the goal here is different, or things work differently here. It’s a gradual process of closing the gap between the expectations you arrived with and the reality, between what you hoped for and what you have. It’s—

14:19 Speaker 2 Definitely.

14:20 Speaker 3 But that takes strength: to eventually say, okay, these are the circumstances, and this is what I’m going to work with.

14:26 Speaker 2 Right. And not to say, okay, this isn’t right for me, this isn’t what I wanted. I can’t make my dream happen, so maybe I’ll look for shlichus somewhere else. It’s understanding that I need to listen to what’s happening on the ground and see what the people here need from me.

14:43 Speaker 3 Yes. Wow. In all honesty.

14:46 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

14:48 Speaker 3 Not trying to copy any other Chabad House. It’s like—

14:50 Speaker 2 Right.

14:50 Speaker 3 You’re in touch with other shluchos. You see what’s happening in other Chabad Houses, and you constantly have to come back to that place of—

14:55 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s a stage, a stage you go through.

15:02 Speaker 3 Wow.

15:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:04 Speaker 3 How are the children there? Do they have some friends? Are there Jewish families with children?

15:08 Speaker 2 My children, um, okay. My children—

15:12 Speaker 3 They’re not so little anymore. What are they, eighteen? It’s...

15:14 Speaker 2 Yes, I have three older ones who are no longer at home. They’re in Israel, may they be well. Two daughters are in high school in Tzfas, and a son spent four years in Belgium at a yeshiva for children of shluchim. He’s in Israel now. And I have three younger ones. Yes, I send them to the Jewish community school, where, in terms of numbers, most of the children aren’t Jewish. Jewish children are a minority, and the style, the Jewish character of the school, is about equivalent to a state school in Israel.

15:54 Speaker 3 Wow.

15:54 Speaker 2 Meaning, they celebrate the Jewish holidays.

15:57 Speaker 3 Kind of traditional-minus.

15:58 Speaker 2 Exactly. Symbols. It mostly comes down to symbols and various ceremonies, but I know it isn’t an entirely religious environment. That’s my choice. There are two sides to it for me. As a mother, it’s important to me that the children develop their social skills, and that tends to happen more successfully when they leave home to go to school.

16:28 Speaker 3 Of course.

16:29 Speaker 2 And second, it means I have to do more to provide them with Yiddishkeit at home.

16:33 Speaker 3 They’re not in online school.

16:35 Speaker 2 Until fifth grade, they’re not in online school.

16:37 Speaker 3 But then they do join it.

16:39 Speaker 2 Exactly.

16:39 Speaker 3 Wow. So you’re responsible for all the—

16:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

16:42 Speaker 3 You know, in Israel, even though you can never, ever hand over your responsibility, on some level you know the school teaches Torah and all the religious subjects.

16:51 Speaker 2 Right.

16:52 Speaker 3 Here it’s all, all on your shoulders.

16:53 Speaker 2 Right, it’s on your shoulders. It takes effort. You have to teach them to read and write.

16:59 Speaker 3 Good thing you were born a teacher.

17:02 Speaker 2 Right. And—

17:04 Speaker 3 No, because being a teacher is a challenge. Being a teacher to your own children is even more of a challenge, I think.

17:07 Speaker 2 Right. And teaching reading is an even bigger challenge.

17:10 Speaker 3 Yes, and without a system or set hours. Or did you put some kind of system together?

17:13 Speaker 2 Uh, I don’t know. No.

17:15 Speaker 3 Just freestyle.

17:16 Speaker 2 Yes. I mean, I do enjoy it. It’s hard. It’s demanding; it asks more of you. But on the other hand, it makes things very clear, because you know their education is your responsibility. There’s no getting confused about it. That’s it.

17:35 Speaker 3 You also know what’s going on with your child. Here, sometimes a month goes by before you suddenly discover that this or that has been happening at school. There, it’s like—

17:40 Speaker 2 Right.

17:41 Speaker 3 You have it all under control. It’s basically homeschooling.

17:44 Speaker 2 It’s homeschooling.

17:45 Speaker 3 Not entirely by choice.

17:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

17:47 Speaker 3 No, actually, it is by choice. Ultimately, you choose shlichus. Ultimately, you choose this way of life.

17:52 Speaker 2 Right. It asks something of us—in my case it’s easier—but we have to be attentive. Being attentive to the children, that’s something we could do a whole podcast about.

18:05 Speaker 3 Just on that.

18:05 Speaker 2 Separately.

18:06 Speaker 3 Yes, really.

18:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:07 Speaker 3 Tell me, when you arrived, was there some kind of building? Was there a shul that...?

18:12 Speaker 2 Well, Chabad didn’t have one, of course. By the way, when we arrived, people asked, “What are you?” There was all kinds of speculation about why we’d come. Some thought we’d come to reclaim property that had been nationalized. Some thought we hadn’t succeeded in Israel. We heard all sorts of theories.

18:27 Speaker 3 Rumors, rumors.

18:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:28 Speaker 3 Oh my goodness.

18:29 Speaker 2 And I was sure that if I said I was Chabad, everyone would nod knowingly.

18:33 Speaker 3 “Oh, Chabad,” you mean.

18:34 Speaker 2 Yes. But no. They asked me what Chabad was. I said, wait, don’t they say that wherever there’s Coca-Cola, there’s Chabad?

18:41 Speaker 3 I think that whole thing is very... I remember my husband’s father telling me that when they arrived, people said a rabbi had come. So everyone gathered in the shul—there were a lot of Jews there—and when he walked in, nobody paid any attention to him, because nobody dreamed that this twenty-five-year-old was the rabbi. They’d imagined someone arriving with a white beard.

18:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:58 Speaker 3 So a young couple arrives, with two children, actually.

19:00 Speaker 2 Exactly.

19:02 Speaker 3 And nobody understands: You’re the rabbi? Come on, where’s the catch?

19:07 Speaker 2 Yes. No, they were really astonished by our age.

19:12 Speaker 3 You really were young. At that age, people haven’t even started their lives yet.

19:15 Speaker 2 Absolutely. We were still wet behind the ears.

19:18 Speaker 3 Really.

19:18 Speaker 2 Though of course we were sure we were grown-ups and knew everything. But—

19:22 Speaker 3 But you were there.

19:23 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. No, he didn’t arrive as the rabbi, either. He arrived as someone nobody had invited. Like, what was this all about? I think, because I was talking about trust, that people there—at least, trust there had been so thoroughly shattered that the idea of someone coming to do good didn’t exist.

19:44 Speaker 3 Yes, they were looking for the—

19:45 Speaker 2 You look for it.

19:46 Speaker 3 Where’s the catch? Yes.

19:48 Speaker 2 Exactly.

19:49 Speaker 3 That’s something. And at some point, presumably, people began to say, “Oh, okay, he really is—”

19:56 Speaker 2 First of all, you’re normal. First of all, you’re a person and you’re normal. There’s a family here, a couple with a good relationship. We function well, there are children, and they look at us first of all as people, as a family. And slowly, very, very slowly...

20:17 Speaker 3 Wow.

20:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:19 Speaker 3 So you didn’t have a shul.

20:20 Speaker 2 Yes, we lived in a rented apartment. We received a grant from Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch that was officially supposed to last three years, and after that, you make the money, find it, bring it in. I don’t know, that was quite something too.

20:38 Speaker 3 I’m sure it ran out long before the three years were up.

20:42 Speaker 2 Honestly, I can’t remember exactly at what point, but at some stage we really did go through very, very serious financial difficulties. But as for the rent, the apartment, the location and all that—when my older children turned three, I opened a preschool in a rented house we found. And that really occupied me around the clock. It was a huge challenge in its own right. Not the financial side—that was on my husband’s shoulders. But—

21:20 Speaker 3 Of course. Listen, I always say: shluchim do so many things, and if you break them down and look at people in Israel—

21:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:27 Speaker 3 Each one, on its own, is a life’s work. When someone here opens a preschool, that’s their life’s work.

21:33 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:33 Speaker 3 Because you say, “I opened a preschool, and it was quite a challenge.” Of course! When someone opens a preschool in Israel, that’s what they do. And you’re just like—

21:40 Speaker 2 But honestly, that is what I did. It was terribly demanding. And convincing people, given what I described earlier, to send their child there—for them, we were some kind of monk and nun. Now you’re going to take your baby and put them in some institution—

21:56 Speaker 3 In a monastery.

21:57 Speaker 2 An ultra-religious one.

21:59 Speaker 3 Yes.

21:59 Speaker 2 Yes, and it took me time to understand the picture they had in their heads. And these were mixed families; the father wasn’t Jewish. So enrollment was definitely a very big challenge. The preschool ran beautifully for fourteen years, and then Hashem willed it, and we moved on to our own building. Until then, we had that rented house, and upstairs there was this little apartment-like space. What do you call it?

22:34 Speaker 3 Like a loft.

22:35 Speaker 2 Yes. So we held classes there and sometimes hosted people there. Usually we hosted at our apartment. And we held big events at a hotel. The most luxurious hotel happened, through hashgachah pratis, to be near our home. We had a deal with the hotel: my husband would send them guests, help with their marketing, direct clients their way, and we would get event halls for free.

23:03 Speaker 3 Wow, cool.

23:04 Speaker 2 Yes, so it was funny, because we had so little money, but we held our events at the fanciest place. How fancy? I learned concepts I hadn’t grown up with, but you learn the place. One woman said to me, “What, if I’m going to the Regent Hotel, I have to put on a dress.” That’s when I realized a dress or skirt was considered a look.

23:33 Speaker 3 Elegant.

23:34 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s where you wear a dress.

23:38 Speaker 3 And you’re elegant by—

23:40 Speaker 2 Yes.

23:40 Speaker 3 “Who’s this elegant woman who’s landed here every day?” You’re wearing dresses and skirts.

23:44 Speaker 2 Yes.

23:45 Speaker 3 How funny. What did I want to ask you? Do you get tourists from time to time too, or is it really just locals?

23:53 Speaker 2 We do, we do.

23:54 Speaker 3 Croatia is a country people do travel to. It’s not one of the most famous destinations, but—

23:59 Speaker 2 It’s gradually becoming better known. We have about four months a year. After Pesach, it starts as a trickle. May, June, July, August—that’s the high season.

24:14 Speaker 3 And how does that affect you, the Chabad House?

24:15 Speaker 2 At first, we really didn’t put much into it, and it probably wasn’t as noticeable either. Gradually we realized there was a—

24:23 Speaker 3 Niche.

24:23 Speaker 2 Exactly. We’ve skipped a stage in the story, but we’re already in our own building, and I’d be happy to tell you a bit about that too. Today, we definitely provide services for groups and families and send out food. There’s also exclusive tourism, where people want everything brought onto their yacht.

