Episode 42: How to laugh and be happy? But with the utmost seriousness ;) | With Chana Cohen Aloro, actress, comedian and lecturer on Chassidus

00:00 Speaker 1 She’s a comedian who also gives classes. She’s an actress who also lectures on Chassidus. I sat down with this remarkable woman, Chana Cohen Alloro, for a conversation about joy. Real joy, without slogans or clichés. “And you shall rejoice.” Come hear how to actually do it. A reminder: if you enjoyed the podcast, you’re welcome to pass it on to your sisters, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, cousins, and anyone else who matters to you. Intro, and we’re off. How do we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? This is Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On this podcast, we meet women who have brought their shlichus into all kinds of fields, and through them, help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created for is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting now. Hello, Chana Cohen Alloro.

01:04 Speaker 2 Hello, Chani Moskowitz. How are you?

01:06 Speaker 1 Boruch Hashem. How are you?

01:08 Speaker 2 Oh, great! I’m excited you’re here.

01:10 Speaker 1 Me too. And it wasn’t for nothing that there were—

01:13 Speaker 2 Obstacles, obstacles on the way to...

01:14 Speaker 1 Will it happen, won’t it happen? But whenever there are obstacles, I know it’s going to be—

01:17 Speaker 2 Something good.

01:17 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:18 Speaker 2 As someone who’s had plenty of stories about obstacles in her life—

01:21 Speaker 1 Yes, you’re speaking from experience.

01:22 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely.

01:24 Speaker 1 So, Chana, introduce yourself to all the...

01:28 Speaker 2 How’s everyone doing? To all the women listening to Chani’s wonderful podcast. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Chana Cohen Alloro. I’m an actress, a comedian, and I’ve been creating theater for over eight years. I lecture on Chassidus and teach Chassidus here at women’s learning programs in the south. I live in Moshav Shokeda, near Gaza, and we brought Chani all the way here.

01:48 Speaker 1 Yes, I’m so... You should know, whenever I see the name of a place I don’t know, I say, “I’ll do a podcast there, and figure out the rest afterward.”

01:54 Speaker 2 I, I need to—

01:54 Speaker 1 I love seeing new places. Wow.

01:57 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, you came here at the height of summer—

01:58 Speaker 1 It’s gorgeous here.

01:58 Speaker 2 On one of the hottest days. You have to come in the winter.

02:00 Speaker 1 No, because it gets so cold in Kiryat Malachi.

02:02 Speaker 2 No, that’s not what I mean. Everything looks beautiful here now, but you have no idea what happens here in winter. After the first rains, everything is carpeted in green.

02:08 Speaker 1 Oh, I’m coming back.

02:09 Speaker 2 In winter, there’s... Shokeda Forest is really known for its anemone blooms. It’s called Darom Adom, the Red South. There are carpets and carpets of them—

02:17 Speaker 1 Oh, this is where the Red South is?

02:18 Speaker 2 Right here, right here. We have the red alert from Hamas, and we have—

02:21 Speaker 1 That’s it. I always confused the Red South with the red alerts.

02:24 Speaker 2 Hamas, I mean... Anyway, there are carpets of flowers here. It’s breathtakingly beautiful in winter, so you’re very welcome to come again. I’m the mother of six children, and I’m married to Roi. Before COVID, I also used to organize trips to Uman and Mezhibuzh. I even had the privilege of taking a group to Haditch—

02:42 Speaker 1 Wow, how did you not make it to us? It’s only another three hours.

02:44 Speaker 2 Yes, just a little farther! What a trip that was, oh my goodness, to Haditch. From Haditch to Uman was something like eight hours. I wanted... That was the end of me.

02:51 Speaker 1 Yes, with the roads—

02:52 Speaker 2 Wow, wow. And every time they told me another... I’d ask the driver, “How much longer? How much longer?” And he’d signal five more hours, four more hours. We’d already eaten, slept, woken up, danced, I’d given a class, we’d had a farbrengen on the bus—what hadn’t we done? We’d stopped for the bathroom eight times. And then he says, “Three more hours.” I’m like, “What?”

03:05 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

03:05 Speaker 2 I felt like I couldn’t take any more. So—

03:08 Speaker 1 Wait, what were these trips? Was that something...

03:10 Speaker 2 Basically, after I started teaching Chassidus in women’s learning programs, the girls said, “We want to go to Uman, we want to go to Mezhibuzh. But if we go, it’s only with you. You’re, like—”

03:18 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:18 Speaker 2 “You’re our kind of person.”

03:19 Speaker 1 What an incredible experience.

03:21 Speaker 2 So I took the plunge. I organized one trip, and about forty-five girls went with me.

03:25 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:26 Speaker 2 Women, young women. Then I started organizing them every year, twice a year, when I didn’t have performances. I’d do it around Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan and Rosh Chodesh Iyar, and it was amazing, amazing, amazing. Then I organized a trip for Rosh Chodesh Kislev, just before Chanukah, and that was it. After Chanukah, COVID started. The Rosh Chodesh Iyar trip was canceled, and then the war began, so we never went back.

03:47 Speaker 1 COVID ended, but...

03:49 Speaker 2 I was already planning another trip just as the lockdowns were ending, and then the war came. So that was it.

03:58 Speaker 1 It became history.

03:59 Speaker 2 Yes. Since then, I organized a trip to Morocco instead, but it’s not the same.

04:02 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:03 Speaker 2 It’s not the same thing at all. It’s something completely different.

04:05 Speaker 1 Yes, a different style.

04:06 Speaker 2 Honestly, it was an incredible experience for me. I miss Mezhibuzh so much. I can literally dream at night that I’m walking its streets, its little alleyways, the beis midrash. I really have a special connection to it.

04:19 Speaker 1 I completely understand.

04:19 Speaker 2 The Baal Shem Tov. Yes, his teachings were really one of the turning points in my life. So that’s me, a kind of combination. On one hand, I’m an actress and a comedian. I create theater and have performed on stages across the country for eight years. On the other hand, I bring a lot of depth, content, and Torah, and I’m always looking for the connection between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and my life. It’s a special, good combination. And over the past year, I set up a beis midrash on Zoom, thanks to COVID. As soon as everything shut down, literally the day after Purim, performances worth tens of thousands of shekels over the coming month were canceled within hours.

04:57 Speaker 1 Oh my goodness.

04:57 Speaker 2 I asked myself, “What’s going to happen to my life? How am I going to make a living? What are we going to do? What’s going to happen?” For a few days I was just in bed, terrified about money. What do you do? Nobody tells you anything. You’re self-employed, and then what? How am I going to get through this period? What do I do? And with the lockdown—it was frightening. It was really, really frightening.

05:15 Speaker 1 It basically looked like the end of the world.

05:16 Speaker 2 It really did. Then a national-service coordinator sent me a sweet message: “Tell me, Chana, can you give a class on Zoom for the national-service girls?” I asked her, “What’s Zoom?” And that’s how I started. That same year, on Erev Pesach, I gave a Zoom class for anyone who wanted to join, for twenty shekels. You know, a kind of preparation for the Seder. Then I did one in preparation for Shavuos, and then one for the holidays. That’s how it began. Slowly, a sort of community formed around me—women who connect with my style and with the Torah that comes through me. And a year ago, I set up a proper beis midrash, with an hour of learning every Monday, every week. Hundreds of women subscribe.

05:53 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:54 Speaker 2 From around the country and the world, yes. It’s going amazingly well. I also feel that having it every week lets me go deeper; it keeps growing and developing.

06:05 Speaker 1 Why did you call it a beis midrash and not a midrasha? I just noticed that a beis midrash sounds more masculine, while a midrasha is for women.

06:12 Speaker 2 Generally, yes.

06:13 Speaker 1 Or was it just something you chose?

06:14 Speaker 2 Women’s programs are called midrashot, while a beis midrash is a place. At least, that’s how I experience it.

06:21 Speaker 1 Like a shul.

06:21 Speaker 2 Exactly. It’s the place where you seek meaning. So I call it a beis midrash because, for me, it’s the place where we meet to seek Hashem.

06:29 Speaker 1 Yes, to make it feel more like a physical place.

06:31 Speaker 2 Yes. I don’t mean it as a masculine place, just a place that’s—

06:33 Speaker 1 Of course not.

06:34 Speaker 2 Right, no, of course not. So that’s the idea.

06:38 Speaker 1 Tell me, that’s interesting. You’re describing these different sides of yourself—depth and comedy—and I came here specifically to talk about joy. It’s interesting that you describe them as opposites, because joy really is...

06:51 Speaker 2 No, I didn’t say they were opposites. I think I just bring a certain combination.

06:55 Speaker 1 Yes, that kind of combination.

06:55 Speaker 2 There are a lot of women who are very, very deep, but also very, very heavy. And listen, I perform at girls’ religious high schools, okay? At mother-daughter evenings and things like that. I stand in front of two hundred, three hundred, four hundred women and mothers dealing with adolescence and some really difficult things. You know, daughters going through stuff, and family dynamics in general. I act out situations from home, from the Shabbos table, from adolescence, and everyone is crying with laughter. They’re moved to tears because they feel they’re not alone, that they’re normal, that this is what it’s like. But at the same time, I’m always connecting it to something deeper: if this is my mother, then presumably this is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted; and if this is my daughter, then presumably she came to help me grow and develop. I always joke that my mother used to say to me, “You’re my tikkun, you’re my tikkun,” and I’d tell her, “So fix it.” When someone hears that, she realizes, okay, there’s a journey to go through here, within all of this. And it gives—I feel that Torah brings healing. I mean, for me, the author of the Tanya is saying that the teachings of Tanya are entirely about healing.

07:54 Speaker 1 Yes.

07:55 Speaker 2 Healing the soul.

07:56 Speaker 1 What you’re describing about those situations is that you can actually touch something deep because you bring it with humor.

