Episode 43: "We are broken-hearted, but it's because we have a heart" 💔 | With Hadas Levinstern - lecturer, mother of six and recent widow

00:01 Speaker 1 A year ago, I met Hadas Levinshtern for the first time at a farbrengen during the Tzama events. From the very first moment, we knew it wouldn’t be the last time, and we agreed that as soon as we could, we’d record a podcast episode together. The days passed, the year ended, and it still hadn’t happened. Then Simchas Torah came. Elisha, Hadas’s husband, was called up immediately, and after ten weeks of fighting, he fell in battle in Gaza on the seventh night of Chanukah. I went to Hadas to hear from her: how she’s coping, how she’s rising above it, and how all the Torah and faith she’s built up over the years give her strength and courage. A strengthening, painful, uplifting, and even slightly funny podcast. You’re warmly invited to listen. A reminder: if you enjoyed the podcast, you’re invited to subscribe to the Shlichus as a Way of Life channel and share it with everyone you care about. To watch content on my status, send a message to 050-850-5770. The intro, and then we’ll begin. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who bring their shlichus into a variety of fields, and through it, help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a Way of Life. We’re starting now. Okay, we’re not going to pretend we’re just starting a new episode, are we?

01:45 Speaker 2 No, listen, I had a whole episode of my podcast—notice the subtle advertising here. I have a podcast. You’re not the only amazing one; I am too.

01:53 Speaker 1 There’s a reason we connected.

01:55 Speaker 2 No, because your podcast is so amazing, and you’re already at some crazy double-digit number of episodes, while I’m on episode seven.

02:02 Speaker 1 Little by little.

02:03 Speaker 2 But I recorded a whole episode, forty-five minutes. Such an episode—I really poured my heart into it. And then, at the end, I went to stop the recording and realized I hadn’t recorded any of it.

02:14 Speaker 1 Oh, that’s crazy. So that’s what just happened to us. How long have we been talking—about fifteen minutes?

02:18 Speaker 2 More.

02:19 Speaker 1 More?

02:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:20 Speaker 1 Okay.

02:20 Speaker 2 But we’ll tell you everything we talked about before.

02:23 Speaker 1 Yes. So what did we do? Okay, Hadas, you’ll have to introduce yourself again. Maybe I’ll hear another interesting detail I haven’t heard yet.

02:31 Speaker 2 No problem. I’ll just tell everyone what I’ve told Chani so far. Chani asked me about some questions she’d received from her followers. They’re very impressed by someone who seems to them almost supernatural—someone very strong, maybe even superhuman. And I told Chani about all the very, very human, small places in my life. I told her I can really identify with people who look at me and ask, “Where do you get the strength?” Because after giving birth, I fall apart. Completely, completely, completely. Okay? A month in pajamas. After a month, I say to myself, “Maybe, maybe I’ll start brushing my teeth again. Like, once a day, no more. But maybe I’ll start brushing my teeth.” I’m really falling apart. And every time, I see my friends—even after a fifth, sixth, or seventh birth, two weeks later they’re already taking the kids to the playground and signing up to bring, I don’t know, a vegetable platter to an event at the kindergarten. And a lot of times, it would bring up this feeling in me: Come on, you’re so annoying. What’s with you? How did you—why did you get your figure back so fast? Why did you recover so fast? Why are you so nice to your kids when I still can’t manage to be there? And because I know myself—I mean, suddenly the spotlight has been put on me now. But I know that I can be in those low places. I know that about myself. And even when I was in those low places, I wasn’t ashamed to say so. I wasn’t ashamed. People would ask me, “How are you?” and I’d say, “Terrible, baruch Hashem.” I really wasn’t ashamed. I remember we had a communal seudah shlishis. They sent around a Google Doc where everyone signed up for something, and I went into the document and signed myself up for napkins. Now, you couldn’t

04:28 Speaker 2 be more slapdash than that, right? Come on. A family with five children comes to seudah shlishis and brings a package of napkins. And I sent a WhatsApp message. I can even read it to you.

04:40 Speaker 3 Go for it. You know, I just have to add that when I read the question she wrote, I immediately knew what you’d answer. Because I think there’s something a little misleading about media and social media: you see a person’s strong moments. You see their strong moments. We, for example, went through the experience of coming from the war in Ukraine—I’m not comparing the two, chas veshalom—but there were so many moments of crisis, and I try, I really try, to give others strength. But anyone who thinks it’s easy, who thinks I don’t sometimes cry and fall apart, who thinks I don’t miss it—it’s important to understand that even when a person shows strength, it’s because they need to. Because that’s how we need to act. And then we need to allow ourselves to be in that place of pain, to know how to come out of it, rise up, and give strength to ourselves and to others. Those always go together, too. When you give strength to others, it strengthens you so much. So...

05:44 Speaker 2 Me too, but I’m really not ashamed to cry.

05:47 Speaker 3 Yes.

05:47 Speaker 2 I warned you in advance. Today is Elisha’s birthday.

05:50 Speaker 3 We have tissues here.

05:51 Speaker 2 5 Shvat. We have two tissues here, one for each of us. I’m not ashamed to cry. I’m not ashamed.

05:58 Speaker 3 You’re funny even while saying that. I... How are you with dark humor?

06:01 Speaker 2 Oh, dark humor. I’m good at it.

06:03 Speaker 3 [unclear]

06:04 Speaker 2 Very good at dark humor. Wait, I’ll read you the WhatsApp message I sent.

06:09 Speaker 3 About the napkins.

06:10 Speaker 2 Yes. My son was born—he’s five. After he was born, I really did go through a postpartum crisis. Something absolutely crazy. Four months of a black hole, nothingness, and emptiness.

06:24 Speaker 3 Wow. Was it actually depression?

06:26 Speaker 2 It wasn’t diagnosed depression. I mean, I wasn’t given medication or anything, but what difference does the label make? I felt terribly depressed. I felt that was it—Hadas Levinshtern would never come back. I kept saying, “I want myself back. Where am I?” I used to have a sense of humor. I couldn’t even really... And then we had a communal seudah shlishis, and I signed up for napkins. This is the WhatsApp message I sent my friends. We have a WhatsApp group called Neighbors Forever. I wrote: “Hi, Neighbors Forever. There’s a communal seudah shlishis this Shabbos. Elisha wants us to go. [unclear] Anyway, I looked at the list and got really anxious—physically, in my body, I felt panicked. I told him to put us down for napkins. Napkins. Me, who has organized quite a few communal kiddushes—napkins. The napkins were taken, so he put me down for salad bowls. Of course, this is a phase, and now, with my back, there’s no way I can do anything anyway. I’m eighty percent okay with being like this, but there’s another twenty percent that feels like something’s wrong with me. And what’s my problem with chopping two vegetables? It’s on Shabbos, after all. What’s the big deal? It’ll take no time. Just sharing—not trying to set off any alarms here. My body hurts, but my soul, baruch Hashem, is at peace. I’m Hadas Levinshtern. I’m on napkins.”

07:48 Speaker 3 Wow. I have to ask: how did you find that so quickly? It’s from five years ago.

07:53 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you why. Because I send it to so many women who share their struggles with me, even before what happened. I have a sort of collection of things I send women to help them feel that what they’re going through is normal and to give them strength, and this is one of them.

08:11 Speaker 3 So tell me what you do in general, too. You say you send things to women and you’re in touch with women. Who are you, Hadas Levinshtern?

08:19 Speaker 2 Yes, so I—

08:19 Speaker 3 Go back. How many years? Take it slowly, go back. How many years have you been in Harish? That’s new. I wasn’t born here.

08:24 Speaker 2 Slowly, slowly. I’m a widow.

08:26 Speaker 3 Your life is divided into two parts. That you can definitely say.

08:29 Speaker 2 No, my life is divided into two parts: before I met Elisha and after I met Elisha. That’s how I divide it. But, yes, I’ll do it like a résumé, where you work backward.

08:39 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

08:39 Speaker 2 So I’m forty and a half. For, let’s say, the last four years, I’ve mainly been giving lectures to women, teaching at midrashos and girls’ high schools, and giving inspirational talks. The goal is really to give women strength and resilience.

08:57 Speaker 3 What do you bring to those talks? I’m curious what kinds of sources you use.

09:01 Speaker 2 First of all, I bring humor and honesty—

09:04 Speaker 3 Yourself.

09:05 Speaker 2 And an open heart. That’s the first thing I bring.

09:07 Speaker 3 Paying attention, no?

09:08 Speaker 2 Paying attention.

09:09 Speaker 3 Right.

09:09 Speaker 2 Right. First of all, I bring—

09:11 Speaker 3 All at once, really.

09:11 Speaker 2 Lots and lots of honesty and humor. That really comes first. And second, most of the sources are from Rabbi Kook, Tanach, and Chassidus—but light Chassidus. Not, like, Chassidus—

09:27 Speaker 3 Wait, slowly, slowly.

09:27 Speaker 2 Slowly, slowly. Yes, but I really do bring things directly from the Rebbe.

09:32 Speaker 3 You weave it all together.

09:34 Speaker 2 Yes, I weave it all together, and a little Rebbe Nachman, and a little—but the main thing really is Rabbi Kook’s teachings. They recognize all the different places in a person’s soul and make room for each of them, while always knowing how to lift your gaze to the bigger picture. Because when a person is stuck inside their own story, it’s very, very hard. And when you tell someone, “Listen, you’re part of a bigger story”—even as an individual: you’re having a hard day right now. It’s a day. A hard month? It’s only a month. You’re so much more than that. And on the national level, too: you tell someone, “It isn’t just you here.” It isn’t Hadas Levinshtern facing Hamas, right? Hadas Levinshtern can’t face Hamas alone. But Sarah and Rivkah and Rachel and Leah and Ruth and Queen Esther and Chani Moskowitz and Hadas Levinshtern, all together facing Hamas—that’s a force.

