Episode 29: Peace of Mind - Yes, It's Within Reach 🪐 | With Bat-Sheva Dragan, astrologer and coach, author of the book '90 Days to Peace of Mind'

00:00 Speaker 1 What do the time and date we were born have to do with our nature and personality traits? What’s the connection between peace of mind and success? And how did two fascinating books come into being in such a short time? Join us for a fascinating conversation among the stars with Batsheva Dargan, an astrologer and coach who opens a window onto a life-changing world. A reminder: if you enjoy the content, you’re welcome to share it and pass it on to anyone who might be interested. Intro, and then we’ll begin. How do we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet women who have brought their shlichus into a variety of fields. Through their stories, they’ll help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a Way of Life. We’re starting now. Hello, Batsheva Dargan.

01:02 Speaker 2 Hello, Chani.

01:03 Speaker 1 First of all, it’s so lovely here in Givat Ze’ev. The peace and quiet, and everything, really—

01:07 Speaker 2 It’s a shame we can’t show people the view here.

01:09 Speaker 1 It really is.

01:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:12 Speaker 1 So, tell us about yourself.

01:13 Speaker 2 Okay. My name is Batsheva Dargan. I’m a mother of seven and, at this moment, a grandmother of seven. But you know—

01:21 Speaker 1 Wow, I’m shocked.

01:23 Speaker 2 With grandchildren, that number can change several times in a single day.

01:26 Speaker 1 Still.

01:26 Speaker 2 Yes, we’re open to it. I live in Givat Ze’ev now; I’m originally from Petach Tikva. I’ve gone through a lot in my life. One of the interesting things is that until I was about thirty, I had no idea who I was, apart from my name. I did things, I got things done, and by thirty I was already a mother of six.

01:48 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:48 Speaker 2 Yes, I did everything very, very quickly and by the book, but I didn’t really know what I was about. I wasn’t doing well, either. After my sixth child was born, I really fell into... Looking back now, from what I’ve read, I understand that it was something like undiagnosed postpartum depression. From the descriptions I’ve seen, it was very similar. There was a huge emptiness inside. Then someone recommended that I go see her sister. She said, almost in passing, “Listen, my sister practices astrology. She’ll help you.” You have to understand, I was thirty then, twenty-four years ago.

02:31 Speaker 1 We’re not doing the math.

02:32 Speaker 2 We’re not doing the math, right. Back then, going to a psychologist or therapist was practically like putting a big stamp on your front door: unmarriageable. For at least seven years, nobody in your family would get married, because, oh no, you went to a psychologist. So I didn’t tell anyone anything. It wasn’t like today, when you can open even the most religious newspaper and see, “Come train to be a therapist for children,” and for this and that. It wasn’t like that then.

02:58 Speaker 1 Nowadays, the person who doesn’t go is the strange one.

02:59 Speaker 2 The strange one. Back then, you weren’t even allowed to talk about it. But someone—Hakadosh Boruch Hu arranges things—asked me, “How are you?” Poor woman, I unloaded on her and started telling her everything. Then she said, “Listen, you really should go.” I didn’t know what astrology was. I had no idea, but I was so desperate that I went. And suddenly her sister started telling me things, and it shook me, because I understood that she was telling the truth. Something about it felt very, very familiar. But I didn’t really know that person she was describing. It’s fascinating. For example, she told me I could write, and I thought that was hilarious. I said, “What does that have to do with anything?” Today, after publishing two books, I understand the connection. But it shows you how disconnected I was. And I can tell you, there are people like that even today. The need for love, the need to be loved and accepted—if they’re a little different from the community and environment they grow up in, even from their own home, if their mother or father has different aspirations for them than the abilities Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave them, then either they become rebellious and go their own way, but lose their home, family, parents, and love; or they give in. They simply tell themselves—and this is between them and themselves, G-d forbid, it’s not the parents or anyone else—the child instinctively says, in some way, “I’m willing to give up who I am. I’m not willing to give up being loved.” That’s it. So at thirty, I began a difficult journey. It was like being twelve, when you start getting to know yourself. What am I saying, twelve? You’re three years old, suddenly starting to

04:42 Speaker 2 figure out what you like and don’t like, what feels good and what doesn’t. And things get a little messy, because you already have a family and children. It’s quite an ordeal. But then I really began to understand that, first of all, I very much wanted to get to know people. I’d been quite distant from them. There was something there. I felt as though I was constantly hiding secrets. Slowly, things began to change. Then I started studying astrology. It took me a few years. I began writing and studying. I went to study therapy, and then this and that. I studied a great deal. I was constantly searching, constantly searching. By the way, I’m still searching today. Apparently it’s part of who I am. Then, amid all that upheaval—I’ve told this story so many times, so I won’t go into it—I lost everything I owned: my house, my savings, all of it. And I gained an enormous amount of debt. I got divorced. All that upheaval wasn’t connected to the divorce, but it happened afterward. And I think that at the time, although I grew up in a Chabad home and even went to Bais Yaakov, then attended Bais Rivkah for high school, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu had always been part of my life, it was like two separate channels. On one channel was Hakadosh Boruch Hu: davening, shul, Shabbos, tznius, mitzvos. On the other was life, and in life, if you don’t do anything, nothing happens. I’m at the center. It’s my responsibility to make things happen. I was obsessed with control, obsessed with plans, and so on. Then came this journey of sheer survival, living without anything to lean on. No husband, no steady job, no house registered in my name. And part of the reason I lost

06:47 Speaker 2 everything I had was that I’d done foolish things. So I didn’t tell anyone anything. I thought, “Oh my goodness, I’m shattering this image of perfection I had in my head.” Of course, I was the only one who thought I had to be perfect. Nobody else thought I was supposed to be perfect. Sorry—I knew I wasn’t perfect. I knew I was far from it, but I felt as though people expected it of me. So I had no one to talk to. Then I began a process of discovering Hakadosh Boruch Hu, discovering emunah, and trying to find another source of support, because you can’t live without something to lean on. So I turned to the teachings about the soul, to Tanya and Chassidus. I studied and studied and studied and studied, but I didn’t get there. For me, “getting there” meant solving my problems, and I couldn’t solve them. I was enriched and I grew, but my financial situation didn’t change, and nothing happened. I always say that all kinds of things can happen in your life, but if there’s still an issue you need to resolve, none of it will help. Boruch Hashem, I met the man who has now been my husband for almost nine years. There was a tremendous miracle in that marriage, because when I got divorced, I felt like the very definition of “Who would marry you?” But I married someone whose finances were in an even bigger mess than mine. Because if there’s something you need to work through, it keeps coming up. But it was really nice to keep working through it together. You know, it was familiar. It had already become a kind of comfort zone. Not “kind of”—it was my comfort zone. How do you deal with money problems? Come to me; I’ll guide you through it. Then one morning my husband came home from shul

08:22 Speaker 2 and told me he’d heard about a very effective segulah for parnassah. Wow, we were really into segulos at the time. You know how it is: after a week of that, you’re an expert on segulos. I remember saying to him, “Listen, if it doesn’t involve garlic or anything like that, I’m with you.” He said, “No, no, no, no garlic. You have to study ten lines of Rabbeinu Bachya’s Shaar Habitachon every day, and all your financial problems will be solved.” I admit I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn’t know what Shaar Habitachon was. I had no idea what Chovos Halevavos was. I don’t know why we don’t study Shaar Habitachon in Chabad—or Chovos Halevavos in general.

09:00 Speaker 3 I studied Chovos Halevavos in high school.

09:01 Speaker 2 Really? I didn’t.

09:02 Speaker 3 Yes, it probably came in and then got cut back again.

09:05 Speaker 2 Exactly. When I was in high school, we didn’t have it.

09:07 Speaker 3 Jewish thought as part of the...

09:08 Speaker 2 Right. We didn’t have it then. No, I don’t remember having Jewish thought at all, but never mind. And you know, there’s also this thing where, when you’re connected to Tanya and Chassidus, you look at anything that isn’t directly related and say, “Well, I have so much to learn. Why should I learn this in particular?” Yes, okay, there’s no rush, but apparently something needed to happen. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu arranged for me, literally a day or two later, to suddenly see a letter from the Rebbe in Igros Kodesh about studying Shaar Habitachon. I said, “I’ve never even heard of it.” And I really love learning, so I said, “Okay, I’ll start learning.” It turned my world upside down. It turned my world upside down. Suddenly I understood that my main problem was that I was sitting in the boss’s chair. I was doing everything I needed to do, but I believed in Hakadosh Boruch Hu the way a boss trusts his employee to do what he wants properly. I was the boss, so even when things didn’t work out, the responsibility was mine. The failure had my name on it. When we succeed, we’re more generous. We’re very generous when we win: “Thank You, Hakadosh Boruch Hu,” a psalm of thanksgiving. But when we fail, it’s us. And really, it was an incredible process. I began to feel that although things on the outside weren’t changing, I was changing. And I really love teaching. So after a few months of delving into it, I invited some friends over. I said, “Listen, you don’t understand—you have to learn this.” They came to my house, and we started learning once a week. And some incredible things came up. Then COVID came, and we had to disband the group. But

11:03 Speaker 2 what I suddenly began to see around me was that people were finding themselves in the situation I’d already been in for a decade: living without anything to lean on, without anything you could rely on in terms of...

11:15 Speaker 3 Now everything is falling apart for everyone.

11:16 Speaker 2 Everything fell apart. So I said, “Hello, come on—I can teach you. I can teach you how to live with this, and live well with it. I have a gift to share.” I remember feeling very strongly, “If not for a time like this...” Like, there was something here. And without thinking too much about it, I told myself, “Okay, every day I’ll sit down and write a short lesson, just three or four minutes on Shaar Habitachon, and send it to people on WhatsApp.” Then I was talking with some friends and said, “Wait, some people don’t have the patience to read, so I’ll record myself too.” Just on my phone. Not...

11:53 Speaker 3 A recording.