08:05 Speaker 2 And I also want to say that I think what brought me to this was growing up in a religious-Zionist home and, for as long as I can remember, really, really missing that connection. I felt a kind of disconnect, in my experience, a disconnect in serving Hashem. It’s hard to explain, because I grew up in a home with very strong values, and Torah was very much part of my life in a way, but only up to a point. I felt that—and I’m not talking about the education I received; this was my experience—when I prayed, I loved Hashem, but it didn’t accompany me through everything. And even more than that, when I got older, when I reached my teens, I became very, very religious. Very. I set rules for myself about three-quarter-length sleeves and skirts, things that weren’t part of where I came from. I grew up in a mixed-gender social environment, with television. It really was a very different world, and I was quite unusual in the environment I grew up in. I learned a lot of Torah. From the age of fifteen or sixteen, after school I’d go to classes. Really—three afternoons a week. In the evenings I went to classes in Shaarei Chesed with Rabbi Eshkol Zuckerman, of blessed memory. I also had classes at Midrash Torah with the Rebbetzin—I was really, really into it. It interested me so much. During Elul, too, and at other times, I was really immersed in it. Every Rosh Chodesh I’d go to the Kosel to pray. Serving Hashem was the main thing in my life. And still, when I went through crises later in life, after getting married and having children and so on, I felt as though Torah was disappearing

09:38 Speaker 2 on me. It was becoming disconnected from my life.

09:40 Speaker 1 Like two parallel tracks.

09:41 Speaker 2 Yes. It was only at twenty-five, when I encountered Chassidus, that things started to connect for me. In my experience, Rabbi Nachman and the Baal Shem Tov healed me. They gave me that connection I’d been missing. That was thanks to Ro’i, my husband, who introduced me to those teachings. Until then, Rabbi Nachman had been this little extra, you know: “There is no despair in the world at all.” I’d toss out a line like that. It wasn’t something I studied. I studied the teachings of Rabbi Kook; I was in a completely different place. Encountering Chassidus and its language was so significant for me. To this day, I feel like I’m on a journey of joy. With everything we learn, I say, “Wow.” It keeps amazing me, all the time. Just how much—

10:21 Speaker 1 It’s funny how, from the outside, it sounds like, “Hey, take it easy, it’s only some learning or something.” But until you actually learn it and understand it...

10:28 Speaker 2 No, it’s not just learning it. It connects to my life, because suddenly I—

10:31 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:31 Speaker 2 What happens in my class every week? I tell a story about something that happened with one of my children, and then I bring a Torah teaching, I bring the Sfas Emes, and I say, “Look, that’s it.” I bring the Nesivos Shalom and say, “There.” And Rabbi Nachman tells a story from a book, and the Baal Shem Tov tells this story and teaches this teaching, and you say, “There—that’s life.” Then suddenly you realize that everything is Torah. Even the crisis I’m having right now with a neighbor, the look someone gave me, something that happened that made me tense up inside, the overdraft at the bank, all those things—and when I feel lost and don’t know what to do. I’m even going through a period like that now. Hashem did something to me this Elul—I’m already writing about it: “Elul, the trickster.” It’s as if He closed my heart and took away all my joy in serving Hashem, my whole sense of mission, everything I’d been so sure I needed to do with my life. For a month or two now, I’ve been thinking, well, maybe I shouldn’t be an actress anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t teach Torah anymore. I’m not worthy. The yetzer hara sits next to me, slicing me up with a shawarma knife, doing a fine job of it.

11:20 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

11:20 Speaker 2 You have no idea. I’m in a battle with it. But suddenly I’m aware of what’s happening. Suddenly I have tools to deal with it. Suddenly I say, “You’re right, I’m terrible. Okay, that’s where things stand. That’s what I’ve got. Right now, I can’t do otherwise.” I have a language for it now, a conversation with my yetzer hara, because it has a way of presenting itself and there are patterns I can recognize. I have a compass. I really have tools. So a woman who comes to my class might find herself facing an overdraft at the bank, and instead of saying, “I’m done for. How did I get myself into this? What a lousy life I have, being in debt,” she suddenly says, “Wait, what does Hashem want from me by bringing me this overdraft?” After all, He’s the One who brought it. Yesterday, in class, in honor of Chai Elul, we learned an amazing story from the Baal Shem Tov. There’s a king who wants to test whether people will challenge his rule. He’s a very powerful king, much loved, and his kingdom is very secure. He tells his soldiers, “Disguise yourselves as other people, go to a certain city, and try to stir up a rebellion against the king. Challenge his rule.” So they tell the townspeople, “Let’s rebel against the king,” and they start speaking badly of him: “He did this to us, he did that to us.” The townspeople say, “You want to rebel against the king? You want to fight him? Fine, go ahead. We don’t get involved with the king. That’s between you and him.” The Baal Shem Tov says that these are the people who don’t want to confront the yetzer hara. They say, “Leave us out of it; that’s between you and the king.” Then the soldiers go to another city and try to incite a rebellion. The people there say, “You want to fight the king?”

12:37 Speaker 2 They draw their swords and fight them. No one is going to fight the king. These are the people who fight the yetzer hara with all their strength. Then the soldiers reach another city. The Baal Shem Tov says it’s a city of Torah scholars. The people there tell them, “You want to rebel against the king? Then you must be the king’s messengers, because it’s impossible to rebel against this king.” But what’s the understanding behind that? What’s the wisdom? We live in the king’s palace, and everything that happens here comes through his messengers. I have nothing to rebel against. His sovereignty is over everything. Suddenly, that changes your whole approach. Instead of ignoring it or trying to fight it, you say, “Okay, He brought me here. So what does He want from me now?” That realization changed all the rules of the game for me.

13:16 Speaker 3 Completely.

13:16 Speaker 2 …

13:17 Speaker 3 Incredible.

13:18 Speaker 2 So—and I brought that onto the stage. I mean, in the end, I also—I’m not making fun of anyone. I’m making fun of myself. In my shows, I even joke about Ashkenazi women who look tight-lipped and bitter, with that Warsaw expression on their faces. Some of them will be sitting right there in the front row. But I’m not making fun of them, because I’m making fun of myself too. I’m Ashkenazi, my grandmother was like that, and that’s how I grew up. My two sisters get terribly offended. I tell them, “Think about it: on Friday night, Grandma used to serve yogurt soup with curry, cucumbers and dill.”

13:47 Speaker 3 Today they call it tzatziki.

13:49 Speaker 2 Tzatziki! We called it karazat, or something like that, and I deserve a disability rating for it. I mean, for that trauma! So yes, I get onstage and of course I joke about skinny women—how I hate skinny women because I’m a little meatball and all that. And some people say things to me about it. You know, you have to let go a little too. Everything is so terribly heavy, everyone is having such a hard time and carrying so much, and I’m tired of that too. You can laugh about things. Humor is one of the things that saved my marriage and helped me raise my children. We can be in the middle of a crazy fight and suddenly burst out laughing, right in the middle of our most deadly serious argument.

14:19 Speaker 3 Absolutely.

14:19 Speaker 2 To laugh and bring humor into it. A lot of times when I talk to young women who are single and dating, they describe such a terribly heavy reality. So I tell them, “Look, laugh too, you know? It’s supposed to be enjoyable. We didn’t come into this world to suffer.” And that’s Chassidus too. Absolutely. There’s that account in the Gemara about the Amoraim: before they went into the beis midrash to learn, they would say something lighthearted, crack jokes, do silly things—

14:44 Speaker 3 Right.

14:44 Speaker 2 And make themselves laugh so their hearts would open to learning, because they knew that without joy, the learning wouldn’t open up for them. That really guides me. Listen, I perform—and in recent years I’ve had the privilege of being seen by hundreds of thousands of people. The number of times someone has told me after a show, “I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that”—I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard it. And it hurts me. A day goes by, a week goes by, without laughing? Oh my gosh, how can that be?

15:09 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s painful.

15:10 Speaker 2 You need it. It’s the hormones of vitality, of joy. And it’s a battle. Being happy isn’t some easy thing. People look at me and say, “Well, you’re funny, so it’s easy for you.” It’s so not. It really isn’t.

15:23 Speaker 3 That’s interesting, because that’s what I’m hearing: you have this talent, this humor, but you have to bring it out into the world, because that’s your role. It’s—

15:34 Speaker 2 All the time. I arrive somewhere and it’s, “Here’s the funny one! Make me laugh!” And when people say that to me—

15:38 Speaker 3 That’s not—

15:38 Speaker 2 I’m really not funny on demand. “Make me laugh”? Please, get out of here. I’m not nice about that at all.

15:42 Speaker 3 When did you realize you were funny?

15:44 Speaker 2 Um.

15:45 Speaker 3 Were you the kind of student who had a wisecrack ready every other second in class?

15:49 Speaker 2 Um, first of all, being sharp-tongued doesn’t necessarily mean you’re funny.

15:52 Speaker 3 Right.

15:53 Speaker 2 I was—I understood pretty quickly that I was a bit of a tough girl. Go ahead, say it. I think that’s a more accurate description.

15:58 Speaker 3 Because the two often go together.

15:59 Speaker 2 Right.

15:59 Speaker 3 You know, nobody—it wasn’t the corny cheder jokes, the ones like...

16:03 Speaker 2 A man swam and swam and swam, and finally reached shore.

16:06 Speaker 3 My kids come to me now with all those jokes—

16:08 Speaker 2 So, so bad.

16:08 Speaker 3 They’re convinced someone in their class invented the wheel, and I’m like—

16:12 Speaker 2 They’re just starting out.

16:12 Speaker 3 “I Got It and I Didn’t Get It went to the beach...”

16:14 Speaker 2 “Catch me, me, catch me and make me...” Yes, they’re absolutely thrilled with them. I feel bad putting a damper on their excitement, but I do.

16:19 Speaker 3 But humor that’s genuinely funny has a sting to it. On the other hand—

16:22 Speaker 2 On the other hand, I do have a choice about whether I want to be someone who stings people. I’m coming back again to this: every person was given a strength, a shlichus, a light, a purpose of their own in this world. You know, there are many, many ways to describe it.

16:34 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:34 Speaker 2 The holy Arizal writes that “from the day the world was created until its end, no person is like another.” Every person who comes into this world, from the moment they are brought down into it, has a unique purpose, a special shlichus that only they can fulfill. That is why they were brought into this world. If they don’t fulfill it, they can spend seventy years here without doing the thing for which they were created. The Nesivos Shalom brings this in connection with Parshas Re’eh: “See, I place before you the blessing and the curse.” It says that if you obey Hashem’s commandments, you’ll have a blessing, and if not, you won’t. That’s the simple equation we all know: whoever keeps Torah and mitzvos merits a blessing; whoever doesn’t, doesn’t. Blessing and curse. The Arizal says no, that isn’t what it’s about at all. It isn’t about mitzvos, or reward and punishment. It’s about your unique shlichus.

17:07 Speaker 3 Wow.