24:47 Speaker 3 Wow, you have that there?

24:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

24:49 Speaker 3 I hope you get to enjoy a bit of that too. I mean, under Rabbi Zaklas’s supervision, or not?

24:55 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

24:56 Speaker 3 Oh, wow, nice.

24:57 Speaker 2 So my husband kashers the kitchen and brings them what they need, makes sure they have all the basic supplies. They usually bring a chef, arrange supervision, and so on.

25:09 Speaker 3 Let me know when it’s on the next cruise.

25:12 Speaker 2 There are cruises too, that’s right. The cruises manage without our supervision.

25:16 Speaker 3 Are you by the sea?

25:18 Speaker 2 We’re in Zagreb, which is an inland city.

25:20 Speaker 3 I need to open a map. You’re between Italy and Montenegro?

25:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:24 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, I know where that is.

25:25 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:26 Speaker 3 Wow, how funny. So you’re right by the water. Well, I’m sure you’re not on a yacht all day, the way it sounds.

25:33 Speaker 2 First of all, we’re not actually by the water, because we’re farther north.

25:36 Speaker 3 The city itself.

25:37 Speaker 2 During the season, we go south. I can tell you personally that when summer comes, I don’t picture myself enjoying the water. I escape here to my family.

25:49 Speaker 3 Right, you have other things to fill your summer.

25:51 Speaker 2 The pyramid is built in stages. Before you get to the water, you have to—

25:56 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, you need to have had your fill long before—

25:58 Speaker 2 Exactly.

25:59 Speaker 3 So tell me about the building. How does a young couple end up with a building? You know, people travel around the world and see Chabad Houses, and they take them completely for granted. Yes, a Chabad House, a huge building. It sounds like it happens automatically: you land, and then the building lands.

26:14 Speaker 2 Yes. A lot of people also think we work like the Foreign Ministry and have budgets.

26:18 Speaker 3 Yes.

26:19 Speaker 2 Not at all. First, I can say that my husband is a person with tremendous motivation, with his wings spread wide. He has a real vision; he knows how to see the future and plan. Not that he wasn’t challenged, but that’s the kind of person he is. So there was no money, but we started looking for buildings. That was a challenge too, because properties had been nationalized, and different governments had come and gone, moving people out and in and distributing properties back. So you could buy—

26:55 Speaker 3 An interesting country.

26:56 Speaker 2 Yes. Well, it had a communist government.

26:59 Speaker 3 It’s not in the European Union, right?

27:01 Speaker 2 Four days ago, they joined.

27:03 Speaker 3 Oh, wow, what timing for that question. Nice. Welcome.

27:07 Speaker 2 Joining the EU is a process. But four days ago, they joined what’s called the Schengen Area, and when I go back to Croatia, I’ll start paying in euros.

27:16 Speaker 3 Wow.

27:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

27:17 Speaker 3 How interesting. Does that always go together? No, I think there are countries that are in the EU but not in the eurozone.

27:22 Speaker 2 Right, there are several stages to it.

27:23 Speaker 3 Okay, let’s not get into that. Wait, do you have citizenship there?

27:27 Speaker 2 My husband has citizenship.

27:28 Speaker 3 So now he’ll effectively have European citizenship.

27:30 Speaker 2 Oh yes, he’s a European citizen now.

27:33 Speaker 3 Nice, how interesting.

27:34 Speaker 2 Yes. So, what else can I tell you about the building? We started looking, and eventually found a building with clear paperwork. First achievement. Then we had to come up with the money.

27:49 Speaker 3 No big deal.

27:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

27:50 Speaker 3 A minor detail.

27:53 Speaker 2 Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch provides a down payment for places that don’t have a Chabad House. That’s a huge sum in itself, certainly for a couple like us.

28:02 Speaker 3 By the standards you’re used to living on.

28:04 Speaker 2 Yes. And we signed an agreement with the owners that we’d come up with the rest over the following two years. But it was a huge sum. The location is excellent: the city center. As if someone had handed us a map and said, “Mark an X wherever you want.”

28:20 Speaker 3 Wow.

28:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

28:21 Speaker 3 You pay for a good location.

28:23 Speaker 2 Yes, but it was also during the global financial crisis, so relative to the market, we got a very good deal. It was still a tremendous amount of money, and my husband was sure that since we’d already paid a down payment, it would be much easier. In short, anyone who knows my husband knows he left no stone unturned. He traveled all over the world—South America, Africa—

28:50 Speaker 3 Wow.

28:50 Speaker 2 The United States. I can’t explain it. He didn’t find the money. Despite everything people had advised us and told us: “Once you have something concrete, people will see you’re serious,” and so on. Then the final summer arrived. The contract was due to expire on the first of January, and the pressure kept rising and rising, because we could lose the down payment. What could we do? It was a nerve-racking summer. Then suddenly my husband got a call: there was a major donor who liked to vacation in Dubrovnik, a city at the far end of Croatia, an eight-hour drive from us, and he had the means to help.

29:45 Speaker 3 Where was he from? Was he Croatian?

29:46 Speaker 2 He was from Switzerland. That’s the thing: there aren’t people with money in Croatia. That’s another factor.

29:51 Speaker 3 Another minor detail.

29:54 Speaker 2 Exactly. Besides, the whole notion of giving tzedakah, as I explained earlier—

29:59 Speaker 3 That doesn’t always depend on how much money people have.

30:01 Speaker 2 True. But there also isn’t money. People are poor.

30:05 Speaker 3 You didn’t know any of these little gems before you left on shlichus.

30:08 Speaker 2 No, no, no.

30:09 Speaker 3 Just as well.

30:10 Speaker 2 Absolutely. So, yes, my husband—

30:16 Speaker 3 So he heard this man was coming to Dubrovnik?

30:18 Speaker 2 Yes. And he came down. That man, too—he isn’t fully observant, but Shabbos and a minyan matter to him. There has to be a minyan. So my husband arranged it all. And then the race against time began, because January 1 was getting closer and closer. Of course, there was the lawyer to deal with, transparency requirements, all the documents they asked for, everything. The money went from the foundation to our lawyer, and then to the owners, a week before January 1.

30:58 Speaker 3 Wow. From that donor, essentially.

30:59 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:00 Speaker 3 Wow, wow, wow.

31:01 Speaker 2 We were this close to losing our down payments.

31:05 Speaker 3 That’s crazy.

31:06 Speaker 2 Crazy.

31:07 Speaker 3 So the payment went through, and the building was yours.

31:10 Speaker 2 Our building. Stage two or three, depending on where you start counting.

31:15 Speaker 3 Yes.

31:16 Speaker 2 Then we had to renovate it. From the outside, the façade and the windows—it’s a very beautiful building.

31:22 Speaker 3 Façade means the front of the building.

31:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:23 Speaker 3 That’s a word in Russian. Are there words that overlap in Croatian and Russian?

31:27 Speaker 2 It’s also in English, I think. Façade.

31:28 Speaker 3 Yes.

31:29 Speaker 2 Maybe I’m wrong.

31:30 Speaker 3 Russian just popped into my head. Croatian is a...

31:34 Speaker 2 Slavic language.

31:34 Speaker 3 But what is it like?

31:35 Speaker 2 Slavic. Something like sixty or seventy percent of its words are similar to—

31:40 Speaker 3 Similar to Russian and all that.

31:41 Speaker 2 The accent is different, though.

31:43 Speaker 3 How are you with the accent?

31:45 Speaker 2 Oh, the accent’s fine. It’s closer to an Israeli accent.

31:48 Speaker 3 Oh, really?

31:48 Speaker 2 It doesn’t have that [unclear] and all that.

31:49 Speaker 3 You know, in Russian, if you speak without the accent, they don’t understand you. You say “pozhaluysta,” and they say, “What?” Then you say “pozhaluysta” with the accent, and oh, now they understand.

31:56 Speaker 2 Yes. So it’s easier for us.

32:00 Speaker 3 At least one thing.

32:01 Speaker 2 In that respect.

32:01 Speaker 3 A small advantage.

32:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

32:04 Speaker 3 Wow. So how do you renovate it? What an undertaking.

32:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

32:07 Speaker 3 I mean, a shlucha goes somewhere, and suddenly she has to be an architect, and suddenly she has to be so many different things.

32:13 Speaker 2 Right.

32:13 Speaker 3 Where did you start? Because it’s also very hard to work with local professionals who aren’t on the same wavelength.

32:18 Speaker 2 Well, there are surprises. There are surprises. At first we worked with someone from Israel, because we thought, how would someone there know?

32:24 Speaker 3 Right.

32:24 Speaker 2 It’s a shul, it needs this and that, this goes here, that goes there. But you have to keep an open mind. There are people who think outside the box.

32:31 Speaker 3 And also believe that...

32:33 Speaker 2 Yes. At first we worked with someone from Israel who made a face every time I moved a door in his plans, as though I’d offended his—I don’t know—his professionalism, or honestly, I don’t know what. Eventually I found a woman there who was fantastic. Actually, by the time I approached an architect, ninety percent of the plans were already... We really didn’t have the money. So I said to my husband, “Let’s start planning, because the money will come. Then, instead of only starting to figure things out, we’ll already have everything ready.”

33:05 Speaker 3 Yes, you’ll be able to get to work.

33:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

33:08 Speaker 3 Wonderful. I think that, architect and all aside, in the end it’s your vision—how you see the place and imagine the activities there. You need... She handles the professional side.

33:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

33:18 Speaker 3 But you’re building the building in your imagination. It’s incredible.

33:22 Speaker 2 Yes. It’s a very interesting part, and really, really enjoyable. I entered a new field, learned about it, and yes, it’s an advantage. It’s a privilege.

33:31 Speaker 3 Roughly how big is the building?

33:34 Speaker 2 A little over eight hundred square meters. Downstairs we have the first mikvah in Croatia.

33:41 Speaker 3 Wow.

33:42 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s really very, very, very special. We have a large kitchen downstairs; it’s a half-basement. There’s another space that we wanted to turn into a café. Croatians really love going out for coffee. One of the things I learned quite early on was when a young woman told me, with real sadness in her eyes, that some people’s financial situation... She wanted to show me how hard things were financially: there are people who can’t afford to go out for coffee twice a day.

34:19 Speaker 3 Oh, such high standards.

34:21 Speaker 2 That’s when I understood where I’d landed. People go out for coffee at least once a day.

34:29 Speaker 3 How about that.

34:30 Speaker 2 It’s the culture.

34:31 Speaker 3 No, it exists here too, but not to that extent...

34:34 Speaker 2 I didn’t grow up with...

34:35 Speaker 3 As a part of life. Yes.

34:37 Speaker 2 Yes. I suppose it’s more common in other communities. In our community...

34:40 Speaker 3 No, there it really sounds...