11:53 Speaker 2 Yes, no special equipment. It was something I did on the spur of the moment. I wrote a Facebook post and said, “Listen, I have this to offer. Anyone who wants to join, come join.” I couldn’t believe it. One group filled up, and then another. I started sending the lessons, and it really was every single day: sitting down to write. I didn’t know where it would lead, how many lessons there would be, or what would happen. Just sit down each day, write a piece, send it, record it, send it. Today, three years later, there are twenty-seven full WhatsApp groups.

12:29 Speaker 3 Incredible.

12:29 Speaker 2 And today each group has around five hundred women. Men too, by the way—lots of men. In the end, it became ninety lessons, ninety days to peace of... Eventually it also became a book, 90 Days to Peace of Mind. It’s incredible. Something you can’t really comprehend or take in.

12:49 Speaker 3 So you’re basically taking what’s written in the book and making it...

12:52 Speaker 2 You see, Shaar Habitachon is a translation from Arabic.

12:56 Speaker 3 Oh, I didn’t know that.

12:57 Speaker 2 Yes. Rabbeinu Bachya wrote it in Arabic more than a thousand years ago. Let’s just say that someone studying Shaar Habitachon in the original translation still feels like they’re reading Arabic. They have no idea what... It’s very hard to understand.

13:09 Speaker 3 Like with so many translated books—it feels that way.

13:11 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, the language feels so heavy and all that. No one had really done anything with it. And so many people contacted me and said, “All these years...” Now, I know where my talent lies. My talent is taking abstract things and making them readable, in simple language. I have no problem with sophisticated sentence structure, but the language is easy to understand. I don’t like lofty words. I don’t like it when, you know, people write and I don’t feel—

13:40 Speaker 3 You make it accessible.

13:41 Speaker 2 Yes. People don’t know what you want from them. I mean, come on, what do you actually want me to do? And on the practical side, because I’m a coach, because I’m a therapist, because my whole life is about working with people to help them make changes—that’s essentially what I did with the material. I took it, made it accessible, and turned it into: “Okay, what do we do with this now?” And baruch Hashem, there’s already another book, because after I finished writing the ninety lessons, I said, “We can’t stop there,” and once a week—

14:05 Speaker 3 I’m taking a peek at it here while we talk.

14:07 Speaker 2 Yes, once a week I began writing a piece called “L’yesser Bitachon.” And in it I take... You see, when you run twenty-seven groups with thousands of women and men, you’re constantly getting questions. Those questions forced me to go deeper and deeper and to keep learning. I’m very connected to Chassidus. I’m in love with Chassidus. So I really delved into it. You see, Shaar Habitachon is the foundation. What Shaar Habitachon does, essentially, is act like an anti-anxiety pill. It’s less about “Think good and it will be good,” which is more active. It’s about being at peace. Be at peace. Someone is running your life. Set aside what I want, what I don’t want, what I think... Put your own desires aside. You know, all the New Age ideas today—and they’re very much present in Chassidus too—but that’s step two.

14:59 Speaker 3 Chassidus moves you to action.

15:02 Speaker 2 It moves you to action.

15:02 Speaker 3 Yes.

15:03 Speaker 2 But if you’re moved to act from a place of anxiety, nothing happens. The problem is that we’re all trying to act without first establishing that foundation. That’s why, when people approached the Rebbe—and still approach the Rebbe—about anxiety and fears, he told them to study Shaar Habitachon. Why did he tell them that? First, deal with the anxiety. Whether you get what you want or don’t get what you want isn’t the point. Everything is okay. And by the way, that’s what the Alter Rebbe says in Igeres Hakodesh, chapter 11, “Lehaskilcha Binah.” He says that if you insist that your present reality is good, it will be good. Don’t think about what will happen; don’t get caught up in all kinds of troubling thoughts. Right now, it’s good, and that itself will bring about good. So it doesn’t matter whether you achieved your goal or not. None of that matters. It’s good. Why is it good? Because it comes from Hashem. First, get to a place of peace of mind. Then you become more filled with trust, more at peace, and you’re genuinely freer to focus on your actions rather than the results. We focus on results all day long, and we need to stop. We need to focus on our actions. You can’t take effective action when the outcome is running your life, because then you’re being driven by fear, anxiety, and things you really can’t control. Women come to me who are more connected to the active side of bitachon: “Do this, think good thoughts, visualize, do guided imagery, manifest...” You know all today’s buzzwords. At first, it’s incredibly exciting. But then they come to me with very severe anxiety. Because what’s happening there? Once again, the responsibility for your life is on your shoulders. One woman told me, “Listen—”

16:47 Speaker 4 And the gap grows because of your expectations.

16:49 Speaker 2 She told me, “Listen, I built my business through manifestation and all of that, but I don’t feel well now. What’s going to happen? We won’t have anything to eat because I don’t feel well.” I told her, “There you are, back at the starting point: you think you’re the one bringing the family’s livelihood home. You’re not the one bringing the family’s livelihood home.”

17:04 Speaker 4 You can’t leave that unresolved.

17:06 Speaker 2 First of all, you have to be in a place of peace of mind: everything I have is the best there is, and the best thing for me, because Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave it to me, and I’m content and happy. Yes, from time to time you can set out on a journey of creating your own reality and go into places where you’re not sure where you’ll end up. But you still know there’s a safety net there telling you: listen, even if you don’t succeed, everything is okay, everything is fine, everything is wonderful, because it’s Hashem’s will, and Hashem’s will is the very best thing.

17:36 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s amazing. It’s a gift.

17:38 Speaker 2 It’s a gift, and it’s work that never ends. I find myself knowing, knowing, knowing. Do you know the story about the cat and Rabbi Yochanan—Rabbi Yonasan Eibeschutz? I keep coming back to it.

17:48 Speaker 4 It sounds familiar.

17:49 Speaker 2 There was once some sort of discussion among sages—sorry. There was once a king who invited his sages to debate: which is stronger, nature or education? All the sages said that education wins over everything. They also invited Rabbi Yonasan Eibeschutz, and he said, he said nature. Nature is strong—the animal soul.

18:13 Speaker 4 Yes.

18:15 Speaker 2 And they were told, go home, okay, find proof, and come back in a month. He, of course, went home and did nothing, because it was obvious to him. He didn’t need to look for proof. Then one day there’s a knock at his door, and they say, a month has passed, come back. He gets ready and takes his snuffbox, and he doesn’t notice that a mouse has gotten inside. He closes it, puts it in his pocket, and arrives. The sages arrive too, and they’ve brought a cat—a cat they’ve turned into a waiter. This cat is wearing a waiter’s suit, walking on two legs and serving food, and wow, everyone is beside themselves. Rabbi Yonasan Eibeschutz is sitting there, probably a little astonished himself, so he decides to take a sniff of snuff. He opens the box, and a mouse jumps out. The cat sees the mouse, throws the—goes right back to being a cat. And we keep going back to being cats. There were times, I remember, after that first period of studying Shaar Habitachon intensively, when I really felt a change. Things were happening that once would have crushed me, and I was, wow, I’m actually...

19:11 Speaker 4 How exciting to feel that.

19:12 Speaker 2 It’s incredibly exciting. But beyond the excitement, I’d already pictured myself sitting with Rabbeinu Bachya at some table for the people who had beaten the system, among all the... Because what do you mean, I’d won? And then something happened, just something so minor and small. And I fell apart. I went back to being a cat chasing mice and meowing. Then I understood, first of all, not to get carried away with myself, not to get carried away with myself, because this is something that never ends. And it’s work that requires... That’s why, by the way, some people have already read my book and have that, but they stay in the groups. Because the whole idea of the group is that every morning you get that little ping from the message. You study for three or four minutes, and it sort of brings you back to an awareness of—

20:01 Speaker 4 It centers you.

20:02 Speaker 2 It centers you. Yes.

20:05 Speaker 4 Wait, and you do all this alongside—

20:07 Speaker 2 My work.

20:07 Speaker 4 Astrology.

20:08 Speaker 2 Yes, I also do assessments using—

20:11 Speaker 4 What’s the difference between astrology and numerology?

20:14 Speaker 2 Look, numerology is numbers. They do all kinds of numerical calculations that I don’t really understand. It’s another method of assessment, but it’s based on numbers. I can tell you that each of the methods really is different. It wouldn’t be fair for me to say that I feel astrology offers depths nothing else can offer, because I’m biased, so—

20:37 Speaker 4 Fair enough.

20:38 Speaker 2 Don’t take my word for it, yes. Everyone should do what... whatever they connect with, and—

20:41 Speaker 4 No, but what’s the difference? What does astrology bring?

20:43 Speaker 2 Astrolog—so look, what astrology brings is this: it gives you a picture... When Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, He gave the system of stars and constellations the role of conveying the information, turning it into nature and bringing it into the world. The Divine plan is spiritual, while this world is limited. There needs to be some sort of system that mediates between the Divine will, which is spiritual, and a limited world. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu essentially encoded it—it’s like a computer program into which Hakadosh Boruch Hu encoded the journey. The overall journey of the world and also the unique journey of each of us. A person’s unique journey includes their character traits, where they’ll grow up and who will raise them, what crises they’ve come to deal with, what they’ve come to rectify, what their shlichus is, and absolutely everything, everything, everything. Now, it took me time to decide that I really wanted to take astrology more seriously, because there are things in it that can conflict with Judaism and even with halachah. For example, not touching anything to do with predicting the future.

21:48 Speaker 4 “You shall not practice divination.”

21:48 Speaker 2 It’s forbidden. Yes, it’s “You shall be wholehearted with Hashem your G-d.” It’s a matter of halachah, it’s—

21:52 Speaker 4 That applies to astrology too.

21:53 Speaker 2 Of course.

21:53 Speaker 4 You meet people who do it, though.

21:55 Speaker 2 People do it, and good luck to them, but I don’t.

21:58 Speaker 4 Meaning you could, if you wanted to.

22:01 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you honestly that you can’t. I’ll give you an example. Many, many, many years ago, there was an election in which all the astrologers sat in the radio and television studios and said Bibi Netanyahu would win, because all the favorable planets were very, very prominent in his birth chart. What happened in the end was that he didn’t succeed, he wasn’t elected, and he took his wife, may she live and be well, to the United States and went on a tour from university to university. That’s how he made his fortune.