17:07 Speaker 2 A person who doesn’t fulfill the special shlichus for which they were created will feel as though their life is a curse. Someone who does fulfill it will feel the blessing in their life. That stayed with me very strongly. For many years I felt I wasn’t doing what I’d been created to do. I felt like—you know, like a blocked pipe. I have so much inside me. I’m bursting with abilities and energy, and I felt as though I was suffocating. Just being at home, just being a mother. It wasn’t about putting on productions or any one particular thing. I kept feeling that I was touching on something but not quite getting there. It took me time to break through. It only happened when I was thirty. Some people would say that’s late, others would say it’s early, but that was the point when it happened.

17:42 Speaker 3 It’s all relative.

17:43 Speaker 2 Yes. Someone once asked me, “Where were you all those years? Why didn’t you start creating earlier?” I told her, “Honestly, I also needed to figure out what I wanted to say.”

17:48 Speaker 3 Right. You know, because I go on and on about shlichus, a lot of young women ask me, “How do I find my shlichus? How do I find my purpose?” And I don’t think there’s one answer. The real answer is: go try things. Run into some walls. Eventually you’ll understand what isn’t right and what is, and little by little you’ll get to—

18:05 Speaker 2 I’d say that about marriage, raising children and earning a living too—about everything in life. There’s never one formula, one equation you’re supposed to follow. “How do I know he’s the one who’s supposed to be my husband?” I have no idea, sweetheart. There’s no—

18:19 Speaker 3 No secret I somehow missed.

18:20 Speaker 2 Incidentally, that’s something that came up very strongly for me over the years, both in marriage and in raising children. Something happens at home, some crisis, and I think: there’s no book that says, “When your child says this, do that.” Halachah doesn’t address it. It isn’t there. Halachah is about how to walk through life. In the end, you reach that point and ask yourself, “What does Hashem want from me? What unique light can I bring into the world in this situation?” I had a blowup with someone a few years ago. A painful blowup involving people who were our friends. It was very hurtful and very hard for me. First I was angry with him. Then I hated him a little. Then I hated him a lot. I blamed him. Then I felt regret. Then I struggled. You know, you go through a whole process. At a certain point, I suddenly said to myself, “But this is from Hashem—this blowup, this humiliation, this whole thing. What does Hashem want from me? How am I supposed to grow from this?” As I peeled away one layer after another, I encountered a very powerful truth. I also suddenly appreciated myself more. I thought, “How amazing that you didn’t give in.” I held that boundary and said, “You will not disrespect us, and you will not treat my children that way.” At the same time, I was sad. I thought about the friendship we’d had. At a certain point I also felt the pain of losing friends I loved very much, thinking that we wouldn’t be friends again. And I was amazed that, over time, we managed to make peace. We became friends again—even better friends than we’d been before.

19:36 Speaker 3 Wow.

19:36 Speaker 2 And this, this, this happened only because I stopped and said, “Hashem, what do You want from me?” In the end, I’m asking the G-dly part of myself: “What do you want? How do you want the G-dly part of you to find expression in this world?” And that’s quite a journey. It catches me in every situation, even in what my Shabbos table looks like. There was one Shabbos that was just awful. Everyone was irritable, things ran late, we were already hungry by the time we sat down. I look forward so much to those Shabbos meals; they’re so precious to me. Everyone was home that Shabbos, and I’d made such good food. That’s rare, too, because some of them are away at yeshiva and we’re not all together very often. Anyway, it was just one of those Shabbos meals. Nobody wanted to sit there. People were sitting there tense and annoyed, and within seconds everyone had left the table. I so badly wanted us to sit and learn something and sing something. I sat there by myself feeling like such a failure. Like, no, no, no. Everything I tell myself I want—it wasn’t happening. The yetzer hara had me all tangled up in it. Then I said to myself: What matters to you? That there should be learning at the Shabbos table? That there should be singing? Then sing. I took the zemiros and started singing. One child joined in, and then another. Really, they’d already gone to their rooms; they weren’t there anymore. And within seven minutes, there was a Shabbos table. Everyone was at the table, everyone was singing. I brought a Tanach, and we learned the Book of Yehoshua together. Whenever we’re all together, we learn a chapter of Yehoshua until we finish the book. I bring the book, we start learning, we look at a map. There’s a map of Eretz Yisroel right there. Where did this happen? Where is that? What did Yehoshua want? And we start

21:02 Speaker 2 asking questions. And then, listen, suddenly there’s a knock at the door. Friends come over, and we tell them, “No, we’re in the middle of something. Come back later.” And that was the truth. I’m telling you, I’m being completely honest right now. It’s not that I’m special. That was a moment of choice. Stand your ground and be yourself; listen to the G-dly part of yourself. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I listen very closely to the animal part of me, my very own. Obviously, nobody here is going to...

21:25 Speaker 4 So you’re not a tzaddekes, then.

21:26 Speaker 2 No, not at all. At the midrasha, a lot of people called me “the Rebbetzin.” I’m a delinquent. Relax. So, absolutely not. And actually, that was a huge revelation for me: that out of the simplicity of everyday life, I can find a Torah for living that flows naturally. It isn’t imaginary or plastic; it isn’t disconnected from me. That’s what matters most to me—to feel connected all the time. In the end, what I pray for my children is that they’ll feel connected, that they’ll want to love Hashem, because I can’t force them. Though I’d very much like to sometimes. You know, sometimes my children don’t want to put on tefillin, don’t want to daven, don’t want to stand for davening, don’t want to be religious. They’re not in the mood; it doesn’t appeal to them. They see something else that looks cool. You can’t really force anyone to serve Hashem. It’s definitely not genetic.

22:10 Speaker 4 Right?

22:11 Speaker 2 It’s absolutely a matter of choice.

22:13 Speaker 4 Wow, oh my gosh, you really are deep. You know, earlier you mentioned awareness.

22:18 Speaker 2 I can do shallow, too. We can talk about Magnum ice cream.

22:20 Speaker 4 Later. Earlier you mentioned awareness. I think maybe that really is the word, in a way. Like you said about the Shabbos table: “I felt like a failure,” and then you decided to move all that aside. Ultimately, we’re constantly choosing between two states. Either I’m being swept along, with myself at the center—“What’s wrong with me? What have I done? What’s going to happen to me? What happened to me?”—or I take charge. And speaking of education, our children see us.

22:48 Speaker 2 Completely. The children do, and you see yourself in the end, too. You call it awareness; I use the word listening a lot. Girls at the midrasha often ask me, “Chana, how do you know?” It’s a muscle you learn to develop, learning to listen: What does Hashem want from you? What does the Torah... what does the Torah...? You know, we had a blowup with a tenant in a house we rent out. He spoke to me very rudely, and voices were getting raised. I know how to answer back. I have quite a mouth, and when it comes to defending myself, Hashem help us. Even schug on my tongue wouldn’t have stopped me. Anyway, with every moment he spoke to me, I was getting more and more worked up. I was a second away from going after him with a lawyer. I was thinking, “You’ll regret the day you moved into my house. I’ll show you.” And I reached the point where I was just about to explode, and I said to myself: “But Chana, what do you want? What do you want to bring into this situation?” Listen, it was amazing. I said to him, “Well, I’m very sorry you spoke that way. This will be the last time we speak. From now on, of course, only my lawyer will speak to you. All the best.”

23:48 Speaker 4 Wow.

23:49 Speaker 2 Now, I really wanted to explode at him. And he backed down—that’s an understatement. Yes, it was more powerful than anything else. First of all for me, but afterward for him, too: there’s another way. When you listen to the G-dly part of yourself. I mean, I don’t hear it automatically. You have to learn to listen to it.

24:09 Speaker 4 Right. And even before listening, you have to be present in the situation. Where are we? All day long we’re scrolling and skimming and refreshing.

24:18 Speaker 2 So, after the summer break—

24:18 Speaker 4 It’s terribly hard nowadays.

24:19 Speaker 2 I made a decision. During the summer break, I put my phone on silent, on vibrate—no notifications. I turned off all the notifications from all the apps on my phone. If I go into WhatsApp, I see who’s... But it doesn’t control me; I’m not hearing it all the time. Then this week I turned the sound back on, and it’s been really hard for me.

24:34 Speaker 4 No, no, no, turn it off altogether. Mine has been off for years. Everyone manages. Nothing has happened yet that—

24:39 Speaker 2 No, so, to be honest, email, Instagram, WhatsApp, all of that... But with WhatsApp, you need to be more available for work, for family, for the kids; there are phone calls and everything. But suddenly I realized how much of it is just constant distraction, constant distraction. And that’s in this world. I mean, in the spiritual world, when you’re dealing with lashon hara and... there’s no end to it. And I really feel that this is some kind of... I auditioned for a TV show with a panel of left-wing and right-wing people. They sent me a prompt for the audition. They were looking for a right-wing woman who was funny, witty, quick on her feet, sharp. Lots of people tagged me, and listen, it sounded cool—exposure and all that. I really wanted it. I started, and one of the questions was, “Is a jellyfish left-wing or right-wing?”

25:28 Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

25:28 Speaker 2 So I immediately answered, “Obviously it’s left-wing, because it has no brain, it just does damage, and it has no backbone.” Without even blinking. Everyone laughed, and suddenly, right then, I put down the paper. I said, “I’m not interested,” and left.

25:39 Speaker 4 Wow.

25:40 Speaker 2 And I taught myself: I don’t want to use all my strength, my wit, my sarcasm, my way of seeing things, to laugh at someone else, to show... I don’t want that. And I think I do have a choice. I said, Hashem gave me a tremendous power in this world, the power of speech. The question is, what am I going to do with it? Will I have a life of blessing or a life of curse?

25:57 Speaker 4 That’s incredible.

25:58 Speaker 2 And it takes work, because I fall into it all the time, too. Right? It’s easy to bring the nice, good examples.

26:04 Speaker 4 We’re always working on ourselves.

26:05 Speaker 2 Always.

26:06 Speaker 4 Everyone... Look, I also see... I know you’re involved in giving talks and classes, too. How many times do you come out of a class... I once read something a woman wrote: “I’m giving a class about joy, and inside I’m, like...”

26:21 Speaker 2 More than that...

26:22 Speaker 4 Yes, it’s...

26:23 Speaker 2 If I announce what I want to teach, that’s exactly where I’m tested. That’s why I try not to teach about marriage. I don’t have the energy for it. But every time I’ve had a big webinar, a broadcast or a talk about marriage, we’ve always had an argument beforehand. Always, always...