34:42 Speaker 2 Yes, she really had tears in her eyes, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

34:48 Speaker 3 How about that.

34:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

34:49 Speaker 3 So you wanted to open a café?

34:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

34:51 Speaker 3 For the general public, to draw people in, or...?

34:54 Speaker 2 Mainly for Jews. But obviously, if someone walks in, you...

35:01 Speaker 3 So it’s open to everyone.

35:01 Speaker 2 Yes, open. Yes, open. In practice, we focused on other projects, and now we’re thinking of using the same concept for students. We have Israeli students studying medicine, and we realized they need a library, a quiet place to sit and study without feeling intimidated by the shul floor and everything that comes with it. Just come, have a drink, study. There’s fast internet, and yes.

35:32 Speaker 3 Wow, a place like that is wonderful for students. A real luxury.

35:36 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

35:38 Speaker 3 Wonderful. And besides that, there’s presumably a shul, a prayer hall.

35:42 Speaker 2 Right, a shul, a prayer hall. We have a carpenter right now building us an aron kodesh and a proper mechitzah. So everything is still taking shape. It’s really...

35:56 Speaker 3 Endless processes. Yes. You hear, “We opened a Chabad House,” and—oops—a renovated building just appeared, full of Jews, and...

36:03 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

36:03 Speaker 3 It’s so not like that.

36:05 Speaker 2 Yes, step by step. Lots and lots and lots of patience. Lots.

36:09 Speaker 3 Maybe that’s your challenge?

36:12 Speaker 2 Yes. Listen, I’m forty today, but I’ve thought about it. You arrive very, very young, and you want to make things happen. Yes, that’s the challenge. Definitely. Definitely.

36:30 Speaker 3 To say, “Okay, things aren’t moving at the pace I expected.” To take a deep breath and understand that this is the point—the patience, going through the process.

36:40 Speaker 2 Yes. So there isn’t... The excitement isn’t in... There aren’t those big bursts of progress.

36:47 Speaker 3 Yes.

36:47 Speaker 2 You have to value the achievements, and know that it isn’t your fault, that it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing things wrong. Everyone is learning, and what...

37:02 Speaker 3 Yes, we’re experts at beating ourselves up. It’s part of how our personalities are built. We tell ourselves we’re not good enough and it’s our fault, and then we bring ourselves down. You have to fight that all the time.

37:13 Speaker 2 Yes, the comparison—the comparison to others. You look at them and say, “So what does that say about me?”

37:20 Speaker 3 Yes.

37:21 Speaker 2 You immediately make it about yourself.

37:23 Speaker 3 How do you get through the hard days? What keeps you going?

37:28 Speaker 2 Okay. Wow. Wow. First of all, there are low points. Let’s start with that.

37:36 Speaker 3 Yes. No, not everything is the way it looks on... Not everything is like the podcast.

37:42 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. There are low points, and they deserve to be mentioned, accepted and acknowledged. I went through a crisis or two...

37:52 Speaker 3 Yes.

37:53 Speaker 2 In those twenty years. Personally, I found understanding and encouragement with our neighbors just four hours away, in Vienna, when I felt I really couldn’t go on. So I contacted the shlucha in Vienna, from the Biederman family, the first shluchim there. And the friendship we built—even though she was my mother’s classmate and there’s a generation between us—yes, that connection gave me, and still gives me, so much. We keep in touch. I drive there, and we meet for coffee while I’m there to shop. I could send a driver to bring me milk and whatever else I need, but I physically go once a month. Yes, yes.

38:54 Speaker 3 The loneliness can drive you crazy.

38:56 Speaker 2 The loneliness.

38:57 Speaker 3 Especially when you’re someone who needs to meet people, talk to people and be around people. It’s a real difficulty, a real difficulty. You know, I remember when I was in Kharkov, people said to me, “Oh, you don’t have that ice cream from...” I said, “What? What ice cream? I don’t have my friends, my sisters or my mother nearby.” That’s the real lack, and it...

39:20 Speaker 2 Right.

39:20 Speaker 3 I think that, in a way, is what you have to contend with.

39:22 Speaker 2 Right, right. Loneliness and despair are two things that can drown you.

39:27 Speaker 3 It’s incredible.

39:28 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:29 Speaker 3 Wow. Well, it’s good you have that. You found an anchor, even if it’s a four-hour drive away. By shlichus standards, that’s at least somewhat manageable.

39:37 Speaker 2 Completely. Completely.

39:39 Speaker 3 The main thing is that you don’t have to get on a plane.

39:40 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, exactly. At first, we’d come to Israel and bring food back with us. At a certain point I said, “I don’t want to bring food from Israel.” It makes you feel as though you have no bread in your cupboard.

39:53 Speaker 3 Dependent.

39:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:55 Speaker 3 That’s crazy.

39:56 Speaker 2 You have to get on a plane to get a loaf of bread. So I said, “I’m driving to Vienna, and in principle I’ll have room to bring things back. I’m not bringing food from Israel.”

40:08 Speaker 3 Right, it’s a terrible feeling of...

40:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

40:11 Speaker 3 As though it’s all across the ocean.

40:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

40:13 Speaker 3 Right.

40:13 Speaker 2 Exactly.

40:14 Speaker 3 Wow, how about that.

40:15 Speaker 2 Yes. And you really try to create and enjoy the successes and achievements, and to grow. And... I did mention that there were crises and challenges along the way, and I’m sure my fellow shluchos could share more from their experience. But in any case, I’m sharing my own experience. I asked myself: Why? Why did I have to go through all of this? All the financial, emotional and social difficulties, and so much more. And no, I couldn’t make sense of it.

40:59 Speaker 3 So why me?

41:01 Speaker 2 It’s not “Why me?” It’s that Hashem sent this my way. So, all right, I deal with it because that’s what He sees fit. But you want to know that it has meaning, that it isn’t just suffering for no reason. The suffering doesn’t stand on its own. You want to make sense of it. That’s a human trait.

41:22 Speaker 3 In other words, I’m willing to suffer, but somehow justify it for me.

41:25 Speaker 2 Exactly. When you see meaning, it gives you strength. And here’s an interesting episode: One of the mothers who had a child in my preschool began growing closer to Yiddishkeit. Then she started studying logotherapy, and at the time I didn’t know what logotherapy was. I knew that the Rebbe had supported Dr. Viktor Frankl.

41:54 Speaker 3 Right.

41:55 Speaker 2 He founded the third school of thought.

41:58 Speaker 3 The Rebbe told him to spread it and not let it fade away.

42:01 Speaker 2 Right, because he had already despaired. He survived the death camps—concentration camps, sorry. Even before he... before World War II, before the Holocaust, he already had a thesis. In his younger years he was a colleague of Freud’s, and his first publication was even encouraged by Freud. He already had a draft of his first book, The Doctor and the Soul. Then the war began. He entered the concentration camps with that draft, and he said that the camps were a laboratory. That was where his theory was confirmed.

42:44 Speaker 3 A laboratory of suffering.

42:46 Speaker 2 A laboratory, a human laboratory. Yes.

42:48 Speaker 3 Yes.

42:49 Speaker 2 A laboratory of suffering. So he argued that the central drive motivating a person is the search for meaning. Unlike Freud, he said that yes, a person has instincts—the part of a person that wants to survive and keep going. The environment has an influence, but it doesn’t have the final say. There is a human spirit. That’s how he defined it: the human spirit. And he said that a person can rise above himself, and if he has a why, he’ll find the how.

43:35 Speaker 3 Wow.

43:36 Speaker 2 Yes, the why is something outside of him. Freud said that a person acts according to the principle of self-preservation. In other words, if you starve people, they’ll behave like animals: they’ll attack and devour each other to preserve themselves. And Frankl said no, there is a human spirit. He saw this in the concentration camps, where people went from barrack to barrack comforting one another and shared their last slice of bread. He said that this minority teaches us about everyone. “I’m not naive,” he said. “I know that few people reach that level, but if we don’t look at people’s potential, their default is to remain less than human.” And in that way, he brought a great deal of optimism into the world. Much of his teaching overlaps with and is compatible with the Jewish approach.

44:38 Speaker 4 Meaning that I’m not at the center, as Freud says—satisfying my personal needs.

44:43 Speaker 2 Right.

44:43 Speaker 4 Rather, it’s the opposite. Meaning lies outside of me.

44:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

44:46 Speaker 4 And that’s what will keep me elevated and alive.

44:50 Speaker 2 Exactly, and it will give you strength. Exactly. So my friend who was studying logotherapy kept coming to me with questions, to see whether these ideas came from Judaism.

45:03 Speaker 4 Wait, what does that mean? Logo is—

45:05 Speaker 2 Logo means meaning. Logos, in Greek.

45:07 Speaker 4 The theory of meaning.

45:08 Speaker 2 Yes. And I told her that when Viktor Frankl came out of the camps and returned, he was both a neurologist and a psychiatrist. He had already worked in a hospital, and he went back to the hospital and returned to teaching in academia, but people simply ridiculed him. Freud’s ideas had taken such deep root that what Frankl said just seemed ridiculous to people. He already had one foot on the way to... Australia, where his only surviving sister lived. Then the Rebbe sent a woman who told him, “Keep going. Keep going, and you’ll succeed.”

45:53 Speaker 4 Wow, that gives me chills.

45:54 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Years later, Rabbi Biederman, who is in Vienna, related that he used to receive donations from Viktor Frankl and couldn’t understand where they were coming from. So he called Frankl to confirm the story, and Frankl told him, “I owe a great debt to the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” So, really—

46:15 Speaker 4 You see how this whole story connects with the Biederman family too.

46:18 Speaker 2 Yes, completely, completely. And then I said, okay, there are tools here too. Logotherapy offers tools. I thought maybe I would study it, and the experience I’d gained in dealing with my own challenges on shlichus could help me ease things for my fellow shluchos. With experience plus tools, I could offer help without stepping outside the framework of shlichus. In other words, it would still be part of my shlichus. And if Frankl said he owed a great debt to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, then we can help him repay it.

46:56 Speaker 4 Beautiful. Of course, it isn’t separate from your shlichus. Quite the opposite—it goes hand in hand with it.

47:01 Speaker 2 Yes, but it does mean stepping outside my own four walls. Today, with Zoom, you can—

47:07 Speaker 4 That’s very normal.

47:08 Speaker 2 Yes, you can.

47:08 Speaker 4 Alongside everything else, and—

47:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:10 Speaker 4 By the way, as they say.

47:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:12 Speaker 4 Wow.

47:13 Speaker 2 At the same time, I also studied marriage counseling from a Chassidic, Kabbalistic perspective. So I hope I’ll be able to help.

47:22 Speaker 4 And does it all come together for you?