22:40 Speaker 4 Those were the fast-moving planets.

22:41 Speaker 2 Exactly. Now, why can’t I read the future? Because I have no way of knowing all the possibilities... I mean, anything can manifest in so many different ways. And when I try to predict it, I also box the person in. I also start setting up self-fulfilling prophecies. I’m just narrowing the possibilities and limiting myself. And it’s... why?

23:05 Speaker 4 That really is “You shall not practice divination.” It’s a kind of guessing.

23:07 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s guessing, and there’s no, I mean—

23:08 Speaker 4 Certainty is only about the past.

23:09 Speaker 2 It’s a hit-or-miss approach. Now, I understand people who really want this, and I can tell you I could have made a lot of money.

23:15 Speaker 4 Right, that’s what I was going to say. There’s money in it.

23:16 Speaker 2 A great deal of money.

23:17 Speaker 4 Who doesn’t want to know what will happen?

23:19 Speaker 2 But put that aside. The one who gives us our livelihood is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You have to do what you believe in and think is right. First of all, I help people sort things out and connect with who they are, because of my own journey of searching for who I am and everything I went through in that search. To be themselves, to accept themselves. To understand that if the Creator gave you this, then it’s exactly right for you. So that’s the first thing. When you’re ready to accept who you are and be yourself, you’re ready to carry out your shlichus in the world. The problem is that you try to be other people, and then it doesn’t work out. It just doesn’t work. You...

24:00 Speaker 4 Especially today, when we can spend every day in dozens of other people’s homes, just seeing what goes on there, and—

24:06 Speaker 2 Exactly.

24:06 Speaker 4 What she does and what she doesn’t do.

24:07 Speaker 2 And it’s terribly hard, because you say, okay, but that looks so much more photogenic to me. That looks so much more... And look, she’s succeeded. So maybe I’ll try to be her. So first of all, you really have to understand that when you try to be someone else, you’re doing several things. If you try to be someone else, it means you’re not being yourself, and then you harm the wholeness of the world. The world is whole at any given moment when each person here is doing what they need to do. You’re actually throwing the world out of balance.

24:31 Speaker 4 Wow.

24:32 Speaker 2 And the second thing is that you’re not carrying out your shlichus. You’re not fulfilled, you’re not happy. You know, it’s like going to IKEA to buy a wardrobe and taking the shelves and doors and everything you need, but then deciding to get the screws and nuts and all that somewhere else because they look much better to you. Then you can’t put the wardrobe together.

24:51 Speaker 4 Our wholeness actually depends on—

24:53 Speaker 2 By agreeing to accept ourselves, to be connected to who we are, and to act regardless of what the world thinks we should do—but instead ask, “Who are you? Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu send you?” The second thing is really uncovering the deeper parts of the subconscious that have such a strong influence on us: our inner desires, our drives, our needs—all those things that aren’t necessarily in our conscious awareness.

25:18 Speaker 4 Most people who come to you—do you find that they identify with what you say?

25:21 Speaker 2 Very much.

25:22 Speaker 4 And recognize it in themselves?

25:23 Speaker 2 Look, because I’ve already—

25:23 Speaker 4 Or are they surprised?

25:24 Speaker 2 Look, nobody is floored by what I say about their abilities and talents, even—

25:28 Speaker 4 Do you encounter resistance? Like, “No, I’m not like that.”

25:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:31 Speaker 4 “Don’t say that about me.”

25:33 Speaker 2 Look, I do encounter that. A lot of the time, I start by saying: there’s no good, no bad, no judgment. Everything you have is what’s best for you. And when people don’t feel judged, they’re less resistant.

25:46 Speaker 4 You defuse it from the start.

25:47 Speaker 2 Right, I defuse it from the start. I say that, ultimately, it all comes down to what you decide to do with a character trait. Every trait sits on a spectrum. You can use it in a way that motivates you, does you good, and helps you move forward. If it’s at the other end, it simply pulls you down and—

26:01 Speaker 4 Yes.

26:02 Speaker 2 Does something harmful. And because I’ve been working in this field for well over a decade, I’m used to getting calls from people a year later, two years later, five years later, saying, “Listen, you were right.”

26:14 Speaker 4 It takes time for things to sink in.

26:15 Speaker 2 It does. And that’s okay. I don’t argue; I really don’t argue.

26:19 Speaker 4 It’s not simple, it’s—

26:19 Speaker 2 It’s not simple. I try very hard to use the meeting to lift people up, not bring them down. I don’t tell people, “Let’s look for what you don’t have and focus on that.” Instead, I say, “Let’s see what you do have, and work with it.”

26:33 Speaker 4 Yes.

26:34 Speaker 2 That’s really what matters.

26:35 Speaker 4 If I understand correctly, my exact time of birth and where each celestial body was positioned—

26:43 Speaker 2 The date and time give an exact picture of where the celestial bodies were positioned at the moment I was born. Through that, I can understand what was imprinted at that moment. And—

26:57 Speaker 4 Say they had induced labor and I’d been born two hours earlier.

27:01 Speaker 2 Then that’s what was meant to happen. Look, one of the things Rabbeinu Bachya—

27:04 Speaker 4 But that would have been an individual decision, without—

27:05 Speaker 2 So listen. One of the things Rabbeinu Bachya teaches in Shaar Habitachon—and it really changes your life—is this: when we look at the world, we see actions, and then results that follow those actions. In other words, I had labor induced, and because of that, my daughter was born now instead of two days from now.

27:21 Speaker 4 Which does happen.

27:22 Speaker 2 Right. The truth is, everything was determined during the Six Days of Creation. The fact that my daughter would be born today was determined then. To make that happen, Hakadosh Boruch Hu put the idea into my head, or into the doctor’s head, or brought about a medical situation that meant I had to induce labor so my daughter would be born today. It’s not that—you know, after the Meron tragedy, I saw a video of Rabbi Manis, and what he said was so deeply imprinted on my mind. He tells the story of a young woman in the United States who once sent a letter to the Rebbe. She wrote that their entire community was broken. They had suffered a terrible, terrible tragedy. For many years, they had raised money to write a Torah scroll, and then for several months everyone had been involved in preparing the celebration to welcome the Torah scroll. They worked and toiled and spent money, and everyone was so happy and excited. The day of the celebration arrived. Everyone gathered and sat down to write the final letters, and in the middle of it, one of the women in the community, a young woman, collapsed on the floor and died. Of course, there was no celebration after that. But beyond that, they were devastated. Why was Hashem doing this to them? Why was He punishing them? What did He want? What had they done wrong? And then the Rebbe—listen, this gives me chills every time. The Rebbe’s way of looking at it is almost beyond comprehension. He told her: “The day a person dies is determined before they’re even born. This woman’s death wasn’t a surprise. But apparently her soul was so lofty that Hakadosh Boruch Hu didn’t want her to depart without anything special. He wanted her to have

29:14 Speaker 2 a whole production—a production, but a sacred one.” So he said: “It’s not that she disrupted your plans. For months, you were actually working to prepare the occasion on which her soul would leave this world.”

29:28 Speaker 5 Oh my goodness. That’s incredible.

29:31 Speaker 2 When you really take that in, you realize that if I’m late getting somewhere, I’m not actually late. I arrived at precisely the time I was meant to arrive. And if a truck blocked my way, that’s because Hakadosh Boruch Hu, Who arranges all causes, arranged it. What does it mean that He arranges all causes? He sets things in motion so that they happen the way He wants. There’s no such thing as something happening here that He doesn’t want.

29:52 Speaker 5 That changes your life too, really.

29:54 Speaker 2 Bingo! That’s what Shaar Habitachon does. We’re constantly anxious because we think we’re responsible for the outcome. When will I get there? How will I get there? Control.

30:03 Speaker 5 That’s the key word.

30:04 Speaker 2 Yes. But if you say, “What needs to happen has already been determined,” then what’s left for me—and, by the way, it’s a great deal—is to see how I can do what I need to do as well as possible. That’s why we came down into this world: to act. We didn’t come here to produce outcomes. The outcomes are already here. They’re here. The point is that if you move the outcome out of the way, you can make much better decisions. You can be much truer to yourself. You can be much truer to the Torah, to your values, to all of that, because you’re not under pressure about the outcome.

30:38 Speaker 5 You clear away all the...

30:39 Speaker 2 All the—

30:40 Speaker 5 Distracting noise.

30:41 Speaker 2 All of it, yes, and then you can soar. When you first tell people this, they say, “Wait, if everything’s predetermined, then what? What am I doing here?”

30:49 Speaker 5 What’s left for me?

30:50 Speaker 2 What’s left for me? We have so much to do.

30:54 Speaker 5 That’s really our work.

30:55 Speaker 2 That’s our work, but we can do it with so much more enjoyment, so much more joy, so much more enthusiasm. I no longer work at what people say you have to do to make money. I work at what I love.

31:05 Speaker 5 Yes. Tell me, I’m curious: say there are two adjacent delivery rooms, and two children are born at exactly the same moment. Do they really have things in common?

31:15 Speaker 2 They have a great deal in common. They share the same foundation.

31:18 Speaker 5 That’s amazing, that’s...

31:18 Speaker 2 But their free choice is different. They have different souls. I can’t see a person’s soul; I can see their potential. What happens with that potential? That depends on the soul. We know that every soul comes from a different place, a different level, a different quality, and free choice also depends on the soul.

31:38 Speaker 5 There’s also the genetic component.

31:40 Speaker 2 The genetic component is—

31:41 Speaker 5 How does that not conflict with this?

31:42 Speaker 2 Because many people have similar genetics, but they make different choices.

31:49 Speaker 5 So, say a particular character trait is very prominent in a family, but each person was born on a different date and at a different time.

31:54 Speaker 2 Then you really will see each member of the family develop differently. The prominent trait remains, but it expresses itself in a different way. That’s the element of free choice.