10:23 Speaker 3 That whole perspective, that you’re part of—that this day is part of a week, and this week is part of a year, and this year is part of the history of the Jewish people. It changes the whole picture. It’s incredible.

10:35 Speaker 2 Exactly. And that’s what I’m—that’s what I talk about. That’s what gives me strength. Now, from the outside, someone might wonder why a woman on the way to her husband’s funeral is talking about the Jewish people and two thousand years and this great mission. But you have to understand: for me, that’s my language. It’s the language I speak all the time.

10:54 Speaker 3 You live it.

10:55 Speaker 2 Right.

10:57 Speaker 3 Exactly. I think that someone who doesn’t know you might really think, “Where did she get that from? Hello, do you realize what’s happening?” But that’s something that really reinforces this point for me. I’m always saying we have to keep learning. We have to keep ourselves filled up; we have to keep preparing before trouble comes. Not because something might happen, but because things are happening all the time, and because we have a gift that most of us—and I’m including myself here—if you’re not keeping up with it...

11:27 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

11:28 Speaker 3 Wow, you learn something and it can change your next day. Then, poof, I’ve forgotten it. It has to be constant, like pra—um—

11:34 Speaker 2 Like exercise.

11:35 Speaker 3 Yes, exactly. Keep working at it, working at it, working at it, and then, so to speak, you’re caught prepared. Obviously, this is a tragedy you can’t really describe as being “caught prepared” for. That’s obviously—

11:44 Speaker 2 No, you can say that about it, Chani.

11:46 Speaker 3 Yes?

11:46 Speaker 2 You can say it. Because I feel that, after all, a woman who sends her husband to Khan Younis during a war—she understands.

12:01 Speaker 3 What was it like for you before? This past month is only one piece of—how long has it been? Three and a half months?

12:09 Speaker 2 A hundred days, right? Yesterday was a hundred days.

12:11 Speaker 3 Right. So you’d already had a huge period of coping before any of this—

12:15 Speaker 2 Which was a kindness.

12:16 Speaker 3 Something similar. You were here alone.

12:18 Speaker 2 Yes, it was a kindness. See? To me, it was a kindness from Hashem, because Elisha left right after Simchas Torah, and for ten weeks I had a dry run. You know how in the army they say there are dry runs and live exercises? So I had a dry run. What does it mean to be alone with six children, day after day, weekdays and Shabbosos, getting ready for Shabbos, setting the timer for the hotplate—which, in principle, isn’t a woman’s job—taking out the trash, which really isn’t a woman’s job, making decisions about school? You know, there was a situation here. I have six children; the oldest is twelve and a half, and the youngest was ten months old then. All it takes is one child—and this did happen here—to fall and split his eyebrow open. I’m with the baby, and now I have to figure out how to get this child to the hospital and what to do with her. And at the same time, in an ordinary situation I’d knock on the neighbor’s door. But now her husband is in Gaza too—

13:21 Speaker 3 Oh wow.

13:21 Speaker 2 And the other neighbor’s husband is in Gaza too, and half our community is serving in the reserves in different areas. And she actually has it harder, because she’s pregnant and I’m not. So you just—I really had ten months of a dry run. Ten months.

13:36 Speaker 3 Weeks.

13:36 Speaker 2 Ten weeks. Elisha did come back sometimes. At first, in the first few weeks, he didn’t come back at all. But then he started coming home for short breaks, and he even came home for two Shabbosos. Suddenly there were long weekends. Or, you know, he’d come home on Tuesday and go back to the army on Thursday. There were some breaks, and those had their own challenges too. I have to say, even before Elisha was killed, I’d told myself that when he came back, we would have to go to couples therapy, because we’d have to make his return home a gradual process.

14:15 Speaker 3 That’s incredible.

14:16 Speaker 2 Yes, because when a man isn’t there, there’s no empty space. There’s no vacuum. You understand? So he hasn’t been here for ten weeks. I have friends whose husbands have been away even longer than ten weeks. Right? There’s no man in the house, so the mother takes on—those roles get filled by the mother, by the oldest son, by the oldest daughter. Then suddenly he comes home. I just want to raise this point for women whose husbands do come home: besides “Thank G-d, thank G-d, how wonderful,” know that it has challenges too. It’s worth anticipating them and trying to get the right emotional tools to welcome your husband back into the family. Because all at once, he goes from being in the reserves, shooting—and, you know, he’s Rambo, he’s with his friends, he’s drinking coffee, and... suddenly he has little children and a job, and he has to go into the office and work nine hours—

15:07 Speaker 3 And take out the trash.

15:08 Speaker 2 And take out the trash. So I feel that’s something worth paying attention to. Even if you’re fortunate enough that your husband comes home—first of all, you’re allowed to complain, sister. If you’re listening to me now and your husband is alive, you’re allowed to complain. If you’re listening to me now—

15:23 Speaker 3 Listening.

15:24 Speaker 2 And your husband is alive and he isn’t in the reserves. He has an exemption; he never went into the reserves at all.

15:28 Speaker 3 And he inherited a fortune and is sitting at home.

15:31 Speaker 2 He inherited a fortune.

15:33 Speaker 3 Wow.

15:33 Speaker 2 Whatever—and you have a housekeeper. Sweetheart, you’re allowed to complain. It’s a basic right.

15:38 Speaker 3 What if she has seven housekeepers?

15:38 Speaker 2 Seven housekeepers. The right to grumble and the obligation to grumble are basic rights. That was a saying in our house. Elisha would always tell me, “The right to grumble and the obligation to grumble.” You have the right to complain, sister. It’s absolutely fine. It doesn’t make you any less—

15:50 Speaker 3 It’s our sport.

15:51 Speaker 2 It doesn’t make you any less righteous. Complain. It’s all good.

15:56 Speaker 3 Exactly.

15:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:57 Speaker 3 It’s part of—on the one hand, complaining, and on the other, here you are now—I mean, I agree with you, but wait, Hadas, you yourself are coping by not seeing yourself as a victim, and in a way—

16:10 Speaker 2 Are complaining and seeing yourself as a victim the same thing? Maybe they are. I don’t know.

16:13 Speaker 3 I think so. It’s a kind of pattern of, um, “Someone’s to blame; I’m the victim.”

16:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

16:22 Speaker 3 And the strength you bring—I’m laughing because in everyday life, it really is—

16:26 Speaker 2 Right, that’s the difference between everyday life—

16:27 Speaker 3 And the victim mentality we’re talking about.

16:29 Speaker 2 Exactly, that’s the difference. Women say to me—that woman who wrote to you earlier, Chani, [unclear] in the podcast that wasn’t recorded.

16:37 Speaker 3 Maybe one day I’ll find it here. I need to cut out all those parts.

16:39 Speaker 2 The episode that wasn’t recorded. No, earlier you said someone asked, “How can she accept Hashem’s decree like that, while I get upset because my living room is a mess?”

16:48 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:48 Speaker 2 I get upset when my living room is a mess too. What’s the connection?

16:51 Speaker 3 Exactly.

16:51 Speaker 2 In small situations, I’m a small person. In a situation like this—it’s like the example I’ve given many times. If you’re listening to me and I’m repeating myself, then enough, sister, go listen to episodes about other people. You’ve heard me already. During shivah, so many people would come, and at a certain point I’d say, “If you’ve already heard this story, you’ve been here too long. Go home.”

17:11 Speaker 3 Skip ahead.

17:12 Speaker 2 Yes, enough, go home. There really is a kind of uplift in the delivery room. When you give birth, suddenly you have a different perspective on life. Even if you have a broken nail, or I don’t know, some little thing that would normally really annoy you, you won’t get upset, because you’re like, “This isn’t the time.” It’s like being under the chuppah. Most women I know wouldn’t check WhatsApp under the chuppah, wouldn’t check whether... They’d be in the moment. So right now I’m still on a kind of delivery-room high.

17:44 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

17:44 Speaker 2 Will it—will it disappear? Is there such a thing as grief oxytocin? I don’t know if that exists, but is this just a phase? I don’t know. Interview me again in two months and you’ll find out. Right now, this is where I am. This is the intensity, this is how I’m talking. You’re welcome to come record background sounds here at seven in the morning or ten at night, and you’ll hear me shouting at my children. I promise you, go ask my children. I get annoyed with them, I shout at them. They have a habit of opening a new box of cornflakes even though the old one isn’t finished.

18:18 Speaker 3 Interesting. That crosses communities and continents.

18:20 Speaker 2 It’s unbearable, that, or all sorts of other things—

18:22 Speaker 3 That phenomenon.

18:23 Speaker 2 Annoying things kids do, right? Like throwing the laundry next to the hamper. Of course I get upset about that. What does that have to do with anything?

18:29 Speaker 3 Part of life is that we’re made up of two souls, and we go up and down. What happens on Yom Kippur? At Ne’ilah, everyone cries out, “Hashem is G-d.” A second later, they’re rushing to eat cake and drink coffee like you wouldn’t believe. We’re not normal. That’s who we are. I mean, that’s our normal.

18:48 Speaker 2 Right.

18:49 Speaker 3 We go from up to down, and life is really, I think, first of all, about having that awareness. Knowing it’s okay that I’m here and then I’m there, and knowing how to be in each place the right way, how to adjust it normally—

19:04 Speaker 2 That’s what the ECG of a living person looks like.

19:06 Speaker 3 Exactly.

19:07 Speaker 2 Up, down, up, down.

19:09 Speaker 3 Ratzo v’shov.

19:10 Speaker 2 Yes. And in a moment Chani will probably ask me about Elisha, and you’ll hear Chani’s tissues rustling here.

19:16 Speaker 3 We already need, uh...