26:36 Speaker 4 You get tested.

26:37 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s like Hashem says to me, “You want to? Come on, sweetheart.”

26:39 Speaker 4 Let’s see how you do first.

26:40 Speaker 2 Exactly like that, yeah. But one of the reasons I’m funny and genuinely happy is that this is something I struggle with, because I touch the depths. Every Motzaei Shabbos I descend into the depths of despair, sweetheart. Every Motzaei Shabbos. I can’t beat that Motzaei Shabbos depression, no matter what I do. Every week I think, “This time I’ll put on sneakers, I’ll go for a walk, I’ll get the house in order,” and the moment Shabbos is over, it’s just wham, wham, wham. I can’t get a word out. I see...

27:02 Speaker 4 The soul departing.

27:03 Speaker 2 These depths of darkness, you know. And every time, Sunday comes, the light shines, and I get going, and I teach, and I’m busy doing things. That’s it. And I say, I also accept those parts of myself. I’ve stopped fighting them.

27:15 Speaker 4 I think they have to be there. If you were happy all the time, who would believe you?

27:18 Speaker 2 No, I’m never happy all the time. Actually, that’s...

27:20 Speaker 4 There’s no such thing anyway.

27:22 Speaker 2 Exactly. There’s no such thing. But I also think we’ve got this artificial idea in our heads of what happiness is. Because people keep talking as if happiness means being all bubbly and having the whole world smile. I’m very, very, very happy with my life, and I don’t look like a happy person.

27:35 Speaker 4 What is happiness?

27:35 Speaker 2 So, in my experience, when I sat down to prepare my first classes on happiness, the very first word that came to me was wholeness. Not perfection, but being at peace with the sum of all your parts.

27:48 Speaker 4 A kind of serenity?

27:49 Speaker 2 Um, no. Serenity isn’t something I know. That’s not...

27:52 Speaker 4 No, I mean serenity as in acceptance of...

27:55 Speaker 2 Yes, so if you... a feeling of being whole. It’s like when you... I’ll give an example from marriage. I’m constantly looking and thinking, “Why aren’t we like that? Look at that couple, how they’re like this and that.” And then you say, “This is my husband, this is me, these are our personalities.” I’m at peace with this marriage, and this is what I work with, what I act within. I say, “This is me. This is how Hakadosh Boruch Hu created me.” That’s the... Rabbi Baruch of Mezhibuzh says—someone asks him about Yom Kippur, and he says, “If they ask me in the Heavenly Court, ‘What did you do? What were you meant to rectify? What was your work?’ I would answer, ‘I did what I could with the soul I was given. I did what I could. If I’d been given a loftier soul, I would have done loftier things. I was given a lowly soul, so I did lowly things.’” There’s something healing in that. He says that regarding Yom Kippur it’s written, “You shall afflict your souls.” You afflict yourself: you don’t eat, you don’t drink. But Rabbi Baruch says, really, teach yourself what you answer your soul. What is my response? I say, “I’m doing the very best I can.” And I say this to the girls at the seminary all the time when we talk about the yetzer hara. They ask me, “But if I’m doing something wrong, am I supposed to feel good about myself?” Because I tell them, “Don’t feel bad; you need to love yourself.” And they say, “But Chana, I’ve sinned, I’ve transgressed. I have to do something about it.” I say, “First of all, sweetheart, you’re not the first, dear. We all sin.”

29:00 Speaker 5 You’re so special.

29:01 Speaker 2 Yes, don’t get too excited about yourself. “No, but Chana, if I told you the sins I commit...” What are you saying, sweetheart? First of all, I’m not a priest; I’m not interested in hearing your confession. And second, we all sin and fall. That’s how He created us. We were created lacking, incomplete, full of flaws from the outset, and that’s the work. But if we’re upset about the work all the time, then what’s the point? And this is where, I think, Western culture washes over all of us: the desire for perfection, the desire for a picture-perfect life, the concern with how it looks, how it will look, how it will sound, and all that. Instagram, those stories, are a serious disease. Really, really, really. Because I say, I have no problem showing the beautiful Shabbos table I set. Fine, I really mean that. But show what it looked like beforehand too. I mean, it’s not... And you don’t have to show everything, either. Yes, that’s a whole conversation in itself. You could do an entire podcast just on that.

29:47 Speaker 5 I think that as consumers, we really need to understand how to look at all of it. Or maybe it’s better not to look. But if you’re there, you need to know how.

29:55 Speaker 2 You absolutely have to learn.

29:55 Speaker 5 To fill in the rest of the picture.

29:57 Speaker 2 And I also say, fine, we’re grown women, we’re aware of these things. But young girls, teenage girls, who are exposed to these status updates, stories, pictures, all these outward appearances—it’s terribly, terribly, terribly misleading, because people don’t really show any depth. And I think maybe that’s something quite distinctive about what I do: I’m not embarrassed to talk about how Roy and I fought and clashed, or how my son smoked as a teenager and I didn’t know what to do about it. And I have one who told me, “I don’t put on tefillin,” and I’m not embarrassed about it. Afterward people said to me, “How can you say that?” And I say to them, “Why, am I special? Hasn’t anything like that happened in your home?” She says, “Yes, so what?” As if it’s comfortable to say it happened in my home. And I talk about things that haven’t happened in my home too. You understand? But that’s not the point. Is there a woman who hasn’t fought with her husband? Is there a woman who hasn’t sometimes said, “I hate him. Why did I marry him? What have I done?” I don’t know one. And if there is, really...

30:38 Speaker 5 We live in a world of human beings, not a world of angels.

30:41 Speaker 2 Exactly. And I say that, and דווקא I feel there’s so much health in it, so much sanity, so much normality. I have two children in special education, with behavioral difficulties, sensory and emotional regulation difficulties, all sorts of things like that.

30:52 Speaker 5 So you won’t get bored.

30:53 Speaker 2 And there are committees and eligibility assessments and evaluations and all that, and I talk about it in my show. Women come up to me afterward with tears in their eyes because someone is talking about it. It makes it easier to face the psychiatrist again, and another committee and another committee, and all the rest of it. And he’s uncomfortable with this or that, and you’re trying all sorts of ways to accommodate him. Wow, it’s very challenging, very hard. And he’s always fighting with friends because he doesn’t know how to regulate himself. Just everyday situations. Suddenly, when someone talks about it, it gives me space. Even when I say I hate people—once a woman said to me, “Listen, ‘hate’ is a very, very strong word, but it’s so good to have someone say it for you.” It gives you a moment to breathe and say it’s okay to hate sometimes, to be jealous, to feel frustrated with what all the pregnancies and births have done to your body. You’re allowed to say it. Everything doesn’t have to be okay. I always laugh about those people who say, “Everything’s good, everything’s good.” Another second and I’m going to punch her so hard she won’t have any teeth left, with all her “everything’s good.” And I feel this is really a strength Hashem gave me, and I really try not to fake it there, to be genuine. I also stumble over this because I’m too genuine. There are a lot of things I can’t manage to do. Marketing is hard for me. Selling is hard for me, because I feel—well, not that I feel I’m faking it, because in the end I’m selling a good show, a good class. Come subscribe to my community. Come on.

32:03 Speaker 5 That’s also the yetzer hara. Wow, I recognize that so much.

32:05 Speaker 2 “You’re not worthy, you’re not good enough, you’re not this.” Sitting there in a constant battle, constantly in a panic. “People won’t connect with me, they won’t connect. Will I be good? I’m not good. I won’t do a good job.” Always stuck in that place. And suddenly I say—I honestly say—I struggle with it. One of the marketing methods is to do a webinar and things like that, and then you have to sell the... get people to sign up for the free webinar. So first of all, I don’t do anything for free. I stopped doing that. I didn’t do it from the beginning, but over the past year, with all the digital stuff, people told me, “Start doing a free webinar. Free will bring people in.” But really, there’s no such thing as free. Nothing in this world is free, and that’s really become a firm principle for me. Whoever wants it can pay. I’m not willing to—I put in the work, I’m here, I give. And I feel that someone who doesn’t invest in it isn’t invested either. Meaning, they’re not putting their heart into it. And I can see the difference with people who do invest.

32:50 Speaker 5 Equal value.

32:51 Speaker 2 I see it. Women in the community actually write to me, “It changed my life. It brought prayer, serving Hashem, and joy into my life, and I can’t go a week without it.” I took one week off during the break, so there was no class. Listen, the reactions were unbelievable. They were saying, “I can’t do without this class. It lifts me up.” So you say to yourself, you know, this is an investment that’s worth making.

33:10 Speaker 5 Good thing you took that break.

33:11 Speaker 2 Wow.

33:11 Speaker 5 Like when people only eulogize someone after they’ve passed away. Nice of you to notice.

33:15 Speaker 2 No, come on.

33:15 Speaker 5 They made time for you.

33:16 Speaker 2 The women in the community are such beautiful souls. They really do tell me all the time, and they’re so generous in saying how much the class lifts them up. But suddenly, when it wasn’t there... I missed it too, yes, but this was really something. Listen, it was powerful. Really, baruch Hashem that...

33:27 Speaker 5 You really have a very special combination, I think. Rare, I’d say. That honesty—after all, you open the Tanya, and the first thing that surprises someone who’s never studied it is, “Wait, that animalistic one—that’s actually me?” It’s like someone holds a mirror up to your face. And actually living with that is what makes you say, “Okay, fine, that’s part of me. But what do I do with it?”

33:51 Speaker 2 What do I do with it, and how do I understand that it’s for my good?

33:54 Speaker 5 Yes.

33:54 Speaker 2 How do I understand that this is how Hashem created me, and this is how He wants me? You know, one of the marketing methods that all the business mentors keep talking about is speaking to people’s weaknesses, speaking to their pain. “Tell them which dreams you’ll make come true for them in this webinar, what it’ll do for them.” I remember the woman who was managing my campaign said to me, “I need you to write down the three dreams you’ll fulfill for the people at your webinar, all their problems, how you’ll solve them,” and so on. So I wrote back to her: “We don’t make anyone’s dreams come true. We don’t solve anyone’s problems. Goodbye.” Just like that. She read it—she’d been waiting for the form, for a document she could work from to make the landing page. And she said, “What kind of answers are these?” I told her, “It’s the truth. I’m not going to make anyone’s dream come true, and I’m not going to solve anyone’s problems. I bring Torah, and whoever wants to can use it, let their heart open to it, and do the work. And if someone is under the illusion that a broadcast or a course or something will change their life and solve their problems without real work, they’re kidding themselves.”