32:06 Speaker 5 Wow, that’s fascinating.

32:08 Speaker 2 Yes, it is fascinating.

32:09 Speaker 5 Let’s tell everyone that before we recorded this, we sat here for half an hour and Bas Sheva did a—what’s it called? Opened my astrological chart.

32:17 Speaker 2 Opened an astrological chart, yes.

32:19 Speaker 5 And it was fascinating. The thing is, it’s so straightforward. It’s like open-heart surgery: “You’re like this, and this, and this,” and you say, “Wow, yes, and yes, and yes, and yes, and yes.” It’s amazing. And a question occurred to me: you’ve presumably done this for your relatives too, for your husband.

32:37 Speaker 2 It’s hard. It’s hard. I can tell you that, for example, I send my children to someone else. I tell them, “Go to someone else. I can’t do it.”

32:43 Speaker 5 But isn’t it something that—if you see a date of birth, doesn’t it—

32:47 Speaker 2 I analyze it. What I do, essentially, is look at the data and give my interpretation. I definitely bring my own interpretation to it, along with my coaching and therapeutic tools, of course. But I also bring my own interpretation, the way I see things. When it’s someone close to your heart, it clouds your vision. There’s no getting around that.

33:09 Speaker 5 But beyond that, a person who’s had an assessment with you—

33:13 Speaker 2 Yes.

33:13 Speaker 5 Is that what you call it, an assessment?

33:14 Speaker 2 Yes, an assessment.

33:15 Speaker 5 And then you’re in touch with them afterward. Isn’t it hard to interact with them when you know all that’s going on behind the scenes?

33:20 Speaker 2 I have surprises for you. Look, I have surprises—

33:22 Speaker 5 That’s really hard.

33:22 Speaker 2 No. So let’s start with this: sometimes people come to me whom I think I know—and I say “think” I know them. That should set off a red warning light for all of us.

33:30 Speaker 5 Yes.

33:31 Speaker 2 I think I know them, and then they come to me to have their chart done, and I say, “Oh my gosh.”

33:35 Speaker 5 How interesting.

33:36 Speaker 2 They’re not at all what I thought. It really means we need to stop making assumptions. We’re constantly making assumptions about people, when we should ask, “Why do you do what you do?” Most of the time, we’d be very surprised by what we hear. But we don’t ask. We make assumptions and do all sorts of foolish things and make mistakes about—

33:57 Speaker 5 On autopilot.

33:58 Speaker 2 On autopilot, yes. I learned—look, I learned this mainly when I studied therapy: to learn how to detach. When I first started working in astrology and this whole field, I didn’t know how to detach, and I’d walk around carrying other people’s burdens. People came to me with difficult stories. Look, over the last three years, because of the Shaar Habitachon project too, I get messages several times a day from people dealing with terrible things, okay? They ask me for advice and encouragement—“Help me stay strong”—all sorts of things. If you don’t set boundaries and detach, you drown.

34:39 Speaker 5 You can’t take all of that in.

34:40 Speaker 2 At first, I really felt like I was—gradually, I started putting filters in place. With this project too, for example, I put filters in place to the point that just recently I hired a secretarial service. I can’t do it anymore; I’m drowning. I feel overwhelmed, and I understand that ultimately it affects the quality of what I can do, because I’m walking around with people’s stories and burdens. You learn to separate yourself from it. So yes, I might see a woman at a wedding, and we’ll smile at each other. By the way, I would never go up to her and ask, “So what happened with what you told me about?” I don’t know whether she’s ready for that or wants it, and a wedding certainly isn’t the right time for it. And even if someone comes up to me at a wedding and asks me about it, I say, “Come on—”

35:26 Speaker 5 This isn’t the time.

35:26 Speaker 2 This isn’t the time. This isn’t the time. It’s not appropriate. It’s... yes.

35:30 Speaker 5 How interesting.

35:30 Speaker 2 Boundaries.

35:32 Speaker 5 Wow. So you—but there really are people in the world whom you know inside out. That’s interesting.

35:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:38 Speaker 5 I mean, in the end, it’s part of you.

35:42 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

35:44 Speaker 5 You can’t really—

35:45 Speaker 2 I can tell you that—I can tell you that, for example, one—

35:47 Speaker 5 Including yourself, by the way.

35:49 Speaker 2 I deal with myself less. I can’t do it for myself. Even if I spent a lot of time digging into it... You know, I can tell you that—

35:55 Speaker 5 Oh, that’s kind of scary.

35:56 Speaker 2 Right. I can tell you, I used to be more the type to dig into myself. Once I opened Igros Kodesh and saw a letter in which the Rebbe wrote to a woman who kept digging into things that she needed to stop, to stop overdoing it. And I understood that he was speaking to me, saying, “Bas Sheva, enough. Enough. Just let it go.”

36:22 Speaker 5 Just know.

36:22 Speaker 2 So no, I don’t do that. I really don’t. Even today, I’ll go to another woman—when I need answers, I go to someone else. I can’t do it for myself. And it’s all very, very, very specific. Not anymore, you know. Even when I work with people—and because I’m a coach too, though I’m also a therapist, I connect less with therapy these days—people ask me how many sessions, and I tell them, “Only as many as we need.” I don’t even say in advance. I can tell you that most people come to me three or four times, five at most, and that’s it. Because, okay, you buy a package of ten sessions, maybe you even get a five-percent discount, and then you find yourself sitting there without even knowing what you want to say. You have nothing left to say, but you sit because you’re supposed to sit. Why? Let’s resolve the issues. There are emotional processes that are important, and those really are done with therapists. Now, I assume there are a lot of coaches listening who may want to kill me, and that’s okay. This is me and my approach. It doesn’t mean it’s the absolute truth or the only right way. It’s mine.

37:24 Speaker 5 It doesn’t seem logical, because—

37:25 Speaker 2 That’s okay. No, it’s okay. Some people need the process.

37:28 Speaker 5 No, but a process in general—how can you fit it into fixed slots?

37:31 Speaker 2 Okay, fine. You know, I don’t want to be careless about these things, G-d forbid. I always tell people, “This is my way. This is who I am.” Some people do need more, so they simply aren’t my clients. They don’t come to me. That’s okay.

37:44 Speaker 5 Yes. You tell them that up front, and people...

37:47 Speaker 2 Yes, I tell people up front.

37:48 Speaker 5 Decide for themselves.

37:49 Speaker 2 If you’re looking for a long process, I’m less the person for that. And by the way, studying Shaar Habitachon helped me a great deal to define what I want. Because you can say to people, “Yes, yes, yes, let’s do a long process. Let’s fill up the calendar so I’ll have money, so my livelihood will be secure.” I used to be more in that place. Today I say no. I’ll have what I need. I need to do what I’m meant to do.

38:11 Speaker 5 You have to live what you teach.

38:13 Speaker 2 And Hakadosh Boruch Hu—wow, He loves me.

38:14 Speaker 5 So you’re really the first to benefit from all the...

38:17 Speaker 2 For now I’m still in the internship stage. I can’t tell you yet whether there’ll be profits too. But whenever I face something, I say to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Okay, I understand that You want me to experience this firsthand. If I don’t experience it firsthand, I won’t be able to help other people.”

38:32 Speaker 5 You need to understand first of all...

38:33 Speaker 2 So, baruch Hashem, I already tell people: don’t come to me with health issues. Baruch Hashem, I don’t want firsthand experience with those. But yes, money, business, all those areas—that’s absolutely my internship.

38:44 Speaker 5 So someone runs into some kind of... Who comes to you? For what reason? How does...

38:49 Speaker 2 Are you talking about astrology?

38:51 Speaker 5 Do you work with the two things separately? How does it work?

38:53 Speaker 2 Look, today it’s all together.

38:54 Speaker 5 I mean, what do you do? What does your day look like?

38:56 Speaker 2 Here’s what I do. I get up in the morning, and my tzedakah for the morning is sending each of twenty-seven groups its own particular lesson. That’s the whole idea of twenty-seven groups. I can’t even combine them into one community, because each group is at a different point. New women keep joining.

39:14 Speaker 5 Oh, wow, you have to keep track...

39:14 Speaker 2 You have to keep track, and I’m not willing to hand that over. Even though I have a secretarial service now, when people ask me, I tell them, “Listen, this is my tzedakah first thing in the morning.” I get up and send them out. And one of the fascinating things is that, in these groups, I’m also selling a book. You might think I should tell people, “I’m not giving you this for free anymore.” But the two things have nothing to do with each other, and I see that there really is no connection. People come and buy the book. I don’t bring the business side into this at all. I get up in the morning and send out the lessons. Twenty-seven of them; it takes me about twenty, twenty-five minutes. At the bottom of the lessons, it does say: if you’d like coaching, an assessment, a lecture, and so on, you can contact me. There’s no charge to participate in the groups. And that’s it. Then I have astrology appointments with people, I coach, and I give lectures and workshops. I spend a lot of time sitting and preparing lessons. I study a lot, because I also try to make a video at least once a week, and once a week I send out a written text. I need to prepare it, and I need to study in order to prepare it, because I always try somehow to connect it either to the weekly parsha or to something current. So it’s a lot. I’m constantly studying so I’ll have something to draw on too. You can’t just keep writing—

40:23 Speaker 5 You have to fill yourself up.

40:24 Speaker 2 Fill myself up. Yes, so that’s what I do.

40:27 Speaker 5 And the coaching—say I come to you for coaching. Do you use all the tools you know, including psychology?

40:33 Speaker 2 So look, astrology isn’t essential. I mean, you can come for coaching without astrology. Some people don’t connect with astrology, and that’s fine, so they simply go through a coaching process like they would with any other coach. I can tell you, though, that people sit down across from me and start talking, and right away I’m thinking, “Okay, it’s this, this, and this.” It just happens, and I give them my assessment verbally. And it’s amazing: if they do eventually decide they want it, and I open up a chart, I say, “Oops, bingo! That’s exactly what I thought.” Some people come for one-off sessions, and by the way, that’s what I love most. I mean consultations. I already have a whole network of professionals I refer people to, because different things suit different people. Some people, for example, are too clever for talk therapy or verbal coaching. They have an answer for everything. They idealize and rationalize everything, and... So I might send them to art therapy or body-based therapy—whatever suits that person. Some people do come for several sessions, and then we really go through a process of making a vision list. You know, all the things you do in coaching. Some people only come for one-off consultations without astrology. They’re facing some difficulty in life and want me to help them, but not through astrology. Or I’ve already done their astrological chart once, and now they just want to consult with me every few months or every few weeks.