19:18 Speaker 2 Chani will ask me about Elisha, and about the fact that they have a birthday, and... I’ll break down crying here, and that’s okay. I mean, that’s completely okay.

19:26 Speaker 3 You know, I actually wanted to start by asking you about him as a person. How did you meet? You became religious, after all.

19:35 Speaker 2 Right.

19:35 Speaker 3 Take me back for a moment to the beginning, to...

19:39 Speaker 2 I became religious at about twenty-four.

19:41 Speaker 3 Where are you originally from? Tel Aviv?

19:42 Speaker 2 No, don’t exaggerate.

19:45 Speaker 3 Don’t exaggerate.

19:46 Speaker 2 I’m from Kfar Yona.

19:48 Speaker 3 Oh, Kfar Yona isn’t too far-fetched.

19:49 Speaker 2 Right, no, Kfar Yona isn’t too far-fetched.

19:51 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes.

19:51 Speaker 2 It’s near Netanya. It’s not Tel Aviv.

19:53 Speaker 3 Wait, and—

19:53 Speaker 2 But in terms of the family’s ideals, yes. My father came from a kibbutz, and he wasn’t casually secular. I mean—

20:01 Speaker 3 So what happened to you?

20:01 Speaker 2 No, not casually secular.

20:02 Speaker 3 Right.

20:02 Speaker 2 Not casually secular—very seriously secular. What happened to me? It didn’t just happen. It was a very, very long process, lasting years, that actually began in the army. I served in the army for almost seven years, and in one of my positions there was this religious officer, a settler from Gush Katif. I mean, you couldn’t get any more—

20:22 Speaker 3 Hardcore.

20:22 Speaker 2 You couldn’t get any worse. We started arguing and talking, and when you’re on a closed base, you have the chance to have very deep, lengthy conversations with parts of Israeli society you would never meet if you weren’t in the army. You meet them in the army and in hospitals. Those are the two places where you really encounter all of Israeli society, in the deepest ways. That officer was married with children at the time. There was absolutely no hint of anything romantic or anything like that. We were two officers who couldn’t stand each other, stuck together on the same base and somehow having to function, each one just wanting to strangle the other. That was basically our relationship. But that annoying man was right, which was even more annoying. Someone who’s both annoying and right—that’s the worst.

21:15 Speaker 3 Oh, wow, that combination is—

21:16 Speaker 2 The worst. Deadly. And I saw that whenever I asked, “Why are you such freeloaders? Why are you so annoying? Why does everything have to accommodate you? Why?” he kept turning the questions back on me. Like, why? Why this? Why here? Why in Israel? Why? It was a very, very long process. I can go into it, but it’ll take a long time. Do you want me to?

21:38 Speaker 3 You’re a person of truth.

21:39 Speaker 2 Right.

21:39 Speaker 3 I think you simply had no way around it.

21:41 Speaker 2 Right. I’m announcing this here, before everyone and the podcast: you should know I’m a fanatic. Really, if there’s one thing I’m extreme about, it’s the truth. I became religious—that truly was a return, a process of teshuvah. It’s actually interesting to hear.

21:56 Speaker 3 You keep doing teshuvah.

21:57 Speaker 2 Again and again—that’s what I was going to say. Six years ago I realized that white sugar and white flour were poisoning me, making me a tired, miserable, dependent, addicted woman. I went through a long process that took more than a year, and I cleared those poisons out of my system. Today, neither cola nor junk food passes my lips. That, too, was a hugely significant kind of teshuvah. We should do a separate episode about it.

22:27 Speaker 3 Wow, I relate to that so much.

22:29 Speaker 2 Or all kinds of other things. I mean, I’m extreme about the truth. If I come to understand that the truth is in Satmar, then I’m telling you, the next time we meet—it’ll take me time, because I’m not someone who keeps changing course—

22:39 Speaker 3 You’d need to do it thoroughly.

22:40 Speaker 2 Very thoroughly. But I’m telling you, if I become convinced that the truth is in Satmar, that’s it. You’ll see me in Satmar.

22:45 Speaker 3 Wow.

22:46 Speaker 2 I don’t owe anyone anything. And that’s a trait I really see in myself. Now that I’m over forty, I can see how, every time, I sort of... It’s not that I was looking for the truth. I wasn’t looking for it, but each time it found me. And with becoming religious, too, the truth simply found me. I wasn’t looking for anything; I wasn’t missing anything. I had an amazing life. I had a full life, full of values and full of joy. I have an amazing family. I didn’t come from, you know, a family...

23:17 Speaker 3 That reminds me of something someone asked. I’m jumping around between the questions here. Oh, okay, never mind. I won’t read it exactly as she wrote it, but she said, “I know Hadas became religious, and I’m curious how her family took that transition, because she wears a head covering and is what you’d call religious Zionist”—can I describe you that way?

23:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

23:37 Speaker 3 Oh, no, some people don’t like being given a label.

23:39 Speaker 2 No, you can even describe me more specifically.

23:42 Speaker 3 Don’t put me on Wikipedia.

23:43 Speaker 2 No, put me on Wikipedia, that’s fine. I think I—

23:46 Speaker 3 I think you already have a Wikipedia page.

23:47 Speaker 2 I think—really? And is it... How is it? Levinshtern? That’s the most important thing.

23:51 Speaker 3 Wait, do you spell it with a vav?

23:53 Speaker 2 No, it’s lamed, vav, yud, nun, shin, tes, resh, final nun.

23:58 Speaker 3 Well, I think we need to open the Wikipedia page live on air.

24:01 Speaker 2 I always used to say, “The surname is awful, but the guy’s a gem.” I’d say that to any clerk who called me. What did I used to say? “The surname is terrible, but the guy is worth it.”

24:11 Speaker 3 Listen, I’ve come across surnames that are even more, uh—

24:14 Speaker 2 Well, you’re a Chabadnik.

24:16 Speaker 3 From all those old countries, you know?

24:18 Speaker 2 Anyway, about my family, I’ll say briefly that it really was a very difficult process. Very difficult, because people of truth believe in their truth. My parents aren’t secular by accident. They’re not some “empty wagon,” poor people who just don’t know any better. No, they know. They’re amazing people, full of knowledge and substance, and they’re secular idealists. That’s a bit of a vanishing breed.

24:49 Speaker 3 Yes, that’s tough.

24:50 Speaker 2 But, uh, yes.

24:52 Speaker 3 Wow.

24:53 Speaker 2 They came from very, very idealistic and committed kibbutzim, and it was a very, very long process. Over time, they saw that this life has values too, and I think those values have a lot in common with secular values. I mean, Elisha was a high-tech professional. He volunteered for reserve duty. He played sports. It wasn’t some... You understand? I didn’t bring them some kind of...

25:21 Speaker 3 At the end of the day, there’s more that unites you than divides you—

25:22 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:23 Speaker 3 At the end of the day.

25:24 Speaker 2 Yes. So over time, they really came to love Elisha too. Very much. It was impossible not to love Elisha. He was such a good person that I honestly don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t. If there’s someone in the world who doesn’t like my husband, get in touch with me, just for the fun of it. I mean, I think there’s one person I know of who had some friction with him. But I know how Elisha handled that friction, so I tell myself, well, if he still doesn’t really like him, that’s his problem.

25:53 Speaker 3 Did he become religious too?

25:54 Speaker 2 No.

25:55 Speaker 3 No.

25:55 Speaker 2 Elisha grew up religious.

25:56 Speaker 3 You wouldn’t think so from his name.

25:57 Speaker 2 Right, Elisha grew up religious. He grew up in an American family. Um—

26:02 Speaker 3 Elisha.

26:03 Speaker 2 Elisha. An American, a tzaddik. My father-in-law is a rabbi. He received his semichah from Rabbi Soloveitchik at the OU. A really, um—

26:13 Speaker 3 Wait, so do they still live in the United States?

26:14 Speaker 2 No, they live in Beit Shemesh, which is, you know, a neighborhood of the United States.

26:17 Speaker 3 Yes. Wow.

26:20 Speaker 2 Religious from birth.

26:21 Speaker 3 How did you meet?

26:22 Speaker 2 Through a shidduch, like all religious people. We met through a shidduch—

26:25 Speaker 3 You were already at the shidduch stage. At what age? Wait—

26:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:28 Speaker 3 Had you been in the army?

26:29 Speaker 2 I was in the army, for quite a few years. I enlisted at eighteen and was discharged at twenty-four and a half.

26:33 Speaker 3 Wow.

26:34 Speaker 2 Yes, actually a little older. I was getting close to twenty-five, and I went to study Torah at a midrasha. At Midreshet Orot Etzion, Rabbi Uzi Binenfeld’s midrasha—he’s Rabbi Druckman’s son-in-law. That’s actually how I got to know Rabbi Druckman. I studied at the midrasha for a year and then started going on dates. And it took time, because I was quite a case, quite a serious case: a woman of almost twenty-six who’d become religious, a captain in the IDF reserves who was still doing reserve duty, with a big mouth and a whole lot of, you know.

27:10 Speaker 3 I’d be interested to read your profile from back then.

27:12 Speaker 2 Yes, thunder and lightning. What can you do? I understand that’s my personality. I mean, I’m already forty, I’m not—

27:19 Speaker 3 Yes.

27:20 Speaker 2 That’s it. I understand that’s my personality, and... there were all sorts of bizarre natural phenomena in the shidduch process. Never mind, you know what shidduchim are like. Then along came this really sweet guy, a tremendous nerd. Just a nerd. He barely spoke, he was so gentle, he hardly looked at me, and honestly I wasn’t excited. So that was that. I went home and told myself, well, this isn’t exciting, I don’t think anything will come of it, but I’m not calling it off. I had this rule for myself that I wouldn’t call it off. Then he called on Friday afternoon and asked, “How was it? How was it for you?” So I told him, “It was... it was okay.” Now, behind the scenes, I’ll tell you that he wasn’t excited about this crazy woman either.