47:25 Speaker 2 Yes. The truth is, I think there’s always been a part of me, a part of my personality, that’s a therapist. For as long as I can remember, I read and studied a great deal. I really wanted to understand how the mind works. Back then, they hadn’t really drawn practical tools out of the teachings of Chassidus yet. Today you have Tanya-based coaching and all that—

47:52 Speaker 4 It all comes together, yes.

47:53 Speaker 2 Yes, but that didn’t exist then. For one thing, in every psychology course at the seminary, I sat in the front row. I still have my notes today. Yes, but as for psychology—

48:05 Speaker 4 You still have your notes from seminary?

48:06 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes.

48:07 Speaker 4 Wow.

48:07 Speaker 2 I—

48:09 Speaker 4 Do you read them now and then?

48:10 Speaker 2 Yes. I look back at them fondly. Yes.

48:12 Speaker 4 No, no, I completely understand. I have notebooks from seminary at home in Kharkov.

48:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

48:17 Speaker 4 I was one of those people who took notes, and everyone would photocopy my notes.

48:20 Speaker 2 Yes.

48:20 Speaker 4 I hate to say it, but...

48:22 Speaker 2 Yes.

48:22 Speaker 4 I’d always add little drawings in the margins too.

48:25 Speaker 2 Indeed.

48:25 Speaker 4 The notes would circulate with the drawings.

48:28 Speaker 2 Yes, nerds that we are. But yes, I love learning. So whenever my husband wanted to buy me something, he’d go into Steimatzky, head for the psychology shelf, pick up three or four books without looking too closely, and put them on the table.

48:47 Speaker 4 At worst, it would be an opposing approach, and that would strengthen your...

48:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

48:51 Speaker 4 Tell me, it’s interesting how you actually use this outlook. First of all, you use it in your shlichus. Do you have...

48:57 Speaker 2 First of all, I use it with my family, with my husband and children.

49:02 Speaker 4 The first shlichus.

49:03 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, it gives you tools. My older children are eighteen and fifteen now, teenagers, and I think I’m reaping the fruits.

49:13 Speaker 4 How wonderful.

49:13 Speaker 2 Yes.

49:14 Speaker 4 That you can say that. Wow, that’s...

49:16 Speaker 2 Yes, really. Investing in children when they’re young is worth all the money in the world. And speaking of that, I’ll tie up a loose end. For all the sadness I felt that, unlike my fellow shluchos, my sisters-in-law and my friends in the world of shlichus, I hadn’t opened a school, hadn’t had a staff, hadn’t run an institution or done any of those things—when I wondered about the Divine providence in it, I realized, and found comfort in the fact, that I had been available. I had been available for my children. Because when you have an institution, so much of the time it’s almost beyond your control.

49:57 Speaker 4 Right.

49:58 Speaker 2 There’s something about an institution that just consumes you.

50:01 Speaker 4 Drains you.

50:02 Speaker 2 Really drains you. And I was spared that conflict.

50:09 Speaker 4 You were able to be available from the outset. Not...

50:11 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. So that’s the beautiful part.

50:15 Speaker 4 I really think that when you go with this idea of a person searching for meaning, the whole way you raise children takes on a different character. It’s actually a shlichus. What does it mean that a person searches for meaning? I’m here to be of use. I’m here to give. I’m here for someone, for something. And when a child grows up with that, I think they become a very sensitive person, not self-centered—which is probably the most common illness of our generation.

50:43 Speaker 2 Right, it’s a condition of the human race. You know what? I wouldn’t call it an illness, because this is how Hakadosh Boruch Hu created us. He created us to experience ourselves as separate. There’s also a pamphlet by Reb Meir Blizinsky, who left the Soviet Union around the time the State of Israel was established. He wrote a pamphlet called Ha’adam Veha’bria. Fascinating. When I was organizing my husband’s office, I came across it, and for a while I carried it in my bag like a talisman. I fell so in love with it.

51:20 Speaker 4 How interesting. What is it?

51:21 Speaker 2 I really recommend it... He explains the human race and the Jew within it, and he also talks about antisemitism. It’s like psychology through the lens of Chassidus. He wrote it for kibbutz members in universal language. The Hebrew is old-fashioned. Someone has since taken it and written a book about it. So he talks there about the self, the experience of “I.” From the moment a baby emerges from its mother’s womb, what does it experience? It experiences itself. So it isn’t an illness; it’s part of the plan. Hakadosh Boruch Hu...

52:01 Speaker 4 But I think that when a child is born—I mean, according to the biological process—it’s normal at first. It’s normal at first. A child is supposed to experience himself. It’s like when a baby cries. You don’t say, “Let him cry so he gets used to it.”

52:14 Speaker 2 Right, and sometimes it’s not...

52:15 Speaker 4 Everything has to revolve around him.

52:17 Speaker 2 Right.

52:17 Speaker 4 The problem is when it stays that way. I mean, imagine if we stayed at the stage of lying on our backs and crying. A thirty-year-old who does that probably has some sort of mental illness, because he isn’t a newborn baby.

52:30 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:31 Speaker 4 In other words, not everything we’re born with is... There are stages.

52:35 Speaker 2 Right, there’s growth, there’s development.

52:37 Speaker 4 It’s staying at that stage that’s the problem.

52:39 Speaker 2 Arrested development.

52:39 Speaker 4 Yes.

52:40 Speaker 2 Let’s call it arrested development.

52:40 Speaker 4 In other words, we were supposed to mature.

52:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:42 Speaker 4 And if that doesn’t happen, we have a problem.

52:43 Speaker 2 You’re behind. You...

52:44 Speaker 4 Yes.

52:45 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:45 Speaker 4 But we really are built in such a way that we keep going back to it automatically, because...

52:50 Speaker 2 Right, that’s a given. It’s a given that we have work to do precisely there: to grow from that place. And that also connects to Viktor Frankl’s teachings. Unlike Freud, it isn’t all drives, and it isn’t all pleasure, and it isn’t all satisfying yourself. You’re part of something; you’re a shliach, you have a mission. And the Jew is often called upon, right there in the darkness, in hardship, in suffering, to be able to set aside his own needs and make present the higher mission he was given. Through that, he transforms the darkness—the darkness of the world and of his inner world, which is the self—into light. That’s iskafya and ishapcha. That’s the whole thing.

53:46 Speaker 4 It really all connects.

53:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

53:47 Speaker 4 How interesting. And really, we’re the first to benefit from it. Because when a person lives—as Man’s Search for Meaning puts it—when you live with that meaning, you’re in a good place.

53:57 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s life on another level. How would I put it? It’s like the chossid who received a blessing from the Alter Rebbe for long life, and said, “Yes, but not a peasant’s kind of life.”

54:09 Speaker 4 Yes.

54:11 Speaker 2 So you get to live. You get a different kind of life.

54:15 Speaker 4 Yes. Quality.

54:16 Speaker 2 Yes.

54:16 Speaker 4 Quality of life.

54:17 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, absolutely.

54:18 Speaker 4 Really.

54:19 Speaker 2 Another level. Yes.

54:21 Speaker 4 So you use this in your first shlichus, which is your home and family. But do you also...

54:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

54:26 Speaker 4 Do people on shlichus consult you too, or do you see yourself as a kind of unofficial therapist?

54:32 Speaker 2 Right, because there’s a somewhat wider circle. And speaking of working with people you teach, when I closed the preschool, I started teaching adults. Until then, I hadn’t really taught adults. We also have medical students whom we teach as part of Chabad on Campus, through scholarships.

54:55 Speaker 4 They’re Israelis, then.

54:56 Speaker 2 Yes, Hebrew speakers.

54:57 Speaker 4 From Israel.

54:58 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And that gradually opens things up as people grow closer. It’s a process. First of all, you’re religious and you’re Israeli—that’s a niche of its own, as you said. When people grow closer and open up, they become interested in learning and hearing more. Yes, we’re still in the middle of that process, you know.

55:25 Speaker 4 Yes, you told me that during COVID you had a lot of... You were a green country.

55:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

55:31 Speaker 4 And all kinds of couples came to you to meet.

55:33 Speaker 2 Right.

55:34 Speaker 4 So that served you in some way too.

55:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

55:37 Speaker 4 Tell us about that. It’s interesting.

55:38 Speaker 2 Yes, I think another niche opened up over the last three years or so: shidduchim, and everything involved before and after. So when the whole world had come to a standstill, we were green.

55:56 Speaker 4 How is that already history? Amazing. It sounds so bizarre now—imagine telling me that people couldn’t go more than five hundred meters from home.

56:05 Speaker 2 Crazy.

56:06 Speaker 4 It sounds like a fairy tale.

56:07 Speaker 2 It really does. Really.

56:09 Speaker 4 Green countries, red countries, all that.

56:10 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes, yes. It was a shock. The world was in shock.

56:14 Speaker 4 What made you lucky enough to be a green country?

56:16 Speaker 2 Well...

56:17 Speaker 4 Maybe—

56:17 Speaker 2 For one thing, part of Croatia’s income comes from tourism, and they didn’t have the luxury of closing the...

56:24 Speaker 4 Oh, so it was all political, really.

56:25 Speaker 2 Yes. Partly, let’s say—

56:28 Speaker 4 Yes.

56:28 Speaker 2 Partly. So we got a call about a young woman from Vienna and a young man from Australia who wanted to come. They weren’t a Chabad couple. They came to us, and in that case I wasn’t very involved. We just provided everything they needed—the place, all the support, whatever they needed. It was interesting. It was a very, very traditional style of shidduch, and it was fascinating to see how it worked.

56:58 Speaker 4 It needs more managing.

57:00 Speaker 2 The parents. They came with their parents, both sides.

57:02 Speaker 4 Wow, what a project.

57:04 Speaker 2 Yes, we stood on the sidelines: “Do you need this? Here you go. That’s over here.” The couple sat downstairs, the parents sat upstairs. Then the parents sat with the prospective bride, and the parents sat with the prospective groom. Then they went home, met up again that evening, and the shidduch was settled. Just like that.

57:20 Speaker 4 Wait, it did work out?

57:21 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

57:22 Speaker 4 How lovely.

57:23 Speaker 2 It was so funny, because they arrived with a suitcase, and inside was a whole ready-made kit. The cake, for instance. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one at a tish. It’s a tall cake, shaped sort of like a flower, from the shtetl.

57:37 Speaker 4 No, I need to see that.

57:37 Speaker 2 They just—pulled out a cake.

57:40 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s something. Just in case— I wonder what they would have done with the cake if it hadn’t worked out. If they hadn’t settled the shidduch—

57:44 Speaker 2 You take it back home. But...

57:46 Speaker 4 How interesting.

57:47 Speaker 2 Yes. No, it was quite something.

57:49 Speaker 4 So the—

57:49 Speaker 2 The documents were ready to pull out too. Everything was ready.