34:48 Speaker 5 Wow, that’s so true.

34:49 Speaker 2 And I see it with my teenagers, too. They’re exposed on YouTube to all these YouTube kids saying, “Come invest money and become a millionaire, invest in this, in crypto”—all kinds of methods like that—

34:59 Speaker 5 [unclear]

34:59 Speaker 2 —for how to make money, and they believe it. I keep telling them, “Listen, money always reflects work, toil, effort. Something you don’t work for won’t really be yours. It’s an illusion. It’ll come and go; it’s not something you can rely on.” And you really feel that this instant generation, the screen generation, is this generation of flip, flip, flip. Everything is so, so fast, and it isn’t real. It isn’t real, and nothing remains of it. It terrifies me. I keep saying, what will happen in the next generation? Listen, I can’t keep up with TikTok. I can’t keep up with all these things. I can’t do it. It’s too fast for me. And I’m not even forty yet. So I say, what’s next? There won’t be TikTok, because even that’s already short—they’ll want something shorter. I made a reel to persuade people to come to one of my classes or something, and they told me, “No more than a minute.” Now what do you expect—

35:49 Speaker 5 To change the frame every second or two.

35:50 Speaker 2 To make cuts every second and all that. And you just want to say, enough. Someone told me, “Chani, I listen to classes at double speed. I can’t listen at normal speed.” What’s happened to us?

35:59 Speaker 5 Right, right.

35:59 Speaker 2 The pace, the frenzy, all of it. So there’s something in me that really... Choosing to live in the Gaza border area, in a moshav, in the south, far from the bustle and the pace of city life—I felt that it—

36:09 Speaker 5 Wait, where did you live before? Where are you originally from?

36:12 Speaker 2 I’m originally from Ma’ale Adumim, near Jerusalem. We’ve moved around for years. We’ve lived in lots of places. We lived—

36:18 Speaker 5 You’re giving me hope.

36:19 Speaker 2 Wow, we lived in Mitzpe Ramon, in Jerusalem, in the Hebron Hills, in Tzfas, in Bar Yochai.

36:24 Speaker 5 Wow, you tried the south, the north.

36:26 Speaker 2 I joke that I wanted to hike the Israel National Trail—you know, the route where you walk across the whole country for two months—but I didn’t have the energy to walk, so we did it by moving house. I’m a little lazy. But really, we were searching. That’s the truth. We’re people who search very deeply—for a sense of belonging, for a place where we feel good. We wanted a shul, too. We wanted so many things. So we moved a lot and simply couldn’t find our place. That was the main thing. Roy and I are also a bit of a mix. Roy is a baal teshuvah; I grew up religious. We’ve both been on journeys. We’ve moved away from observance and come back to it, and we’ve gone through all of that together over our twenty years as a couple, until we found what was right for us. There was a time when our children wore black kippahs, when they were really kids in a chassidic Talmud Torah.

37:05 Speaker 5 No way.

37:05 Speaker 2 Yes. Then we moved them to the more stringent religious-Zionist world. We saw that wasn’t good for them, so we moved to the religious-Zionist school system, and even there... My children are in that system, but in many ways we aren’t religious Zionists. In a lot of ways, if I could, I’d keep what we had in the chassidic Talmud Torah, with the black kippahs. I’d gladly keep a lot from there. But suddenly we understood that we didn’t belong there. And then—

37:25 Speaker 5 That’s so hard.

37:26 Speaker 2 It was very hard.

37:27 Speaker 5 Wow.

37:27 Speaker 2 Choosing the religious-Zionist school system for our children was a very, very difficult choice. It demanded a great deal of honesty from me: understanding that belonging has a—

37:37 Speaker 5 Right.

37:37 Speaker 2 —very, very high price. And that if we stayed in the baal teshuvah world, my children would remain unmoored. They wouldn’t belong. In terms of schools, in terms of yeshivos... I remember when I was really young, there came a point when I suddenly said to Roy, “Who will they marry? Who will they marry?”

37:56 Speaker 5 People say—and they’re right—“Don’t define us, don’t put us in boxes,” but—

38:02 Speaker 2 I’m the last person to put labels on people.

38:02 Speaker 5 But in the end—

38:03 Speaker 2 But suddenly I realized that—

38:05 Speaker 5 No, because you also have to make a choice.

38:06 Speaker 2 —that I needed it. That there was no way my children—

38:08 Speaker 5 That you have to fit in somewhere.

38:08 Speaker 2 —would go to a black-hat yeshivah in Beitar Illit, or a yeshivah for baalei teshuvah in Modi’in. That wasn’t right for me. And the baal teshuvah world is a very confused world.

38:15 Speaker 5 Absolutely.

38:15 Speaker 2 I don’t know how much you’ve encountered the second generation of baalei teshuvah. They’re very lost. I looked around and saw the older sons of all our friends. It wasn’t just cigarettes and alcohol. More than anything, I’m telling you, it was that lack of roots. You simply don’t belong anywhere. And there’s something in me that, despite all my criticism of the religious-Zionist community, of where I grew up, and of the things that weren’t clear there—things I’m trying hard to correct, to put right, to bring into my life differently... I run a different kind of home from my parents. I have tremendous respect and appreciation for them, but I’m someone else. And yet, on the other hand, where we live in the religious-Zionist world, there are screens and smartphones, which my older children didn’t have. They grew up without them. The younger ones have grown up with them, so the older ones criticize us for that.

38:58 Speaker 5 Oh.

38:58 Speaker 2 “We grew up with more Chassidus.”

39:00 Speaker 5 At what age does that start?

39:01 Speaker 2 What, the criticism? Wow. They... I have no idea where these critical children came from, because I wasn’t a critical child at all.

39:07 Speaker 5 Interesting.

39:08 Speaker 2 I don’t know why they turned out to be such little firecrackers. So, that was a very hard choice. When we came here and the kids saw that other children watched movies and had computer games, we didn’t know what to make of it. Xbox, PlayStation—that was a no for us. But we softened on that too. There’s a price you pay for it. And today, when I look at my older kids, who are seventeen and eighteen, and see that they’re doing well and have good friends with good values—

39:29 Speaker 5 Wow, now you’ve upset me.

39:30 Speaker 2 They’re doing well, they’re doing well. My son went to yeshiva; he’s in his first year, he learns Torah, he loves Hashem. So I say, first of all, I try to make sure we give them what we can. And I also keep ringing the bell upstairs, so to speak, reminding Him—

39:43 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

39:44 Speaker 2 That He’s very much the third partner in this, and it’s His responsibility too to help them connect. And I daven for them, you know, for each of my children, that in the end they’ll find their way. Someone once said to me, “As long as my child doesn’t leave the path, as long as he doesn’t leave the path”—as though that’s the most frightening thing. I told her, “What frightens me is that my children might not be happy, that they might not want to live.” That’s not something you can take for granted today. I see and meet a lot of sad, depressed teenage girls who don’t want to live. Whether they keep Shabbos—or keep it less, forgive me for saying so—first of all, I want them to want to love themselves, their lives, who they are, what they are. That’s what I—

40:16 Speaker 5 To live.

40:16 Speaker 2 Yes. Just to want to live, to be happy with who they are.

40:21 Speaker 5 That reminds me of a story about a man in New York whose son had left the path and moved out of the house. He turned to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and asked, “What can I do? My heart is breaking. I don’t know what to do.” So the Rebbe told him, “You need to make the Shabbos table wonderful. Don’t say anything to him. Just add more special dishes, joke around, have fun, make it joyful.” Then, when the son spoke on the phone with his younger siblings, they suddenly told him, “You wouldn’t believe how much fun our Shabbos meals have become.” After a few weeks, he came to the Shabbos meals—

40:58 Speaker 2 Amazing.

40:59 Speaker 5 And he stayed.

41:00 Speaker 2 Amazing.

41:00 Speaker 5 That story always stays with me because, as you say, in the end a child wants—we all want to live happy lives.

41:08 Speaker 2 Right. Everyone wants to feel that they belong, that they’re loved. Really, that’s the most basic need. I feel like that’s... I think it’s also what guides me when I get up onstage and talk about how I love Magnum ice creams, and how hard it is for me to feel like a meatball, this chubby woman, and how I used to be thin. Just sharing that makes room for someone to say, “It’s okay, I’m going through something like that too.” I feel we’re all searching so hard for that. When someone hears a woman like me speaking, she feels that she belongs.

41:36 Speaker 5 Right.

41:36 Speaker 2 That there’s room in the world for women like me—flawed women, women who are struggling, women who aren’t good enough. You know, I say in my shows that I hate those women who put so much effort into everything. I hate them because they make me feel so inadequate. They make the most beautiful cakes and all that, and then there are the ones who spent the whole COVID period doing crafts and activities with their kids, this and that. I have a whole sketch about it in the show, and you see women crying, really crying. My sisters, during lockdown: “Today we did MasterChef sushi; today we did MasterChef desserts—

42:00 Speaker 5 Wow, wow, wow.

42:01 Speaker 2 And today we did this”—a trip around the world.

42:01 Speaker 5 You should have sent your kids over to them.

42:02 Speaker 2 You have no idea. It was awful. And then my mother asks in the group, “But Chana, what are you doing with your kids?” What am I doing? A race for Petit Beurre biscuits. Let’s see if we can make it to the pantry and find some biscuits—

42:10 Speaker 5 We’re watching what everyone else is doing.

42:12 Speaker 2 Right? And I’ve learned to let go of so many external expectations. I’ve learned to enjoy getting into the car, driving five minutes with the kids to the forest here, taking a picnic mat and making tea and having cookies. Or even bringing dark chocolate, and everyone dips it in the tea and it melts in their mouth, and we say, “Wow, this is so nice!” We call it a sunset outing. We try, we try. It isn’t always possible. It’s easier in the winter, because I’m often out in the evenings. In summer I leave at that time, but in winter I can—I leave when it’s already dark, because—

42:45 Speaker 5 And a lot of the time it’s quite a drive.

42:47 Speaker 2 I spend a lot, a lot of time on the road.

42:49 Speaker 5 You really cover some ground, don’t you?