28:08 Speaker 3 I wonder how many years it took you to talk about that.

28:10 Speaker 2 No, we talked about it while we were dating.

28:12 Speaker 3 Oh, okay.

28:12 Speaker 2 Once we realized it was heading toward an engagement, we talked about it. We got engaged after two months, too, so it’s not like—

28:17 Speaker 3 There was a little time.

28:19 Speaker 2 Yes. He wasn’t excited either, and he thought to himself, well, I’ll hear what she says. She’ll probably say it was awful too, because it wasn’t... I mean, you couldn’t say otherwise. Yes, she’ll say it wasn’t good, we’ll end it, and that’ll be great. But when I told him it was okay, he said, “Oh, okay.” That shows the difference between us, because most of the time, for me, everything is amazing, incredible, gorgeous, the most beautiful, the best, the most. For me to say “okay” is a low rating.

28:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

28:49 Speaker 2 But Elisha, who’s the gentlest person in the world and doesn’t throw words around like I do—for him, “okay” really is okay.

28:56 Speaker 3 It’s like when people say “nice” in English. It’s actually a big compliment, but in Hebrew, “nice” doesn’t sound like much.

28:59 Speaker 2 Right.

29:00 Speaker 3 What’s “nice”?

29:01 Speaker 2 Right, exactly.

29:03 Speaker 3 Okay.

29:03 Speaker 2 Good.

29:04 Speaker 3 Yes, exactly.

29:04 Speaker 2 “Good” is an eighty.

29:05 Speaker 3 Exactly.

29:05 Speaker 2 So we kept dating, and on the second date we both felt the same way. I said, well, I’m not calling it off. And he said, well, it was, like, still okay. And I think after four—I think after four dates, I suddenly told myself, listen, here’s a guy with good middos. Genuinely good middos. And then I thought, wow, what a good guy. Never mind for the moment whether he’ll be my husband or not—what a good guy. And we kept dating, and from date to date I could really see it. Now, we were very strict about these things, right? No touching, no being alone together, sitting on benches at the central bus station in Be’er Sheva—the most typical religious dates. And from date to date I just kept thinking, wow, he really is good, he really is a good person. I need someone like that beside me. And he’s so quiet, and he doesn’t mind that I’m wild. I really am wild, Chani. I’m not a sane person, I mean, and he just smiled at it so graciously. It didn’t scare him.

30:16 Speaker 3 So, as the cliché goes, he completed you.

30:19 Speaker 2 Very much, very much. He brought out more in me, and I think I brought out more in him too. But it’s more his family who say that I brought out more in him, because I always admired him. I mean, I didn’t see any... I admired him from the beginning, truly. My sister-in-law reminded me this Shabbos of something I once said to her. I’ll say it in English. Sorry to everyone who’s fussy about grammar. I’ll say it in English. She said: “You said I got the best brother, so I told you, ‘The best brother for you,’ and you said, ‘No, the best brother, period.’” In other words, you said you’d gotten the best brother. So I told you he was the best brother for you. And you told me, no, he’s the best brother, period. I always admired my husband. I admired him because he truly deserved admiration. Such a kindhearted person, so upright, never wavering, such a gentle soul, who knew so much Torah. There’s just no comparison—a walking repository of halachic answers. Now, a thousand times a day I come across questions, and I know I can ask a rabbi, but I want to ask Elisha. Or we’d be in some situation, and I’d say something, and someone would answer, “Yes, I think that’s okay.” I don’t even remember what it was. “Yes, I think it’s okay for you to do that.” And I’d say to him, “Do you think it’s okay, or do you know?” And he’d say, “I know.” I’d say, “How do you know? Come on, I studied—I studied halachah,” and I felt like, ugh, you don’t know anything. It’s awful—

32:03 Speaker 3 It’s not that same certainty.

32:04 Speaker 2 Now, it sounds awful to say this, it sounds terribly elitist, but I really did have a kind of spiritual elitism here. Think what it means to live with someone who knows halachah thoroughly. You ask him a question and you know that what he tells you is certain. And if he says you can be lenient, you can be lenient. And if he says you have to be stringent, then that really is what you have to do. For example, I know many Jewish women light Shabbos candles and then drink instant coffee, but in our home we don’t do that. We light candles and don’t drink anything, not even water, until Kiddush. And I’m so proud of that. At first it was hard for me. I told him, “But everyone drinks instant coffee after lighting candles. Everyone, everyone.” So he told me, “No problem. Make Kiddush and drink instant coffee.” So I knew that I knew—not just with halachah, but with financial matters too, with things to do with raising the children. With absolutely everything. If you ask Elisha a question and he answers you, that’s the truth. That’s the truth. It’s the most balanced, the most normal, and the most correct thing according to halachah. And I really feel the loss of that, because... I’ll give you just one example of a very small question. I receive donations. Righteous Jewish people want to help widows and orphans. I receive donations. Do I need to give maaser from them?

33:25 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s an interesting question.

33:26 Speaker 2 An interesting question, right? I am a widow, after all. On the other hand, I think I do need to give maaser, because if I receive a hundred shekels in charity, I think I need to give maaser from it. So that’s a question. Now, there’s a lot of halachic discussion about it. I won’t get into it here on the podcast. I’ll just say that you give maaser after deducting all your expenses. Meaning, you don’t have to give maaser on the full hundred shekels. You say, for example, out of that hundred shekels, I spent sixty at the grocery store. So I give maaser on forty.

33:56 Speaker 3 Wow.

33:57 Speaker 2 But I don’t know how much I spend on electricity and gas and water and after-school care and groceries. It’s all these calculations. And I simply don’t know what to do. And that’s one tiny point out of thousands where, every day, I find myself saying, “Elisha.”

34:14 Speaker 3 Wow. Even just a moment to consult him, a moment to share a question, a dilemma—even when you sometimes already know the answer. You still want a moment to ask your husband.

34:21 Speaker 2 Right. Right, and my husband was an enormous Torah scholar. But when he answered me, I understood what he was saying. He was never like—you know, sometimes rabbis or very, very great Torah scholars seem unable to say yes or no. They’ll talk for an hour and an hour and an hour.

34:37 Speaker 3 [unclear]

34:38 Speaker 2 Yes. And Elisha was a Torah scholar, truly an enormous Torah scholar, and a normal person.

34:45 Speaker 3 Wow. What did he do day to day?

34:46 Speaker 2 He worked in high tech. He was a Java programmer, worked nine hours a day, and came home. Every day he had something else: daily Rambam, Daf Yomi, a chavrusa at the community beis midrash. He was in charge of the shul community’s schedule. He taught secular boys preparing for their bar mitzvah through Tzohar. He did so many things. He really used his time in an extraordinary way.

35:12 Speaker 3 As if he sensed it.

35:13 Speaker 2 That’s it. I’ve wondered whether he sensed it. That’s the question of a lifetime, really. Did he know?

35:18 Speaker 3 It’s also a little creepy to get into that, because what does it mean to “sense it”? How often do we have all sorts of feelings and then wonder, was that something or not? People say afterward that they sensed it, but that’s such a deceptive thing. Still, you look at someone who made use of every moment as though he knew.

35:34 Speaker 2 Look, the next time I meet him, I’ll ask him. My problem is that they say, “No creature can stand in the presence of those killed for the sanctification of Hashem’s name,” and “In the place where baalei teshuvah stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.” So I’m really worried. What’s going to happen? How will we meet? Where?

35:50 Speaker 3 Wait—“No creature can stand,” and “cannot stand.”

35:53 Speaker 2 So that’s a problem. He’s completely righteous—

35:55 Speaker 3 That’s a question.

35:55 Speaker 2 “Cannot stand.”

35:56 Speaker 3 That’s a question.

35:57 Speaker 2 Right?

35:58 Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

35:58 Speaker 2 If any of the listeners has an answer to where we’ll meet, send it to the show. Because, you know, I was counting on that. I won’t be buried beside him either, because he’s buried in a military cemetery.

36:10 Speaker 3 Where? Near here?

36:11 Speaker 2 In Beit Shemesh, where he grew up, near his family. So, yes, there’s the question of where we’ll meet.

36:18 Speaker 3 Wow, Hadas, the way your mind works reminds me of a post you wrote. A post from a few days after—maybe after the shiva. “They bowed and fell.”

36:30 Speaker 2 Oh, the one that—

36:31 Speaker 3 “But we rose and were strengthened.”

36:32 Speaker 2 Right after we got up from shiva.

36:33 Speaker 3 It took me a few seconds to understand that familiar verse from Psalm 20, the meaning you had given it. I was floored. I read it and thought, okay, what does she mean? Then it clicked: we fell. We fell, and we rose and were strengthened. Wow.

36:56 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:56 Speaker 3 How did they—how did they tell you, actually? Was it during Chanukah?

37:00 Speaker 2 It was on the seventh night. The seventh night of Chanukah. First, let’s start with what I knew. I knew my husband was in Khan Younis. I knew he was fighting very, very hard, because on the Shabbos before he was killed, he called me after Shabbos. There was a problem with their tank, and they had to get out and fix it. He had a minute or so, and he called and told me. He said, “I can’t tell you anything, but we’re really giving them a beating and fighting like lions,” and...

37:30 Speaker 3 He felt proud of the whole...

37:31 Speaker 2 Very. Very, very, very proud.

37:35 Speaker 3 It’s so moving that he fell doing something he was proud of, something he might even have dreamed of—though I don’t know if he dreamed of it, because no one dreamed that what happened would happen. But...

37:50 Speaker 2 No, you can say that restoring national honor and eradicating evil are things worth dying for.

38:01 Speaker 3 Our entire history is full of that.