57:51 Speaker 4 So that happened there, then—the...

57:53 Speaker 2 It happened there, yes.

57:54 Speaker 4 You know, it’s defined differently in each case, halachically, when the shidduch is settled.

57:57 Speaker 2 Right, right. It was very interesting.

58:00 Speaker 4 While the rest of the world was bored, you had plenty going on.

58:03 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. And then the first Chabad couple arrived.

58:08 Speaker 4 They probably heard by word of mouth that you could—

58:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

58:10 Speaker 4 Come to Raizy and...

58:12 Speaker 2 They were simply looking into a match from abroad and needed somewhere to meet. So the first Chabad couple was different, of course, and I mainly accompanied the young woman. It was fascinating. It was lovely.

58:28 Speaker 4 So they needed you for practical reasons, and then it became more than that because you were talking with someone who was going on shidduch dates.

58:32 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. And the young woman came back from the meeting with all that emotional weight and all her fears, and she was alone. It was literally just the two of us on a desert island.

58:45 Speaker 4 And she’d only met you the day before.

58:47 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. So we did it together, also dealing with the parents, with the mothers. There were two Chabad couples. It was beautiful. So beautiful. I love it so much. Yes, a relationship is truly a wonderful thing.

59:07 Speaker 4 And you accompanied them as they made the decision, and helped her.

59:10 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

59:11 Speaker 4 Making decisions is something that comes up so many times in our lives. But you could say that a shidduch is the decision.

59:19 Speaker 2 Absolutely. The decision. And the whole matter of making a decision, and allowing yourself to go through the process, is crucial. It’s crucial because, as you say, it’s for life. Not that we enter an indissoluble marriage, but we aren’t counting on an option to get out of it.

59:37 Speaker 4 Yes.

59:37 Speaker 2 We want to grow old together and live our lives together. And a young woman faces quite a few obstacles along the way, and you have to allow space for that. Make room. See things, see the complexities. Yes, making a decision isn’t simple for a woman. For a woman it’s less—she has her emotional world and its ups and downs. Sometimes she needs a little help.

1:00:15 Speaker 4 Yes. A lot of young women who aren’t married yet are listening to you here too. Is there something you can give them to carry with them through this time?

1:00:26 Speaker 2 I think, from what I noticed in my own experience—and I’m going back twenty years—first of all, choosing also means giving something up. When you choose one thing, you give up all the other options, and that’s hard. You have to take that into account.

1:00:44 Speaker 4 What you might call closing all the other doors.

1:00:46 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And to accept that. To accept it. It’s not all privileges. It’s not all pluses. It’s not just that. Second, I think it’s very, very important to allow the process to unfold. For a woman, it’s a process; it takes root. Don’t rush it—just don’t rush it. But ultimately, when you reach a decision, it’s important to make sure you’re doing it wholeheartedly. At the same time, know in advance that between the vort and the wedding, there will be peaks, there will be ups and downs. Our thoughts are constantly shifting. Because this decision is so crucial to our lives and has such far-reaching consequences, it’s natural to have all kinds of scenarios running through your head, to overthink things along the way. Otherwise, you don’t understand what you’re heading into.

1:01:49 Speaker 4 So just knowing that it’s normal—

1:01:51 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:01:51 Speaker 4 Helps you get through it.

1:01:52 Speaker 2 Take it into account from the outset. And while you’re making the decision, it can’t come from outside pressure. There are other things, too, in our community: girls who have been sheltered, who were raised their whole lives to be modest and to keep their bodies to themselves.

1:02:18 Speaker 4 That transition.

1:02:19 Speaker 2 It’s a transition from zero to a hundred, and sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard when you’re facing someone of the opposite sex who operates differently. You need to give yourself room, and give the other person room too. So there’s a kind of switch here, and girls need help understanding the perspective of the opposite sex, but in a human way that they can relate to.

1:02:47 Speaker 4 To make room for it and understand both sides.

1:02:49 Speaker 2 To understand it and allow for it. And that’s something that can be a barrier for girls, too.

1:02:55 Speaker 4 When you started working with these brides, did you suddenly feel, “Wow, I’m good at this,” and...

1:03:00 Speaker 2 Yes. Oh, it feels so good.

1:03:02 Speaker 4 I mean, maybe you should do some kind of virtual bridal guidance.

1:03:06 Speaker 2 Right, I’m also a bridal instructor.

1:03:09 Speaker 4 So you can give expression to that part of you that’s—

1:03:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:11 Speaker 4 Going to waste.

1:03:12 Speaker 2 Right, I’ve already thought about it. A tourist came to us who was a business consultant, and she told me, “Do something with this. Host seminars at your place, do...” In short, she was already full of ideas. But I’ve kept it in mind, somewhere in the back of my head. And over the past year, I’ve also had the chance to teach several couples—students who settled down and are preparing for their weddings. Students who aren’t religious. So the challenges are different. My husband has started officiating at weddings for couples, so he makes quite a few trips to Israel as well.

1:03:50 Speaker 4 Couples where, say, a student who spent time with you—

1:03:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:52 Speaker 4 Is getting married in Israel and wants your husband to be the rabbi—

1:03:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:55 Speaker 4 At the chuppah.

1:03:55 Speaker 2 Yes. They’re in Croatia for about six or seven years.

1:03:58 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:03:59 Speaker 2 Yes, studying medicine.

1:04:00 Speaker 4 That’s half an era—it’s longer than a term in office.

1:04:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:04:03 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:04:04 Speaker 2 Studying medicine is demanding. It takes a lot, and...

1:04:07 Speaker 4 So some of the doctors working in hospitals here are actually a product of...

1:04:12 Speaker 2 Yes. It hasn’t been running for that many years. It’s relatively new. In some places it’s been going on much longer. My parents were on shlichus for two years; that was a specific assignment. In Romania, there were already students there when I was a baby. So there are countries where it started much earlier, and where we are, it’s fairly recent. “Recent” means the last eight or nine years.

1:04:36 Speaker 4 Meaning the ones who started and finished their studies—that’s only a cohort or two, right?

1:04:41 Speaker 2 Exactly. A cohort, a cohort and a half. Yes. So I teach the couples, too, because I say: with a couple that isn’t religious, if I teach only the woman, what are the chances she’ll be able to keep it up? It’s important that the man be involved and supportive. So although most of the teaching is with the woman, we see them as one unit. And it’s a great joy, too. It’s like being a midwife. You see what comes into the world; you receive it into your hands.

1:05:15 Speaker 4 Your eyes are sparkling when you talk about it. It’s amazing.

1:05:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:19 Speaker 4 You have to do something with this.

1:05:20 Speaker 2 I am sparkling. Totally.

1:05:23 Speaker 4 So how does the woman learn with you? Do you study over Zoom?

1:05:26 Speaker 2 If they’re in Croatia, then on Zoom—sorry, face-to-face, and sometimes on Zoom too, yes. And if I’m in Israel, I meet them for a session as well.

1:05:37 Speaker 4 So it’s happened that a student who was with you is marrying someone who wasn’t.

1:05:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:42 Speaker 4 But she studies with you.

1:05:43 Speaker 2 Yes. That’s happening right now.

1:05:45 Speaker 4 Beautiful.

1:05:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:46 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:05:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:48 Speaker 4 Do you get to see people here in Israel who spent time with you there? Or when you come, are you more focused on...

1:05:54 Speaker 2 When I come, first and foremost I focus on my extended family, my friends, and my community.

1:05:59 Speaker 4 It’s so amazing to come to Israel. You can explain it, right? To come from shlichus, and everything that seems so ordinary to everyone here just sparkles. Everything is like, wow.

1:06:09 Speaker 2 Yes, you appreciate...

1:06:10 Speaker 4 You drive on Israel’s roads, and it’s as though they’re smiling at you.

1:06:14 Speaker 2 The roads are definitely a big thing. I’m always driving—my parents live in Lod and my in-laws are in Kiryat Malachi—so I specifically take Route 3.

1:06:25 Speaker 4 Wow, I take that route too.

1:06:27 Speaker 2 Yes, even though it adds about six minutes to the trip. I checked. But there’s nothing like the fields and the [unclear].

1:06:37 Speaker 4 Wow, it’s gorgeous!

1:06:38 Speaker 2 I look around and tell myself, “Reizy, breathe this in. Take it in. Let it sink in.”

1:06:44 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:06:44 Speaker 2 It makes your heart expand. It really does.

1:06:47 Speaker 4 I remember driving on that road not long ago, that stretch between Masmiya Junction and Latrun, on the way to Jerusalem.

1:06:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:06:55 Speaker 4 And I remember telling my husband, “Wow, I...” We were driving during winter break. When was that? Maybe four or five years ago. And I told him, “I love this road, and I want to get excited about it all over again every time,” even though we drive it a lot.

1:07:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:07:07 Speaker 4 And I’m driving all over the country now, but I still want to hold on to that excitement. Even though I’ve been here a long time, I want to truly marvel at it. That green! Where else in the world do you get green like this right now?

1:07:18 Speaker 2 Right. Where we are, everything is green in winter, not summer.

1:07:21 Speaker 4 Yes, in Israel it’s amazing how everything starts turning green when winter comes. In summer, it’s better to be there.

1:07:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:07:27 Speaker 4 It’s the opposite. Wow. Reizy, a lot of women are listening to you right now, and each one is dealing with her own lot in life, so to speak—her own struggles, worries, and difficulties. I’d love for you to offer a few words of encouragement to all of them. Each woman can take them to where she needs them. When you’re going through suffering and hardship, and sometimes you wake up in the morning and everything feels like it’s closing in on you—that feeling that everything is closing in—and you think, “What’s it all for? What’s all this for?” How do you get out of that? How do you overcome it? Not through a one-time flash of inspiration, but by really getting up each morning, day after day, and finding the strength to go on.

1:08:13 Speaker 2 Look, there’s the level of ideas, and there’s the practical level. On the level of ideas, Viktor Frankl says that every moment in life has an absolute meaning. Actually, not Viktor Frankl—Judaism.