41:58 Speaker 5 A kind of general ongoing support.

42:01 Speaker 2 What I love most is giving talks and teaching.

42:05 Speaker 5 So what do you give talks about? What do you teach, for example?

42:07 Speaker 2 First of all, my talk is about my personal story. I tell what I told you, and it becomes a whole journey. I also describe the entire personal process I went through, which ultimately conveys the insights of Shaar Habitachon (Gate of Trust). I describe how I was always so controlling, with an Excel spreadsheet. Everything was written down, everything was recorded, everything was planned—and in the end, things happened differently from how I’d thought. Something would happen in a truly miraculous way, and I’d say, “Thank You, Hashem, thank You, Hashem, thank You, Hashem,” and immediately open a new Excel spreadsheet. Somehow those two things didn’t connect for me. They didn’t connect, and this happens to us all the time. Say women consult me about things, and I work with them on this question of trust and letting go. They do it, and amazing things happen. Then a month later they call me from exactly the same place. It happens to me too, as though I’ve forgotten. Once again I say, “If I don’t do it, if I don’t control it, if I don’t do this or that, it won’t happen.”

43:08 Speaker 5 Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu create us this way? We have to keep working at it all the time.

43:12 Speaker 2 Because every time you manage to rise above your nature, you’ve fulfilled the purpose of your existence. That’s what He wants.

43:19 Speaker 5 Yes.

43:19 Speaker 2 If you do it, it works, and that’s the end of it, what else is there for you to do here?

43:23 Speaker 5 Right.

43:24 Speaker 2 That’s the whole point. That’s the purpose.

43:25 Speaker 5 You just have to take that in.

43:28 Speaker 2 You take it in, but because it goes against your nature, you have to work on it again each time. It never ends. It’s work that never ends.

43:34 Speaker 5 Exactly.

43:35 Speaker 2 It’s true that it gets easier and quicker. These days, if I fall... Look, I can say about myself—and I say this carefully, because some people might not understand—that I really like being in that place. I really like feeling sorry for myself. I really like feeling miserable. There’s something so warm and comforting about it. And it used to be... Since I started studying Shaar Habitachon, though, it’s been taken away from me in a very... Like, how can you cry and feel sorry for yourself if everything is actually good? I can tell you that sometimes I deliberately say to my husband, “Listen, I need ten minutes. Ten minutes of self-pity.”

44:15 Speaker 5 Your dose.

44:16 Speaker 2 I miss it. You have to be careful, because it’s addictive.

44:22 Speaker 5 But that awareness is incredible.

44:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

44:24 Speaker 5 Even the fact that you—

44:25 Speaker 2 I don’t enjoy it anymore. I don’t enjoy it the way I used to, because I forget, I feel sorry for myself, and then it’s as though there’s a Bat-Sheva looking down at me from above, saying to me...

44:32 Speaker 5 You have nowhere to hide anymore.

44:33 Speaker 2 Seriously, like, “Tell me, what’s happened to you?”

44:36 Speaker 5 That’s the problem once we know something. That’s it, we can’t—

44:38 Speaker 2 It’s like there’s another, higher version of me looking at me. I try, but... She used to look at me with contempt. Today she looks at me and says, “Okay, I understand that this is what you need right now. Come on, it’s all right, take your time. I understand you.”

44:56 Speaker 5 Yes.

44:57 Speaker 2 Afterward we’ll get out of there together.

44:59 Speaker 5 Wow.

45:00 Speaker 2 Yes, we’ve started to love each other. The less... The idea is to learn to have a loving relationship with the undeveloped, even animalistic, parts of ourselves. To accept them and understand that—

45:14 Speaker 5 That kind of compassion.

45:14 Speaker 2 To approach that part with compassion and do the work there, because without compassion and acceptance, it doesn’t work.

45:21 Speaker 5 Do you see people who suddenly find their purpose in life once they get to know themselves on the inside?

45:27 Speaker 2 Wow, absolutely. People come back to me with amazing stories about things they’ve started doing. A lot of people have already found it, but they need encouragement. I mean, they come to me so I can reassure them that this really is the right thing. They say, “Listen, I knew everything you’re telling me, but I was afraid that maybe...” Because of the voices coming from outside, it’s hard for us to know with any certainty that this is it. “Someone told me one thing, someone else told me another, and maybe it’s this, and maybe I’m wrong.” They come to me, and before I’ve heard anything from them, I start by speaking from what I see. Then they say, “Listen, okay, that’s what I needed to hear.”

46:00 Speaker 5 I think there’s also a fear of closing other doors when you...

46:05 Speaker 2 That too, though not for everyone. There’s a fear that I’m wrong, that I’m doing the wrong thing, that I’ll make a fool of myself. What will people say? Very much so.

46:14 Speaker 5 And do you see that when people follow their gut feeling and their... they succeed?

46:20 Speaker 2 What do you mean by “succeed”?

46:21 Speaker 5 Succeed as in feeling satis... having a kind of peace of mind.

46:24 Speaker 2 Peace of mind comes from trust. No—peace of mind, I think, comes from trusting that at every stage of life you... Really, peace of mind is a result of that thought, and that’s also where joy and self-confidence come from: knowing that at every stage of life, you’re where you need to be, even if it isn’t exactly right, even if it isn’t what you expected, and that you have everything you need.

46:47 Speaker 5 But on the other hand, with my free choice I do need to steer things.

46:51 Speaker 2 That’s where you move forward from. That’s the foundation. I’m where I’m supposed to be right now, at this moment. I have everything I need right now, at this moment, and from there I move forward. Because when you think you’re not where you’re supposed to be, it’s terribly hard.

47:12 Speaker 5 So the past is Divine providence, and the future is free choice.

47:14 Speaker 2 I really think that the approach in Chassidus of holding opposites together is critical to a good life. It’s knowing that at any given moment you’re in the right place for you, and in another minute you’re meant to be in a better place.

47:26 Speaker 5 Wow. And that depends on us.

47:28 Speaker 2 On us.

47:29 Speaker 5 Because in a way, if I fall into saying, “Okay, everything is Divine providence, so whatever happens, happens, and it’s not in my hands,” that can lull me into passivity a little.

47:36 Speaker 2 Look, I can tell you I’ve been through all the... all the stages, so I recognize it very quickly. The first stage, when you learn about the attribute of trust and they tell you that... they tell you that everything that needs to happen happens, and so on—what do you actually do? You take all the things you can’t deal with and call them trust in Hashem.

47:56 Speaker 5 Right, so you’ve taken it to a very comfortable place.

47:58 Speaker 2 Yes. All of us, we’re very, very... I speak with women, and they tell me that in one area of life, a woman wants her husband to be like this and like that, and this and this and this. Then when I talk to her about other things, she says, “It’s Hashem’s will.” I tell her, “Okay, how wonderful that we met. How wonderful that you’ve met Him.” Suddenly you discover that—

48:15 Speaker 5 There’s an excuse for everything.

48:16 Speaker 2 Yes. So first of all, you really have to be very, very honest with yourself. Am I letting go because I’m saying, “Okay, I’ve done my best, and now I’m leaving the outcome to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and I’ll accept whatever He brings”? Or am I letting go because I’m being lazy, because I don’t have the strength to deal with it, because I’m afraid? When you first begin the journey of trusting in Hashem, you sort of stop doing things. You suddenly discover that you can do nothing and things will just happen. But the next stage of trust is actually that the more you do, the more trust it shows you have—but only if you’re doing it with peace of mind. Yes, but I really saw this in myself. I’m a real fanatic about doing things and being in control: if pushing hard doesn’t work, push harder, and all that. For years I tried to break through a financial glass ceiling in my earnings. Every morning I’d wake up with a new venture, a new idea, this and that. And I succeeded at what I did, but I didn’t break through that glass ceiling. Then I deliberately decided to give myself a year in which I wouldn’t initiate anything. It was hard as hell. I got a really nice tan, because you know my yard. I sat on the swing, and the glass ceiling broke: all kinds of offers came in. In other words, I wasn’t sitting there out of despair or because I couldn’t cope. I understood that I’d done everything I could. I’d opened doors, created vessels, done things. Now I was sitting and waiting for Hakadosh Boruch Hu to put in them what was needed.

49:53 Speaker 5 You made room, basically.

49:54 Speaker 2 I made room for Him. And incredible things happened. But when that year ended, I felt a little bored and wanted to do more. Only now I approached it from a different place. Today, when I do something, there’s no anxiety in it, because I tell myself it could happen without me, too. I simply enjoy doing it. I’ll get to where I want to be one way or another, but I don’t feel like sitting on the swing anymore. I want to create and talk to people and initiate things and do things—but from a place that’s more relaxed, more allowing, more open, and less anxious. And if one day I don’t feel like it, then that day I just don’t. Nothing will happen.

50:35 Speaker 5 That balance is amazing. That’s really the remedy.

50:38 Speaker 2 But every so often I feel I’ve shifted a little too far one way or the other, and I bring myself back into balance. It’s work that never ends.

50:44 Speaker 5 Yes, exactly. Wow. It’s interesting that you said earlier that you give your own interpretation of the chart.

50:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

50:53 Speaker 5 Which basically means that the more people you meet, the more you have—

50:56 Speaker 2 Right.

50:57 Speaker 5 Precision.

50:57 Speaker 2 Experience is really crucial here.

51:00 Speaker 5 So how did you do it at the beginning, for example?

51:02 Speaker 2 First of all, you charge less. You tell people, “Listen, I’m new—”

51:05 Speaker 5 But how did you do it?