38:04 Speaker 2 Right. And you know, Hakadosh Boruch Hu decided that Elisha would die. Hakadosh Boruch Hu decided that. There’s no way to change that decision. But there are many ways to leave this world. We live in an area with lots of excellent drivers. We won’t say which group they belong to; we’ll just say they’re a kind of distant cousin on our father’s side. One of them could have run him over.

38:28 Speaker 3 Excellent drivers. Oh, excellent.

38:29 Speaker 2 Excellent drivers.

38:30 Speaker 3 Okay.

38:30 Speaker 2 Yes. So excellent they don’t even need a license. They don’t need one; they’re simply excellent drivers around here. He could have been killed by some stupid seventeen-year-old driving at two hundred kilometers an hour, texting at the same time, without a license, in a stolen Mitsubishi, right? That isn’t far-fetched. It happens here. It could have happened. And then there would have been no honor, no gunfire, no military salute, nothing at all. So I take a great deal of comfort in how Elisha fell. Elisha truly fell in the most heroic way: holding a weapon, wearing the uniform of the Israel Defense Forces, evacuating wounded soldiers from a tank, in a war that could not be more just. I wish he were alive. I wish he were alive. But since that’s no longer an option—that was Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s decision, and I can’t intervene in it—I take great comfort in the circumstances. Right? “May the Omnipresent comfort you.” What does “May the Omnipresent comfort you” mean? There are many interpretations, but someone said to me: his place. The place he is in. “No creature can stand in the presence of those killed for the sanctification of Hashem’s name.” His place—he’s together with Rabbi Akiva, he’s together with the Rambam, he’s... So his place brings me great comfort. But it isn’t only that. Our place comforts me too. This place, where, in the end, I truly have no regrets. That may sound like a grand statement, but I have no regrets. If it hadn’t been my husband, it would have been someone else’s husband. Every soldier there in Gaza—and not only Gaza, in Yehudah and Shomron, on the northern border—every soldier there is someone’s child, someone’s father, someone’s husband.

40:19 Speaker 2 And I really am very proud of Elisha.

40:27 Speaker 3 Wow, Hadas, now I understand all the...

40:30 Speaker 2 All the amazement.

40:31 Speaker 3 Yes. Listen, I’m sitting here saying, yes, you’re right, but to say it from where you are right now is incredible. I wrote to you about the podcast, and I was afraid you’d block me. Really. Like, “Why are you barging in? Give me a second.”

40:47 Speaker 2 I would never block you.

40:49 Speaker 3 And then you wrote back, “Wait, I’m waiting for the thirty days...”

40:54 Speaker 2 Right.

40:54 Speaker 3 “...to pass.” And I thought, oh my gosh. Just everything I’d seen and watched, and it hadn’t even been a month yet.

41:03 Speaker 2 Right.

41:05 Speaker 3 You know.

41:05 Speaker 2 But you have to understand.

41:06 Speaker 3 It came out of you.

41:07 Speaker 2 But you have to understand that for me, this is healing. And I’m truly not judgmental. I deeply, deeply respect anyone who chooses to get into bed and pull the blanket over her head.

41:17 Speaker 3 No, it’s very therapeutic.

41:18 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I just ask that you understand that for me, teaching Torah is healing. In principle, when someone is sitting shiva, they’re not allowed to study Torah or teach Torah. And that really is a decree the public cannot bear. It’s just...

41:35 Speaker 3 They took away your...

41:36 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s like...

41:37 Speaker 3 The thing you love.

41:37 Speaker 2 “We have become orphans, without a father.” It’s not enough that we’re orphans; we’re also without a father. It’s like on Tisha B’Av, when you say, “Wow, Master of the Universe, if You won’t let us study Torah, this is really serious,” right? Like a father who’s truly angry.

41:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

41:50 Speaker 2 Right? He won’t even let us study Torah. And I couldn’t keep to that. I have to say, I didn’t shower during shiva, I didn’t change my clothes, I sat low, all of that. But not speak words of Torah? I can’t do that.

42:06 Speaker 3 During shiva, you naturally end up speaking that way. That’s your language. How could you not? I wonder what Elisha would have said about it.

42:15 Speaker 2 I really wonder. I do. And so many Torah scholars came here. My husband was connected to so many righteous people, so many Torah scholars, and many Torah scholars came here. In the end, it really was Torah that comforted me. What can I do?

42:35 Speaker 3 Absolutely.

42:35 Speaker 2 It truly is comforting. “Had Your Torah not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.”

42:40 Speaker 3 I think what you said earlier, about Hakadosh Boruch Hu having already decided—that belief in hashgachah pratis, that what happens is ordained from Above—it holds you up so much. I mean, if you didn’t believe that, where would you be? And it’s funny, because earlier, when we discovered the podcast wasn’t recording, I said, in a way, it’s the same thing. Yes, Hakadosh Boruch Hu decided. Hakadosh Boruch Hu decided. And when that guides you day to day, when you’re truly steeped in it, it bursts out of you the way it just did.

43:23 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s what my bridal instructor, the amazing Rivka Amira[?], told me. She said, “Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so precise, we need to be very flexible.” If you think about that a lot, it can give you a lot of strength for life. And that brings me back, as always, to Pilates. What can I do? It’s my language too. No, no, you can’t interview me—

43:45 Speaker 3 Your Pilates post was...

43:46 Speaker 2 You can’t interview me without talking about Pilates. What can I do?

43:49 Speaker 3 Where did this whole love story begin?

43:52 Speaker 2 At rock bottom. I’d reached a state—you know, that embarrassing state where, after four births, you can’t sneeze without, without, without side effects.

44:01 Speaker 3 Illness.

44:02 Speaker 2 Yes, and a pelvic floor that no longer exists. And really, back pain and weakness, and— I decided I wanted to do Pilates. Now, because I was in such a low place, I said, “I can’t even do this in a group. I’ll take private lessons.” And I really did start private Pilates lessons. It cost me a fortune.

44:24 Speaker 3 Yes, I know, one-on-one is...

44:26 Speaker 2 One-on-one, once a week. And she told me, “Join a group. It’s a shame to spend all that money.” And I said, “No. I’m embarrassed to be seen—I mean, I’m embarrassed to be in this state. The money isn’t the issue. Just guide me through it slowly.” I really do have an amazing, amazing Pilates teacher. Should I name her?

44:48 Speaker 3 Go for it.

44:49 Speaker 2 Liraz Levin, you’re the best, you really are. You’re my Pilates angel. And really, little by little, once a week in my living room. At first I couldn’t do ninety percent of the exercises. Then it was eighty-nine percent, eighty-eight percent. And for ten months, maybe even longer, every week, until I felt ready enough to join a beginners’ group.

45:15 Speaker 3 Wow.

45:15 Speaker 2 As in, I was finally ready for the group of couch potatoes.

45:18 Speaker 3 You didn’t have any history of sports or anything like that? This was something—

45:21 Speaker 2 I had a history of getting out of gym class in high school.

45:23 Speaker 3 Ah, okay.

45:24 Speaker 2 And bringing a note saying...

45:25 Speaker 3 So this really was a complete return to the fold, too.

45:27 Speaker 2 Completely.

45:28 Speaker 3 Wow, from the...

45:28 Speaker 2 It happened alongside the changes in my diet. They came together, at the same...

45:31 Speaker 3 Yes, they go together.

45:33 Speaker 2 Yes. And I really joined the— I think I’ve been doing Pilates for almost six years now.

45:42 Speaker 3 Wow.

45:43 Speaker 2 And it gets results. So I recommend it to everyone. It doesn’t have to be Pilates. If Pilates doesn’t interest you, it doesn’t have to be Pilates. It can be dancing. It can be— it can be anything.

45:55 Speaker 3 Moving—the soul, the body.

45:56 Speaker 2 It can be walking. It really can be anything, but setting aside some time in your schedule to move your body is a very significant anchor. Very.

46:07 Speaker 3 And sticking with it.

46:08 Speaker 2 Right. So in Pilates, when it comes to flexibility, there are a lot of exercises that look like they require strength, but strength isn’t enough. You can be very, very strong and still not be able to reach your toes. It isn’t just a matter of strength. You also need a lot of flexibility. And in our lives, our limited, complicated human lives—with family and children and work, trying to juggle it all—and suddenly your daughter wakes up with an eye infection, and you say, “No, no, you can’t have an eye infection. My schedule is insane. There’s no way. You have to...” So because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so precise, we need to be very, very flexible in life.

46:49 Speaker 3 Beautiful.

46:50 Speaker 2 Right? It’s not mine; it’s Rivka Namir’s. So...

46:53 Speaker 3 You know that saying of the Baal Shem Tov, that a Jew should learn something about serving Hashem from everything? You really could write a book about Pilates, about the... I need you to say what you said last year at Tzama, because that’s where we met, about this idea of returning to the fold. Do you remember?

47:08 Speaker 2 Remind me.

47:09 Speaker 3 In Pilates there are those broad movements with momentum, and there are the small movements that supposedly look easier to do. But those are precisely the ones that take more effort.

47:22 Speaker 2 Right.

47:22 Speaker 3 More precision. It takes— it’s harder.

47:24 Speaker 2 In general, I think one-off productions—let’s look at our lives for a second—there’s a certain way in which one-off productions are easier than the day-to-day.

47:37 Speaker 3 Those grand projects that happen just once. Exactly.

47:41 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:42 Speaker 3 And then applying that to returning to the fold: you see it in yourself. True, you had your return to the fold, the one you can call a “return to the fold,” the big one, the big movement. But in some ways there was something easier about it.

47:55 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

47:55 Speaker 3 Than that everyday return to the fold.

