Episode 25: Chani from Kathmandu | With Chani Lifshitz, Chabad shlucha in Kathmandu, Nepal

00:01 Speaker 1 How does a couple with a baby land in a third-world country with barely any amenities and build a warm home there for every Jew? What makes the Chabad House in Kathmandu so special that its reputation has spread far and wide? And what’s Chani’s secret to getting through extraordinary challenges and still smiling at the world? You’re invited to an adventurous podcast with a truly remarkable woman. A reminder: if you enjoyed the podcast, if you liked the content, please share it and spread the word. This podcast was recorded with the sponsorship of Shoham Judaica, a Jerusalem factory that makes beautifully designed cases for Sephardi Torah scrolls. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who have brought their shlichus into a variety of fields. Through their stories, they’ll help each of us find and define our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created for is the best thing there is. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting now. Good evening, Chani Lipschitz.

01:12 Speaker 2 Good evening.

01:13 Speaker 1 How are you?

01:14 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem, excellent. How are you?

01:16 Speaker 1 Boruch Hashem. With the Jerusalem air, you don’t need anything more.

01:20 Speaker 2 Look at that—Kathmandu and Kharkiv meeting in Jerusalem.

01:23 Speaker 1 Yes. What’s the air like in Kathmandu? The air, uh—

01:27 Speaker 2 Mountain air.

01:27 Speaker 1 Right, you have the mountains, but on the other hand, it looks a bit smoky.

01:30 Speaker 2 Exactly. Mountain air, but not at all clear as wine.

01:33 Speaker 1 Oh.

01:33 Speaker 2 Not at all. It’s full of smells and sounds and colors and vendors and chaos and—

01:40 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:40 Speaker 2 Along with the mountain air. Yes.

01:42 Speaker 1 Come on, take us straight into the atmosphere of Nepal—of Kathmandu, actually. That’s the capital?

01:46 Speaker 2 Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal. We’ve lived there for twenty... wow, almost twenty-three years already.

01:52 Speaker 1 That’s incredible. At first you must have said, “Wow, five years,” then “Wow, ten years,” and now it’s like—

01:56 Speaker 2 Fifteen, then twenty, and... I’ve stayed eighteen and a half. I always say, please don’t work out my age.

02:01 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:01 Speaker 2 Though I arrived at twenty-two, and now we’re coming up on twenty-three years there.

02:03 Speaker 1 We won’t subtract that. Right. Wow.

02:07 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

02:07 Speaker 1 So what does the street look like there?

02:10 Speaker 2 Chaos. One word. Chaos. Colorful, soot, gravel, shouting, children—

02:17 Speaker 1 That’s wild.

02:17 Speaker 2 People missing hands, people missing legs. It’s chaotic, and the sights aren’t always simple or easy to see. Cows wander the streets undisturbed, rickshaws everywhere, tuk-tuks. I mean, everything is just toot, toot, toot, toot, toot. Nothing in Nepal is orderly. Even what you see is disorderly. You’re constantly living in a kind of—chaos, just chaos.

02:38 Speaker 1 How do you explain that? Wow, this question occurred to me once: in all the less developed countries—or maybe it’s the other way around—in countries with such beautiful scenery, the population is sort of less deve... Not everywhere, but South America, Thailand, Nepal, India.

02:54 Speaker 2 Honestly, Thailand is practically America these days. Thailand? Compared with Nepal, it’s the most beautiful place in the world.

02:59 Speaker 1 [unclear].

03:00 Speaker 2 Magnificent palaces. But yes, Nepal has stayed—I don’t know. It’s as if someone pressed a button on a time machine and sent you back five hundred years.

03:08 Speaker 1 That’s the third world. That’s the definition: a third-world country.

03:11 Speaker 2 It’s the third world, it really is, and it never moves forward. They try, and sometimes they’ll suddenly pave some road in the Himalayas or do something else, but within a month the road suddenly—

03:19 Speaker 1 A drop in the ocean.

03:20 Speaker 2 No, it’s not just a drop in the ocean. A month later, they suddenly decide to tear up the road because something isn’t working out, and then they decide... They just built a new airport in Pokhara, and the poor things, two weeks after they built the new airport—

03:30 Speaker 1 Oh no.

03:30 Speaker 2 A plane crashed there, into the new airport.

03:33 Speaker 1 Oh my, oh my, oh my.

03:33 Speaker 2 It’s like, sometimes we say—

03:35 Speaker 1 Just bad luck.

03:35 Speaker 2 It’s like all the plagues of Egypt, you know, all the disasters they have there, all the... There’s something about Nepal—they have no luck. But on the other hand, there’s so much simplicity there that wins your heart, and so much joy in life. I mean, you don’t walk down the street and see sad people or people who’ve lost their spark. No, you see people smoking opium, delighted with life, dancing, and, you know—

03:56 Speaker 1 And working jobs we’d never, ever be willing to do.

03:59 Speaker 2 We never would. Listen, I can tell you that the first thing that won me over when I arrived in Nepal was—I’ve always loved simplicity. I’ve never been a... You know, I’m probably never going to be an Instagram personality, because I’m not into being chic and getting dressed up and all that. I don’t know how to do those things. And I always dreamed of living somewhere you don’t need that whole show of seeing and being seen, of what to wear and what not to wear and what kind of sheitel you have—

04:20 Speaker 1 When you walk down the street there, you always look like a million dollars compared with everyone else.

04:24 Speaker 2 Always.

04:25 Speaker 1 You win.

04:26 Speaker 2 No, the beautiful thing there is that—you look your best when you’re comfortable—

04:29 Speaker 1 Totally.

04:29 Speaker 2 And everyone is as comfortable as can be. Everyone there, you know, wears stripes and triangles and squares all together, with colors that don’t match, and everyone’s happy. There really is something about it. I remember thinking from the very first moment that you could come to a place like this and feel very superior. Because I have—what do I know—I have the money, so I get to call the shots. I have things; I’ve had so many years of schooling, you know.

04:47 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:47 Speaker 2 But no. I walk down the street and think, look, there’s practical wisdom here you won’t see anywhere else. The way the women pick lice out of one another’s hair, and the way this little child knows exactly where to plant the rice—I could never do those things. And the women carrying bricks on their heads. Listen, there’s a lot to learn from that simplicity—

05:07 Speaker 1 Of course.

05:07 Speaker 2 From that practical wisdom.

05:08 Speaker 1 It has a kind of magic to it...

05:10 Speaker 2 There’s so much magic in that place. I love it very much, difficult as it is, and we’ve gone through some very difficult periods there. You know, I smile a lot and really show the good side of our shlichus, but when I’m being completely open, I say this place is bizarre, crazy, and not easy at all. At all. There have been plenty of tears too. But I also really know how to appreciate it. I deeply appreciate our shlichus. Very, very, very much. I truly feel it’s a privilege.

05:35 Speaker 1 Did you choose this place?

05:37 Speaker 2 Uh—

05:37 Speaker 1 How did you end up there?

05:38 Speaker 2 Well, I don’t know if I can say I chose it, because it was clear to us that we wanted to go on shlichus, both out of idealism and out of a sense of adventure. I’m being very honest. I mean, both Chazki and I are very—

05:48 Speaker 1 Listen, it’s no coincidence you ended up in Nepal and not somewhere like Kyiv.

05:52 Speaker 2 We almost did. We almost did—not Kyiv.

05:54 Speaker 1 Really?

05:54 Speaker 2 Almost. Yes, yes, I’m not joking. We almost went to Khar—to Kharkiv. We almost went to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.

06:03 Speaker 1 Wow, how nice.

06:03 Speaker 2 They really wanted us there.

06:04 Speaker 1 No, no, that’s too conventional for you.

06:06 Speaker 2 But we’d already gone through the whole process. We went and did that entire seminar. You know the seminar they do for the Ministry of Education? I was supposed to be—

06:12 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, Chafzibah, yes.

06:13 Speaker 2 Yes. So I was supposed to be a teacher in Tashkent. Can you picture me as a teacher in Uzbeki—? I wouldn’t even have gotten up in the morning to teach.

06:17 Speaker 1 So how did you end up there at the last minute?

06:20 Speaker 2 At the last minute, there was no position available. We’d already done the whole—

06:23 Speaker 1 No way, really?

06:23 Speaker 2 We were a young couple. Yes, we were a young couple. Tzvika was a month or two old, something like that. We took a month- or two-month-long course with the Ministry of Education in Tel Aviv, at some hotel in Tel Aviv.

06:32 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes, yes, I went through that too.

06:34 Speaker 2 So did I. We even learned a little Russian or Uzbek, I don’t remember. We really tried. And Chazki very much wanted to go on shlichus, and I also wanted to open a home of love and giving and all of that. We said, okay, maybe there. Then, at the last minute, the rabbi told us they were very sorry, but there was no Ministry of Education position—something had gone wrong. Then I remem—then we heard about a place called Thailand. They were also looking for a teacher, a kindergarten teacher, there. The next day we were already in Thailand. We packed up Tzvika, our baby, and ourselves, and we spent about eight or nine months there, really involved in the life of the Jewish community. But all along, we had this nagging feeling that it wasn’t what we wanted. I mean, what was happening there was wonderful, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t the...

07:12 Speaker 1 Not adventurous enough.

07:14 Speaker 2 No, we were looking for a jungle, somewhere to sow seeds and plant new trees—

07:18 Speaker 1 Wow, wow, wow. That’s wild.

07:19 Speaker 2 And then we actually arrived in Nepal, which is—now, you have to understand, even when we arrived, nobody thought it would be possible to have any kind of normal community life there. You know, there are twenty thousand backpackers there, young men and women. So many young people come there after the army—really, so many. It’s one of those places that, because of the Himalayas, draws so many—

07:37 Speaker 1 Right, why do people go there in particular?

07:40 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, there’s the—

07:41 Speaker 1 The nature.

07:42 Speaker 2 The scenery is incredible. I mean, it’s amazing, because there’s Nepal down below and Nepal up above, and you can’t even describe the difference between them. Nepal down below is all the chaos, the food, the shouting and screaming, the children and the street children. And Nepal up above—you open the window and see the peaks of the Himalayas, Annapurna and Everest. It’s amazing.

08:01 Speaker 1 Such a contrast.

08:02 Speaker 2 The contrast is unbelievable. I go up to the roof and breathe in the sight of the peaks for a bit, then I go back downstairs and start handing out, you know, sweaters to these poor children whose eyes are just begging for food. These are children who are starving at night. And I go back up to the roof just to breathe. You know what? I realized how many times a day I go up to the roof for a moment, just to breathe in those Himalayas and remind myself that there’s a horizon, there are peaks, there’s air—because you don’t have that down below. And nobody dreamed we’d succeed. I mean, the Rebbe—the Lubavitcher Rebbe—sent people there to hold a Seder. You know, that’s been going on for sixty years—

08:40 Speaker 1 They’d come for something specific.

08:41 Speaker 2 They’d come for two or three days.

08:42 Speaker 1 A shlichus center.

08:43 Speaker 2 Now, do you want to hear something amazing? I remember—wow, this is something—every single year, when I was a little girl. I’m talking about a girl with freckles and glasses.

08:51 Speaker 1 Where are the glasses?

08:52 Speaker 2 I lost them. I told my parents they’d gotten lost, but I did it on purpose. At some point, when I was about twelve or thirteen, I lost them somewhere. Poor parents—how much could they take? It was already the eighth time I’d lost them, and the glasses were getting old, so they didn’t buy me new ones. I haven’t worn glasses since. But you can still see that when I’m a little tired, my eyes cross.

09:09 Speaker 1 But can you see well?

09:10 Speaker 2 I see wonderfully. It’s just that my eyes cross. So if my eyes cross a little, it means I’m tired. That’s how it works with me. I’ve learned to recognize it.

09:16 Speaker 1 A sign.

09:16 Speaker 2 A sign everyone can recognize.

09:17 Speaker 1 Soon I’ll know when you’re tired.

09:18 Speaker 2 When I’m getting tired on you. Anyway, I remember hearing it on the news. After burning the chametz, we would sit and listen to the news on Erev Pesach, in Rechovot—yes, I was a little girl in Rechovot. Every time, they would report on the preparations for Pesach, and they would say that the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s shluchim had arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, to hold a Seder. And I remember little me, with my freckles and glasses, saying to myself, “One day I’ll be there. One day I’ll be in a place like that, and I’ll hold a Seder in a place like that too—and not just a Seder.”

09:52 Speaker 1 As a child, how did that adventurous side of you show itself?

09:56 Speaker 2 I was always a little different. Well, not just a little. I always fit in socially, and—this is funny—people would always tell my parents I was special.