51:06 Speaker 2 Look, I studied for four years, and throughout my studies I was constantly practicing.

51:12 Speaker 5 Where do you study something like that? Is it something—

51:14 Speaker 2 Look, there are no formal astrology studies.

51:18 Speaker 5 Right, I’ve never heard of any.

51:19 Speaker 2 No, there isn’t a university for astrology. You learn from private teachers. I learned from someone named Maggie Adam.

51:26 Speaker 5 Almost like passing down a tradition.

51:28 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. Only, like—

51:29 Speaker 5 Certification.

51:30 Speaker 2 Yes, there are various colleges and things like that.

51:33 Speaker 5 That’s not the same thing.

51:33 Speaker 2 No, I’m not saying it isn’t. You just really need to pay attention to where you go to study, to make sure there’s yiras Hashem there. Otherwise, you can easily be drawn into actual Torah prohibitions.

51:46 Speaker 5 Wow.

51:47 Speaker 2 Yes. So pay attention to where you study and what you study. There was a period a few years ago when I taught astrology, but that’s it. I stopped.

51:54 Speaker 5 So at first, people would come to you and you’d do it based only on what you’d learned?

52:00 Speaker 2 Yes. At first it was friends—basically anyone close enough for me to pull aside.

52:03 Speaker 5 “Come on, let me analyze you.”

52:05 Speaker 2 Quickly, quickly, quickly! And people really like it. Look, one thing that helps is that we all like having someone pay attention to us.

52:11 Speaker 5 It’s very intriguing.

52:12 Speaker 2 It’s very intriguing. So plenty of people agreed to come and be my practice subjects. And yes, I spent a very long time practicing; I wasn’t working in it professionally. Then at some point, when I felt more confident, I started charging a little, and gradually built up from there.

52:26 Speaker 5 Because there are really a few things here. There’s the analysis, and then there’s what—

52:29 Speaker 2 Look, there’s no question—

52:30 Speaker 5 What you offer the person.

52:31 Speaker 2 There’s no question that some time after I finished studying astrology, I realized it wasn’t enough for me. So I went to study therapy.

52:39 Speaker 5 It has to come with something that...

52:40 Speaker 2 It doesn’t have to. There are astrologers who are just astrologers.

52:43 Speaker 5 Someone simply comes to hear about herself.

52:44 Speaker 2 They come, yes, have their chart analyzed, and that’s it. I really do it more as coaching and therapy now. I bring all my tools into it. It’s much more than just, “You have a talent for writing, you have a talent for this, you have a talent for that.” I go deeper and give them tools as well.

53:00 Speaker 5 Yes, so it’s a process that takes them somewhere.

53:03 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.

53:05 Speaker 5 Wow. Is this field developed in Israel generally, apart from...

53:08 Speaker 2 Yes, there are various people doing it. In our community, there are a few. There are a few chareidi women, even Chabad women—two that I know of—who work in astrology. There’s a lot of fear, though people are more open to it today. I can tell you that women who study with me feel more comfortable coming because they know my worldview, and—

53:30 Speaker 5 In this field, you have to be one hundred percent sure.

53:33 Speaker 2 Right. So with me, I don’t advertise it. It’s just word of mouth. I don’t put ads in newspapers for it.

53:40 Speaker 5 Yes.

53:40 Speaker 2 Yes.

53:41 Speaker 5 How interesting. Wow. And what you said about everything you’ve been through—it’s so beautiful to see how someone arrives at her profession. I love it when you go to a professional who brings her whole life with her.

53:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

53:56 Speaker 5 Everything she’s been through, and—

53:58 Speaker 2 Look, it makes perfect sense. I’ll explain. It makes perfect sense. Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends us down into this world because He needs us to go on a journey here. Now, what drives us? What we lack. What’s missing in my life is ultimately what makes me move. So I set out on a journey to find what will fill that lack, and that’s where I become most knowledgeable, and where I can also help other people. But where can I help them? Not with something that comes naturally to me. You know, I always tell people that math is very hard for me. I know where things went wrong for me with math, and there’s no inherent reason I should have a problem with it. What happened was that, in one of the really important school years, I had a teacher who was a genius at math. And because she was such a genius, she didn’t know how to explain it. “Obviously this, and obviously that. It’s obvious, obvious, obvious.” And I got nowhere, because it was all so very obvious to her. I needed someone who understood how hard it was for me to grasp something there. When something is comfortable and easy for you, you can’t really advise other people about it.

55:04 Speaker 5 Right.

55:04 Speaker 2 Because you haven’t worked at it. It just comes to you—not because you’re clever, not because you worked or achieved something, but simply because Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave it to you, put it right into you, and it comes easily. That’s it. But in the areas where you struggle, you acquire tools and experience and knowledge. They’re etched into you through pain, and that’s where you can help other people.

55:27 Speaker 5 First of all, you can actually understand what they’re talking about.

55:29 Speaker 2 Whenever I teach Shaar Habitachon, I use myself as an example for the simple reason that people need to hear that I struggle with the same things they do. I’m not saying, “There, I’ve won.” I haven’t conquered anything. I’m on this journey with them, and I fall and stumble and do silly things and get stressed and frightened and anxious. But I already have tools, precisely because I’m so anxious and stressed and need to be in control. That’s why I can help them more.

55:58 Speaker 5 It’s like going to ask someone for advice about my weight when she’s never struggled with it.

56:01 Speaker 2 Someone who’s never struggled with dieting will tell you, “Don’t eat.”

56:04 Speaker 5 Yes.

56:04 Speaker 2 “What’s the problem? Just don’t eat.”

56:07 Speaker 5 I remember once, when I was young—a teenager—talking with a friend about this. She was the sort of person who barely ate anything. And she said to me, “What’s the problem? Eat whole-wheat flour. It isn’t fattening.”

56:18 Speaker 2 Of course.

56:19 Speaker 5 Problem solved.

56:20 Speaker 2 That’s it.

56:20 Speaker 5 What do you mean?

56:21 Speaker 2 That’s it, life changed.

56:22 Speaker 5 Eat nuts and almonds.

56:23 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

56:24 Speaker 5 You’ll gain ten kilos from nuts and almonds if you eat them the way someone who loves food eats them. Yes.

56:28 Speaker 2 No, it’s also nice to go to a professional who really understands you and understands what you’re dealing with. That’s part of the...

56:33 Speaker 5 So, by the way, I think professionals do need to share about themselves, but in moderation. When you come to someone and think, “How am I ever going to reach him? He’s so far above me; it’s hopeless.” It’s like...

56:46 Speaker 2 Right.

56:46 Speaker 5 But if you come and say, “No, look, we’re talking about the same thing. We’re dealing with the same thing, all of us. I just have tools. I’m not better than you; I just have tools.”

56:56 Speaker 2 Yes, look, I do this. I apply it to myself.

56:59 Speaker 5 Yes. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fall.

57:02 Speaker 2 Tell me, I’m curious: 90 Days to Peace of Mind basically covers the entire book on bitachon?

57:09 Speaker 5 Shaar Habitachon.

57:10 Speaker 2 Shaar Habitachon divided into ninety pieces.

57:12 Speaker 5 Lessons. Right, and there are also various passages I wrote along the way about my own personal journey.

57:19 Speaker 2 And why? Why make it a women’s study book? Is there something that really...

57:22 Speaker 5 It’s written in the feminine form.

57:23 Speaker 2 Is that why?

57:24 Speaker 5 It addresses women.

57:24 Speaker 2 Did you feel you wanted to write it for women?

57:27 Speaker 5 I’ll tell you, it was very interesting. Even before I started, when the idea of publishing the book came up, several people approached me and said, “Maybe you could write it in a... you know, generic way.”

57:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

57:37 Speaker 5 And I said no. I think men have enough books. I want to make this specifically for women. I can tell you that lots of men study it. For example, after Simchas Torah, someone from a shul here in Israel contacted me. It’s a shul for young couples, and he said, “On Simchas Torah, we took it upon ourselves to start studying Shaar Habitachon.” So he ordered forty books, and the couples sit and study together.

58:01 Speaker 2 In the feminine form.

58:02 Speaker 5 They have no problem with it, and they study.

58:03 Speaker 2 It’s all right. We women deal with masculine wording a lot.

58:05 Speaker 5 Exactly. One woman contacted me, all worried, and said, “Listen, I study it with my husband, but it’s in the feminine form, and maybe that’s hard for him.” I told her, “He’ll manage.”

58:11 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s all right. We manage.

58:13 Speaker 5 He’ll manage. Yes. I’m not going to write differently because of that.

58:16 Speaker 2 Yes.

58:17 Speaker 5 I have thought about perhaps putting it out someday in a genuinely generic form. Um...

58:23 Speaker 2 There isn’t really an equivalent to it, is there?

58:25 Speaker 5 There isn’t, there isn’t. That’s why men study from it too: there’s no book like it.

58:29 Speaker 2 But what a pleasure it is to read a book written in the feminine form. It’s just...

58:33 Speaker 5 With examples about women. The whole book addresses women. I also think women’s learning is practical. With men, there’s something about them—they’re the point of chochmah. It’s more about understanding the subject, understanding the idea. And then, okay, I’ve understood it. But Shaar Habitachon—and by the way, the Rebbe also writes about this—isn’t something you study just once. It’s not simply, “Okay, I’ve studied a subject, it’s really enriched me intellectually, and now I’ll carry on with my life.” It’s something you have to internalize in your life. So the way to do that is through... What is daas, after all? Daas is when I take everything I know and understand and bring it into my everyday actions. I make it mine by connecting it to my life. And what I did here was take the knowledge and bring it down into practice. What happens when...? What happens if...? What is this...? What do you do then? What do you tell yourself? Above all, what do you tell yourself? The narrow passage of the throat. The Alter Rebbe talks about how, to bring things down from the head, which is broad, to the chest, which is broad—from chochmah and binah down to daas—they have to pass through the throat. Now the throat is narrow, but inside the throat are the vocal cords, in that narrow passage. You have to say it aloud. I actually talk to myself. I tell myself, “Trust Him. He knows what He’s doing. This is what’s best for you. It’s good. If you insist that it’s good, it will be good too. And it is good, because it comes from Hashem, and Hashem is good.” And as I speak, I feel myself becoming convinced. I really am convinced by what I’m saying.