1:08:28 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:08:29 Speaker 2 The purpose of suffering is to help us grow. We need to grow, and we need to... You know, even people in very, very difficult situations. I remember one woman who was a role model and an inspiration to me: Mrs. Naomi Hillel of Lod, may her memory be a blessing. She has children all over Israel. A very distinguished family. Even when she was healthy, I saw her as an example to follow. She was a woman of the community whose home was open to people in need and people who needed support. She took people under her wing. As a member of the community, I remember that she would always come and speak at Shabbos Kallah gatherings. She was such a unifying, uplifting person. At a certain point, she became ill. The image I have of her is from the days when she could still come to shul or go outside to sit on a bench. Despite her suffering, she kept smiling and taking an interest in people. To remain a person through suffering, to hold on to your humanity—that’s an attitude. “I won’t let this pain defeat me or make me treat someone else badly.” If you’re only reacting to life, rather than acting from a place of choice and awareness, you often say, “Yes, I act this way because that’s how people treated me.” That’s not the purpose of suffering. The purpose of suffering is for it to make me a more empathetic person. If I’ve experienced something like that, I begin to look at the people around me with different eyes, and I grow from it. And even if I can’t find meaning in it, or can’t find meaning right now, chances are that in the future I’ll look back and see that it did lead me somewhere. And even if I don’t, that suffering certainly has meaning. It’s not for nothing that in Judaism, when speaking—may we never know of such things—about someone who suffered during their lifetime, we say after their 120 years that they were “refined through suffering.” That’s what’s called tragic optimism. And it’s important to know that.

1:11:00 Speaker 2 To know that it isn’t for nothing. We have so much in Judaism... Judaism is so rich. We don’t take the trouble to make use of the treasures we have.

1:11:09 Speaker 4 Absolutely. I feel that way so often.

1:11:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:11 Speaker 4 You suddenly learn something and think, “Wow, I need this.”

1:11:13 Speaker 2 Do I need to go study logotherapy? I mean, hello.

1:11:17 Speaker 4 Yes, yes.

1:11:18 Speaker 2 But yes, sometimes when someone packages it and organizes it for you, and you receive it as a toolbox—

1:11:22 Speaker 4 It’s nice.

1:11:23 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s easier too.

1:11:24 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:11:25 Speaker 2 But yes, we have... In Chovos Halevavos we have Shaar Habitachon, the Gate of Trust. We have... We have so much already. But when we’re really, really low, often, if I move to the practical side, we need to see what’s within our power to choose. Because there are things we can’t change, and suffering is unavoidable. But what can we do? What is my choice, and what isn’t? Sometimes it’s getting out of bed, going outside and taking a walk.

1:11:59 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:12:00 Speaker 2 That’s possible.

1:12:00 Speaker 4 That’s exactly what I was about to say: Hakadosh Boruch Hu created us in such a way that suffering, facing a challenge... When I face suffering and look it in the eye, it lifts me up. But let’s say there’s suffering and there’s suffering. In our generation, suffering for a girl who, so to speak, has never known a worry in her life might be honoring her parents, for example. I mean, that’s her difficulty—getting out of her comfort zone. What I’m saying is that suffering means something different for each person, at their own level. For one person, suffering is, Hashem protect us, an illness, a serious illness. For another, it’s discovering that she has to step outside herself, be part of her community and family, give of herself, and actually get moving. Because that’s hard.

1:12:48 Speaker 2 Right, it’s subjective, and you have to respect that.

1:12:51 Speaker 4 Even going to the gym is suffering, but afterward you feel amazing about yourself. It’s...

1:12:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:12:56 Speaker 4 In a sense, suffering means stepping out of my comfort zone. So I think we can divide this into two: When I’m suffering, how do I deal with it? And for people whose lives are more comfortable and self-focused, how do you create some discomfort for yourself so you can grow?

1:13:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:13:12 Speaker 4 Do you understand what I’m saying?

1:13:13 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:14 Speaker 4 That’s more for young people. More for... Not just young people, actually. I think our lives, too, are divided into periods and moments and little sub-moments when sometimes I need to make myself endure discomfort. How do you say that?

1:13:29 Speaker 2 Right, right—by choice. Otherwise it’s...

1:13:32 Speaker 4 To leave your comfort zone so you can grow. If you stay in your comfort zone all the time, you stagnate in a way.

1:13:38 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:13:39 Speaker 4 I remember the Rebbe spoke—I remember, yes, it was in the 5720s, but I read that the Rebbe spoke about going out on shlichus. He said: Why should a Jew live in Crown Heights, where he has Cholov Yisroel within walking distance and everything else, and say, “Ashreinu—how fortunate we are”? What do you mean, “How fortunate we are”? You’re comfortable? Leave your comfort zone and bring another Jew into a place where he, too, can have that Jewish comfort. Let him be able to say “Ashreinu” too. I mean, there is this idea in Judaism that you should always aspire to good, to delight in Hashem, and to have things be good for you. But your real growth comes when you leave your comfort zone, make an effort and, in a way, suffer a little.

1:14:15 Speaker 2 Right, right, because those are constraints. That’s the Exodus from Egypt.

1:14:20 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:14:20 Speaker 2 It’s the Exodus from Egypt.

1:14:22 Speaker 4 To get out of that, and...

1:14:23 Speaker 2 To get out—and it always comes from a narrow place. That’s the way the world works. That’s exile and Geulah. That’s how Hashem chose it to be.

1:14:33 Speaker 4 I really think it looks so different in each person’s life. I’m trying to think of every woman listening to you, and each one is going through something different. It really is about changing your perspective to see that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given me a gift. And I feel it’s unfair to say that, because if someone is dealing with something very difficult, to come along and say, “Yes, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave you a gift”—that can sometimes be upsetting. Let each person say it about herself, as they say, you know? But still, someone who can truly adopt that approach stands to gain so much from it.

1:15:09 Speaker 2 Right. There are moments when you cry out and you weep and you ask, “Why? Why have You brought harm?” But we shouldn’t... We need to allow that and understand that there’s no way around it; there’s a process.

1:15:28 Speaker 4 Yes. Can you divide your life on shlichus into two parts—before you made that switch in your mind and after? Or do you feel it was always there?

1:15:36 Speaker 2 Honestly, I think the principles of logotherapy were always ingrained in me, because they’re present in Judaism.

1:15:43 Speaker 4 It just got a name.

1:15:46 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. I didn’t feel that much of it was new to me. It’s different terminology. I think it’s much more developed in Judaism, too.

1:15:53 Speaker 4 Right.

1:15:54 Speaker 2 But it’s something I want to use in a practical way. Just put it to use. I mean, I’ve used it for myself. And what you do for yourself is wonderful, but when you want to help others, there’s a bit more learning you need to do. Yes.

1:16:21 Speaker 4 I think the work you do on yourself also automatically affects the people around you, because you behave differently and project something different.

1:16:29 Speaker 2 Yes, I think—

1:16:29 Speaker 4 Your children, for example.

1:16:31 Speaker 2 When I think about myself, I think that for as long as I can remember, I’ve thought about how suffering makes me a better person, how I gain tools from it, and how, in the end, I come out of it having gained something—and, with Hashem’s help, others will benefit too. That’s something that was ingrained in me. Sometimes, though, the path is actually to relax, to allow things to be, to connect with a wider space rather than identify with suffering and turn it into an ideology.

1:17:09 Speaker 4 Yes. No, that’s not what I meant. It’s interesting, because when Viktor Frankl speaks from his experience in the concentration camps, in Auschwitz, or wherever he was—I don’t remember—

1:17:20 Speaker 2 Auschwitz too.

1:17:22 Speaker 4 Then you don’t really have to explain the word “suffering,” right?

1:17:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:17:27 Speaker 4 But it’s important to understand that suffering isn’t something that... It doesn’t have to mean concentration camps.

1:17:31 Speaker 2 Yes. No, absolutely. I think Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so great and infinite. You think about all the diversity in the world—so many people, and each person is unique, with relationships and a complex personality, and there’s so much complexity. And I say, how great Hashem is that He can run the world and create worlds within worlds, endlessly, with things taking a different form in each person’s life. That, too, is a kind of “How manifold are Your works, Hashem.”

1:18:06 Speaker 4 Absolutely. His works are us, really.

1:18:09 Speaker 2 Yes, worlds upon worlds. Of course, suffering should be prevented whenever possible. But Hashem... We say, “Crushed for the luminary”: when you crush the... the olive—

1:18:27 Speaker 4 The oil comes out.

1:18:28 Speaker 2 The oil comes out.

1:18:29 Speaker 4 Right. Tell me, I’m curious to ask you something. You said you have two daughters at boarding school.

1:18:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:18:35 Speaker 4 In Tzfas.

1:18:36 Speaker 2 Right.

1:18:37 Speaker 4 Does that help you with... It isn’t easy to send daughters to boarding school. I did a whole podcast about boarding school, by the way. Very interesting. But really, raising girls from afar, a flight away—that’s not simple.

1:18:53 Speaker 2 Yes. I can tell you that ever since—

1:18:54 Speaker 4 Suffering.

1:18:56 Speaker 2 Ever since I became a parent, the knowledge that one day you’ll send a child away from home has been like a stopwatch. You know: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I have one year, two years, three, four, and in those years I need to give my child everything I can, because she’s going out into the world. She’s going out into the world, and I have to send her out as well prepared as possible. Yes, you’re trembling. Of course, it depends; every child is different.

1:19:33 Speaker 4 Yes, personality plays a part too.

1:19:35 Speaker 2 Yes, right, right. But I remember... Look, my oldest didn’t want to leave home, and it was very hard to send her away. To send away a child who doesn’t want to go.

1:19:46 Speaker 4 At what age?

1:19:47 Speaker 2 She was in ninth grade. She went away for ninth grade. And she’s a very, very sensitive girl, very, very attached to the family. That’s suffering.

1:19:57 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:19:58 Speaker 2 That’s suffering. I remember promising her that I would be there. Baruch Hashem, thank Hashem, I think I’ve largely kept that promise. But I remember a particular time when she was dealing with something. I was in touch with the staff and tried to do what I could, and... it took time. Things dragged on. She was leaving home, crying in my arms, and her father was already honking the horn from the car downstairs. What was I supposed to do? Just... pull her out of my arms? I remember that moment. Afterward I called a social worker and said, “I can’t. I promised my daughter.” And just then I heard the song “Amen Al Hayeladim Sheli,” which is such a powerful song.

1:20:55 Speaker 5 It brings out all your—

1:20:56 Speaker 2 Yes, I remember crying. All right, it passed; it was an episode. I have to say I’m optimistic about this, because if we as parents don’t neglect our children’s education and understand that... To me, this whole podcast will be worth it if we emphasize this in shlichus—and not only in shlichus, but especially there. Our first obligation is to our children. Because for a child, it’s not like it was for me. They called me a street kid; I loved being outside. Back then there was no Zoom, and there was hardly any video either. We grew up with our friends, out on the street, in the community. We lived in a different world, a more innocent world.

1:21:41 Speaker 5 The community raised us.

1:21:42 Speaker 2 Yes. And our children on shlichus don’t have that life outside. They don’t have... they just don’t. If they’re lonely and they’re not developing as they should, and they’re miserable, then first of all we have to make time for them. Because the circle of responsibility—how do they put it? The needy in your family come first.

1:22:04 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:22:04 Speaker 2 The needy in your own city come first. What kind of shlichus is it if I care for other people—I don’t want to call them strangers—but turn away from my own children? A child has no refuge, no friends, nowhere to go if he’s lonely at home because his mother is busy with mivtzoim. I think that’s very serious.