10:05 Speaker 1 So when you pictured your dream as a child, you saw yourself—

10:09 Speaker 2 I saw myself living a big life. That’s how I’d put it. I would even tell people, “I’m going to live a big life.” Now, a big life doesn’t necessarily mean going to Nepal. A big life is—it’s a way of being. It’s something like... you know—

10:20 Speaker 1 Breaking through.

10:21 Speaker 2 Breaking through. Small things were never enough for me. I was always looking for big things. I was always looking for the extreme, the experience, the adventure—something like that. There was always a hunger in my eyes for something.

10:33 Speaker 1 You got it. You got it.

10:35 Speaker 2 I think I got it in a big way.

10:37 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

10:38 Speaker 2 In a big way.

10:39 Speaker 1 Tell me about the Chabad House in Nepal.

10:41 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:41 Speaker 1 I’m walking into it now. What do I see?

10:45 Speaker 2 A lot of togetherness. That’s the main thing. So much togetherness. I mean, you don’t see chandeliers or money or gold. You don’t see luxury or grandeur. Not at all. And you know, that’s something I never aspired to, either. Okay? I can visit all kinds of other Chabad Houses in the East or in Europe, and I don’t feel even a moment of—once, I was giving a talk at a Chabad House in Europe, and the shlucha, who was lovely, said to me, “It really is an incredible Chabad House, so beautiful and impressive.” Then she looked at me and—

11:13 Speaker 1 “Isn’t it beautiful?”

11:14 Speaker 2 Yes, as if she was asking, “Would you want something like this?” And I told her, “You know what? No. I really wouldn’t.”

11:22 Speaker 1 It doesn’t suit your style.

11:24 Speaker 2 It’s—I don’t know. I love the jumble we have. The sofas that don’t always match, the rug and the armchairs, the drums and the guitars, the cards and the books. There’s something about it. On the one hand, I’m very particular about keeping it tidy and clean. People actually laugh at me because I’m straightening up the Chabad House all day. They tell me, “Chani, Chani, sit down. Relax.” It matters to me that it looks nice and is orderly, especially because the place has such a jumble of things going on. But on the other hand, you won’t see any grandeur at all. You’ll see so much soul, so much heart. You know what? There’s something I’ve prayed for since the very beginning, something I believe in very, very strongly in life: finding favor in people’s eyes. I think people don’t truly understand how valuable that is. It’s a tremendous blessing. I always pray that I should have it, that my children should have it, that my husband should have it, that our Chabad House should have it. Finding favor is everything.

12:10 Speaker 1 That’s true.

12:10 Speaker 2 Exactly. Once you have that quality, you find your way into everyone’s heart. And I think our Chabad House, baruch Hashem, really has it. That takes a lot of hard work on our part, and a lot of help from Heaven, and everything together. There’s a real feeling of “I’ve come home.” So you come in, and there are the paths that are sometimes flooded with rainwater, and the benches and everything. But there are always people. Always, always, always people. And they’re smiling and happy, too. You know, every one of them is going through some kind of journey. These aren’t people who just happened to come to Nepal. Nobody just happens to come to Nepal. Nobody.

12:45 Speaker 1 They’re searching for themselves.

12:46 Speaker 2 They’re searching. There’s so much searching there, and a lot of confusion and questioning too. And I think that when they come into the Chabad House, there’s a feeling that here—here we’ll find the answers.

12:55 Speaker 1 A kind of stability.

12:56 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, absolutely.

12:57 Speaker 1 Solid ground.

12:58 Speaker 2 Ground. Safe ground. And I think it’s very loving ground. We try very hard. We genuinely love them. We really, really do.

13:05 Speaker 1 You must find yourself having conversations with people like that—people who are searching for themselves and find a listening ear in you.

13:13 Speaker 2 All the time, all the time. I’ve learned to recognize it. I can see it in their eyes.

13:16 Speaker 1 You need a degree in psychology.

13:18 Speaker 2 Psychiatry too. But you know—

13:21 Speaker 1 A doctorate.

13:22 Speaker 2 Every psychologist needs a psychologist too.

13:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:24 Speaker 2 Maybe I need one too, but...

13:27 Speaker 1 No, I think you have far more experience than anyone working in the field.

13:30 Speaker 2 Right, in understanding the human soul.

13:31 Speaker 1 Because the real cases come to you.

13:32 Speaker 2 Cases come to me that you wouldn’t believe. Really.

13:35 Speaker 1 That’s a responsibility.

13:36 Speaker 2 In a single day, I can deal with cases involving—everything. Everything.

13:40 Speaker 1 Who do you consult with, actually? You need someone to back you up, don’t you?

13:43 Speaker 2 I consult a lot with Chazki. I have tremendous respect for Chazki, aside from the fact that I’m his wife.

13:49 Speaker 1 A minor detail.

13:49 Speaker 2 A minor detail. I have tremendous respect for his wisdom. I’ve admired it since the moment I first met him. He has so much wisdom, and he’s very objective, too. You know, he’s very—

14:00 Speaker 1 Sensible.

14:01 Speaker 2 Very sensible. He really knows how to— And when I need to, I also have a psychiatrist I sometimes consult about girls who come to us, someone I turn to regularly. I have a psychologist I consult if necessary about girls or other young people who need help. There are various people. I mean, there are professionals too, but we also consult with each other a great deal.

14:21 Speaker 1 Interesting.

14:22 Speaker 2 We consult with each other a lot. He consults with me, and I consult with him.

14:26 Speaker 1 Has anyone ever been sent to you specifically? I mean, say a parent encouraged their child to travel to Nepal so they would end up in that situation.

14:32 Speaker 2 Now, remember I told you I had an important call before I came to see you? I just had a forty-minute conversation with a mother whose daughter is one small step away from no longer being in this world. She said, “Chani, you’re my last lifeline”—the last hope I can see.

14:47 Speaker 1 She met you.

14:48 Speaker 2 Yes. She came to one of my talks and felt... She was there with her daughter, and her daughter said, “Mom, if there’s someone who can help me, if there’s a place that can help me, it’s her place.” And she really is going to come with me to Nepal. Now, I know I need to be very careful, and very... I mean, I don’t put it all on myself. It’s not that I think healing comes from me. I think that with me, a person’s soul simply opens up.

15:11 Speaker 1 It’s a particular kind of experience.

15:13 Speaker 2 Wait, one second, I need to correct myself. It’s not with me; it isn’t me. I mean...

15:16 Speaker 1 It’s the whole experience.

15:16 Speaker 2 Everything, the whole experience. Exactly—being in that particular place, so far away.

15:21 Speaker 1 Listen, generally, when you fly somewhere, the moment the wheels leave the ground, no matter where you’re going, you already feel a certain detachment. And then you arrive somewhere so isolated and utterly different.

15:32 Speaker 2 And it’s a place where nobody judges you. There’s a reason so many young people come to India, Nepal, places like that. They really are places where nobody judges you or looks too closely at where you came from, what kind of home you grew up in, or what your financial means are. Everyone is very equal there, really equal, and that brings out so many interesting stories. You know what I mean?

15:53 Speaker 1 Wow. Have shidduchim come about at your place?

15:55 Speaker 2 Lots.

15:56 Speaker 1 How about that.

15:57 Speaker 2 I think I’m also a bit... So I say that if I weren’t a Chabad shlucha in Kathmandu, maybe I’d be... No, I wouldn’t be a matchmaker.

16:02 Speaker 1 You’re a matchmaker too.

16:03 Speaker 2 I’m a matchmaker and I run the mikvah and do lots of other things, but I don’t know if I’d call myself a matchmaker. Lots of shidduchim have come about at our place. You know, for most of the year we don’t have religious young people in Nepal, but there’s one month a year, Tishrei, when I feel like a Bnei Akiva group leader. And I say, why specifically Tishrei? Because this is something that’s always very close to my heart: people who are still single later in life, looking for a partner. Not twenty-two- or twenty-three-year-olds, but people who are thirty-five, thirty-six, forty, forty-five. We just had a woman who was fifty, and they’re still looking. They still have that longing in their eyes, of course. And they come to us because Tishrei is the month when, you know, at shul, people start looking at them: “Oh, what’s going to happen? Edelstein’s daughter still isn’t married, and so-and-so’s son...”

16:45 Speaker 1 It never occurred to me that that was the reason.

16:47 Speaker 2 Of course. Of course. So they come to us, and we set a table for thousands of people. And Chatzki laughs at me: “Chani, sit down.” I can’t sit down. I stand there the whole time, putting puzzles together. She’d be right for her, he’d be right for her, he’d be right for her.

16:58 Speaker 1 It’s almost inevitable. It’s...

17:00 Speaker 2 You have to. Do you know how many shidduchim have come out of that month? You have no idea. Really. I make a real effort, too, because I truly feel for them. You know, precisely because it’s a challenge I never experienced. I got married quite young. I was just a kid—Chatzki had already written to me when I was nineteen and a half. Actually, if you’d asked me, I would have been sure I’d spend a long time trying to find my way, precisely because I was a little different, a sort of Chabad girl who connected across communities. I’d always been that way, so I was sure it would take me a long time to find my way. And you know, things turned out differently. Precisely because this is a challenge I haven’t experienced, it’s terribly important to me to help with this particular thing. I mean, there are things I always say it’s obvious I’ll be involved in—special needs, or things like that that touch my heart. But I tell myself: that’s not the hard part. You need to go and help people specifically in an area you haven’t experienced yourself, where it’s harder for you to relate—and go there.

17:51 Speaker 1 To experience it alongside them.

17:52 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. This really is something very, very close to my heart. Very.

17:56 Speaker 1 Have couples come back to travel in Nepal together?

17:57 Speaker 2 Oh, that’s the best thing in the world.

17:58 Speaker 1 That’s so sweet.

17:59 Speaker 2 The best. Yes, yes, yes. There are couples who got married up in the mountains, with no family there, no one to be with them. Listen, it’s a home. It’s a home. It’s amazing, because young people arrive in the morning as strangers. They walk in at eight in the morning and they’re strangers; by eight that evening, they’re already our best friends. And these are young people with dreadlocks, tattoos and piercings all over, who look completely different from us. But that connection—you can’t describe it.

18:27 Speaker 1 That’s incredible.

18:27 Speaker 2 It’s so wonderful.

18:29 Speaker 1 How do you take all of that in?

18:32 Speaker 2 How do I take it in?

18:32 Speaker 1 There’s joy, there’s pressure, there’s... Do you even have a daily routine?

18:37 Speaker 2 No.

18:38 Speaker 1 You wake up in the morning and wait for the next surprise.

18:41 Speaker 2 I never know what it’s going to be like. I don’t know what our day will look like. I have no idea.

18:46 Speaker 1 There’s no ordinary day.

18:47 Speaker 2 In the morning, you might go visit people in hospitals—young people who’ve just come down with dengue after being bitten by a mosquito. They’re in danger. You need to visit them, and then go see a woman at a guesthouse who isn’t feeling well. Psychosis, anxiety, drugs. You know, there are all kinds of things. Then suddenly you get an SOS on the satellite phone: young people up in the Himalayas, in the mountains, have been injured. One has a head injury; another broke an arm. So you go up there in a helicopter.

19:07 Speaker 1 They get stuck without oxygen. Tell me, how do they end up without oxygen? Don’t they think about it beforehand? I always wonder: take oxygen!

19:14 Speaker 2 Maybe it’s a metaphor for our lives. We often find ourselves without oxygen.

19:17 Speaker 1 Right. We know we’ve run out, but...

19:20 Speaker 2 But we still haven’t brought enough oxygen. There are so, so many things. So yes, when people look at me from the outside, they’re amazed. On the other hand, I’ll tell you honestly: so often I look at my sister’s life, for example. She gets up at seven-thirty in the morning, she’s at school by eight, and she teaches until one. I don’t mean anything negative by this, G-d forbid, but I look at her in amazement and say, “I couldn’t do that.”

19:46 Speaker 1 Right. I say it’s a matter of temperament—you wouldn’t be able to handle it. Right.

19:50 Speaker 2 I think Hakadosh Boruch Hu had a little mercy on Chatzki and me.

19:53 Speaker 1 He really made it to fit you.

19:55 Speaker 2 That’s it. He knew neither of us would really manage with a regular daily routine. He said, “What are We going to do with this couple? They’re nice people, after all, so let’s find them something that fits their lives.”

20:06 Speaker 1 Exactly.

20:06 Speaker 2 So we really don’t have normal lives. Sometimes people look at us from the outside and say... Tell me, how did the series Kathmandu come about? Do you remember there was a television series about ten years ago?

20:15 Speaker 1 I think there was a film before that, too.