1:00:04 Speaker 2 So you really wrote it not just in the feminine form, but for women, because it...

1:00:08 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:00:08 Speaker 2 Speaks to us.

1:00:09 Speaker 5 Right.

1:00:10 Speaker 2 That’s interesting. Since you’re talking about men and women, do you see a difference when you assess a man versus when you assess a woman?

1:00:17 Speaker 5 Look, I work more with—

1:00:18 Speaker 2 Is there something significant?

1:00:18 Speaker 5 I work much more with women.

1:00:20 Speaker 2 Naturally.

1:00:20 Speaker 5 I hardly ever—Coaching processes, of course, I don’t do with men. I don’t think that’s appropriate.

1:00:24 Speaker 2 Right, but—

1:00:25 Speaker 5 A one-time assessment, yes.

1:00:26 Speaker 2 I mean, does temperament express itself differently in...

1:00:28 Speaker 5 Um, no.

1:00:31 Speaker 2 Because ultimately we’re—

1:00:32 Speaker 5 Look, with women, certainly, even if a woman’s emotional faculties aren’t prominent, she’ll be more sensitive than a man whose emotional faculties are prominent. Okay? Simply because she’s a woman and he’s a man.

1:00:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:00:44 Speaker 5 So yes, I’ll see more emotional energy there, so to speak, and more practical energy in a man. And I’ll take that into account more when I assess someone.

1:00:53 Speaker 2 So it does make a difference.

1:00:54 Speaker 5 It does make a difference, yes. Though some women come with very masculine energy, and some women have more feminine energy, so to speak.

1:01:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:01:00 Speaker 5 Sometimes it’s a bit confused.

1:01:02 Speaker 2 Especially today. Tell me, do you also do this remotely?

1:01:08 Speaker 5 Of course.

1:01:09 Speaker 2 Meaning you don’t have to meet the person to—

1:01:10 Speaker 5 I work on Zoom with lots of people, all over the world. I do—

1:01:13 Speaker 2 You don’t need to feel the person’s presence to—

1:01:15 Speaker 5 No, no, no, no, no.

1:01:15 Speaker 2 Because you have your own interpretation, and it doesn’t come from the context, you mean?

1:01:19 Speaker 5 First of all, when I meet the person, I talk with them.

1:01:22 Speaker 2 No, but say you can see the—

1:01:23 Speaker 5 No, what I’m doing now—

1:01:24 Speaker 2 You don’t need to analyze—

1:01:25 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:01:25 Speaker 2 A letter, say.

1:01:26 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

1:01:27 Speaker 2 For example.

1:01:27 Speaker 5 I don’t do that, also because I realized that when I put things in writing, I don’t have the ability... There are things—

1:01:37 Speaker 2 I understand.

1:01:38 Speaker 5 That a person reads—and that’s exactly the problem with a book. The person reads it, applies their own interpretation to themselves, and it creates a huge, huge, huge mess for me. When we’re speaking, I can immediately see that the person hasn’t understood what I meant, so I can clarify it and give them another perspective. You can’t do that with something they’re reading.

1:01:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:01:55 Speaker 5 So I don’t write up my assessments for anyone. Under no circumstances, for any amount of money, will I do that. But on Zoom, I see the person and talk with them. That’s enough for me. I don’t need their physical presence.

1:02:07 Speaker 2 These days it’s completely acceptable from the outset. Since COVID, it’s already...

1:02:10 Speaker 5 Zoom, listen, has done wonderful things for us in the world.

1:02:13 Speaker 2 Do you work more on Zoom than face-to-face?

1:02:15 Speaker 5 Yes, because I live in Givat Ze’ev. We have a great view, but it’s a bit out of the way, and there are people—

1:02:21 Speaker 2 Depends what you’re comparing it to.

1:02:22 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:02:22 Speaker 2 Twenty minutes from Jerusalem? I’d be happy with that.

1:02:24 Speaker 5 But some people hear “Givat Ze’ev” and think “Arabs”—

1:02:27 Speaker 2 It’s less familiar, yes.

1:02:28 Speaker 5 And all that, and danger, and things like that. But it’s fine; Zoom is great. Excellent. I really love meeting people, though, so I get more of that through the workshops I do, through lectures... I miss it a lot.

1:02:40 Speaker 2 What kinds of places do you go to for workshops? Women’s evenings and things like that?

1:02:44 Speaker 5 Yes, those too. Large audiences, and also smaller gatherings in people’s homes, where they bring together women of all kinds and I come to give a class. I have regular classes that I teach. I’ve had a regular class in Bnei Brak for about a year and a half now, every other week.

1:03:03 Speaker 2 Is it open to participants? Maybe you could give the details.

1:03:05 Speaker 5 In Bnei Brak—actually, the Bnei Brak class began as a Tanya class, and it’s more of a Chassidus class. None of the women are Chabad. They’re women who didn’t know what Chassidus was before they started. It’s an amazing class, but there is a fee. They pay something at the door. But yes, it’s open to the public, and anyone who wants to—

1:03:24 Speaker 2 Can join.

1:03:25 Speaker 5 The person who runs it is a woman named Gili Levinstein. You’d need to contact her. I don’t know whether I should give you a phone number or you’ll write it down—I’m not sure.

1:03:33 Speaker 2 We’ll include it when we share this—

1:03:34 Speaker 5 Yes, we’ll include it, exactly. So that’s one class, and I really bring everything into it. We study Chassidus and bitachon, and... Look, when I teach, even when I teach Tanya, I take it to the practical side and to the inner workings of the soul. I really—

1:03:51 Speaker 2 The teachings of the soul.

1:03:51 Speaker 5 Yes, I’m very connected to the teachings of the soul and to the practical question of how I take this knowledge and bring it into my everyday life. I know some people study Tanya more as a Torah class, but this is my profession, and this is who I am. This is my way, and whoever connects with it—

1:04:05 Speaker 2 A coach in...

1:04:05 Speaker 5 I’m a coach in my very being.

1:04:07 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly.

1:04:08 Speaker 5 Um, and there are one-off talks that people invite me to give. They might be at Chabad Houses, but they might also be for municipalities. You know.

1:04:18 Speaker 2 All sorts.

1:04:18 Speaker 5 Yes, all sorts. Every kind of group. There was a women’s study program where I ran a yearlong program on resilience. It was an amazing process to go through with the women there. And here in Givat Ze’ev, I teach a class every two weeks that’s completely free.

1:04:36 Speaker 2 For anyone who... anyone who lives here?

1:04:39 Speaker 5 No, it’s for the women of Givat Ze’ev. Yes. One of the really interesting things was that after I started this project on peace of mind and bitachon, for the first few months I was on a cloud. I was doing shlichus, full of inspiration and all that, while our financial situation at home was terrible. I kept davening for a livelihood and davening for a livelihood and davening for a livelihood. And I didn’t understand: how could I be talking about bitachon when it wasn’t working? I didn’t understand what was going on. Then one day I opened the Igros Kodesh and saw a letter from the Rebbe. He wrote to someone that he was very sorry to hear reports that the person wasn’t doing enough to make vessels for a livelihood. That turned my thinking upside down. I said, “What does he want from me? I’m obsessed with doing everything I can to earn a living.”

1:05:32 Speaker 2 What haven’t I done?

1:05:32 Speaker 5 What haven’t I done? Why isn’t it working? Then I spoke with my coach, and we started talking. She said, “Listen, you have a community of”—at the time, it was hundreds of women—“why aren’t you making that a vessel for your livelihood?” “It’s shlichus, shlichus,” I told her. “What does earning a living have to do with it?” I remember that at first I felt as though I’d be sullying my shlichus.

1:05:56 Speaker 2 Betraying it.

1:05:57 Speaker 5 Betraying my role. Sullying what I was writing. After all, I didn’t even put my name on it. I would write “Lesson Number Three” and send it out. My name wasn’t mentioned at all. I thought I was being so angelic, doing everything for the sake of Heaven. And she said, “No. Put your name on it. Write your name so people know who you are.” I kept feeling that would be prideful, but those weren’t healthy vessels at all. That wasn’t right. That kind of modesty was misplaced.

1:06:24 Speaker 2 Misplaced.

1:06:25 Speaker 5 Completely misplaced. I came to understand that if Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent us into this world with the limitations of the world—with a body, with needs, with money and all these things—then it’s within that reality that we have to carry out our shlichus, not apart from it. There’s no shame in bringing those two things together. And people began to appreciate the material much more when they knew who was writing it, when they suddenly heard that I was a coach and that they could come to me, too. Yes, they still receive a lot of material from me free of charge, with nothing asked in return. But for me to keep doing that, I need to make a living.

1:07:01 Speaker 2 And it’s very important to understand that from the other side, too, when you’re consuming someone’s content.

1:07:04 Speaker 5 Today I’ve also learned not to be embarrassed to say, “Listen, I’m very happy to share content, but if you want more than that...”

1:07:11 Speaker 2 This is how I earn a living.

1:07:12 Speaker 5 It’s also how I earn a living. But if I say yes to everyone, eventually I’ll have to say no to everyone, because I won’t be able to keep going. That was such an important realization: I’m not sullying my shlichus. Quite the opposite. If you put the shlichus at the center rather than yourself, it’s much easier to see what’s being driven by ego and what’s truly for the good of the shlichus. Sometimes, by the way, raising prices is good for the shlichus. It isn’t necessarily about ego.

1:07:39 Speaker 2 Because in a way it creates focus.