42:49 Speaker 2 A lot of time on the road, a lot of time away from home. So we have this thing we call sunset outings, and we do them a lot in winter too, because the weather is more manageable. It’s just a pleasure. Even if it’s only, you know, forty minutes. We go out, give forty minutes to nature, watch the sun set, say goodbye to the day we’ve had, sing a little—something small like that. And it’s not—and it took me a long time, you know, because my family is very values-driven, idealistic, Zionist, and they go on lots of hikes and outings. So I’d always feel that pressure: “What are you doing today?” “What are you doing?” “Today we didn’t do anything, and we’re happy that way.” That’s just an example. I learned to listen to my own pace, to recognize that I’m not like that and that certain things don’t suit me. I used to do them and see that I was miserable. I’d do it because someone would say, “Chani, get up, we’re going out.” And I’d think, I don’t like this. Last week, toward the end of summer vacation, I told Roi, “I really want us to go see the sunset at the beach, to mark the end of vacation.” Just like that—no preparations, nothing. We folded up one picnic mat, got into the car without really getting organized at all. I ordered pizza from a place on the way, we picked it up, and we arrived right at sunset with the pizzas. We sat there, the kids went into the water, and I hadn’t come prepared—no change of clothes, no towels, just like that. It was perfect. We talked, and everyone said what they’d enjoyed about vacation and what they wished for themselves in the coming year. It was so easy and natural, with no plans or anything. And I said, “This is me. This is my pace. This is what works for me.” I think it was also one of the best vacations I’ve ever had.

44:04 Speaker 5 Wow.

44:05 Speaker 2 I wasn’t waiting for it to end. The kids weren’t getting in my way, nothing—because at no point was I trying to be someone I’m not.

44:10 Speaker 5 You were listening to yourself.

44:11 Speaker 2 I was simply myself. There were days when we stayed home and didn’t move, and it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And there were days when we went on outings, and they were perfect. I didn’t try to be like this person or that person, and I didn’t try to please anyone. I tried to feel good about being just as I am.

44:25 Speaker 5 The problem today is that, alongside our own lives, we’re exposed to so many other things and other people’s lives. It’s crazy. Listen.

44:32 Speaker 2 Right?

44:33 Speaker 5 Forget social media—even just the family WhatsApp group, as you said, can drive you out of your mind.

44:39 Speaker 2 Absolutely. And think how many WhatsApp groups we’re in.

44:41 Speaker 5 And we judge ourselves. It’s just—it’s crazy.

44:44 Speaker 2 And it really takes work to be happy with who you are, with the way Hashem created you. To say, “These are the strengths I have, and if Hashem had wanted me to be someone else...” You know, there’s a song by Benny Landau, such a sweet, sweet singer. He’s a bit better known in the religious-Zionist community, but his songs—every one is gold. He has a song called “In the King’s Palace,” which is about the psalm of David, “Hashem is my light and my salvation,” the psalm we say during Elul and Tishrei. And he says, “Inside the King’s palace, only the King’s will...” Everyone knows that inside the palace, only the King’s will is done. Run to Him. So you understand that—and it’s so powerful—because in the end, I can want to be someone else, but I am me. You know, there’s an amazing story I always tell during Elul, about a righteous man named Rabbi Avraham. A true story. He was a craftsman and a righteous man. He prayed three times a day, set aside regular times to study Torah, gave a tenth of his income to tzedakah—by the book. He really did everything he was supposed to. One day, in his workshop, he reaches for a very, very heavy tool, and it falls on his head and he dies. He dies and ascends to heaven. He arrives, and the angel greeting him asks his name. He says, “My name is Rabbi Avraham.” The angel looks in the file and says, “Listen, Rabbi Avraham goes to Gehinnom. That’s what it says.” He says, “What do you mean, Gehinnom? Listen, look at my file. That makes no sense. I prayed, I did...” The angel looks at the file and says, “Listen, this is really, really strange. You’re really not a case for Gehinnom. It doesn’t look...” So he says, “All right,

46:12 Speaker 2 let’s check.” They go up to a chamber above, a chamber of seraphim, and approach a seraph. Now Rabbi Avraham isn’t speaking anymore, because the angel has become his advocate. He says, “Listen, there’s a file here.” The seraph says, “Mine says Gehinnom too.” The angel says, “That makes no sense. Look at his file,” and shows it to him. They go up another level, and another. And that’s how the story describes them passing through seven chambers, until they reach the feet of the Throne of Glory. They get all the way up there, and all the angels and seraphim join in, advocating for Rabbi Avraham the whole time. He gains confidence, as they say. They reach the feet of the Throne of Glory, and all the angels and seraphim ask, “How can Rabbi Avraham be going to Gehinnom? It just doesn’t add up.” Then a heavenly voice comes forth and says, “He wasn’t meant to be merely Rabbi Avraham. He wasn’t meant merely to pray three times a day. He was meant to be the greatest Torah sage of his generation.”

46:47 Speaker 5 Wow.

46:47 Speaker 2 Rabbi Avraham stands before the Throne of Glory and cries out, “Send me back! Send me back! Send me back!” And he wakes up in his workshop with a head injury, and becomes the greatest Torah sage of his generation.

46:56 Speaker 5 Wow, what a story.

46:57 Speaker 2 It’s a story that stays with me. It stays with me, and it wasn’t easy for him to become the greatest Torah sage of his generation. I have no illusions about that. And often it would be much easier and more comfortable for me to be a small person who just does what she does and goes along. But I feel a soul burning inside me. I feel the flutter of its wings, I really do. Sometimes, before performances, my whole body hurts and I don’t know why. Then afterward, the impact I encounter is so powerful that I say, “Okay, I get it.” I had a performance at Binyanei HaUma in front of two thousand women. It was an incredible performance, and afterward I crashed. I couldn’t function for several weeks.

47:37 Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

47:38 Speaker 2 And when I got messages from women telling me what that performance had done for them, I understood that ultimately—I tell the girls this in my weekly class too—this teaching may come through me, but it touches every person it’s meant to. Even now, as we record this podcast, the thousands of women who will hear it are part of what’s being said here, because they need to hear it.

48:00 Speaker 5 Right.

48:00 Speaker 2 That’s the energy moving through the world. Ultimately, all of us were hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory. We came from the world of souls, and we all met one another there. Each of us knew what awaited her here and what her shlichus would be. And I really do believe that, up there, we all signed contracts with one another: that we would meet here and help each other carry out our shlichus, realize who we are. When I meet women like me—colleagues, independent women, creators—I get incredibly excited, because I feel this vibration of life. Like, you and I met there. I’m sure of it.

48:33 Speaker 6 Wow. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing.

48:35 Speaker 2 And to really help each woman become her own Rabbi Avraham, to bring her greatness into the world.

48:40 Speaker 6 How do you explain that crash, though, after such a high and all that adrenaline, when you know it was amazing? Boom! There’s this...

48:49 Speaker 2 The truth is, my answer is... Two years ago, we had COVID, and my two sons developed an illness—a very, very serious story. That’s for another podcast. But they developed a post-COVID illness called PIMS. My oldest son had it very, very badly. He was in critical condition, with organ failure, on a ventilator and sedated. It was very, very frightening. You sit in intensive care, and there’s nothing you can do but look at—what? The monitor. And what does the monitor look like when things are good? What does the heartbeat line look like? It goes up, down, up, down. That shows there’s a pulse, that there’s life. And that taught me something very, very important. We aren’t looking for a straight line. A straight line is death. We’re looking for the rise and the fall. And this teaching of Chassidus, of the Baal Shem Tov, and of Rabbi Nachman in particular, by the way, is to find joy in the fall too. To say, “This too is a movement of life.” Even when I’m depleted—and as women, we empty and refill physically, spiritually, emotionally; we’re constantly giving birth to something. Right? Whether it’s children, whether it’s...

49:48 Speaker 6 And we all know what a cycle is—what it means to be cyclical.

49:51 Speaker 2 And to fill up again, and to be willing to accept the part that becomes depleted, that empties out, that struggles. Physically, there’s bleeding, but emotionally too. I’ll tell you: for many years, I didn’t have any more children. I had five children, and after the fifth, the doctor told me I wouldn’t have any more. And I cried. I was twenty-eight, and they were telling me I wouldn’t have any more children. I wanted more. I cried about it a lot. A few years later—four years—Roi asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said, “I want a baby,” and I cried. I told him, “I want to give birth.” I mean, I wanted that movement. And he said to me, “But you’re giving birth all the time. Isn’t every class you teach a birth? Isn’t every crisis we go through and overcome a birth?” He really instilled in me, really brought home to me, this teaching that we are constantly, constantly renewing ourselves. Things are happening all the time. And again, ultimately, the choice is what color I paint it. When I’ve come through a crisis, do I see it as having given birth to something? As having reached a new level? When I’m in that low, can I say, “I’m empty right now. I feel hollow, utterly abandoned, and I know I’ll fill up again”? If I can say that, then I can be joyful. I’m telling you, for the first time, I can say, “I’m depressed,” and be okay with it. Like, it’s all okay.

51:03 Speaker 6 Right. You’re reminding me, too—I think it says in Kabbalah that this world is like... What’s the basis of life? The heartbeat. It’s called tikkun d’liba, that the whole world is essentially built on that movement of the heartbeat, which is...

51:20 Speaker 2 Filling up and emptying out.

51:21 Speaker 6 Running forward and returning.

51:22 Speaker 2 Exactly. And Rabbi Nachman says in his teaching, the first teaching in Meshivas Nefesh: “Someone who wants to return to Hashem, blessed be He, must have two kinds of expertise: know how to move forward and know how to return. ‘If I ascend to heaven, You are there; and if I make my bed in the depths, behold, You are there.’” And what happens when we’re down in those depths? We’re sure we’re alone.

51:35 Speaker 6 Exactly.