20:17 Speaker 2 There were a few things.

20:18 Speaker 1 I remember when I was in eighth grade, they gathered us in a hall and screened a film about Kathmandu.

20:24 Speaker 2 Yes, there were a few things.

20:25 Speaker 1 I even remember a few girls calling out “Kathmandu” from behind the screen—that’s stuck in my mind. Then there was the series too.

20:32 Speaker 2 Right. So how did the series come about? You asked me about a daily routine, and that reminded me of it, because that’s really how it began. A couple happened to come by—Esther Vander[?] and Yair Rahav[?]. She was a writer, and he was a screenwriter at the time, or something like that. I may be mixing things up. They had come to look around, on their way to India, to make a... They had an idea for a film about Israelis in the East. Now, Israelis in the East—that’s fascinating. So they were sitting at the Chabad House in Kathmandu, and it was an ordinary day at the Chabad House. What does an ordinary day mean? There was a young woman whose blood type, I remember, was O negative, and she’d broken her shoulder. Her arm was practically hanging by a thread. She was losing huge amounts of blood.

21:11 Speaker 1 A young woman who was a rare case, both because of her blood type and because of what had happened.

21:13 Speaker 2 Completely. And I remember a girl happened to come to us, while we were running from place to place trying to find someone to donate O-negative blood. It wasn’t simple. We were running around, and the Chabad House was bustling. Then this girl came up to me crying and crying. I hadn’t yet noticed that those two guys were watching us out of the corners of their eyes the whole time. Chazki was running around looking for blood, and this girl came over, put her head on my shoulder, and told me she was really torn about what to do. She was in a relationship, she’d gotten pregnant, and she didn’t know whether to have an abortion or not. Now, this girl—I was also in my thir— She was thirty-five, and I was thirty—

21:45 Speaker 1 And you’re thinking, damn, you can have an abortion, but you’ve got O-negative blood.

21:50 Speaker 2 So I’m talking with her, and I don’t even remember what I said to her. Guys, it was chaos, absolute chaos. Then, a few hours later, that couple came over to us and said, “Tell us, is this what it looks like—what was today? What’s going on here?” Chazki and I looked at them and said, “What? No, we don’t understand. What do you mean?”

22:05 Speaker 1 What was special about it?

22:06 Speaker 2 “This is what happens here every day.” So they said—I remember—“What? Someone should make a film about you.” Chazki was joking, of course, and he said to them, “Why a film? You could make a series.” And that’s how the series Kathmandu was born.

22:18 Speaker 1 That’s so wonderful.

22:18 Speaker 2 Suddenly it clicked for them. “Wow, you’re right. We’re going to make a series about you.” So, so really—

22:22 Speaker 1 Because it is a series. If someone put cameras there twenty-four seven—

22:25 Speaker 2 All the time, all the time.

22:26 Speaker 1 That’s it. You wouldn’t even need to edit anything.

22:28 Speaker 2 Yes, the truth is that things happen all the time. All the time. There’s never a dull moment, never a dull moment, and it isn’t always easy. I’m not saying it is. I’m talking about it and smiling, but think about it: alongside all that, I’m raising—well, not alongside it. First and foremost, I’m raising six children.

22:43 Speaker 1 Yes, let’s start there. You have six children.

22:45 Speaker 2 I have six children.

22:47 Speaker 1 The oldest is...

22:48 Speaker 2 Twenty-three. Tzvika is twenty-three, Chali is twenty-one, Shmulik is nineteen, Rivka is thirteen, Yitzchak is eleven, and Schneur is six. I didn’t get mixed up! I said I wasn’t going to say that religious mothers get their children’s ages mixed up. I practiced beforehand.

22:59 Speaker 1 Birth dates, please.

23:00 Speaker 2 I know them all, all of them. Believe me. Except for their ID numbers—that’s still a bit...

23:04 Speaker 1 That’s one level up.

23:05 Speaker 2 One level up. Some mothers know them.

23:08 Speaker 1 I know two out of five. That’s pretty good, no?

23:10 Speaker 2 I expected more.

23:12 Speaker 1 No, they made one easy for me at Laniado, with a 770 in it.

23:14 Speaker 2 Ah, nice.

23:15 Speaker 1 So I have an advantage.

23:18 Speaker 2 So, so, so never mind that. What I’m saying is, first and foremost I’m a mother, and first and foremost I’m a wife. A spouse.

23:25 Speaker 1 At the end of the day, that’s our first shlichus.

23:27 Speaker 2 That’s our first shlichus. Now, I can honestly tell you that in the early years, it was very hard for me to put that first. I mean, when people ask me what it’s like to be a mother in Nepal, and what it’s like to—honestly, I’m sure I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning. In fact, not long ago I asked my Tzvika, my oldest, who grew up there all his li—whether I’d made mistakes, how many mistakes I’d made. He claims not many.

23:49 Speaker 1 I think, look, every oldest child is ultimately a kind of...

23:54 Speaker 2 Guinea pig.

23:54 Speaker 1 Their parents’ guinea pig.

23:56 Speaker 2 Right. Yours too?

23:57 Speaker 1 I think so. I mean, there’s no way around it. Nobody is born an experienced parent.

24:04 Speaker 2 Right. So imagine that not only was I not born an experienced parent, I also had to live in Kathmandu. There’s no Jewish community, no Jewish school, no mikveh, no home, no shul, no—basically, you build the community, everything, with your own two hands. And whatever you don’t do simply won’t happen. It means living at the end of the world. There’s nobody else living in Nepal. I remember when we left Nepal.

24:25 Speaker 1 The loneliness, I mean, that...

24:26 Speaker 2 Actually, that’s it. You’re touching on something very interesting, because on the one hand, if you walk into the Chabad House, you’ll see me surrounded by girls all the time. I’m never alone for a moment. On the other hand, I’m alone a lot.

24:36 Speaker 1 It’s not the same thing.

24:37 Speaker 2 Because I don’t really have a friend I can pour my heart out to. I can’t walk into the Chabad House and say, “Ugh, I’ve just had such a lousy time,” and put my head on someone’s shoulder. I’m a figure people look to; I’m always in that role. I’m very honest, you know. I’m not some person who’s above everyone else. But—

24:51 Speaker 1 You can feel down for a moment, but then you have to pull yourself together. You have—

24:53 Speaker 2 Exactly.

24:54 Speaker 1 You have to keep finding the strength.

24:55 Speaker 2 It’s like everyone’s eyes are on you, you know? Everyone’s eyes are always on you. Even during the very difficult times we went through there, I couldn’t fall apart. I mean, I have my husband and my husband has me, but you can’t really... And I think I’ve almost forgotten how to be a friend. Even now. Wow.

25:14 Speaker 1 That goes back to childhood.

25:15 Speaker 2 Yes, that was a really hard thing to say. Hard, but true. Because even now, when I come to Israel and meet up with friends from the past, I notice that I...

25:24 Speaker 1 You don’t have much in common.

25:26 Speaker 2 Much less. Much less.

25:27 Speaker 1 I really understand what you mean.

25:29 Speaker 2 You understand what I mean. No, I’m afraid it’ll sound condescending. It’s not that my life is somehow more...

25:34 Speaker 1 It’s that you’re you.

25:35 Speaker 2 There’s something...

25:35 Speaker 1 You’re living on two different tracks that don’t run parallel.

25:37 Speaker 2 Exactly. They talk about things that I...

25:40 Speaker 1 Are far removed from.

25:41 Speaker 2 How can I explain to them that yesterday I was at a monastery and took a girl from there whose head was shaved, who wouldn’t stop screaming? How do I tell them she was experiencing psychosis? How do I tell them we deal with completely different things? Even the way you judge things is so different. I don’t know. I see life so differently now.

25:57 Speaker 1 Right, right.

25:57 Speaker 2 I don’t really see those outward trappings of clothing and appearance anymore. And you know, when people talk about tznius and things like that, sometimes I look at it and think, wow, I’m so... No, it’s not that, G-d forbid, I dismiss it. I’m just not there.

26:09 Speaker 1 You went through a huge leap in growth.

26:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:12 Speaker 1 And a kind of maturing that...

26:13 Speaker 2 Completely.

26:14 Speaker 1 When you were thirty, you were on a completely different level from your friends.

26:18 Speaker 2 On the other hand, I was always a little more mature.

26:21 Speaker 1 You’d seen things, because you’d been through things.

26:24 Speaker 2 I’d seen things. I’d been through things.

26:25 Speaker 1 And that makes you a different person.

26:28 Speaker 2 Right. It changed me completely.

26:30 Speaker 1 Yes, and I realize that even now, in your day-to-day life, your children are a little older, but still—the youngest is six.

26:36 Speaker 2 The youngest is seven.

26:37 Speaker 1 You’re the kindergarten teacher, the caregiver.

26:39 Speaker 2 So I’ll tell you that I try very hard not to be. I used to be. I used to be everything: the kindergarten teacher, the caregiver, the teacher, the special-education teacher, the teacher for this and the teacher for that. And I mention special education because my second daughter—

26:53 Speaker 1 For anyone who doesn’t know.

26:54 Speaker 2 She’s a teenager. Actually, I talk about her a lot, so I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t know.

26:57 Speaker 1 Just to be safe.

26:58 Speaker 2 She’s a girl with special needs. So there’s her, too. What a shlichus within a shlichus within a shlichus. It’s really incredible. So I was everything, and for a significant stretch of the first ten years I did everything. Then I realized—actually, it was after the first eight years—that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right, because saying “Come sit down and learn” to the children isn’t right. You’re their mother. So I started bringing teachers from Israel, and that was the right thing to do.

27:20 Speaker 1 It takes something to say, “I need to delegate.”

27:23 Speaker 2 To let go, to let go. Today I call myself a principal. I run a school called [unclear], named after all the children in it, because the older ones already study in Israel. And really, it’s about letting go. On the one hand, letting go. On the other hand, I explain to the girls who come to be with my children that what they see at the Chabad House—all of it, the chaos and the people and the singing and dancing and everything that goes on—I don’t arrange that around my children.

27:49 Speaker 1 Yes.

27:49 Speaker 2 The day-and-night schedule, where there’s no day and no night—that has nothing to do with my children. Come to the Chabad House. There’s something very important I can tell you: you won’t see my children jumping onto travelers’ shoulders. Absolutely not. I’m very, very protective of that, even fiercely so.

28:03 Speaker 1 You keep the two separate.

28:04 Speaker 2 I keep them very separate, very separate. Even though it’s probably the hardest thing in the world. I really want to welcome the guys and not judge them. And you know, I always say this—I never get tired of saying it: one thing is not to judge. You really don’t know where anyone has come from or what their journey has been. We don’t want people judging us, either. But even so, you won’t find my children sitting at a sing-along in the Chabad House, or... You know, there’s... I always say there’s one filter... Right. For children, and another filter for adults. And you know, people always say that the education of shluchim’s children rests on the Rebbe’s shoulders. Of course—otherwise I wouldn’t be there for a moment, because it’s a crazy place. But that doesn’t absolve us of responsibility. That sentence always frightens me a little. Yes. On the one hand, it moves me terribly; I always have tears in my eyes when I say it. But on the other hand I say, “Wow, Chani, all those beautiful sayings can’t absolve you of your responsibility as a parent when you’ve traveled so far away and are raising your children in Kathmandu, where there’s nothing at all except street children. There aren’t any other children, and your children don’t have friends here, and... You can’t say their education will be on his shoulders.” Their education is on your shoulders and your husband’s. And there’s siyata d’Shmaya, and the Rebbe’s bracha, of course. But this is on my mind 24/7: it’s my responsibility. It’s crazy to make that separation. You live in the same building, and yet... We’re literally a stone’s throw away. How does that work? Behind the Chabad House. I mean, the Chabad House is... We don’t have...