1:07:40 Speaker 5 Exactly. And sometimes lowering prices has nothing to do with the shlichus. It has to do with your ego or your fears, because you’re afraid of what will happen if your prices are high. That can apply to anything. If you say, “Okay, I’m not at the center; my shlichus is at the center. What will help the shlichus?”—then if putting my name on something will help the shlichus, I’ll put my name on it. If it gets in the way, I won’t. But if it helps—and clearly, it’s much easier to connect with something when you know who’s behind it than when some anonymous person sends you a text—then I should do it. I thought I was being so modest and humble. Nonsense. It was just a show; it wasn’t genuine.

1:08:14 Speaker 2 You know, people are missing that understanding. I remember telling you earlier that my husband and I give talks. Once, after we’d spoken about the situation in Ukraine and told our story, a woman came up to me and asked, “So how do you make a living?”

1:08:26 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

1:08:27 Speaker 2 You see?

1:08:27 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:08:27 Speaker 2 So it’s like—

1:08:28 Speaker 5 It’s like people—

1:08:29 Speaker 2 There really is a disconnect.

1:08:31 Speaker 5 I’ll tell you something more. People don’t understand why they have to pay when they come to a Torah class.

1:08:35 Speaker 2 I mean—

1:08:36 Speaker 5 Why, if you’re coming to give—

1:08:37 Speaker 2 Maybe they see teaching as a kind of volunteering.

1:08:38 Speaker 5 What do you mean? It’s a mitzvah. Or people invite me to give classes and talks, and then I say, “Okay, and what about the fee?” And they say, “What do you mean?”

1:08:48 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s amazing.

1:08:48 Speaker 5 “It’s a Torah class. We’re giving you the opportunity to do a mitzvah.”

1:08:53 Speaker 2 That understanding that the person in front of you presumably needs to make a living somehow.

1:08:57 Speaker 5 It’s so interesting. People say, “Torah belongs to everyone,” and so on, but you’ll go to a macramé workshop and pay seven hundred shekels for it, while you won’t spend ten shekels on a Torah class. As if it’s owed to you? No, just the opposite: you should pay more for Torah. It’s completely backward.

1:09:13 Speaker 2 Amazing.

1:09:13 Speaker 5 Yes. So this is something I really want to tell women, because modesty and humility, when they’re misplaced... I’ll say even more than that: writing something without putting your name on it also means not taking responsibility.

1:09:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:26 Speaker 5 If someone finds an error, they can’t come to you and say—

1:09:28 Speaker 2 You’re not standing behind it.

1:09:29 Speaker 5 You’re not standing behind what you’ve said. There’s so much significance to that. It isn’t modesty or humility.

1:09:35 Speaker 2 It’s the opposite. In a way, it’s a kind of fear—

1:09:38 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:09:38 Speaker 2 It’s a kind of ego.

1:09:40 Speaker 5 Absolutely.

1:09:40 Speaker 2 I’m afraid for my reputation. I’m afraid for—

1:09:42 Speaker 5 But it’s such a clever kind of ego. It seems so wise, when it’s really the opposite.

1:09:46 Speaker 2 It’s disguised, yes.

1:09:46 Speaker 5 You hear stories about tzaddikim, about doing everything for the sake of Heaven.

1:09:50 Speaker 2 True humility is being honest enough to understand that. That’s the point.

1:09:54 Speaker 5 Yes, and I also need to... I earn a living. Yes, of course. Mitzvos, mitzvos. You have to do mitzvos and earn a living.

1:10:00 Speaker 2 Right. Bitachon in Hashem alone isn’t enough. As you said—

1:10:02 Speaker 5 You have to make vessels.

1:10:03 Speaker 2 Bitachon is the foundation.

1:10:04 Speaker 5 You have to make vessels. Bitachon in Hashem is... We live in a natural world, and in a natural world you make vessels. Wonderful. If someone else also benefits because the vessels you make are vessels for shlichus, then you’ve really beaten the system. But of course you need to... There’s no shame in asking for money.

1:10:19 Speaker 2 Amazing, amazing. That alone really made this—

1:10:22 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:10:22 Speaker 2 I saved that for a reason.

1:10:24 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:10:25 Speaker 2 Okay. And where can people get the book?

1:10:28 Speaker 5 The second book—

1:10:29 Speaker 2 Which is beautiful, I have to say.

1:10:30 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

1:10:30 Speaker 2 Are these colors you like, or...?

1:10:32 Speaker 5 No, they are colors I like, and I’ll show you the—

1:10:33 Speaker 2 You got that color—it’s exactly like the podcast logo.

1:10:35 Speaker 5 Like this? Then I’ll show you the second book, too.

1:10:39 Speaker 2 Wait, the second book is new, then?

1:10:44 Speaker 5 The second book is new. Yes, it came out just—

1:10:46 Speaker 2 So what’s the difference?

1:10:48 Speaker 5 Look, this one is Ninety Lessons on Shaar Habitachon. I can tell you it’s become the kind of book women keep beside their beds. And remarkably, I haven’t advertised it anywhere, yet in two years I’ve sold through more than three print runs.

1:11:05 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:11:06 Speaker 5 Yes. People come and take boxes of twenty books, forty books.

1:11:09 Speaker 2 Well, it’s really successful. You don’t need to advertise it.

1:11:11 Speaker 5 Yes. And this book just came out. It follows the weekly parshas. For each parsha, I chose a topic connected either to bitachon or to personal growth, and after each section there’s space to write. It’s a kind of workbook.

1:11:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:31 Speaker 5 It takes the quality of bitachon another step further.

1:11:35 Speaker 2 It’s amazing that it really lets you live with the times.

1:11:37 Speaker 5 Yes, because it’s connected to the weekly parshas. Right.

1:11:39 Speaker 2 So this is the result of... You said that once a week you try to find...

1:11:44 Speaker 5 It’s the “Just to Be Safe” column.

1:11:46 Speaker 2 Oh, that’s what it’s called.

1:11:46 Speaker 5 It’s a column called “Just to Be Safe,” and eventually, when I’d completed a year—

1:11:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:51 Speaker 5 At some point I also put out a book. I keep writing the column all the time. I mean, it’s something that’s ongoing. I—

1:11:54 Speaker 2 I’m waiting for the third book.

1:11:56 Speaker 5 With Hashem’s help. Yes, but you know, I’m like a woman who’s just given birth, saying, “Don’t talk to me about that right now.”

1:12:00 Speaker 2 Yes. You’ll forget in a moment, and then...

1:12:03 Speaker 5 Yes, I’ll forget. Boruch Hashem.

1:12:06 Speaker 2 Wow. Bat Sheva, thank you. You’re truly fascinating.

1:12:09 Speaker 5 Thank you. Thank you so much.

1:12:10 Speaker 2 It’s special, and I think this point about the shlichus you’re doing—we were just talking a little earlier about the virtual world.

1:12:17 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:12:17 Speaker 2 And you’re sitting here—

1:12:20 Speaker 5 Right.

1:12:20 Speaker 2 Opposite a beautiful green hill, and I—

1:12:22 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:12:22 Speaker 2 And you’re shining light through, uh, your phone’s keyboard, just as the Rebbe said to use technology.

1:12:29 Speaker 5 You know, people come to me, and they’re lost trying to find their shlichus. They’re lost trying to find their purpose.

1:12:37 Speaker 2 That’s where all of us are, really.

1:12:39 Speaker 5 And I tell them: Stop working so hard at it. Just be willing to try; be open. Listen, when I decided to write the first lesson, it never occurred to me that two and a half, three years later, it would be a community of seven thousand people.

1:12:52 Speaker 2 And that it would be a book.

1:12:53 Speaker 5 And it would be one book, and then another.

1:12:55 Speaker 2 You know what’s moving about the book? It’s physical.

1:12:57 Speaker 5 Yes, that’s why I published a book. Even though virtually, many more people may have read it, but wow—

1:13:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:13:03 Speaker 5 So much. That was one of the reasons I decided to publish the book: people really asked me to. “We want something we can hold in our hands. We want—”

1:13:08 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:13:08 Speaker 5 A book for Shabbos, too, and for learning with chavrusas, and so on. That makes sense. But, um, Geulah comes when you’re not expecting it. Still, you have to have a certain openness so you can recognize the opportunity.

1:13:24 Speaker 2 To let go.

1:13:25 Speaker 5 And I always say, I didn’t actually sit down and say, “Okay, now I need to find my shlichus, so let’s take some action.” I didn’t think it was a shlichus. I didn’t think it was anything. I felt a very deep inner need. I love teaching. My strongest need is to pass on knowledge. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu worked through that great need to teach and my connection to bitachon, and this is what happened. In the end, look where it’s reached, but none of it was planned. It wasn’t some—you know how people sit down and work out a strategy, marketing activities, what they’re going to do.

1:13:55 Speaker 2 Like you said earlier, you made room for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that’s really—

1:13:58 Speaker 5 Exactly.

1:13:58 Speaker 2 How it came about.

1:13:59 Speaker 5 And that’s where it came from, exactly.

1:14:00 Speaker 2 Wow. Even if we take away just that one point, that’s already—

1:14:03 Speaker 5 Yes, that’s already, uh, [unclear].

1:14:04 Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you so much, Bat Sheva.

1:14:06 Speaker 5 My pleasure, and thank you for what you do.

1:14:08 Speaker 2 Where can people get the book?

1:14:08 Speaker 5 Uh, the book—actually, it’s really sold only through me. Though there are pickup points around the country, and shluchim and various arrangements. So if you’d like, I’ll give you the—just the link afterward.

1:14:19 Speaker 2 Yes, that works. Or you can Google Bat Sheva Dargan.

1:14:21 Speaker 5 You can Google Bat Sheva Dargan and find my links. Or, yes, I’ll give you a link.

1:14:27 Speaker 2 May we all truly merit to find our shlichus.

1:14:29 Speaker 5 Amen, amen.

1:14:30 Speaker 2 And to feel peace of mind—but that takes work.

1:14:32 Speaker 5 Oh, it takes work.

1:14:32 Speaker 2 Nobody’s going to get to rest.

1:14:33 Speaker 5 No.

1:14:34 Speaker 2 Wonderful. Thank you, Bat Sheva.

1:14:35 Speaker 5 My pleasure.