47:58 Speaker 2 I’m telling you, putting on a skirt, covering your hair and starting to eat kosher is easier. It’s easier than growing up in a religious home and deciding to be particular about some halachah. I’m just giving a small example, but it’s a huge example. I have a friend who took almost a year to decide that she would stop washing dishes on Shabbos with a regular scrub sponge and switch to a Shabbos sponge.

48:21 Speaker 3 Wow.

48:23 Speaker 2 Or deciding—it doesn’t matter that you already don’t wash pots on Shabbos—or deciding on the tiniest thing, deciding to add one more thing. Not just Birchos Hashachar, but Birchos Hashachar and Shema, or to say Birchas Hamazon only from a siddur. Absolutely: taking it upon yourself to say Birchas Hamazon only from a siddur. I’m telling you from firsthand experience, that’s much harder than the big return to the fold that you can make a movie about. Nobody makes a movie about the woman who was born religious and, at some point, decided that she—I don’t know. I can’t think of an example right now, but she decided to wash mayim acharonim. Nobody will make a movie about her. She decided that, before Birchas Hamazon, she’ll also say Al Naharos Bavel. Nobody will make a movie about her. You won’t come interview her, and I’m telling you she’s a heroine of our generation.

49:17 Speaker 3 Exactly. It’s the habits. Making something a habit is... But that’s what wins. That’s how we make progress.

49:24 Speaker 2 Right.

49:25 Speaker 3 Incredible. Let’s go back to... We were in the middle of his reserve duty.

49:32 Speaker 2 We were in the middle of the message.

49:34 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

49:34 Speaker 2 It was the seventh night of Chanukah. I lit the candles here with the children.

49:38 Speaker 3 So you actually lit all the...

49:40 Speaker 2 We lit them all on our own. Yes, from the first night, we lit them all on our own.

49:43 Speaker 3 So you really had to do Chanukah without him.

49:44 Speaker 2 Yes, really.

49:45 Speaker 3 That part of Chanukah is tough. It broke my heart.

49:48 Speaker 2 Right. But now, you know, I also have Purim and Pesach and Yom Ha’atzmaut.

49:52 Speaker 3 No, with Chanukah, really—yes, it happens with every holiday, but on Chanukah it’s eight times that the father has the...

50:00 Speaker 2 Right.

50:00 Speaker 3 Leading role.

50:01 Speaker 2 Right. Absolutely. But our dad has the leading role every Shabbos too, with Kiddush and cutting the challah. Now I’ve accepted it; I’m ready to do it. But at first, when Yeshaya was on reserve duty, for instance, I found it very hard to make Havdalah. I felt like, enough, no—

50:19 Speaker 3 That’s where you draw the line.

50:19 Speaker 2 There’s a limit. No, there really is a limit. I’m not supposed to make Havdalah. I’m not supposed to drink a whole cup of that grape juice. It’s like a sugar overload.

50:29 Speaker 3 Really.

50:29 Speaker 2 Enough, I don’t want to. So each time it was someone else: once the neighbor, once my brother-in-law, and then— Until at some point I said, “Hadassi, just do it.” Yes, like Nike: just do it. And with Hashem’s help, I hope— I have a son who’s supposed to become bar mitzvah in about half a year. I hope I can hand over the role to him with dignity.

50:46 Speaker 3 Pass the baton.

50:47 Speaker 2 With dignity, as they say. Anyway, we lit the candles. It was Wednesday evening. My father, my mother, my sister and her three daughters were here for a festive candle-lighting. My brother-in-law and her son weren’t here; they couldn’t come. And of course my children were here. We were all here. We lit the candles, and the notification officers were standing below our balcony—we have a balcony. They saw me lighting the candles. They recognized me and understood that this was the place. So they said to each other, “Wait, let’s let her light the candles, and then we’ll go up.”

51:22 Speaker 3 I have to add something in parentheses for a second: what a terrible job.

51:25 Speaker 2 For them?

51:25 Speaker 3 Yes, being the bearers of bad news.

51:28 Speaker 2 Look, they have a very, very difficult job, but the way they do it is admirable.

51:36 Speaker 3 Yes.

51:36 Speaker 2 They are incredibly professional people, and I sincerely hope no one ever has to meet them. But you should know that they do their job amazingly well. They accompanied me here, and I kept finding myself in awe of how professional they were. To the point that, a second before I got on the bus to the funeral, they said, “Hadas, diapers, formula, diaper cream, a change of clothes. Are there medications you take regularly? Do you want to get something from a doctor?” That level of detail, okay? Amazing, amazing, amazing. There were three of them here. Under the casualty support unit’s rules, you don’t stay in touch with them after the shiva. They accompany you from the notification through the shiva, and then you part ways. Those are the rules, and I’m very careful to follow them because I understand that they protect them. So although I love them dearly, I won’t even say their names here. They know I love them, that I deeply, deeply appreciate what they do, and that I hope they’ll be out of work. Amen.

52:39 Speaker 4 Amen.

52:40 Speaker 2 So they stood here, those three angels—and they really are angels. They waited. They said, “Let her light the candles, and then we’ll go up.” We lit the candles. We’re Ashkenazi. That’s a lot of menorahs, right? One menorah, then another, then another, and after that, Haneros Halalu.

52:53 Speaker 4 That already, that’s...

52:55 Speaker 2 Yes, it took a long time. We kept them waiting here. Then came Haneros Halalu and Maoz Tzur, and Rabbi Druckman corrected us in the last verse of Maoz Tzur. He said to sing, “There is an end to the days of evil.” Not “There is no end to the days of evil”—“There is an end to the days of evil.” That’s how he told us to sing it. Of course we sang it. We came back inside for dinner. And you know what dinner is like, right? Some soup. “You don’t want any? Why don’t you want any?”

53:22 Speaker 4 And Chanukah and family.

53:24 Speaker 2 And Chanukah and family and soup and this and that. A knock at the door. They come in.

53:29 Speaker 4 Oh.

53:30 Speaker 2 Right away I sa—right away I saw the first one. All three come in. They close the door behind them and walk right into the living room. I mean, they don’t stand in the doorway. They come all the way in and close the door. Magen David Adom is waiting outside. At first I said, “No, no, no,” and made this motion with my hand, as if to say no, no. I was really trying to push the news away. No, no, no. But anyone who lives in Israel understands what three soldiers mean, right? It’s obvious what three soldiers mean. I told them, “At least tell me he’s wounded. Tell me he’s wounded.” Then they began—they have a set text. “Your loved one, Elisha Lowenstern...” or “Your loved one, Elisha, has fallen.” And then I understood. Meanwhile, my sister quickly took all the children into a room, and I said to her, “Look, [unclear], do what you think is right with your children, but I want my children here.” I called them all in. I said, “Do you understand? Do you understand what it means that the soldiers are here?” The older ones understood; the younger ones, of course, didn’t. So you explain it in terms children can understand, right? Dad was at war. The bad people killed Dad, and it’s very sad, and we cried here together. A lot happened here—there really were a lot of very sad things in those first moments. My daughter had a very, very hard time. Very hard.

54:55 Speaker 4 You’re receiving the news and, at the same time, you’re a mother who has to explain the hardest thing imaginable to her children.

55:06 Speaker 2 And there was also—so, yes. On the one hand, it was a kindness that my sister and my parents were here, right? I wasn’t alone, and immediately there was a support system. And the bond between me and my parents and my sister is so wonderful that, really, I couldn’t—For me, it was... I told my sister, “What a miracle that you’re here. What a miracle that you’re here.” And she said, “What miracle? What? Elisha died—what miracle?” And I told her, “No, for me it’s a miracle that you’re here.” I mean, how fortunate that you’re here with me, because I wouldn’t have—if I’d had to tell my father, I... it would have been very hard for me. And this way, it just happened. Everyone knows now.

55:41 Speaker 4 They received the blow together with you.

55:42 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. And... that was it. Then there was a process. We had to notify my father-in-law and mother-in-law. Elisha has five siblings, and one lives in the United States. We had to do it gradually. It took several hours to locate everyone. Meanwhile, people had already begun arriving here, and that made me very angry. People who... I actually threw people out of here, shouting at them.

56:07 Speaker 4 They came for what? To hear?

56:08 Speaker 2 People who had heard beforehand. People—people knew before my mother-in-law knew.

56:13 Speaker 4 Wow.

56:13 Speaker 2 Which is completely unacceptable. They’re kindhearted people, and I even know some of them, but I think they did something terribly wrong. When I have enough emotional strength to call them, I’ll reprimand them too. So expect a personal call telling you off. But I know there was a soldier who told people before the official notification.

56:39 Speaker 4 Ah, right. I was about to ask how that could happen.

56:41 Speaker 2 He told friends of ours. The fact is, friends of ours knew and came here, right?

56:45 Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

56:46 Speaker 2 That’s what happened. And it’s very, very serious. It isn’t a small thing. Yes, it takes many hours, but there’s a reason: there’s family, there are all kinds of sensitivities, and there’s a brother living abroad. And you know, today on WhatsApp everything spreads in a second. I really, really—I don’t want to use the word angry, but I do want to say: until you see it on a reliable news site with the words “cleared for publication,” if you pass it on, you should know that you’re doing something terribly wrong. Because of you, the sister of a fallen soldier might find out that her brother has fallen while she’s in the middle of the supermarket, and she might simply collapse there. It’s just terrible.

57:31 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s so important.

57:33 Speaker 2 It really is.

57:34 Speaker 4 Sometimes I think people don’t even get as far as—you know, they’re just used to forwarding things. Stop for a second.

57:41 Speaker 2 Yes.

57:41 Speaker 4 I heard this recently—maybe it was Sivan Rahav-Meir who wrote it in some context—that if no one else puts on the brakes, you put on the brakes. Not, “Well, if someone forwarded it to me, it must already be—”

57:51 Speaker 2 Right. No, don’t forward it. Don’t forward it until there’s an official death notice.

57:57 Speaker 4 Lives are at stake.