29:24 Speaker 2 You know what? We had a home right there, and did you hear what happened during COVID? No. Okay, wow, no. Well, this is Nepal. During COVID, they took our home with everything in it. I mean, during COVID, like many shluchim, we went to Israel. We were there a very long time—a year and a half. There were no travelers in Nepal. No travel... Zero. Nothing. There were no travelers at all. Everything was locked down. Wow. It turns out that during that time our landlord—we had a rented apartment—took the apartment, with everything in it, and turned it into a Nepali restaurant. Sheesh. Because he said COVID would never go away, there would never be tourists in Nepal again, and the Lipschitz family would never come back. Did he tell you beforehand, or was it...? Oh, afterward. He sent us a video when the whole place had already been torn apart. He told us after the home was already gone. Where were all your things? Well, that’s just it—we still don’t know where all our things are. Every time he says something different. Some of them... Wow, seriously. We basically came back to nothing, to chaos. We came back after COVID to chaos. After twenty years, zero. After twenty years, zero. And you know, the great thing is that I don’t get attached to material things. I never have. I don’t really own expensive things, either, things of value. You know, even if someone robbed me—I always laugh that if some women were robbed, they’d lose eighty-carat diamonds, blah, blah, blah. If someone robs me, they’ll get this necklace. See this necklace? I made it for ten shekels. My pretty, colorful bracelets cost twenty shekels each. I mean, I’m

30:41 Speaker 2 not very expensive. Right. Let them rob me, let them. Let them. So I didn’t leave behind many valuables, either. I always joke that my sheitel is the most expensive thing I own, and even that isn’t all that expensive. I think it’s the same for me. Wow. Anyway. So today our home is basically a kind of guesthouse. A guesthouse—behind the Chabad House there’s this guesthouse, like a hostel where the travelers sleep. So we took a slightly nicer place there, and we... connected it to the rooms, the rooms to... We’re still dealing with the damage from COVID. Wow. And starting... We bought, you know, like... We’re starting to buy things. That’s why I related to what you said about how you’re also... Everything is double. Everything in your lives costs double now. Oh, right. So, but the Chabad House is literally a stone’s throw away. There’s just a little fence separating our living room from everything going on over there. Not that there’s actually a living room in our home. It’s like a room in a guesthouse, yes. And it really isn’t easy to maintain that... I think it takes a lot of conversation with the children, a lot of understanding that no, not everything happening there is right for them. And it’s not, G-d forbid, that anything there is bad—because then you’d be shooting yourself in the foot. These are the people closest to you. It’s just a matter of explaining to them, again, that we have a different filter. At a different age. There’s one filter for children and another for adults, and that’s perfectly fine. We love everyone who comes to us so much. And you know what? It’s amazing to see that I never even have to tell them what’s appropriate and what isn’t. They slip away; they just know,

32:11 Speaker 2 you know, when a conversation starts, they know how to slip away. And when something starts... they know how to slip away. I actually call it a slide. I’m telling you, it’s like they make this switch and slide away, and they amaze me every time. Wow. Yes, boruch Hashem. The truth is, my children turned out much more frum than I am. I guess they really are on the Rebbe’s shoulders. Wow, yes, completely. At what age do they leave home? Ah, “leave home” is a very hard phrase. Yes. Go to Israel to study. Yes, right. That’s another thing I always felt sorry about—that my children... Wow, there are so many things I felt sorry about. If I made a notebook of regrets, I couldn’t... Good thing you didn’t. It would be embarrassing to leave the house. I was sorry that my children would ever have to leave home before they got married. So I opened a yeshiva in Nepal. I remember that at first I didn’t want to send the older ones away to yeshiva. I’ll never forget that I brought in a bochur. Do you remember? He’ll probably smile if he hears this. Yisroel—I brought in this bochur from Jerusalem. Wait, as a principal? As the rosh yeshiva. What do you mean, principal? Wow. I remember we made a sign: Chabad Yeshiva, Kathmandu. He had “rosh yeshiva” on his résumé. Rosh yeshiva. That’s it—now he can say he was a rosh yeshiva. And I remember, I’ll never forget, we wanted so badly to make it official that we would... I was always holding parent-teacher meetings with him. And he would write letters on this letterhead: “To the parents of the students of Chabad Yeshiva, Kathmandu.” Wow. It had one little boy in it. Wow. Sweet and little and poor thing, all alone. Wow, how long did that last? Six months. Six months, and I remember, and we were

33:42 Speaker 2 They’d come to parent-teacher meetings. No. And he would make siyumim on tractates and all that. But at some point, I remember one time at one of the events—I don’t remember exactly what it was—he had to show what he’d accomplished. Suddenly I looked at it from the side and said to myself, “Chani, stop. There’s selfishness here. You want to keep this child with you? Enough already.” It’s not easy. Wait, was the plan to bring other kids to study with him there, or...? No, there really was no plan. The plan was that my children wouldn’t leave me. That’s so hard. But that was it. Then we understood that... So we sent him to China to study with his friends. China is actually closer. China is close, and the Greenbergs’ children are there, so he could be with children his age. And school over the computer is almost impossible where we are. We started a little, but every time it was, “Lifshitz dropped out.” You know the online school, of course. The connection just doesn’t work. There’s no electricity, no water—we have nothing. So it kept happening. It was getting embarrassing to hear, “Where’s Lifshitz?” “Lifshitz fell down,” as they’d say in English. Lifshitz dropped out. Lifshitz dropped out. Lifshitz disconnected. “A righteous person falls seven times.” All the time. Enough, I said, this isn’t working. I’d only tried it with two children. Tzvika and Shmulik were still in online school. But it was no longer possible. So we sent them to China, and afterward we sent one of the children to Moscow. We really tried, tried to hold on to Shlomo. Why not Israel? Because they’d go to Moscow and come back. He’d go to China and come back. But at some point we understood it was no longer possible.

35:04 Speaker 2 You need a framework. You need a framework. You need a framework. Some kind of stability. Yes, and the home is already such a mess, such chaos, with things happening all the time... They travel together, right? Say, at the start of the year or after the holidays. Right. So today, actually... They’re not each going off somewhere different. Right. My older three—the older trio—are now based in Israel, and my younger three are based with us. For now. Yes. So are there young women staying with you? Yes, young women come to stay with us. I change them about every six months, something like that, to keep things fresh. Oh, they make it through. They do fine; it’s just to keep things fresh. I bring young women who aren’t too young—twenty-two, twenty-three—who also have some emotional maturity. Yes. You know, they see things that aren’t easy. They hear things that aren’t easy. They’re dealing with all of that there. Their job is with my children, but still, it isn’t simple. It isn’t for everyone. Sometimes they see people struggling with anxiety, sometimes with drugs, sometimes losing their grip, sometimes going through all kinds of confusion in life. And, you know, I don’t want the young women getting confused themselves. It isn’t simple. Right. And there are male and female travelers, and all those things. So I’m very protective of them too. I’m constantly explaining to them what their role is: you and the children. What kind of mental preparation do you give them? Constantly. Like an audition? An audition. Yes, yes, I’m very... No, it isn’t simple. I check carefully. I’ve made mistakes before too, but I really, really try to check, and even speak with the parents beforehand. You know, sometimes setting expectations with the parents of the young woman coming to us is... Right, so there won’t be

36:27 Speaker 2 all sorts of misunderstandings afterward. Yes, G-d forbid. You know, you really have to explain to them what goes on with us. Listen, our place isn’t a sheltered environment. Where do they sleep? They sleep...? Well, when we had a house above our apartment—we lived in an apartment right across from the Chabad House, and above it there were always apartments, sometimes one, sometimes two. One apartment was for people who couldn’t always be left alone, or people who needed looking after for various reasons, you know, emotional reasons. And in the apartment next door were the young women staying with us. Everyone was always in the same complex. Now they live in the same guesthouse we live in, in the room next door. We’re essentially in the same situation. You really adopt two young women every six months and then send them home. Completely. That’s exactly right. And besides that, you adopted a Nepali child? Right. An unbelievable story, an unbelievable story. He was a street child who was dying on the street. Why him specifically? There are so many. He... a miracle happened to him. There are so many suffering children on the street. A miracle happened to him. Yes, a miracle happened to this child. How did it happen? What was that moment? Look, where we are, there are truly so many people in desperate circumstances. Children are dying of hunger at night. Yes, it’s not... I’m not exaggerating. It’s just... You walk down the street and sometimes you see... You have to develop a certain numbness, because otherwise it would drive you out of your mind. There are places you walk through in Nepal where, without that numbness, your eyes would never stop tearing up. It’s... it’s... it’s... Wow. You know, when you see a hungry child, it doesn’t matter what color he is or where he comes from. All those filters, all of that, just melts away. It’s not even... It’s terrible. You see children covered in scratches, with cuts, with eyes gouged out, with... you know,

37:58 Speaker 2 it’s at that level. It’s hard even to hear about it. There are so many children there. Let me explain something. At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I’d see children there without arms or legs, things like that. Really, what’s going on? No, why? Why? Exactly. What, is there some kind of genetic problem here? Then I learned that when they were small, their parents would shut them inside cardboard boxes so that when they grew up, they could beg in a way that aroused more pity. People would feel much sorrier for them. Really? Exactly like that. And you see mothers, for instance—there’s this phenomenon, so much begging, beggars every second, every step you take. You’ll see mothers walking around with babies who are completely listless, begging you to give them money for the child. And I look at one of these mothers, and the next day I see her and think: Wait, yesterday the baby was much darker. Today this child is lighter. No, it’s not the same baby. Gradually you follow what’s going on and realize there’s a whole business around begging. There’s a cart that serves as a distribution point for orphaned babies—I don’t even know where they came from. They put them down and pick them up, over and over. And at some point you also understand that you have to distinguish between who really needs help and who doesn’t. You understand the business behind the begging. For example, these days I never give children money. I take them to eat at restaurants I know. I actually take them. “Come, come with me.” There are restaurants—don’t picture anything fancy. They’re called dhabas. By the way, a restaurant in Nepal is called a dhaba. Dhaba. Right in your face. If you go in here, that’s what’ll happen to you.

39:23 Speaker 2 That’s what will happen to you. So I take them to a dhaba; they already know me, and I pay the place. Now, look, at a certain point we don’t have refrigerators—and really, forget anything that runs on electricity. I don’t have a washing machine at home. I have Didi, who washes the clothes in a tub. We don’t have refrigerators—well, we do have refrigerators. But they run on generators. And the generators don’t always work either, because the fuel comes from India, and when Nepal and India are at odds—which happens all the time—the border closes and no fuel gets through. You really can’t rely on anything in Nepal. So most of the time the refrigerator doesn’t work. We’re constantly serving food, bringing more, serving it, bringing more. We have a restaurant, the Kathmandu restaurant. Kathmandu. Right. There’s a dairy one and a meat one, and we don’t throw food away. We simply give it out. About thirteen years ago we started distributing it. I mean, who needs a refrigerator? We make food, and the leftovers go out onto the street. They go to all sorts of people who appreciate getting a good meal—schnitzel, fries, salad, tahini, hummus. It really fills them up. Our people go out and distribute it, and one evening one of the young men who helps us at the Chabad House—one of the Mendys, as they’re called—came with a little boy who looked absolutely terrible. And that’s where it began. He was really begging us to help him. Why did he bring the boy along? He brought this child with him. It was very interesting. He said, “I…” He’d seen the food distribution and what was happening around the Chabad House, the Jewish house, yes, but he said, “I’m not interested in the food here. I’m interested in the mother and father here. I want to be the child of that mother and father.” Wow. No. It’s—

40:55 Speaker 2 He’s a very determined, very bright child, with something about him that really gets into your heart. And that was it. When he came to us, we didn’t yet realize we would truly take him in. But, you know, we bathed him for the first time and cared for him, weaned him off drugs and bandaged his wounds, because we learned that he’d been cut—the man who exploited the street children abused him and cut him. He had no father, and a mother with schizophrenia who nearly buried him. What? It’s a whole story, an unbelievable story. When I took him in, I still didn’t—if you’d asked me twelve years ago, “Will he stay with you?” No, no, I didn’t know. You know, it’s easy to say now, in hindsight, that of course this child is with us and calls us Mom and Dad and speaks fluent Hebrew. But back then, no, we didn’t know. Did he convert, do you think? No. No, and we never encouraged that, either. I mean, we never had any… A lot of people ask us whether we’ll convert him and what we’re going to do with him. How old is he today? Well, that’s the thing: you can have a child grow up with you and not know how old he is, or even what his last name is. All I know is that his name is Bim. We think he’s the same age as our Shmulik, who’s nineteen today, which would mean he was seven when he came to us, because that works out nicely for us. I mean, it helps to think he’s the same age as one of our children—so we can compare, too. So you can compare. We think so. But from the beginning, both Chizki and I were clear that we weren’t going to change who he was. We said: he’ll be a good Nepali, a good Nepali. With Hashem’s help, we’ll send him to the best school. And he really did skip several grades. He learned to read and write in Hebrew, Tibetan and Nepali. He’s very smart. And we really—