1:22:26 Speaker 5 We really have to remember that this is our first shlichus.

1:22:29 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:22:29 Speaker 5 Everything else comes second.

1:22:30 Speaker 2 I also always think that what we’re building is a life’s work. We’ll have to leave it to someone after us, and if our children don’t want to take it on, then honestly, think about what you’ve done.

1:22:43 Speaker 5 It really is awful to give everything you have to people who, so to speak, are a little farther from your closest circle. Of course, all Jews are brothers and sisters and so on, but still, Hakadosh Boruch Hu made us, biologically, parents to children, baruch Hashem, and our first obligation is to them. There’s no... In a sense, it isn’t a matter of choice. It’s your duty.

1:23:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:23:03 Speaker 5 But we have to remember that.

1:23:03 Speaker 2 Because a child can’t help himself. A child is helpless, truly helpless. He doesn’t have the tools to help himself, he doesn’t have money, he doesn’t have autonomy. He’s there; he’s stuck. He’s just as lonely as I was, but he has no way to help himself. And when I spend time with my child, listen to him, learn with him, and am present in his life, first of all, I’m raising a child—a healthy child. People always talk about adolescence as every parent’s nightmare. That’s when you’ll reap the rewards, because the child reaches that very sensitive age with resources to draw on. And second, I’m absolutely investing in shlichus. I’m investing in the next shluchim, in the next generation of shluchim.

1:23:50 Speaker 5 Completely. We raise children to be... people who’ll be part of the world. What was it? I did a podcast with a woman who homeschools. She said, “Children are little people.”

1:24:01 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:24:02 Speaker 5 We see them as these sweet little kids, you know.

1:24:05 Speaker 2 Right.

1:24:05 Speaker 5 No, they’re people, and one day they’re going to be here in our place.

1:24:09 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:24:10 Speaker 5 It’s wild when you think about it.

1:24:11 Speaker 2 Absolutely. And you know, today, in this age of feminism and chauvinism, the whole world is a little crazy. But once I was thinking about the masculine model of a person who’s an entrepreneur, independent, developing things in high-tech and so on. And I thought, what is it—a chip or some other kind of chip? I don’t know. There are all sorts of things people have developed in technology, and they really have made communication and closeness between people happen faster. But we have the privilege of bringing a person into the world. A person, not a chip—a human being with a human brain that, to this day, no one can fully explain. It’s something... And we’ve been given the opportunity to bring that person into the world and raise them. Sometimes I say, if what I’ve brought into the world is six healthy, stable, active, vibrant people who will bring light—

1:25:14 Speaker 5 Personally, I—

1:25:14 Speaker 2 Then honestly, I’ve done my part.

1:25:16 Speaker 5 Absolutely. It’s the most incredible thing you can do. Wow. To have a child—and you know, it really doesn’t end with giving birth. Because I think, on one level, yes, we go through a lot. Come on, I’m not denying that at all. Pregnancy, childbirth—we sacrifice. But ultimately, that’s a process that happens; somehow, it happens. After that, though, how do you raise the child?

1:25:39 Speaker 2 Right.

1:25:39 Speaker 5 In some ways, that’s harder, because there you have a lot of room to make choices.

1:25:44 Speaker 2 Right, and it isn’t so spontaneous. Not everything natural happens spontaneously. You know, speaking as women to women—we’re among women here—

1:25:51 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:25:52 Speaker 2 If you want an example of something natural, there’s nothing more natural than breastfeeding. And yet look how many women make a living as lactation consultants. Why? Because it doesn’t just happen spontaneously.

1:26:03 Speaker 5 Right.

1:26:04 Speaker 2 So raising children, too, takes forethought. You work at it. And to do that work, you have to learn. You have to be honest, you have to be brave, look inward, look at your past, look at your flaws and the scars you carry.

1:26:20 Speaker 5 And know how to ask for advice.

1:26:22 Speaker 2 Know how to ask for advice without ego, how to be vulnerable, how to be weak.

1:26:28 Speaker 5 In a way, that’s exactly what I was going to say. That’s where we’re vulnerable, because it’s easiest to be strong out in the world. I do this and I do that and I do that—but who you really are comes out in how you are with your children at home. That’s your soft spot, the—

1:26:44 Speaker 2 In how you face yourself.

1:26:45 Speaker 5 That space... Yes. No one’s checking on you there. I mean, it’s just the four walls of your home.

1:26:51 Speaker 2 Right, and sometimes, when you haven’t acted the right way, it calls for looking inward and facing—maybe “demons” is too strong a word, but you do have to face a few demons.

1:27:02 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:27:03 Speaker 2 And that takes courage.

1:27:05 Speaker 5 Do you see things the girls took from home that help them cope now that they’re away?

1:27:10 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:27:10 Speaker 5 Wait, now that you’re in Israel, did they let the girls come see you a bit, or how does it work?

1:27:15 Speaker 2 Yes, they come for weekends. We steal a day here and a day there. We appreciate those weekends. And yesterday we went up to Tzfas.

1:27:24 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:27:24 Speaker 2 With the little ones. The younger siblings wanted to see the beds where their sisters sleep.

1:27:29 Speaker 5 That’s a big thing, that’s...

1:27:32 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:27:33 Speaker 5 I mean, that’s their life now.

1:27:35 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:35 Speaker 5 I really understand wanting to see where my sister sleeps, because it’s...

1:27:38 Speaker 2 Right, because they send their sisters off and welcome them home, send them off and welcome them home. But where do they go? Where are they?

1:27:44 Speaker 5 Then afterward you can picture it: she’s there, and she’s doing this.

1:27:47 Speaker 2 Where she eats and where she learns, and the faces she sees.

1:27:50 Speaker 5 And they let you in and gave you—

1:27:52 Speaker 2 Yes, of course.

1:27:53 Speaker 5 How sweet.

1:27:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:27:55 Speaker 5 So how are they actually coping there, in real life, as they say?

1:28:01 Speaker 2 First of all, they give me a lot of nachas.

1:28:03 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:28:04 Speaker 2 I’m so proud.

1:28:05 Speaker 5 That’s wonderful.

1:28:06 Speaker 2 Yes. I think that, first of all, I raised the children with a lot of... I understood early on that personal and interpersonal intelligence are the foundation. Not grades or matriculation exams. Those are the second and third floors. Communicating with people—that’s where you have to invest. And thank Hashem a thousand times, my girls are little social workers, as I call them.

1:28:35 Speaker 5 Wow, and there’s certainly a need for a social worker in a boarding school.

1:28:38 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. For example, my oldest told me that during COVID, there was a student whose parents lived abroad and weren’t citizens, so they couldn’t come to Israel during that period either, and the girl was stuck here. What happened was that positive cases started popping up like popcorn: positive, positive, positive—and all of this was inside a boarding school.

1:29:00 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:29:01 Speaker 2 So anyone who tested negative, poor thing, had to stay in her room because she’d been exposed to someone who tested positive.

1:29:08 Speaker 5 So she kept having to go back into isolation, right?

1:29:11 Speaker 2 Constantly. For more than two months, that girl didn’t leave her room. Not my daughter.

1:29:17 Speaker 5 That’s terrible.

1:29:18 Speaker 2 I’m Israeli. I came to Israel, went up to Tzfas, got my daughter out and took her away. What could the other girl do? The poor girl sat in her room for more than two months. Then she started having stomachaches, and my daughter said to her, “Maybe you’re lactose intolerant, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that.” Pesach came, and the girl went home. Her parents took her to get it checked out, and they were told: a panic attack. So what do you do? Her parents said, “We’re not sending you back to the boarding school. We want to get you help.” The school said, “We’ll make sure she gets help,” and they found her a professional. The girl didn’t want to go, because of what people think: if you go sit on a psychologist’s couch, what does that say about you? There’s the whole stigma and all that. My daughter sat with her and said, “So what? I’ve sat with a professional too. I’ve shared things too, and it’s perfectly normal. You don’t even have to talk. Just go and listen.” And she kept talking to her like that.

1:30:19 Speaker 5 She’s amazing. Wow.

1:30:20 Speaker 2 Yes, she really is amazing. She went with her, took the number twelve bus with her, waited outside for her, and said, “Mom, I reviewed my material while I waited. The air was lovely, and it was so quiet.”

1:30:32 Speaker 5 How sweet. She even enjoyed it along the way.

1:30:36 Speaker 2 Yes, and more stories and all that. Yes, it gives me such nachas.

1:30:42 Speaker 5 In a way, it’s taking the saying “Derech eretz comes before Torah” and putting it into practice. Because what is derech eretz? It’s us and the people around us, and that comes before what we call learning and Torah and...

1:30:57 Speaker 2 Right. I think I once wrote somewhere about something that caught my attention. There’s—I don’t know if it’s part of a letter or something else written by one of the earlier Chabad Rebbes—where he writes about what is fitting for a chossid and what isn’t fitting for a chossid.

1:31:17 Speaker 5 Yes, the Rebbe Maharash, I think.

1:31:19 Speaker 2 I think it’s the Frierdiker Rebbe. We’ll check after the podcast.

1:31:22 Speaker 5 Definitely, yes.

1:31:24 Speaker 2 Yes, so you see that the overwhelming majority of the things the Rebbe sees fit to describe in a chossid are about how a person treats others and about good character traits. And speaking of shidduchim, the Rebbe says “good character traits and fear of Heaven.” It’s interesting that the Rebbe puts good character traits before fear of Heaven.

1:31:46 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:31:47 Speaker 2 So I don’t think that necessarily means one comes first, but it’s part of it. It’s built in.

1:31:53 Speaker 5 It’s the foundation for it.

1:31:54 Speaker 2 Yes, and speaking of us as shluchos working with people, at least in my case, I think that’s what draws people closer. I’ll tell you a little story. I was just sitting with my husband, having something sweet somewhere here.

1:32:08 Speaker 5 How are you treating yourself while you’re here? This is so interesting to hear. Listen, she doesn’t have Israel available to her all the time. How long have you been here now?

1:32:15 Speaker 2 Two weeks now.

1:32:16 Speaker 5 How lucky I was to catch you! How nice.

1:32:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:32:18 Speaker 5 And all of this, everything around us here, isn’t something I take for granted. I keep coming back to it because I remember how it felt.

1:32:25 Speaker 2 That you can—you can eat outside your home.

1:32:28 Speaker 5 Walk down Rabbi Akiva Street in Bnei Brak, for example. It’s like, oh, right? It’s that kind of feeling.

1:32:33 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

1:32:34 Speaker 5 You know, I even remember a moment when we landed once and were driving, and I saw a sign that said “Ramla.” And I thought, Oh my goodness, Hebrew letters! On the signs, of all things. Now, what’s the big deal? You grew up here.