51:36 Speaker 2 We’re sure we’re alone, abandoned. He says, no. You have to know that if you want to be connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, then even in the lowest depths, He is there with you. Yaakov Avinu leaves Beis El, a place where the Shechinah dwells, leaves the holiness, the tent, Be’er Sheva, all those places, and goes to Charan, a place of divine anger. And what happens? He reaches darkness, an abyss. And what does he say the next morning? “Surely Hashem is in this place, and I did not know it.” In this dark, difficult, bleak place, Hashem is here, and I didn’t know it. I’d always been in the tent, in Be’er Sheva, in the presence of the Shechinah. And now—look, everything’s lovely and wonderful? No. I’m not saying it’s no accomplishment to be there. There, too, you have to hold on and learn and everything. But really, in the end, that’s the pulse of life. I don’t love myself only when I’m pure, doing the right thing, succeeding. I have to love myself even when I’m stuck, when I’m far away. I really mean that. And I don’t mean in the context of a relationship; I mean it in a very real sense. Even when I’m a mess, even when I’ve done wrong—when I’ve screamed at the children, spoken lashon hara, sinned, fallen. So what? Is that it—exile? Do I no longer deserve love? I said this to the girls because they told me, “But I sin, I fall.” I tell them: Anything that makes you feel bad about yourself—know that it’s the yetzer hara. Anything that makes you feel better is the yetzer tov. “Chana, doing wrong makes me feel good.” I told her, “Fine. Let’s be honest for a second. After it felt good to sin, after you enjoyed the fall and your transgressions, what then? What’s left? How do you feel?” I asked her, and she said, “I feel

52:58 Speaker 2 like I’ve done wrong.” I said, “Okay, you know what? You did do wrong. Yes, you fell. Do teshuvah. Fine, say, ‘I don’t want to keep messaging about this,’ and so on. But what’s left now?” “I hate myself.” I told her, “That’s the yetzer hara. He says, ‘You’ve already fallen. Now let’s really make the most of it. What a mess you are. There’s no place for you. Hashem is far from you. You can’t do it. You’re not this or that.’ That’s the yetzer hara.” Brilliant, brilliant. Because what does he say? He makes you feel as though it’s the yetzer tov: you deserve to feel this way.

53:21 Speaker 7 And he disguises it.

53:22 Speaker 2 You deserve to feel this way because you fell. Because you sinned, transgressed, and did wrong. That’s his brilliance. Listen, he’s simply a genius. I say this all the time: he never comes with a sign saying, “I’m the yetzer hara—watch out.” No.

53:34 Speaker 7 Exactly.

53:35 Speaker 2 He always, always, always comes with sweet words. “But you could do more. It isn’t enough. If only you were a little more…” And then you say, “Well, what is that? That’s the drive to make an effort. Because if I just tried harder, I’d be better.” If you finish the day without feeling that you were the best you could be that day, the yetzer hara won. Unequivocally. There’s no way that, in this world, in this generation, any woman at the end of the day can’t look back and say, “Wow, I’m a champion—even in my falls and even in getting back up. I made it through another day here. I smiled today, raised children, tidied the house, and ate.” And you know what? There are days when I’ve said, “Today I didn’t run away to India or abandon the house, and for that I was a champion.”

54:15 Speaker 7 Oh, that’s so true.

54:16 Speaker 2 That’s it. And wow, what a champion I am. If I got through a day and didn’t feel that way at the end of it, but instead felt like a terrible failure, with all those thoughts about myself—then he beat me. And he beats me on many days, mornings, and nights. Let’s be clear about that. But it’s the truth, it’s the truth. Because all he wants is to make us feel small and weaken us.

54:32 Speaker 7 Absolutely. And in this era, it’s easier than ever, with all that apparent perfection around us, like you said.

54:36 Speaker 2 Right.

54:36 Speaker 7 What does it take to feel like a mess when that’s what you see?

54:38 Speaker 2 Sukkos, which is the happiest, most amazing holiday, carries so much fear within it. Suddenly you can hear everyone. People aren’t each inside their own homes anymore with the air conditioners running. How do they sing Shabbos songs over there? How are all their children doing riddles and answering questions, while at my place they’re throwing food at each other, screaming and fighting, saying, “I don’t want to sit next to him,” and all that? You go out to the sukkah expecting the Clouds of Glory, and you feel more like there are clouds of dust settling on you. You’re sure you’re going to feel holiness and sense the ushpizin, and you feel nothing. Everyone’s talking about Simchas Beis Hashoeivah, and you’re thinking, joy in this house? Really? I mean it. And you see everyone visiting one another, while no one invited you. And when you did invite someone, they didn’t answer you. Or they said, “It won’t work,” “It doesn’t suit us.” Lots of family events, and things just aren’t going smoothly. There’s no shortage of fears that can come up on this holiday. Yes, and…

55:28 Speaker 7 And we’re told, “You shall rejoice on your festival.” What is that? It’s a commandment.

55:31 Speaker 2 Ah, ah, ah. Torture.

55:34 Speaker 7 So let’s really think about it for a second.

55:36 Speaker 2 Well, we call them “festivals for rejoicing.”

55:37 Speaker 7 Yes, and not for nothing.

55:38 Speaker 2 Exactly.

55:39 Speaker 7 Let’s end the podcast with some actual advice. We’re told, “You shall rejoice on your festival.” We’re commanded to be happy. And that raises the big question people also ask about “You shall love Hashem your G-d,” and all of that: How can you command an emotion? How can you command an emotion? What does “you shall rejoice” mean? Do I press a button?

55:57 Speaker 2 And suddenly I’m happy? What, do I press a button on my heart and love every Jew? Absolutely not.

56:03 Speaker 7 Exactly.

56:04 Speaker 2 I took part in a conference this week, a conference for single women looking for a match. They had a different talk every twenty minutes. The woman before me spoke about peace, and Shlomit bringing peace, and all that sort of thing.

56:16 Speaker 7 They brought all the good vibes.

56:17 Speaker 2 And then I came on after her. “Okay, sweethearts, we’re going to talk about ‘When you go out to war.’” We were a bit of a counterpoint to that. Whenever people say, “It’s a great mitzvah to always be happy,” my response is, “I’m not—no one’s going to command me, and no one’s going to force me.” My whole rebellious side rises up. I always say that the happiest day of my life is Rosh Chodesh Menachem Av. The moment you’re supposed to stop being happy, I become overjoyed.

56:34 Speaker 7 Yes.

56:34 Speaker 2 And then I’m always depressed. But really, I think—you know, you ask me this, and I want to say that I don’t have some answer, some gem of wisdom, some neat way to wrap up the podcast. I think it comes back to being honest. The more honest I can be with myself and say, “This is my home, this is my sukkah, these are my ushpizin,” the more I can be present with the good I actually have. That’s where I find a great deal of joy. I think back to that moment when they let me back into the intensive care unit after they’d fought to save my son’s life, and the doctor said they weren’t sure he would survive because his condition was so serious. I felt as though Hashem was placing me at a crossroads and saying, “Listen, you can go into a panic now and cry and ask questions. It won’t affect whether he lives or not; you have no control over that. But there’s one thing you can choose: to rejoice in what you have right now. Right now his heart is beating. Right now he’s alive. Be happy with what you have right now.” I said to myself—and the thought was terribly frightening—that if he had only a few more hours to live, I wanted the hours I’d have left with him to be good hours. I went into the room, and we took a selfie, and we said, “Well, I’m not dead yet. I’m still here for now.” We laughed, and I sang to him and talked to him. I’m telling you this because it was a choice to say, “This is what I have.” It was a moment that was so starkly about life and death. But I took it with me into the way I move through life, to say, “This is what I have right now. This is my Shabbos table. These are the children I was given—[unclear], monkeys climbing the trees, a disgruntled teenager, a husband who hardly talks, and…” This is what I have. I can’t change it. And I also tell

58:04 Speaker 2 myself: You don’t really want someone else’s test, someone else’s struggles. And I think that’s where the lack of joy begins: when I don’t want to be in my own place. Instead, I can say, “I want to be what I was created to be,” and I draw so much joy from that. Really, each of us can ask herself: How can this Sukkos, this moment, be the best it can be for me? What would make you happy right now? Is it hard? Come on, make some shakshuka right now. Would it make you happy to invite someone over, to put on music? Come at it from a place where you aren’t a victim. You’re not someone to be pitied, and you’re not a victim of anything. This is your life. The steering wheel is in your hands.

58:36 Speaker 7 Exactly, that choice. I think, first of all, the very fact that we’re commanded to be happy means we have the ability to do it. Maybe not by pressing a button, but we can work at it. And as it says in Chassidus, thought gives rise to emotion. Ultimately, it’s chochmah, binah, daas.

58:50 Speaker 2 A mitzvah.

58:50 Speaker 7 Netzach, hod—all the rest follows from that.

58:53 Speaker 2 It’s a mitzvah.

58:54 Speaker 7 It comes from the mind.

58:57 Speaker 2 Completely.

58:58 Speaker 7 And if we do the work and learn how to do it, how to control our thoughts, then we can direct our contemplation. You want to be happy? Think about things that make you happy. Like you said, do things that make you happy.

59:10 Speaker 2 I think mitzvah is related to—there’s also the word tzav, a command, in mitzvah. So it’s also about what I’m telling myself to do. What’s the state of my heart? What does it want? Sometimes I ask myself: What’s the state of my conscience? What do I want? How do I want things to be? You know, sometimes I look back and have regrets. Why didn’t we do things differently with the kids? For example, one of their complaints is about all the moves. Why did we move so many times? “We never settled anywhere, we still don’t own a home, we’re renting, and we don’t have a childhood bedroom”—all sorts of lovely remarks, full of appreciation.

59:44 Speaker 7 From them.

59:45 Speaker 2 For everything we’ve done for them in life. And then part of me says: What would you have preferred? That we’d lived in the same place with all our siblings and you’d never met this person or gone there? All the color in our lives comes from everything we’ve been through, from all our journeys. True, we were in debt for many years, and many times we struggled. We went through a lot, a lot of things. It’s a choice to say: Now you choose the state of your heart. What’s the command—what are you telling yourself to do? What do you choose to say? “I’m—I’m happy with...”

1:00:09 Speaker 7 So we have the long way: let’s contemplate, let’s think about things that make me happy, let’s think about my life. But I think there’s a short way too. You know, you feel lousy, you feel like garbage, it’s Yom Tov and everyone’s... Come on, put on music and start dancing. If you can’t manage the long way, take the short way. I think it really comes down to understanding that the situation is in my hands.

1:00:32 Speaker 2 Also, also—

1:00:32 Speaker 7 Nothing is suddenly going to come along and make me happy.