42:22 Speaker 2 We said, “He’ll help his people.” And today he really helps with all the food distribution to the street children. He’s completely in charge of that operation. I don’t have to worry about it anymore; he handles it. Imagine him going to those children and saying, “I used to be like you.” You know, when he came to us he was dying. He was skin and bones, covered in cuts, in such a state. Today he wears clothes I buy him and, you know, he looks like a million dollars—a handsome boy. And he says, “I used to be like you. There’s hope for you. There’s hope for you.” How amazing. And I think I really believe in being a light unto the nations, you know? And that’s also— Right. Being a light unto the nations is also, you know… I think that whole question of Jews and non-Jews—when you go abroad, especially when… Suddenly you see souls. You see people. You see that a non-Jewish woman can be the helper who does so much for you and your children. Absolutely. And she can be—you can— She’s the first one in your prayers. The first one in my prayers. You know, I light a candle for her on a night in Tishrei. May she live for many good years. Heaven forbid anything should happen to her, because what would I do without Dana? I miss her while I’m here. Wow, right. It really is… I remember showing people all sorts of things from Kharkov, and they’d ask me, “What, she’s a non-Jew? What, he’s a non-Jew?” Right. Isn’t it upsetting to hear that? Yes. I think when people live in a very closed community, they just see someone as “a non-Jew.” But these are human beings, created in the image of G-d. Right, right. Creations of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Exactly. And when you live among them, you understand that— Absolutely. Right, they’re—

43:41 Speaker 2 Not Jewish. We’re not bringing them closer to Judaism or anything like that. But you understand that there are good people. There are righteous people among the nations. Truly. There are amazing people who made it possible for us to carry out our shlichus—all the drivers and everyone else… And there are rotten Jews, too, but shh, don’t let anyone hear that. We’ll cut that. Well, what does it matter? There are also… Oh, I wanted to ask you about Bim. You said he now runs the whole distribution operation. So when you’re in Israel, who takes care of things there? Well, we’re in Israel for two periods each year. You know, I always say it’s a blessing that we have those periods, a blessing. I don’t know what we’d do without them. Not that I’m resting now that we’re in Israel—I spend all day rushing between lectures and performances and everything. Yes. But—but it was hard to pin me down for this. But there’s the weather: winter, a month and a half of freezing winter in the Himalayas. There are no travelers; the Chabad House is empty. There are no travelers in Nepal at all. Oh, okay. So you don’t have the day-to-day activity then. Nothing. Nothing. We’re not a community, after all. There’s no community in Nepal. We depend on backpackers. When the backpackers don’t come because of the weather, there’s nothing for us to do there. And there’s a month and a half of monsoon in the summer—which is interesting: it’s summer, and I don’t know what it’s like in Kharkov, but it just doesn’t stop raining. Kharkov has four seasons, just like you learn in first grade: winter, spring, summer and fall. Exactly—three months, three months. It’s actually very orderly. Nepal has winter and summer. And in summer it never stops raining. Wow. It’s very interesting. It’s hot—I mean, genuinely hot—and raining,

45:02 Speaker 2 Rain, torrential rain, all the time since morning. It’s such crazy rain that travelers don’t even show up. Now, honestly, if we didn’t have a little breathing room, and then we come to Israel and put the children in school... You know, if we didn’t have that... that chance to breathe, to have a bit of normalcy. That breathing room, honestly, I don’t know. And here, too, we keep in touch with the travelers, which is really, really nice. We’re always getting togeth—spending Shabbos together, meeting up. It’s an unimaginable number of people, I think, isn’t it? Yes. We’ve had—how many have come through? Thousands. Thousands. I mean, think about it: every Shabbos we have five hundred young people at the Shabbos table, a thousand a week, two thousand at the Seder. Every day, about eight hundred people pass through the Chabad House. It’s already far more than thousands. Much more than thousands. Hundreds of thousands, if not more. Listen, we really are... it’s a melting pot of Israeli society. Absolutely everyone comes to us, everyone. It’s incredible. Isn’t it hard to invest in people who keep changing? Someone arrives at your place, and then... Yes, I don’t really know anything else. Do you understand? You and I are very different in that way, because— Right. I don’t know. I never belonged to— In other words, that’s how you started, and that’s how you’ve stayed. That’s it. I don’t really know— That’s the reality you know. The reality is that... Look, some people do come back to us a second time, but you know what’s funniest? We arrived in Nepal when I was twenty-two and Chazki was twenty-five. We were the travelers’ age. Just kids. What do you mean, kids? The travelers were older than we were. There were women travelers of twenty-three or twenty-four whom I looked up to.

46:21 Speaker 2 I mean, I didn’t show them that, but— Right. They were so much older than me, and here I was running this whole thing. So at first, when we arrived—it’s funny—we were the travelers’ age. Then we became the age of the travelers’ older siblings. An older broth—I was an older sister. Now women come to me whose mothers— Their mothers already. No, whose mothers stayed with me twenty years ago. Wow. Do you understand the... the... Now, yes, it isn’t always easy to invest. You give everything you have—really, your heart and soul—and Chazki and I are both very all-or-nothing people. We really invest in people, and the next day that person might leave. So sometimes you sow and don’t get to reap. Because even though we try very, very hard to keep in touch— It’s usually hard to see the fruits. Yes. So many times we hear about it, you know, suddenly after ten years, after... Last week I gave a talk in Israel, and suddenly a woman wearing a head covering came up to me and said, “Chani, do you know you saved my life twenty years ago?” I was... Wow. A woman who suddenly told me, “Listen, do you remember I was going through a very severe emotional crisis, and you went here with me and we went there, and we talked and talked? I went back to Israel and became observant. And not only that—it’s not just a matter of becoming observant. You opened the safe where my soul was locked away. I changed my whole way of life, emotionally too. I’m a different person.” Now, I had to wait twenty years, you understand? To hear something like that, something that touches your heart. You have a community, and it’s simply scattered— It’s

47:43 Speaker 2 scattered, you understand? All over the world. Today, in the age of WhatsApp—and I’m sure you know this too—it’s much easier to keep in touch. Yes. When we arrived, there wasn’t even internet, you understand? When did the internet start? Some... I didn’t even have a cell phone until eight years ago. As a matter of principle, I didn’t have one. Really? Wow. Unfortunately, since then I’ve fallen, fallen deep. I didn’t have one at all. There was no way to stay in touch, you know. There was a guestbook, there were people— Email. Email, yes, right. Messenger. Right, right, there were emails. And we wrote so many emails, right. And suddenly, you know, today there are WhatsApp groups, so many WhatsApp groups for the Kathmandu Chabad House, Nepal, Facebook, Instagram, all that. There’s so, so much contact with the travelers. But yes, a lot of things happen and I don’t know about them. I have no idea. Not at all. That’s something. You started to say—when you give a talk here, a talk there—tell us what you do here in Israel. You don’t sit down for a moment. And you know what’s amazing? Every single time I laugh about it. Every single time I say to Chazki—and Chazki always reminds me of this halfway through the visit—that this time I’m not telling anyone I’m coming to Israel. Really. Two days later, everyone knows. Two days later. I don’t know how it happens. Yes, but it’s like, so— Because you’re going from place to place, too. I’m going from place to place. People see you. So what’s this play you do? Well, yes, I also have a play. First of all, you’re an actress. I’m an actress. What aren’t you, really? You’re an actress, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a chef, presumably. You have to run... Well, I’m not a chef.

49:06 Speaker 2 Okay, we found one thing you’re not. Yes, I’m a bit of a musician, and a teacher, a kindergarten teacher, a mother. But specifically a chef, no. I’m terrible in the kitchen, terrible in the kitchen, and I’m not a painter either. There, we found some things. We did. No, it’s not hard to find them. Come on. So you really are an actress at heart. The truth is, I always was. I always was. Yes, acting was something I always did. I always wrote, always composed, always made music—though that’s another part of me that hasn’t really come out yet. A creative soul. There is a creative side. I was always acting, always playing the lead role in school plays and things like that. I studied theater, too. Oh, nice. Where? When? Where? At Emunah College. Emunah College. Oh, when you were in Israel. When I was in Israel, from the age of eighteen. I was the only Chabad girl studying at Emunah College, with my stockings and long sleeves. I was a bit of a trailblazer. Yes. I’m sure people looked at it and thought, “Wow, what are you doing?” I was the Chabad girl, but I held so firmly to who I was. You know, I went into a different community, but I was Chabad through and through. It wasn’t... Yes, I told you they said I was unusual. I don’t know if they meant that in a good way or a bad way, but that was how they saw it. Unusual is unusual. Wait, and where did the play come from? The play grew out of wanting to express what happens to us. There’s so much of it, so I write. I write a great deal for various magazines, you know, regular monthly and weekly ones, and I have weekly columns, and I’m writing a book. So I write, and writing is all well and good, but at some point I felt I wanted to bring it to the stage. I felt that what happens with us, apart from

50:38 Speaker 2 When I tell it, I’m not just telling my own story. It isn’t Chani Lifshitz’s story. It’s a story about a way of life: you get up in the morning and live a life of service to others, a life that isn’t just for yourself. You get up and say, “There’s something I can give.” Not because I, personally, have something to give, but because everyone does. Absolutely. Because every person is a shliach for something good in this world. And that’s how the play was born. It began with an earlier version called “This House in Kathmandu,” and gradually it developed and was updated. And listen, I think we put on this play, “A Postcard from Kathmandu”—How have I not been to see it yet? How? Enough already. Because I’ve hardly been in Israel. Well, then we’re inviting you. I need a guest-of-honor ticket now, yes. Send me one. VIP, front row. Absolutely. I want to see you. Let’s do it. There’s an actress, Hadar Sasson-Penkasovitch, who had been a traveler at our place. She studied at Nissan Nativ, and I told her about this dream of putting on a play, and it came together. We went to a director who had also been at our place, Gadi Weiss. Really, I have an amazing team. We wrote it together and put it together; Gadi and I had this whole brainstorming process, and we brought it to the stage. Hadar is constantly switching roles—she plays a traveler, then someone else—and I switch roles a few times too, but mostly I’m Chani. I do a little acting as well... It’s cute to play yourself. It’s cute to play myself, and even cuter to play our travelers. Up close—you know them better than anyone. Exactly. And it’s a play with the whole range of emotions. People really come out of there... First of all, it’s already been performed about fifty times on

52:01 Speaker 2 stage. Wow. And boruch Hashem, I say this humbly, truly, because I feel so strongly that it’s a privilege: there hasn’t been a single performance that wasn’t sold out a day or two in advance. Wow. No tickets left, none. Just a week ago, there was a performance in Ma’ale Adumim, with five hundred seats in the audience. Not a single seat was empty. You’re also very limited for time. You’re there twice a year. So I have—by now I have a producer who handles it. Boruch Hashem, I don’t really need much marketing, because people come on their own, but she does... I think there’s nothing like it. She books everything. She books it all. That’s it, she books it. I also have [unclear]. I’m telling you, I’m surrounded by people. I always say I’m surrounded by so many good people. Really, truly. To make dreams come true, you really need the right people around you. Good people, the right people. So she arranges everything while I’m still in Nepal. By the time I arrive, my calendar is full; I don’t have a single free evening. So there’s the play, and there’s the talk, “With an Aliyah from Above,” which is also accompanied by videos, pictures, experiences, colors, smells, everything. You really breathe Nepal. And again, I don’t leave it at just my own story, because otherwise it wouldn’t be interesting. What inspires someone? Feeling, “I’m there too.” Everyone feels that they’re there. That connection. The connection. I think what people like is that I’m not some larger-than-life figure. You know, I make mistakes too, and I bring those mistakes onto the stage. I choose to put on stage mistakes I made on shlichus

53:17 Speaker 2 and things that were less easy for me. Because, you know, otherwise what are we—angels? That’s not it. I think it creates a sense of identification. That honesty. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to portray myself as someone I’m not. You understand? I have plenty of... Yes. You know. Yes, like all of us. Right. And people connect with that honesty. Yes, I think you’re right. How special. So you come to Israel, and how often do you do this—several times a week? I have something almost every evening. Do you sleep occasionally? Yes, yes, I do. I have to say, quite the opposite. I always tell my mother—my mother is known for sleeping four hours a night, saying, “I didn’t sleep all night”—but I really don’t sleep a lot. I tell her, “Mom, sleep isn’t a privilege. Sleep is a necessity.” I never apologize for it. No one has ever caught me apologizing for sleeping. Yes, they say sleep is for the weak, but sleep is for the strong. Absolutely. My sister says that all the time. People often ask me to give morning talks, you know, at girls’ schools and high schools, and I tell my producer: as few morning talks as possible. Sleeping in is sacred. Getting to sleep in the morning. Listen, some people are morning people. I’m a night owl. I start waking up around noon; until then I’m like a zombie. And when do you go to sleep? I go to sleep—well, over the years... I used to stay up until five and do all the work at night, the writing and things like that. Yes, but after giving birth, I just need to sleep. I go to bed at eleven or twelve. Oh, wow. I try to, yes. Noon. So