1:32:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:32:46 Speaker 5 But no, it’s—it’s amazing, it’s...

1:32:48 Speaker 2 It feels new again.

1:32:48 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:32:49 Speaker 2 You know, there’s an expression in Chassidus: for a tzaddik, G-dliness is self-evident and the world is something new. Meaning, he sees G-d, he experiences G-d, and the world feels new to him. It’s as if he has to remind himself that there’s a world. So sometimes, for us too, the reality of life in Israel feels new. Like, wow, this exists. Not that I didn’t know, but look—it exists.

1:33:12 Speaker 5 Yes, absolutely. Wow.

1:33:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:33:14 Speaker 5 So you were just starting to tell us a little story.

1:33:17 Speaker 2 I was. So I was sitting with my husband, and next to us were two women. One was wearing a sheitel, and the other looked like she belonged to the religious-Zionist community, with a baby between them. So of course the baby brought us together, and we started talking. They told us they both came from religious-Zionist backgrounds and had traveled to the East—to Peru, I think. South America. And... while they were there, they stayed with a couple in the middle of nowhere, somewhere even Chabad girls don’t want to go on shlichus.

1:33:50 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:33:51 Speaker 2 So they bring girls from other circles there. And these women were there, and the shluchim were simply there with them. The shlucha didn’t teach them, didn’t preach, didn’t try to work anything into the conversation. There was just a warm, authentic human connection. After a few months, the women left and returned to Israel, and then they continued on a journey of their own. To make a long story short, one of them now teaches at a Chabad girls’ college in Netanya, if I’m not mistaken, in some creative field—art. Today she wears a sheitel, she’s Chabad, and she lives here in the Chabad community in Kiryat Malachi. What interested me—and this is also a message about the kind of shlichus I come from—is that the warmth, that human connection they had with that family of shluchim, ultimately led them to give Chabad a chance and adopt its way of life. And the shlucha in Peru doesn’t even know what she did.

1:35:07 Speaker 5 Maybe now she’ll know.

1:35:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:35:09 Speaker 5 What a story. Wow.

1:35:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:35:11 Speaker 5 It’s amazing.

1:35:12 Speaker 2 So be a person. Be—be good.

1:35:16 Speaker 5 The real influence is in how we behave. It’s how we act, how we connect with others. It’s not what we do—it’s not the what, it’s the how.

1:35:23 Speaker 2 Yes, I think that’s what makes them want to identify with us. Um, yes.

1:35:30 Speaker 5 More generally, I think that as a family on shlichus—again, everyone is a shliach—but when you’re doing shlichus to bring people closer and so on, the best way to do that really isn’t what you say, what you bring, or how many classes you give. It’s that your family lives in a way people want to emulate. People are amazed by that. I remember a woman who became observant in Kharkiv, before I even arrived there. Her family came to live here in Kiryat Malachi, and she said, “I wanted a Shabbos table like the one I’d been a guest at. I wanted to be the mother at that Shabbos table.” Meaning, long before questions of what the Torah says or whether there is a G-d, there’s this human connection: I want that too.

1:36:18 Speaker 2 Right, right. An experience.

1:36:20 Speaker 5 It’s amazing.

1:36:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:36:22 Speaker 5 Wow, Raizy, listen, you’re fascinating. Give us something to close with.

1:36:29 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:36:30 Speaker 5 Something that’ll leave us wanting more.

1:36:34 Speaker 2 Something to close with. Wow.

1:36:39 Speaker 5 It’s hard to choose.

1:36:40 Speaker 2 Yes: “If you toil and find, believe it.” And you’re allowed to complain. It’s important to maintain friendships—very, very important. I think social connection is what keeps us from being lonely, from getting drawn into that spiral of loneliness. It’s destructive. And if we’re authentic, we allow other people, and give them permission, to be who they are too. That’s where the answer to loneliness lies, because a person can be lonely even in a busy city center, surrounded by people. How do you break through loneliness? By allowing yourself to be yourself. When you allow yourself to be yourself, you give others the opportunity to be who they are too.

1:37:37 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:37:37 Speaker 2 So be yourselves.

1:37:38 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:37:38 Speaker 2 And help others.

1:37:40 Speaker 5 With Hashem’s help. Would you like to give us a few more words to sum up this whole question of suffering?

1:37:44 Speaker 2 Right. I—I think a person shouldn’t bring suffering upon themselves, but there is such a thing as healthy tension. Unlike the other approaches we mentioned earlier—Freud and others like him—whose goal as psychotherapists was to bring about a kind of inner calm, Viktor Frankl actually says that this calm isn’t our goal. Our goal is to encourage a healthy tension between where I am today and my ideal self. That exists within a person, in the human spirit. We just need to make room for the spirit to bring that spiritual part of us into our lives, because that voice comes from within. A person wants meaning, wants purpose, wants to live for something. And if you just pull out all the weeds and quiet all the buzzing and all the...

1:38:50 Speaker 5 Make room for yourself to find your way.

1:38:51 Speaker 2 Yes, you’ll hear that voice. That’s exactly the point: there’s an inner conscience. And the Rebbe says this too—that there’s a cry you sometimes don’t hear. There’s a quiet voice, less forceful, less driven by whims. Um, if you make room for it and give it its place, you’ll see that when you’re striving—and perhaps this is where leaving your comfort zone comes in, the gap between where I am today and where I want to be—it’s okay to feel tension. It may not be exactly the same as suffering, but you don’t need to be at peace and maximally comfortable. That isn’t a person’s purpose on earth.

1:39:34 Speaker 5 Today you’re at point A, and the point B you want to reach really needs to be somewhere...

1:39:39 Speaker 2 Higher.

1:39:40 Speaker 5 Yes, and it’s okay to go through a kind of tunnel, along a somewhat difficult road, in order to... Actually, not just okay. I think it’s inevitable.

1:39:50 Speaker 2 Right.

1:39:50 Speaker 5 It’s inevitable if you want to...

1:39:51 Speaker 2 Right.

1:39:51 Speaker 5 Lift yourself up and reach a place that—after all, as the familiar saying goes, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. And to move forward, you have to go through something.

1:40:01 Speaker 2 Exactly, and that’s where you’ll have to leave your comfort zone.

1:40:05 Speaker 5 And when Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends suffering our way without asking us—when I’m facing, well, there’s no shortage of challenges; each of us knows her own—then I understand that this is my path. In a way, I think perhaps instead of searching for the... I mean, I know what I have to deal with. Hakadosh Boruch Hu has put it right in front of me.

1:40:24 Speaker 2 Right.

1:40:25 Speaker 5 Someone who is ill, G-d forbid—I use that as a classic example because illness is illness, and... they don’t have to search too hard for their challenge. Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given me this illness, so this is where I’m meant to grow; this is my test and this is what I have to face. And what does “I’m meant to grow from this” mean? No one knows how it will end. But to face it, to live with it, as you said to Naomi.

1:40:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:40:49 Speaker 5 Really, to say: Hakadosh Boruch Hu knows what He’s doing, and if this is what I need to go through right now, then this is my path, and this is how I’ll grow from it.

1:41:01 Speaker 2 Yes. And again, I always say it’s okay to complain too, but don’t forget: you have to keep moving forward. There are three things a person inevitably goes through in life: guilt, pain and suffering, and death. And you can find optimism in all three. Death reminds us that every day of life matters—to appreciate life, make the most of it, celebrate it, not just suffer through it. With pain and suffering, it’s about using the freedom we have to choose our attitude. The Frierdiker Rebbe also said, when he was forced to flee Russia, “Our bodies are in exile, but our souls are not under their control.” Viktor Frankl said that too, and he saw it during the Holocaust. He said Jews walked to the crematoria with their heads held high and the words of Shema Yisroel on their lips. Their spirit could not be broken. He saw that. And there are countless examples throughout Jewish history.

1:42:11 Speaker 5 Examples.

1:42:11 Speaker 2 Examples.

1:42:12 Speaker 5 Sadly.

1:42:13 Speaker 2 Yes. We don’t have to go through that, G-d forbid. It’s a very extreme example. But yes, sometimes your fate isn’t in your hands, yet you can grow from it. And guilt. Guilt is also something we can’t escape, because we all make mistakes. But you can still take responsibility. Frankl said that alongside the Statue of Liberty in the United States, they should have put up a Statue of Responsibility.

1:42:42 Speaker 5 Beautiful.

1:42:43 Speaker 2 Yes. It’s interesting that he would also go to... he would go to prisons and tell the prisoners that their crimes were indeed their own. He placed the responsibility on them. And paradoxically—of course, you don’t just drop that on someone and walk away. Boom! You explain that if the guilt is yours, if what you did was your choice and your responsibility, then you can also make amends. You can change. If someone comes along and says a person is like a computer, just the sum of external, genetic and personality factors, then, well, you’re a victim of circumstance. And even if you committed a crime, you have no hope. But you do have hope. It actually helped prisoners rehabilitate. It’s really tricky.

1:43:40 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:43:40 Speaker 2 This whole matter of responsibility. Um, yes.

1:43:45 Speaker 5 Because taking responsibility goes both ways. So if you’re the one responsible—

1:43:49 Speaker 2 Then you can also do teshuvah. That’s what teshuvah in Judaism is about.

1:43:54 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:43:55 Speaker 2 So yes, there’s darkness in the world. Sometimes I see—I see the darkness, and I say, “Wow, G-d, how great You are. You’ve managed to conceal so much.”

1:44:05 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:44:06 Speaker 2 “And there’s so much darkness. How great You are.” So we’re not denying it; we’re not naive. But you can find optimism within it, and perhaps that’s the light that comes out of the darkness. And come on, let it end already. Let Moshiach come.

1:44:24 Speaker 5 Yes, the great light. Thank you, Raizy.

1:44:26 Speaker 2 Amen.

1:44:26 Speaker 5 Thank you so much for being with us. What a pleasure.

1:44:28 Speaker 2 Amen.

1:44:29 Speaker 5 Wishing you success in your shlichus.

1:44:30 Speaker 2 Amen. Amen. Come visit.

1:44:32 Speaker 5 Let’s do it.

1:44:32 Speaker 2 We have gorgeous islands—over a thousand islands—and breathtaking scenery. Five of my friends came, friends since childhood.

1:44:40 Speaker 5 Wow, right, was that for your birthday?

1:44:42 Speaker 2 For our birthday—the whole group born that year.

1:44:45 Speaker 5 For turning forty, you mean.

1:44:46 Speaker 2 Yes. Come one, come all.

1:44:49 Speaker 5 I think I’m already on my way.

1:44:50 Speaker 2 Let’s do it.

1:44:52 Speaker 5 Bye.

1:44:53 Speaker 2 Bye.