57:58 Speaker 2 Lives really are at stake. Until there’s an official death notice, don’t forward it. Don’t forward it. There was a—a mix-up. They drove to notify my mother-in-law in Beit Shemesh, but she was at a candle-lighting in Ariel, at the home of, um—

58:12 Speaker 4 Wow.

58:13 Speaker 2 Another one of Elisha’s brothers. So they got to Beit Shemesh and no one was home, and they started looking for her. Then they drove to Ariel, but she had just left, so they had to go back to Beit Shemesh. It took time. My mother-in-law deserved to hear officially from the IDF that her son had died. She shouldn’t have had to hear it from—Thank G-d, in our case she didn’t. She heard it from the soldiers. But I’m saying that, in theory, the news could have reached her first.

58:34 Speaker 4 It could have, yes.

58:35 Speaker 2 Yes. So I was really angry at everyone who came here. I was screaming at them.

58:39 Speaker 4 As if you didn’t already have enough to deal with.

58:41 Speaker 2 Get out of here. Leave. Does it seem right to you that my mother-in-law doesn’t know yet, and you do? Leave. Really, get out of here. Yes, it’s something that—throughout it all I was holding myself together, but that point really hurt me. And if—

58:55 Speaker 4 Because it was unnecessary.

58:56 Speaker 2 Because it was, because it was. Yes.

58:58 Speaker 4 You can tell your deputy everything in private, but it’s a matter of free choice.

59:00 Speaker 2 Exactly, and it’s not okay. As far as I’m concerned, that soldier who told people should be removed from his position.

59:08 Speaker 4 Wow. Right. Wow. So the soldiers actually sta—no, wait, it was evening.

59:15 Speaker 2 It was evening, six in the evening. They arrived, and then they stayed. That was it. They weren’t going anywhere. Eventually I told them, “Listen, enough. Everyone needs to leave.” It was already around one in the morning. I told them, “This house isn’t going to fall apart. This house isn’t going to fall apart. It’s not going to become a train station. Everybody out.” I didn’t want anyone staying to sleep with me. I’ve been sleeping alone for ten weeks now, right? I got everyone out, and then the endless flood of lovely Jewish people began. They really are lovely, but come on, sweetheart, you’re knocking at half past midnight on the door of a widow who was just told—who was told six hours ago. You say, “I’m a social worker. I came to check on you.” What do you think, that there’s nobody here? Enough. If you’re wondering whether she needs someone, find some indirect way to check. Don’t knock on the door. Really, don’t knock on the door. You don’t know me. Why should I have to— Now, maybe, I tell myself, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, she’s a social worker and she heard and thought maybe no one was with me. But don’t knock on my door. Find a way. Make an effort. Knock on the neighbor’s door. I don’t know. Just don’t. It was overwhelming, almost irritating. People were ringing the doorbell at seven in the morning.

1:00:34 Speaker 5 Wow, that’s hard.

1:00:35 Speaker 2 And food, food, food. Someone’s just been told that—right? I was told my husband died. What do I feel like doing? Great, let’s tuck into a laffa. That’s it, suddenly I’m hungry. No. And more and more food. I put a sign right on the door: I want to be alone. Don’t come, don’t knock, and don’t leave anything here. It doesn’t get any clearer than that, right? The clearest possible language. For anyone who didn’t understand: there will be shiva after the funeral, and there will be an opportunity to offer condolences. We had—

1:01:02 Speaker 5 That’s one of the reasons there’s shiva.

1:01:03 Speaker 2 Right. Now, because my husband’s brother lives in Chicago, it took time. So he was only buried the following evening. That meant twenty-four hours here of, of, of not-shiva.

1:01:16 Speaker 5 Nothing, so to speak.

1:01:17 Speaker 2 Yes, but I needed that time. So I put up a big sign, and people came anyway. I really am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I am. But please know that it isn’t always—unless you know you’re her closest friend, or that she really needs you, don’t—don’t come. Go to the neighbor. Really, don’t come. It was a very difficult part of this for me.

1:01:49 Speaker 5 Really difficult.

1:01:49 Speaker 2 Yes. And respect the hours for condolence visits, too. We had visiting hours. I called them shifts: one from eight-thirty to two, and another from four to nine or ten.

1:02:02 Speaker 5 That makes so much sense.

1:02:03 Speaker 2 It makes so much sense. But then people arrive at two and say, “You know, I just got here. I came all the way from Jerusalem.”

1:02:10 Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

1:02:10 Speaker 2 I’m sorry, I can’t. I really can’t. That sensitivity—we actually said maybe we should put together some sort of guide. Though it wouldn’t help, because people—

1:02:26 Speaker 5 They wouldn’t read it.

1:02:27 Speaker 2 Right, they wouldn’t read it. There’s no need to bring food here. This isn’t shiva; this is before shiva. It’s just overwhelming and unpleasant, and I shouldn’t have to come back—we weren’t even here. The funeral was in Beit Shemesh, and we spent Shabbos in Beit Shemesh. I shouldn’t have to come back here and find piles, mountains of food rotting outside. I shouldn’t have to. So I appointed a neighbor. I told her, “The house is locked, and there’s a garbage can outside. Anything that arrives, I want you to tell the person who brings it: either take it back, or watch it get thrown in the garbage.” And thank G-d, the threats worked, and now people don’t knock on the door anymore. At first I was very, very firm about it, and now, thank G-d, they’re afraid of me and don’t come. People knock on the door half an hour before Shabbos, half an hour before Shabbos, with gifts for the kids. “We came all this way. We’re here for Shabbos. We wanted to give you a hug.” Then hug me after Shabbos. Not now.

1:03:24 Speaker 5 When you come to help someone, try to think about what they need, not what you want to do.

1:03:30 Speaker 2 Giving has to be on the recipient’s terms.

1:03:32 Speaker 5 Exactly.

1:03:32 Speaker 2 You should know that those incidents are the minority. Most of the time, we’re surrounded by care here, and it’s amazing. You’ll see: when you leave my house and open the door, there’ll be breakfast waiting for me. I know it will be there because it’s there every day. I have an incredible friend who asks me just one question every morning: “Butter or avocado?” That’s it. Every morning, a lovely, healthy breakfast is waiting for me, with sourdough bread and cut-up vegetables. That’s an amazing act of giving. I’ll tell you about a few of these things so you understand just how cared for I am.

1:04:02 Speaker 5 Go on, tell us. Let’s talk about what does help.

1:04:04 Speaker 2 I’ll explain. First of all, it’s also about how you do it. Really, don’t approach the widow directly; approach her neighbors or her friends. Don’t go straight to her. Don’t tell me, “I brought you a salad.” When I’m sitting shiva, I’m not going to open it and eat it right then. I have no idea what’s going on in the fridge. I haven’t seen my children for five days. I don’t know. I just don’t know. And don’t ask me—don’t ask me in general, and don’t ask open-ended questions like, “Do you need help?” No. Say to me, “Would you like me to make you an avocado sandwich?” Then all I have to say is yes or no.

1:04:40 Speaker 5 Yes-or-no questions.

1:04:41 Speaker 2 Yes. And another tip, the number-one tip I got from Yael Shevach: smoothies. Smoothies during shiva are a lifesaver, because you don’t have the energy to chew. I drank smoothies. I’ll give you a few examples of amazing giving. I have a friend who quietly leaves breakfast outside my door every morning. She doesn’t knock or make a fuss. It’s the amount I like, made the way I like it. I have a friend who comes every week to comb my girls’ hair for lice. If that isn’t true friendship, I don’t know what is.

1:05:11 Speaker 5 Wow, that’s so moving. I have no words.

1:05:16 Speaker 2 There are no words for it.

1:05:18 Speaker 5 It’s—

1:05:19 Speaker 2 There are no words for it.

1:05:20 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:05:21 Speaker 2 No words. I have a neighbor who comes every week and takes care of things that are very, very delicate. The bathroom trash cans. Folding my personal clothes—very private things that I don’t want every girl who comes here to fold laundry to discover. All my secrets, you know? So many very delicate things. That’s giving. There are people here who truly come and do amazing things for us.

1:05:49 Speaker 5 Wait, where were we?

1:05:50 Speaker 2 I don’t know.

1:05:52 Speaker 5 At the funeral.

1:05:53 Speaker 2 At the funeral.

1:05:54 Speaker 5 Did you go with the children? I assume you did.

1:06:00 Speaker 2 I went with all the children, including the seventeen-month-old baby. It was very, very important to me that she be there too.

1:06:07 Speaker 5 Did you have someone, a sort of shadow, accompanying you who could take care of them?

1:06:11 Speaker 2 First of all, the people who delivered the news. The three angels who delivered the news stay with you. They don’t leave. They’re just there. I told them, “Listen, I’m going to get used to having three people everywhere I go carrying everything for me.”

1:06:24 Speaker 5 Three angels.

1:06:24 Speaker 2 Really, three angels. That’s what I called them. They help me with everything. I’m going to get used to it.

1:06:29 Speaker 5 Wait, so they left at night and came back in the morning?

1:06:30 Speaker 2 They left at night and came back in the morning, and then they came to the funeral.

1:06:34 Speaker 5 That’s so moving. I didn’t know that was how it worked.

1:06:36 Speaker 2 What incredible people. Now, they’re reservists. Again, I don’t want to reveal their details, but they’re all parents, truly amazing people. And it’s hard. It’s hard knowing that when they aren’t here, it’s because they’ve gone to notify another family. There was a whole day when one of them wasn’t there. I asked, “Why isn’t he here? Is he with another family?” And they said yes. I just said, “Oh no. Oh no.” And they come back with you from the funeral and accompany you through it all, with such kind eyes. They always look you straight in the eye. Such genuinely kind-hearted people. So, at the funeral, it was very, very important to me that all the children be there. And afterward, when they had covered the grave and placed the wreaths, I told the children, “I want us to salute Dad. All the soldiers are saluting, and we want to salute too.” So I lined all the children up beside the grave and said, “Children, salute!” And all the children saluted at once.