54:48 Speaker 2 it used to be two. I mean, I make myself do it. But I still get up at seven for the children. And go back to sleep? No, I can’t get back to sleep. But I do all the things that don’t demand much of me. In slow motion, like that. Very much so. Me too. Don’t talk to me in the morning. I don’t understand people who get up in the morning. I don’t understand how they do it. I think it’s just something built in. I tried to fight it. No, don’t fight it. “I’ll get up in the morning.” No. I scheduled Pilates for eight one morning. I thought it would wake me up. I was there like this. I came home and got into bed. It’s built in; it’s hopeless. First of all, Pilates is dangerous. Just kidding. You know, where I am there’s all the yoga and meditation and those things. The women travelers really do say to me, “Chani, come to a yoga class with us,” and drag me onto a plane. Maybe that connects to it. There, yes, there it’s all about letting go. Separating. Sculpting. Yes, it’s all avodah zarah there, and... But you know, my way of life—and Chazky’s too; Chazky is a night owl—really fits with the travelers. It actually works very well for us. That’s why I told you it’s a good thing I’m not in Uzbekistan. I think if I were a shlucha in Uzbekistan, the head shluchim would kick me out very quickly. Or you would... Or I’d kick myself out. Right. Because in Nepal, just so you understand, we sit on the couches at the Chabad House having heart-to-heart talks until around two in the morning. There’s a class on Judaism, and then there’s a briefing. You know, before people head up into the mountains, they hand out satellite devices and talk about altitude sickness and all that. Then we sit with someone else, and talk about that, and then another woman wants to have a quiet conversation on a bench. And then

56:14 Speaker 2 I mean, I look at the clock and suddenly it’s three in the morning, and I go to sleep at three or four. In the morning, the Chabad House is really sleepy. It opens at nine, but until eleven, things get going slowly. Right, there’s hardly anyone there. The first [unclear]. The first [unclear] is at eleven thirty. So it works out perfectly for us. Cool. Maybe you created that without realizing it, do you think? Could be. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Wait, are you also responsible for the treks? Do you plan routes, or does that just happen because everyone’s there? Honestly, we aren’t. Well, we are. It’s turned out that we do everything. We wear every hat. You have to understand: people arrive in Nepal, and there are no other Israeli centers. This is the only Israeli center. There’s nothing else. You understand? I mean, you land in Nepal, in Kathmandu, and there’s the Kathmandu Chabad House. And it’s something to see, because some people arrive with their backpacks saying, “Wow, we’ve heard about you, we’ve read about you, we know who you are.” And then there are the ones I actually love most, the tough nuts to crack. They come because you have to go to the Kathmandu Chabad House. You leave your bag there; there’s luggage storage. You come to borrow a satellite device before heading up into the Himalayas, and you consult Rabbi Chezki about which route to take and where to go. You come to me to ask which pills to take or whatever it is. It turns out we do everything. And for some people, coming to a Chabad House doesn’t come naturally. You know, it’s not their natural inclination. Right. Sometimes they’re people who are very opposed to religion, who grew up in homes that were opposed to it. And seeing that ice break is the most wonderful thing. First of all,

57:40 Speaker 2 I never take it personally. I always say: don’t take it personally, even if at first you see people looking at you a little, you know, differently. We have to remember that we all have stereotypes. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Right. We do it too, when we arrive. When you’ve heard a certain thing about religion for thirty years— Right, or about the people who represent it. Right, but never mind that; it affects you. You do it too: you see a woman wearing a headband and say, “Okay, she’s Religious Zionist.” You see someone with a “Yechi Adoneinu” kippah and say, “He’s a Moshiachist.” Listen, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. That’s how our minds work. We put people in boxes, and it helps us too. There’s something about... Right. We look for some kind of pattern, some kind of peer group. We’re looking for community. So that’s why I say that right now they’re looking at me as a woman in a sheitel. In the first couple of minutes, the ice breaks with us very quickly. There’s the woman in the long dress and the sheitel and all that: here comes the religious lady to make us all do teshuvah. Fine, that’s okay. I count to a hundred in my head. Not for long. Right, because I know that in a moment he’ll be Chezki’s best friend and the young woman will be my best friend. We take to them, and they take to us, very quickly. You really do have, I think, a very special charm. I can’t say that about myself. You also have to connect with so many different kinds of people. I think I’ve always connected with all kinds of... I remember even as a child, people would say to me, “Aren’t you afraid of him? How can you...” And I never...

58:59 Speaker 2 I never had that. People ask me all the time, “How are you not afraid? You sit across from people who, just from the way they look...” I’ve never had the slightest fear of anyone. I don’t know. Maybe I’m afraid of heights—I live in the Himalayas and I’m afraid of heights—but not of people. I have other fears, but I’ve never been afraid of human beings. Quite the opposite. You seem to have this tremendous curiosity about people. People make me very curious, and I find them so interesting. It’s fascinating. I think you could write book after book just about... You have so much material. About the people who live there, about what goes on inside them. But it’s more than that. You have to stop and notice. It’s not just... There are interesting people around us all the time. You have to stop and see them. You know, there’s a line I sing in my show. I sing a little too. I sing... Go on, sing it for us. It’s for women only. So it goes: “Here come the wandering, illuminated souls. Make me a vessel for Your shlichus, so I can see them.” Wow. “In this house I’ll be able to see them.” That prayer. Yeah. Oh, no, that... That came out beautifully. Yes, lovely. I’m a cantor’s daughter, after all. A mohel and a cantor. I’m not a mohel. No, he’s a mohel. He was my brother’s mohel. I think the mohel Menachem Fleischman is one of a kind. But, but... An advertisement. Yes, an advertisement. Use only him. Right. But these days he trains mohelim and supervises them. Wow. But really, seeing people—people pass by you all the time, and my constant prayer is for the ability to truly see a person. Because it’s so easy, you know,

1:00:44 Speaker 2 sometimes we don’t want to see, because once it enters our hearts, it isn’t easy. You know, you’d rather just pass that person by. Yes. Yes. To protect ourselves. Right, to protect ourselves too. And you say, “I already have my own life, my children, the intensity of life, all that intensity.” But I want to see them. I have this prayer to be able to see. Do you feel you’ve practiced that over the years? Yes, a lot. I think it’s something you develop. It’s something I’ve always had, but I think people can also tell that I see them. People come to someone who sees them. You can’t miss it. Yes, yes. Right. And that’s true everywhere. Any woman who opens her eyes has people around her who need... You don’t have to travel all the way to Kathmandu. Who need to be seen. Right. In your case, they’re concentrated in one place. Right. It’s very noticeable, and it’s very much a part of your life. Right. For me, they’re concentrated in one place, and don’t forget that I have a kind of permission to be someone who sees. Right. I mean, if I were... It’s not like that everywhere. Sometimes it could seem very strange. Like you’re nosy. Exactly what I was about to say. Sometimes it could seem that way, but I’m in a certain position... Actually, I’m not nosy at all, by the way. Really not. I make a point of not being... I’m not, Chani. You do it in the right measure. Really, I’m not. I even dislike that sort of thing. You won’t hear me asking too many questions. But I am in a certain place. Just think: I’m sitting on the sofa in the Chabad House with so many young people coming in, and all they want is to be seen. That young woman just wants me to see her.

1:02:02 Speaker 2 I just got a message, actually. It’s really interesting. A woman who was with us ten years ago told me how her whole life changed because of her experience at the Chabad House in Kathmandu. She told me all kinds of stories, and then, out of the blue, she decided to write to me. She said, “Do you know what the most powerful part of the experience was? You looked me in the eyes. No one had looked me in the eyes before that. And you said to me, ‘I see you. I see that you need this and that.’” That whole way of being, she said. And she asked me, “How did you know? How did you see?” So seeing people is so important. Now, I know I fall short at that too, and don’t see enough. I’m not perfect. Come on, with thousands of people, it’s not exactly... But I know that here and there, people slip through the cracks. It’s such an individual thing. Yes. It really has to be one-on-one. Yes, one-on-one, when you... You have huge numbers of people. Right, it isn’t always easy. That’s why, as much as I love the huge crowds and all that craziness, there’s sometimes that end-of-season period. At the end of the travelers’ season, when it starts getting a little cold. Fewer people, more quality time. How I love those Shabbosim. When you’re sitting with hundreds of people on Shabbos, you can’t really see everyone. You know? You give them your biggest smile, but... And then suddenly you have those Shabbosim with thirty people—which are very small Shabbosim for us—and suddenly you can see them. It’s... it’s wonderful. I really, really love the end of the season. I do. How amazing! Yes. Wow. People, you just... you’re...

1:03:18 Speaker 2 Etched in people’s hearts forever. It sounds like an experience that... Right. I think that in our community—and by “our community” I mean the more religious, Charedi community—traveling to places like that is less common. Right. I’m suddenly thinking that maybe it’s an experience people are missing out on. Though, you know, it’s really interesting: in the last two years, after COVID, we’ve suddenly started seeing a few of those young people come. All the things COVID changed—it blows my mind. Really, the world, and people still don’t grasp the... the world before and after. Somehow COVID comes up in every podcast I do. Yes, yes, COVID is a kind of... a point in time that marks everything. So they really have started coming, but again, these are people looking for a match. Charedi men and women in their thirties, who perhaps didn’t feel they could come to us in their twenties, because what would people say? It would mean something to them. But here, exactly, here, there was suddenly quite a large group with us just now, and... that’s something we didn’t have before. I mean, again, the Charedi community still hasn’t... A lot of Charedim go to Thailand, huge numbers of Charedim. Thailand is more set up for it. Yes, right. You arrive and there are restaurants and an itinerary and several Chabad Houses. Right, it’s easier. That’s true, that’s true, but we see less of that. We get either completely secular young people or religious Zionists, who come more around the Tishrei holidays, as I told you. We actually have an opportunity to break down a lot of stereotypes, precisely because so many secular young people come to us. You know, it really breaks down a stereotype. Think of someone who, until now, would cross to the other side of the street when he saw a rabbi. Suddenly the rabbi saves his...

1:04:47 Speaker 2 Life. Suddenly the rabbi is the one who went to Everest and got him out of there when he was bleeding to death. Do you know how that changes your whole perception? And suddenly there’s this rebbetzin who caught you when you were completely caught up in drugs and at a point where... Do you know how many times people have said to me, “Chani, leave me alone. Why are you still helping me?” And I don’t give up. I’m stubborn too. I’m a Taurus. I don’t give up, and I never... I... I don’t give up quickly at all. Maybe that’s good and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know, but I... I’m stubborn when it comes to people. All the way. Once I start helping someone, I don’t... Wow, it really is an enormous privilege. You see the shift people make in how they see you, and how they see the whole world of Torah and mitzvos. And you know, so many times—actually, I have to tell you—people who travel tell us, “We traveled so far to find things close to home. But perhaps we traveled as far as we could because we found what was closest of all.” Young people sit and learn at the Chabad House, and suddenly there’s a class on the weekly parsha every evening, and suddenly they’re sitting and learning and opening a book. They say, “Come on, back in Israel they’d look at me like I was crazy. They’d think I was becoming religious.” It’s wild. We’ve had several couples from Israel who set foot in a shul for the first time with us, and now they’re part of a community. It’s part of their lives. Yes. I think the stereotype really is so strong. Right. On the other hand, I’m sure there were also people who saw you and said, “Well, you must be different.” People tell us that a lot, and we explain it to them. “Not in Israel. In Israel, Charedim are like this and that. You’re something else; you’re not like them.” Or, for example, they say...

1:06:12 Speaker 2 Well, there you go. But it’s funny. Young people connect with us and then say, “Wow, it’s so great that there’s this whole Chabad House network around the world. It’s amazing.” We ask, “Where do you live?” “Ashkelon.” “Where in Ashkelon?” There’s a Chabad House practically next door to him, with all kinds of activities, and he says, “No way.” And he won’t necessarily go when he’s back in Israel. But it’s different. He’ll go. It’s different where you are. I think the farther a Chabad House is from Israel, the more special the experience is. Right. Really. I’ve had several shluchos on, and each time we bring up how people imagine a Chabad House based on the one they know, or have heard about, or have visited. Yes. And every Chabad House is so completely different from the next. Yes, you have to understand that the character of the place and its needs are different too. A Chabad House in Ashkelon doesn’t need to meet the needs you meet. Right, right. So it really is fascinating just to talk about that. But then he goes back to Ashkelon and discovers that nobody’s sitting in the hallway with guitars, playing cards at three in the morning. Right, but I also think we need to consider how we approach people. We have a bit of a problem: sometimes we can be a little missionary-like without noticing it. You know, we need to... Even when you come to bring someone closer, you need a lesson in humility. We don’t have a monopoly on Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We don’t have a monopoly on wisdom or on Torah. And sometimes we come in with the title of rabbi and rebbetzin, and we know, so we’re going to teach you. But the young people in front of us aren’t fools, people. They’re perceptive, intelligent, principled. They’re not people who... And when you approach someone, sometimes, you know, we... I say this very...