1:00:34 Speaker 2 Also. I’ll tell you, I think the whole approach—and to me, this is the great light of the Chassidic movement—is from the inside out. So often we look for things outside ourselves to strengthen us and make us happy. And women love buying clothes—

1:00:50 Speaker 7 Oh, now that’s—

1:00:53 Speaker 2 And we tell ourselves a story. I’m not saying—I bought a scarf not long ago, and it genuinely made me really happy. Fine, that’s nice, but it’s not... In the end, joy is an inner engine. When my children come home this coming weekend and we have a good, happy time together, that will give me much more strength. And you know, even more than that: when my husband goes to learn Torah. The strength and joy it gives me to know he’s learning Torah are priceless. What it does for my creativity, what it brings me when we sit and learn Torah together, when we sit and prepare something to study together—that isn’t another necklace, another scarf, another thing. I mean, I love buying a beautiful tablecloth for Shabbos, and look, I bought myself a special ceramic honey dish for Yom Tov. It’s not that I live in some world detached from material things, not at all. But I ask myself: What will make me happy? On the other hand, sometimes when I’m feeling low, it really does help to pick up the phone: “Sweetheart, I’m at my lowest. Let’s go out.” A week ago I had a really hard day, so I went to see a friend. We drove out that evening, bought a really indulgent pizza—

1:01:49 Speaker 7 Where was the pizza? At Shuki’s?

1:01:50 Speaker 2 We drove to Ashkelon and went to the beach. We just sat there until four in the morning.

1:01:55 Speaker 7 Wow.

1:01:55 Speaker 2 And we talked and talked, and it was simply healing for my soul. Suddenly I said to myself: Some things do come from outside, but they didn’t really start outside, because they came from within—from listening to myself. Right now I need a friend. I need someone to talk to me. I need to get out of the house for a bit, not see my kids, not feel the August heat. So I did it. It was simply a moment of healing.

1:02:14 Speaker 7 Exactly, that listening. Even when you say, “I buy what makes me happy,” it’s because you’re listening to yourself. You’re not buying because—

1:02:18 Speaker 2 Exactly. And it’s also about not lying to myself that eating another Magnum ice cream, and another thing, and another thing, is what will... It isn’t. I’ve really learned about this, because people talk about it a lot: emotional eating, emotional shopping, you know, addictions.

1:02:30 Speaker 7 Filling up the cart and...

1:02:31 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And what Instagram does, the stories, all of that—it sort of fills a void. What are they doing? Where are they? What’s happening with them now? And I’m saying, some things are fascinating and interesting, and I get a lot from it, to be clear. I don’t want to just spit into the Facebook and Instagram well, because there’s a lot of light there. I spread a lot of light there, and you spread a lot of light there. It’s an enormous tool, and you have to know how to use it. I remember that even in the middle of all that—actually, you know what? Say you’re busy, sitting there on a miserable morning, nothing’s working out, it’s too hot, and you’re not going anywhere. You know that kind of day. Ask yourself honestly: What would make you happy right now? Just one thing. Sometimes it’s as simple as driving to the nearest gas station and buying ice pops for everyone. Really. You come back, and suddenly you’ve done something. I’m trying to think of something that isn’t dramatic or big.

1:03:14 Speaker 7 Because there’s something about getting moving.

1:03:16 Speaker 2 Put some dough together. Get the kids—

1:03:18 Speaker 7 Take a drive.

1:03:19 Speaker 2 No, you know, let’s make some dough and bake rolls together, all of us. Sometimes you think, “What, I’m going to make a mess?” Come on, make a mess. A little flour—what happened? Because sometimes you get stuck in a rut, and then you put on music and make rolls together. And then, come on, let’s make rugelach. Great. Suddenly it brings some movement into the house.

1:03:32 Speaker 7 Right. Getting things moving.

1:03:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:35 Speaker 7 Turn the—

1:03:36 Speaker 2 Invite friends over, let’s... If everyone’s... I find this sometimes when Shabbos is coming and I’m getting worked up. Everyone needs to tidy up! Before Shabbos I’m upset, nobody’s helping, and I’m the only one doing everything in the house. Then I tell myself: “Sweethearts, listen, here’s the situation. I want the whole house to be such-and-such by this time. You’ve got a mission.” Then I offer cards, an ice pop, whatever, and suddenly there’s a different energy in the house. You know, it all depends on the tone I use. I see it too when I’m about to argue with Roi: what tone do I come in with? When he says something that annoys me, am I going to attack him? Or do I say, “Listen, I hear what you’re saying, I understand. I really feel that if you looked at it this way, it would come across differently.” And everything calms down. But when I come in with, “Listen, you—!” it’s like—

1:04:14 Speaker 7 It’s wild.

1:04:15 Speaker 2 And how much power there is in the tone we set for our lives—

1:04:18 Speaker 7 And when you say that, I think, oh my goodness, “And you shall rejoice on your festival” isn’t just a personal command to us. We’re responsible for it—for the joy of our whole family.

1:04:24 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Absolutely.

1:04:25 Speaker 7 It’s wild.

1:04:26 Speaker 2 Completely. I feel that a woman is the one who sets things in motion. She moves everything; she’s the barometer of the home. When the mother is sad, the whole house is sad. When the mother is happy, the whole house flourishes. When the mother is angry, everyone runs away. It’s—

1:04:38 Speaker 7 Completely.

1:04:39 Speaker 2 Completely. Yes, and that’s a very big responsibility. I’m not taking responsibility away from them or from Roi, right? He sits at the head of the table, yes. But I still feel that we’re the water, we’re the movement.

1:04:54 Speaker 7 Yes.

1:04:54 Speaker 2 It’s very...

1:04:55 Speaker 7 Wow, Chana—

1:04:56 Speaker 2 It’s also the Yom Tov of the water libation, while we’re on the subject.

1:04:58 Speaker 7 Yes. And listen, it’s not just “rejoice on Yom Tov” and that’s it. With Sukkos, there’s the idea of drawing joy for the whole year.

1:05:04 Speaker 2 What do you mean? To say—

1:05:05 Speaker 7 Drawing, speaking of which.

1:05:06 Speaker 2 Exactly. It’s drawing from the wells of salvation. That’s where it comes from—the joy of Yom Tov. It’s drawing from there: “And you shall draw water with joy.” That takes effort. Drawing something isn’t something that happens along the way. It’s not a small thing.

1:05:17 Speaker 7 Yes.

1:05:18 Speaker 2 It really takes action. You have to work at it, like—

1:05:21 Speaker 7 Completely.

1:05:22 Speaker 2 So that we can have—

1:05:22 Speaker 7 Exactly. So may we merit it. And without that, as people always say—

1:05:25 Speaker 2 Don’t be afraid of the effort, of the eff—of the effort—

1:05:27 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:05:28 Speaker 2 And the sweat. Really. I mean, like—

1:05:30 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:05:30 Speaker 2 Someone who drew water sweated for it, and then they can really rejoice in it.

1:05:34 Speaker 7 Right. People wish each other, “Have a happy Yom Tov, have a happy Yom Tov,” but a happy Yom Tov isn’t just a wish. Make your Yom Tov happy. Go on, don’t—

1:05:42 Speaker 2 And what does the word chag come from? A circle, movement, all that. Something is moving here, too. I mean, if you want it to revolve around you, to be meaningful, you have to set things in motion. Joy doesn’t come without movement. Joy is movement, quite literally. And what does it mean to be happy? To be happy with Hashem. You have to be happy with what Hashem gives you. Like—

1:06:01 Speaker 7 That positive outlook, and—

1:06:03 Speaker 2 This is what Hashem is giving me, so it’s the best thing there could be.

1:06:05 Speaker 7 We’ve come back to the beginning. Wholeness.

1:06:07 Speaker 2 Completely. Right. That’s really how I see it. And there’s also something about these days that feels very whole. At least, that’s how I experience them.

1:06:15 Speaker 7 Chana Eloro. Cohen Eloro.

1:06:17 Speaker 2 Chana Cohen Eloro.

1:06:18 Speaker 7 Chana Cohen Eloro.

1:06:19 Speaker 2 Actually, my name is Chana Hadassah. But I—

1:06:21 Speaker 7 Wow, wow, wow. No, that’s also—

1:06:21 Speaker 2 Exactly. So I dropped the Hadassah because, with all the surnames, it was getting too much for everyone.

1:06:27 Speaker 7 Chana Hadassah Cohen Eloro.

1:06:28 Speaker 2 Born Bar-Lev.

1:06:29 Speaker 7 Born Bar-Lev, from the community of Shokeda in the Gaza border region.

1:06:32 Speaker 2 [unclear]. You were [unclear] Israel in 5778.

1:06:35 Speaker 7 You can’t introduce yourself in just two words.

1:06:36 Speaker 2 No, I’m complicated. I’m so glad you came, Chani.

1:06:39 Speaker 7 Wow, thank you. I had such a good time.

1:06:41 Speaker 2 Really. Thank you so much.

1:06:42 Speaker 7 I had such a good time. We’ll publish this, with Hashem’s help, before Sukkos.

1:06:45 Speaker 2 Amen.

1:06:46 Speaker 7 So let’s wish everyone—

1:06:47 Speaker 2 A happy Yom Tov.

1:06:48 Speaker 7 That we manage to put it into practice. I think just having said all this—we need to listen to it again before Yom Tov, too. We forget everything so quickly.

1:06:54 Speaker 2 Completely, completely.

1:06:55 Speaker 7 That awareness, thinking about it and living it. And with Hashem’s help, may there be thousands and tens of thousands of happy homes on Sukkos.

1:07:03 Speaker 2 Amen, amen.

1:07:03 Speaker 7 Every action, every—I’m saying, people talk about how much every action affects the world, how much every feeling we have affects the world. We are one soul.

1:07:12 Speaker 2 When someone gets up in the morning, sees the good, and feels happy about something or someone, the rest of their day draws from that. Completely. And the reverse is true, too: the rest of the day draws from that in the other direction.

1:07:23 Speaker 7 May we merit to—

1:07:24 Speaker 2 “And you shall rejoice in all the good that Hashem your G-d has given you.” It’s really about seeing how much He gives. And from there, so much comes down to choosing to see everything we have, not just what we don’t have. Because where there’s nothing, there’s nothing. And looking at what isn’t there won’t help me either. So our task is to see what is there.

1:07:39 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:07:40 Speaker 2 What’s alive, what’s vibrant, what’s here right now.

1:07:42 Speaker 7 How beautiful our sukkah is, and what foods we have on the table, and—

1:07:46 Speaker 2 Why are we Ashkenazim?

1:07:48 Speaker 7 Yes, yes. Let’s laugh about that after the pod—

1:07:51 Speaker 2 Come back for the Pesach podcast, too.

1:07:53 Speaker 7 No, that’s more, uh—

1:07:54 Speaker 2 That’s harder.

1:07:55 Speaker 7 All right, thank you so much, Chana.

1:07:56 Speaker 2 Thank you so much. May we hear good news.