1:07:46 Speaker 2 Carefully, because it’s not that I’m criticizing, G-d forbid, people who do that. But sometimes there’s this thing where you come up to someone: “Put on tefillin. Light Shabbos candles.” Wait a second. Give her the respect she deserves; give him the respect he deserves. I mean, he is many other things before he puts on tefillin, and she is many other things before she lights candles. Sometimes we have the end point in mind, like a target we’re aiming for. Yes. And I think that’s one of the things people often tell us: they don’t feel like they’re a means to an end. “You love us because you love us.” And then, you know, it’s amazing, because I always say that this drawing closer to Judaism happens even before— I mean, of course a person needs to—every good deed and every mitzvah can tip the world toward the side of merit, and we believe that. But sometimes it’s enough for someone to sit in the Chabad House, to be there in that whole atmosphere of togetherness, to sit at kiddush, and slowly, slowly, they get involved. Then they go to a Jewish studies workshop, precisely because the atmosphere was so welcoming, open and pleasant. And little by little, that too— You have to believe in the process. You don’t immediately— Exactly. Count how many shtreimels people are wearing on Shabbos already, and how many wigs. No, no, no, that’s not where it’s at. Believe in the process. And you know what? Not one person has been to the Chabad House and looked at Judaism, the Torah, mitzvos and faith in the same way afterward. There’s a world of difference between how someone comes in and how they leave, even if they leave with the same number of tattoos and the same number of earrings. It doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant. Something in their soul, something inside them—a Jewish spark

1:09:08 Speaker 2 that’s been kindled. An inner process that... Right. And we have to remember that. I think layers fall away, too. Yes. When people see you and feel they belong. Right. What do we all want? At the end of the day, we all want to feel we belong somewhere. Right. And a person feels they belong and understands that there’s something here, and it happens slowly. I’m sure many people did eventually put on tefillin because they went through such a deep process. Quite the opposite: I think the percentage of people who’ve grown closer through us is astonishing. Precisely because both Chezky and I are very accepting and don’t pressure people. Again, because we come from a place of humility, not a place of— When someone walks into a place and there’s something in the air that says, “We have all the wisdom; we know.” Yes, yes. No, we’re not the ones who know. Here’s a place. Sit down, make yourself at home. You’re welcome to be yourself, and— Yes. We have more to offer later on, later on, later on. Yes. Wow, that’s amazing. Yes. Tell me, I have a question that’s been on my mind. Yes. You’re saying that people come through you because they need so many practical things, including help on their treks and all that. What do the non-Jews who come to travel in Nepal do? Are there any other Western organizations? You have no idea how much envy there is over this place. You have no idea how many Koreans— “I’m lucky if I’m Jewish.” Thais. What’s a Chabad House— They call us— First of all, they don’t have the “ch” sound. So we’re Kaski and Kani and Kali and Kebab House. I run Kebab House. Nice to meet you. Oh, so— What’s the language there, anyway? Nepali. Nepali. A terribly ugly language, in my opinion. Do you know Nepali? Yes, but— You have no choice. No choice, but really, there’s nothing else you can do with it.

1:10:38 Speaker 2 Arabic too? Right, no— There’s also a lot of English, and a lot of Hebrew, because our main audience is Israelis. But we have Nepali employees, Nepali neighbors, the women next door... Is there any population of Nepali Jews? No. It doesn’t exist. No, not even one. Like in India, say. No. Wow. There is one woman who converted. I think she’s the only one in all the twenty-two years I’ve been there—twenty-three. Yes, she married an Israeli and afterward underwent a conversion, actually a more stringent conversion in Israel. Now she’s come to Nepal for a few months, and suddenly I have a Nepali woman who’s a friend. So, yes, that’s it. You’ve got someone to work with. Good material. I don’t know. We sat together on Yom Kippur, and I actually showed her the machzor. It was her first time praying, her first time... How remarkable. But that’s—there are no Nepali Jews. None. Look, where do Jews settle? Somewhere there’s commerce. We don’t have commerce. These aren’t businesspeople. Not businesspeople. Who’s there? Just the travelers. Ordinary Nepalis, and, you know, people who can’t read or write. Oh, so there really aren’t any Nepali Jews at all. I’m not familiar at all with this whole business of working with a community. No, I don’t have that. But, so you really need to do a lot. That’s true. For a Chabad House, it’s amazing. I don’t think there’s another Chabad House—maybe there is, but I don’t know one—that also has to do so much physical work. I mean, you literally save lives. It’s handing out oxygen tanks and satellite devices, helping here and helping there, checking oxygen saturation, and going up into the mountains and helping all the time... Is there a consulate there? There’s an Israeli embassy with

1:12:03 Speaker 2 three people, the ambassador there on his own, without even his wife and children, and— They generally turn to Chabad and... Yes, yes, they know— Actually, they’re more responsible for Israel–Nepal relations, for training foreign workers, all those things. Yes. Very difficult, painstaking work. You know, everyone has their job. But— So is there a Western organization that provides help with all this, or...? No. I’m an American woman; I don’t know what that means. No, but I want to tell you that it’s reached the point where, baruch Hashem, the Chabad House has become so well liked and has such a good name, as I said, that non-Jews come to us asking for help. You’re starting to open, like— Really. A branch for non-Jews. That’s exactly what it is. They come to us. You know how many times— There was a Japanese woman who was hospitalized for a month, and we kept visiting her with food and helping her. And now there’s a Chinese man who fell in the mountains and is begging Chezky to come rescue him. “Only the rabbi”—the rabbi... Chezky’s become, you know, a guru there. He’s the one, yes. Everyone knows him. He mediates between everyone; he’s a peacemaker, you know. Wow. And the non-Jews really are envious. You know how often, on Shabbos, we’re sitting and singing—this tremendous singing of Adon Olam. It’s so lovely. And do you know how many people come to listen? Not just Nepalis—all sorts of tourists. “What’s going on here? What’s going on here? What is this place? Can we sit down? Can we listen? Can we watch?” And it’s such a pleasure to see the Israelis, too. It happens all the time: suddenly, you know, they stand a little taller. There are things they take for granted, like having a Chabad House. A kind of pride in being part of the group.

1:13:17 Speaker 2 There’s this sense of pride: “This is ours, this is ours—this is our home.” Wow, how special. It’s so lovely to see that. Yes, our home. When they travel to New York, they try to blend in, but here it’s the opposite. Yes, exactly the opposite. It’s amazing. So many people tell us, “We never dreamed we’d come here and find ourselves at a Chabad House.” From start to finish, there’s this trek called ABC that people do when they go to the Himalayas—Around Everest Base Camp, Around B... So they always joke that in the end, ABC isn’t around Everest; it’s Around Beit Chabad. You come to hike around Everest and find yourself there. You really do find yourself there, in the deepest sense. Wow, that’s so special. It really sounds like an exceptional Chabad House, even beyond... Boruch Hashem. How do you manage to do it all? I don’t manage to do it all. Or you don’t manage to do it all? What does “all” mean? I’m trying to think—define “all.” Because you don’t have a set daily schedule. Right. “All” means, for example, that you end up visiting a woman in the hospital, even someone who isn’t Jewish, while you also have everyone at the Chabad House. And how do you plan anything if you don’t know what your day will look like? I have what I call the circles method. I came up with—I don’t know if I actually came up with it. Did I? I can’t remember anymore. Let’s register the patent now. You know, I’m not sure. At some point I realized you have to start with the closest circle. First of all, that’s my children. Yes. First of all, my children

1:14:36 Speaker 2 and my husband. Then there are the Israelis staying with us and the Jews. Actually, you know what? I’m in that circle with my children and husband. Really, I’m there too. It all goes together. I’m there. By the way, I don’t neglect myself. I’m actually not someone who gives that up. I’m very good at making time for myself too. No need to feel sorry for me, as they say. So you don’t need to put yourself on the list; that’s obvious to you. No, it really is obvious. Yes. And I truly know when I need to go sit on a patch of grass at some hotel for a little while, and I know how to do that without feeling guilty. Is there a mall? No, no, no. Forget it, I go to the market. To the filthy market. But no, there aren’t really places to go out to. Anyway, first it’s that circle, then the Israelis, then the Jews, and then the people nearby—the neighbors who live around me, if they need help or something. In other words, because everything there can get confusing, you set priorities. You start with whoever is closest to you and gradually widen the circle. Now, if there’s an extreme case—say an American suddenly asks me for help—of course I’ll help. But in my head I always have this circles method: start close and gradually move outward, not the other way around. And you’re doing that all day long, that constant... Yes, yes, all the time. Around the clock. Right. Wow. Right. Tell me, was there ever a moment when you thought of leaving,

1:16:00 Speaker 2 some kind of crisis? Lots of them. Like, “That’s it, I’m leaving everything; I don’t care anymore.” People always ask me that and expect me to say, “Never.” No, really—of course there were. All the time. I mean, we went through so many difficult things there. We went through some very hard things, one after another: an earthquake, a blizzard, shootings in the streets by the Maoist insurgents who were there for several years, and a very, very difficult financial situation that we’re constantly dealing with. You know, there’s no money there. It’s not as though there’s some cloud called Chabad that sends money down. Every shliach has to look after that for themselves. And we work with a community of backpackers who are broke, so there’s no one to turn to. There were so many challenges: raising a daughter with special needs amid all of this shlichus, and raising children who were so isolated there. Of course there were moments when I wanted to leave. But every time, what truly keeps me going is the understanding that I’m living the dream. And I don’t just say “living the dream” as an expression. I always say this in my talks: living the dream was my dream. All of this that’s happening—really, being a shlucha of the Rebbe. You know, I experienced the Rebbe myself. Until I was eighteen and a half, we were there. Wow. We were there. You’re sitting across from me, and looking at you, I feel like you’re my age. But you’re not. And then suddenly you say things like that... I’m eighteen and a half—did you forget? You really experienced it. We experienced it, and we saw the Rebbe, with tears in his eyes, asking that no Jew be left behind and that there should always be someone there. And you know,

1:17:22 Speaker 2 you grew up with that. You went out on shlichus shortly afterward. Shortly afterward—just three years later. And truly, first of all, there’s this dream of fulfilling the Rebbe’s dream. I mean that quite literally. And there’s also the fact that all my life I dreamed of a big life, a life of giving, with my home open to others. And here it is, happening. So whenever I look at my living room, with religious and secular people, young and old, people from every community and every walk of life, I tell myself, “Chani, this was your dream. You’re living the dream.” Show me how many people in the world really live their dream. But the thing is to remember that it was your dream. Because so often, you know, we dream of getting married and how wonderful it will be. Then, instead of holding hands and saying, “This is the dream,” we start comparing again, looking at Instagram and Facebook and at other couples. We dream of having children, and when they arrive, instead of holding their hands and saying, “This is the dream,” we focus on what one child said or didn’t say. It’s as if we have this problem: we’re never in the here and now. I think a lot of it is because—I’m going to sound like some older, self-righteous woman—but I lived in a time before all these screens and distractions. I wasn’t immersed in that. You can see the difference. I can see the enormous difference. Today you live while constantly seeing other people’s dreams. You’re in a hundred places at once. It’s tremendous FOMO. You sit there thinking, “Wow, she’s at a concert right now and I’m not

1:18:41 Speaker 2 there, and she’s at the beach now—how wonderful for her.” And you might be sitting in an enchanted forest, but your mind is over there; you’re not in the forest. So I tell myself so often: “Chani, this is the dream.” Come back to that point. You’re in the dream. And I say it to my children too: “Look at what we’re doing here.” We also talk with the children a great deal about what we’re actually doing, what our shlichus means, what this incredible home is that we’ve been privileged to open to so many different people. It isn’t something to take for granted. You know what? I say this too: I go up onstage almost every evening. I’ve given hundreds of talks and performances of various kinds. I’ve become something of a public figure. And every time, I tell myself: “Chani, never stop feeling moved. If one day you’re about to go onstage and you don’t feel moved, you’ve lost it.” There’s this freshness that I don’t want to lose. I never want to lose the feeling of being moved when I speak to an audience, when I speak to a soul. Truly, the day I stop feeling that way, I’ll know something has happened, something has gone wrong. Absolutely. So the spark is still there. You don’t get used to a certain level and need more and more? No. Or just show up on autopilot and you’re already... I can still be moved by every conversation I have with another person. May it stay that way. I don’t know—I really hope so, and I pray for it. I think a sense of shlichus is something you can become addicted to as well. You wake up in the morning and give and give and give, and it puts you in such a good place. Right. Right. I felt a terrible void when we came here. After we had done

1:20:07 Speaker 2 Everything we could. A terrible vacuum. And it wasn’t until we really started going to different places, giving talks, speaking and sharing our story, and getting involved here too, and I started the podcast... Wow. We also started volunteering a little in Kiryat Malachi, with Shifra and Puah and a few other things here and there... Wow. Close to home. You find yourself saying, “What am I getting up for in the mor—wait, what am I going to do for the Seder? Just by myself? What? What’s happening here?” Really. Wow. Purim came, and we went... Purim was less than two weeks after we arrived in Israel, and we went to a Megillah reading at a house nearby. They held a reading there. You don’t feel it—where’s the shlichus? Exactly. Listen, I’m used to... Every Purim, there’s a Megillah reading at the circus in the evening for two thousand people. Wow. And I’m thinking, “Where am I?” Wow. Just reading to the children sitting next to me, reading the Megillah. And I really mean it: once you understand what this is... Right. You can’t give it up. You just can’t anymore. It becomes part of you. You can’t explain it. Yes, I really understand what you’re saying. There are moments of crisis, but you know that’s where you belong. Right. You know you’re not going to give it up, because it’s a dream. It’s a dream. It’s a privilege. Right, and I know that as much as... I’ll say one more thing. I know that we help people, and I’m aware of the good we do for people, baruch Hashem. Shlichus also does us a great deal of good. Of course. I mean, I don’t know what our marriage, our family, or our parenting would look like without it... We wouldn’t be... There’s nothing to compare it to. But I know there’s something very special about the family life we’ve built and the marriage we’ve built, and I’m sure a lot of that blessing comes from

1:21:45 Speaker 2 our being shluchim. Let me explain. People always say that when there’s difficulty in a marriage, you should try to find some sort of shared life’s work, something good to do together, where you see the good in your husband and he sees the good in you. Think about it: in a way, without marriage counseling... Look, we’ve saved money—though maybe we need to save up some more. What I mean is, I’m constantly seeing the good in Chizki, and he sees the good in me. We see each other doing good for others, so... Right. That does something very good. And the children too. Amazing. The children... Yes. Have you ever thought about that? You haven’t? I understand what you mean, but suddenly looking at it from the outside, in theory, it’s... Of course. I say to myself all the time, “Wow, this really strengthens our marriage.” Of course. You constantly see your husband giving and doing good, and he constantly sees me sitting with the girls, giving and doing good and trying. So think about it: you’re constantly seeing bright spots in your spouse, and the children see it too. You don’t need to tell them, “Love people, give to people.” You’re a living example. That’s something. It’s not... Do you understand? It’s a living example. Children who live on shlichus don’t ne—don’t need to be taught that. It’s... Yes, because they... They live it. Yes, they live it. You don’t have to tell them, “Come on, there’s a mitzvah called hachnasas orchim, welcoming guests...” Yes, yes. And draw a picture, a coloring page about welcoming guests. Yes. To them, it’s life. Right. It isn’t “welcoming guests”; it’s home. Yes, exactly. They don’t know anything else. Right. So look

1:23:05 Speaker 2 how many bright spots there are in... And what a genius the Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was. He took... I say this all the time. We sort of take it for granted, but it’s an incredible power. He took ordinary people. You know, I chatted during lessons too, and pulled up grass at Beis Rivkah [unclear], and he grew leaders out of them. You know how many times people have asked me, “Tell us, did you take some kind of course? A course in leadership, survival, working at heights, public speaking, coping under pressure?” And I look at them, smile and say, “No, we’re simply chassidim of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” Mm. Because that’s a leader. Because you’re coming from an ideology. You’re not coming... Right, you said you were adventurous and all that. Yes. But that’s only part of it. Of course. You’re coming from an ideology. I wouldn’t have lasted a year. Exactly. You wouldn’t have lasted. No, no. People who go to all sorts of places... You know, there are all kinds of shlichus organizations around the world, and most people go for a term and come back, and some may have broken down along the way. A posting at an Israeli embassy is four years. Yes. Right. Then they rotate. Right. We’ve already seen so many people rotate through, and we’ve been there for how many... And people who came for a year, too. Right. And couldn’t take it and went back. They can’t understand how we stay. It’s the truth of it that keeps you going. Right. It’s amazing. And understanding that you’re doing something very, very great—something that, again, is good for you too. There’s no need to shy away from that. I’m not going to speak grandly and say, “We do good for people, and that’s what keeps us going.” No. We’re also doing good for ourselves. Completely. Completely. Really. Sometimes I even felt that came first. I mean, when we arrived in Israel, I said to myself, “Wow,

1:24:32 Speaker 2 where am I?” You know what I mean? Yes. Okay. Though, you know what? I’m glad—I don’t know what will happen yet—but I’m glad I felt that way there too. There were many times in the middle of the day when I’d say to Mendel, “Do you realize what we’re doing? Do you realize...” Amazing. “...how much good we’re surrounded by?” And simply being in that position. Listen, people live in all sorts of circumstances, where, compared with those around them... Yes. They can be in all sorts of positions, but you’re always in the position of giving. You’re in the position of doing good. Right. It lifts you up. Right. And it... Right, right, right. It strengthens you. It makes your worries smaller. It... Right. Look, this has turned into a podcast encouraging shlichus. Maybe we should even call it that. Yes, “Shlichus as a Way of Life.” That’s the name. Oh, okay. Right. You know what? Since you said you need to sleep tonight, let’s start wrapping up. I want you to say something to every woman listening to you now. Realistically, the woman listening probably isn’t going to go on shlichus to Nepal. Do you need more shluchim? You know, you’re going to laugh. We tried. Several times we tried to bring couples out as shluchim, and none of them lasted more than nine months at most. Wow. Really. And every time they ask, “How do you survive this, especially with a child?” They were always young couples with a little baby, or... And we laugh and smile and say that we really are a crazy couple. Made of different stuff. I don’t know if we’re made of different stuff—you’re flattering us. I always say we’re a crazy couple. It really is a kind of craziness. You know, it’s shtus d’kedushah—holy foolishness, as we call it. Right. It’s... Right. Because in the end, if you want to change the world, you

1:26:04 Speaker 2 You have to be a little crazy. Right. You can’t stay within your own four walls and bring about change. It doesn’t work that way. But again, we’re influenced by our leader. The Rebbe really had a kind of holy craziness too. Right, and he passed it on to everyone. He was crazy about holiness, and it rubbed off on everyone. Look at all this excitement about Moshiach and all the singing—these are things that you—G-d forbid, right? I don’t mean crazy in a bad way. I mean things that make you look at yourself—in a good way. It’s so unlike a leader, unlike other leaders. Yes, and to us it seems obvious because we grew up with it, but it’s really extraordinary. And you know what I take away from it most? How much he trusted us. Trusted us. Think about what that means: taking his people and sending them far away, isolating them, sending them to different places, and saying to himself, “They’ll succeed.” The Rebbe also never gave really specific instructions about— No. It was more like, you’ll arrive, you’ll see what’s needed, and you’ll know what to do. Right, but look how much trust that takes. And I take a lot from that for my children too. I often tell them, “You’ll succeed. You can do it.” How many times do I say that to them? “You can do it, you’ll succeed, you’re capable, you—” Listen, we really have a great Rebbe. Truly. Wow. He turned each person into—how did you put it? From a little girl pulling up grass in— Yes. Into a leader. Yes. Wow. So give us a tip. You know what? Not a tip. Some encouraging words for every woman who wants to feel fulfilled and feel that she’s on a mission. I always—because we’re all shluchim, really. Exactly. Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent us into this world to do good, to make the world a better place. Right. I always say that the story is

1:27:28 Speaker 2 not my story. I mean, it often happens that I’m onstage, out in front, telling my story. And I always try to tell people: “Okay, so there’s this crazy woman”—that’s what I’d say to myself—“in the Himalayas, running around among bodies and people who are dead, sick, and injured.” But no, that really isn’t the story. I truly, sincerely believe that every woman listening to us is a shliach for something good in this world. And you know what? You don’t have to be in the Himalayas for that. You don’t have to be in Kharkiv either, and you don’t have to be—you don’t need a badge saying you’re a shliach. You don’t need it. You know, there are little things you can do. Sometimes all it takes is a smile, a warm expression, a kind word. Yes, it sounds like a cliché, but it really isn’t. It really isn’t. And you know how much I avoid clichés. I’m actually very wary of them. I don’t like them. But I’m telling you honestly: you know what the secret is? Understanding how much power you have. Sometimes I want to go up to people in the street. I don’t do it—though sometimes I do—and say, “Do you know how much power you have? And you, and you? Stand tall. Look around. Pay attention.” Absolutely. You have so much power. I’m telling you, those little things—a warm expression, a smile. You wake up in Kiryat Malachi. Even when you’re in Kiryat Malachi, Chani, you wake up in the morning and greet your neighbor with a smile, and you’ve changed her day. Absolutely. You’ve changed her life. I think that’s the point: to value ourselves. Yes. To recognize how much power we have. That’s it. And to remember that if Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought us into the world, it wasn’t for nothing. Right. It’s not that He was bored

1:28:44 Speaker 2 and needed something to do. He brought us here because He trusts us. Right. You heard that the Rebbe trusts us? So maybe the secret really is—if you ask me what I think the secret is—I know I have a lot of power. The power to influence and bring about change. Yes, yes, I have a lot of power. Even if I think of myself as just an ordinary person. Yes. Just a mother. But there’s no such thing as “just.” Just a teacher. But there’s no such thing as “just.” Exactly. Everyone—and I also say, don’t try to be someone you’re not. You know, some people are more inclined toward kindness, some toward strength, some toward education, and some toward other things. Each person should come with what she has and bring that. Bring yourself. Don’t try to be that shliach from—you know, look at the shluchim. Even just the shluchim near us in the East: we’re so different from one another. Right. The shliach in Thailand isn’t the shliach in Nepal, and the shliach in Nepal isn’t the shliach in Singapore. We’re all so different, and that’s okay. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Be you. I’m not—I—the shliach in Kharkiv is the shliach in Kharkiv. The shliach in Kathmandu is the shliach there. Absolutely. You see? Don’t try to imitate anyone. Go with your strengths. Exactly. And make a difference. Use what you have, the gifts you were given. And we’ve been given so many gifts. So many. Truly. Really. Take a look. You know how you said that someone sees you? Yes. So do that for ourselves. Right. Take a moment to see myself. Right. You know, I always say you need to smile—[unclear]. Yes, right. No, and I always say that smiling isn’t only about smiling at someone else. You know, tell me, when was the last time, Chani,

1:30:02 Speaker 2 you looked in the mirror and smiled at yourself? You know, I smile at myself in the mirror. That’s amazing. Yes. It’s amazing. Yes, I smile at myself in the mirror. Especially when you say that—yes, at the end of the day, you’re alone. But you have yourself. Right. You find a way to... Yes, yes. I think there’s something wonderful about knowing how to enjoy your own company, talk to yourself, smile at yourself. I think that loneliness also taught me to enjoy my own company. The loneliness. I go out all the time. I’m alone a lot. I mean, I go out on my own, and even when I’m in Israel, I don’t... You know? My mother and sisters say, “You went there alone?” And I say, “No, I went with myself.” Right. I’m with myself. That’s amazing. I enjoy my own company. I recently read—I don’t remember, some article or something—about a woman who went on vacation to Italy alone. She said she had such a good time. The best time in the world. It really is like that. And to get back to how we came to this: being with myself, spending time with myself, discovering myself, and then bringing myself to the world. Right, absolutely. So may we—and then we’ll all fulfill our shlichus. Let’s do it. Once you discover yourself, you really understand how much power you have. Look, I always say that, sadly—and this is the opposite of what we’re talking about—one fourteen-year-old terrorist can destroy a family. That shows you the power to destroy. Yes, because one person has power in this world. So, in the most profound contrast, think how much power one person has to build. Right? Wow. Right. It’s like people say about trauma: how can one small thing happen and have such a long-lasting effect?

1:31:29 Speaker 2 Yes. It follows that a good thing can have that same tremendous impact. And it does. It has a tremendous impact. Wow. So may we merit to make a difference. Amen. May every woman wake up in the morning and feel that she’s bringing all the good she has into the world. May she smile at the world. Absolutely. Thank you, dear Chani. Dear Chani—and to yourself, too. L’chaim, l’chaim. L’chaim, l’chaim. Bye.