1:07:33 Speaker 5 How lucky they are to have you. Listen.

1:07:36 Speaker 2 Yes, and afterward—

1:07:37 Speaker 5 You’re turning it into an empowering experience for them.

1:07:40 Speaker 2 It was very important to me, and this too—well, I won’t go into it, but it’s also part of “Fortunate is one who is considerate of the needy.” If you’re falling apart and you’re not my sister, my mother, my sister-in-law or my mother-in-law, then don’t come to me at the funeral.

1:07:58 Speaker 5 Let her fall apart on you.

1:07:58 Speaker 2 Don’t fall apart on me.

1:08:00 Speaker 5 Even though you’re so strong and...

1:08:03 Speaker 2 It’s not that I can’t hold space for you. It was important to me that my children have an experience where people were holding themselves together, even when we were standing in the line. That’s the most, most awful place. Identifying the body, okay? The hardest place imaginable. It was important to me that my children have that experience. Not that there weren’t lots of tears—tears and crying and grief and heartbreak—but not trauma. Not seeing people bang their heads against the wall, scream, scratch themselves. If that’s what she wants, that’s perfectly fine. Just keep your eyes open and see what the vibe is. And when someone comes and does those things—lies down on the floor, scratches herself and loses it—in front of my little children, and I have no way to protect them from the situation, it’s like, oh my gosh.

1:08:52 Speaker 5 Wow, yes. That helplessness.

1:08:53 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, but again, it’s always a minority. It’s always the minority. There was also a woman who came up to me at the end of the shiva and started telling me about her life. At the end of the funeral, sorry. At the end of the funeral she came up to me and started saying, “Listen, I was married for twenty years. It was hell. Today I’m divorced.” The fact that I can repeat that to you now?

1:09:12 Speaker 5 Let’s put the spotlight on the majority.

1:09:14 Speaker 2 Exactly. No, the majority were amazing. The majority were amazing.

1:09:17 Speaker 5 I heard something you said at the funeral, and I can’t get it out of my head. I probably won’t quote it exactly, but it was something like, “The reason our hearts are broken is that we have hearts.”

1:09:28 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:29 Speaker 5 “And we’re on the side of those who have hearts.”

1:09:32 Speaker 2 Right. Well, that’s stated explicitly by the Klausenburger Rebbe.

1:09:37 Speaker 5 Incredible. Listen, I have to understand: did you plan a speech for the funeral, or did you even have the time or the headspace to decide what you were going to say? Pen and paper, even? Or—

1:09:52 Speaker 2 You’re going too far. First of all, I did have plenty of time, because my brother-in-law lives abroad.

1:09:55 Speaker 5 No, I don’t mean time in terms of how long.

1:09:57 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you. I can show you those words, and you can check for yourself, because baruch Hashem there are lots of my classes on YouTube from before. Check what I say, and let me show you classes I gave during the war. A week before Elisha was killed, I gave a class about gratitude at a beis midrash in Petach Tikva, the [unclear] beis midrash in Petach Tikva. A class about gratitude. And I said there that when you give thanks, you’re allowed to give thanks even when reality is complicated. You’re allowed to give thanks for the good. Saying thank you for the good doesn’t mean you’re—like, that you’re blind to the bad. And at my husband’s funeral, I stood there and said thank you. So again, every student of mine who came to comfort me, I immediately asked her, “Tell me, were you surprised? Was there anything I said that surprised you?” And they all said no, no, no. That was very important to me. I can show you sources in my classes for everything I said at the funeral. I can—because what does “my classes” mean? These aren’t my ideas, right? They’re all “stolen,” in quotation marks. They’re all from my rabbis.

1:11:03 Speaker 5 So that’s what flows through your body.

1:11:05 Speaker 2 That’s what—it’s my language, it’s my language. Quite simply, it came out of me in one shot.

1:11:11 Speaker 5 I think that’s simply the real proof of a person who has internalized what she teaches, who lives what she says. Because, between us, a lot of people talk, but when reality puts you to the test—the hardest, most real test there is...

1:11:26 Speaker 2 Right. So thank Hashem.

1:11:27 Speaker 5 Either you stand firm or you don’t.

1:11:28 Speaker 2 Let’s thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for bringing me close. Let’s thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for having mercy on me. Let’s thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for truly giving me the privilege, the privilege. “Fortunate is one who grows up in Torah and whose toil is in Torah.” My rabbi used to say that people sing, “Fortunate is one who is great in Torah.” He would always stop them. He’d say, “Fortunate is one who grows up in Torah and whose toil is in Torah. It isn’t just a song; it’s a great truth.” And because I heard that so many times, truly, truly—thank You, thank You, Hashem, for granting me the privilege of being among those who sit in the beis midrash and not among those who sit on street corners. Is what we say all day in our prayers just some empty nonsense? No, it’s real. Thank You, Hashem, for granting me the privilege, for truly cushioning me with so much faith and fear of Heaven and love of Torah, and with such illuminating, wonderful Torah scholars. Thank You.

1:12:22 Speaker 5 I have to make it in time, because there are Christians, and we’re going to have a different kind of knock at the door.

1:12:26 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:12:27 Speaker 5 I need you to talk for a moment about this idea of living. You’ve spoken about it a lot.

1:12:33 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:34 Speaker 5 About, about: here we are, we’re going to have children.

1:12:36 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:36 Speaker 5 We’re going to go to Pilates, we’re going to eat salad.

1:12:39 Speaker 2 And why?

1:12:40 Speaker 5 In spite of you.

1:12:40 Speaker 2 Let’s open the weekly parsha. We’re at Parshas Bo now. Let’s open the weekly parsha. Why do I have to say it?

1:12:47 Speaker 5 Let’s open the weekly parsha.

1:12:48 Speaker 2 Bo. What do Jews do in Egypt? What do Jews do in Egypt?

1:12:53 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:12:53 Speaker 2 Right?

1:12:54 Speaker 5 We have a precedent.

1:12:55 Speaker 2 Exactly. What do Jews do? There’s actually a book called I Believe, I think, with stories from the Holocaust. The stories are very—really, it’s a book you read on 10 Teves or on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Not something you just pick up casually. There are stories in it about Jews who, in their final moments, risked their lives to get matzah, or to circumcise a baby when it was clear he was about to die because the Germans were there—but he would die a Jew, he would die circumcised. We always cling to life, and our enemies always cling to death. So the only true revenge the Jewish people have is to live. To me, every sandwich is an act of revenge. It’s really—you know, there’s Operation Dugo. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s on January sixteenth. I think it’s January sixteenth. If I’m wrong, someone write it in the comments.

1:13:45 Speaker 5 What, tomorrow? What is it? I don’t know it.

1:13:46 Speaker 2 Oh, that’s tomorrow?

1:13:47 Speaker 5 Today’s the fifteenth.

1:13:49 Speaker 2 Oh my gosh. No, really?

1:13:50 Speaker 5 No, but I don’t know what it is. I’m curious.

1:13:52 Speaker 2 Maybe it’s the eighteenth? Wait. Our real revenge is in living. Today is January fifteenth. I don’t know when you’ll put this podcast up, but every year on January eighteenth—

1:14:04 Speaker 5 January.

1:14:04 Speaker 2 Every year on January eighteenth, we eat a portion of falafel. It’s a custom called Operation Dugo. There was a Holocaust survivor who passed away this year named David Leitner. Throughout the death march from Auschwitz, he dreamed of bilkelech—that’s what he called the warm rolls his mother had told him they had in Eretz Yisroel. He managed to survive Auschwitz, came here, and ate a portion of falafel in Tel Aviv. From then on, every year on January eighteenth, he would eat a portion of falafel. He ate falafel with the army chief of staff, he ate falafel with the president, he ate falafel. It became a whole trend. Falafel shops in Israel know that on January eighteenth they need to make lots and lots and lots of portions. You can look it up online. For Operation Dugo, people eat falafel and take pictures with a sign saying “Am Yisroel Chai,” happy and eating falafel. To me, that’s the real way, too. You want to truly honor Elisha’s memory? You should know that Elisha was a living person. Don’t focus on his death. His death was—it’s so symbolic that he was killed instantly. He took a direct hit from an anti-tank missile. He didn’t waste time on dying.

1:15:11 Speaker 5 It wasn’t drawn out.

1:15:12 Speaker 2 It wasn’t drawn out. Exactly. Elisha lived until the very last second. And if you want to honor my husband’s memory, exercise for the elevation of my husband’s soul. Go out on a date for the elevation of my husband’s soul. Eat a salad for the elevation of my husband’s soul—or a hamburger, because he was American and he loved hamburgers. Or really, dance with your children for the elevation of my husband’s soul. I don’t want any stones, any frozen memorials. That doesn’t speak to me. Only life. And I truly feel that this is how I win. This is how I defeat Hamas. They teach people to die, and we teach people to live.

1:15:50 Speaker 5 I think the fact that it’s the test is what makes it the real victory, because it isn’t our natural response. Our natural response is to become bitter; our natural response is to fall into depression, into gloom. And that’s what they want to happen. That would be their victory.

1:16:06 Speaker 2 By the way, since the beginning of the war, I haven’t watched the videos either. I haven’t seen a single video. I said, why should I cooperate with the enemy? How stupid would that be? Why should I cooperate with him? I have family who aren’t religious, and they said to me, “What do you mean? Don’t you want to know?” I said, “I have so many books about the Holocaust here. I know. They’re the same Nazis, the same Amalek. We know that in Egypt, when they didn’t meet the quota of bricks, they would put a Jewish baby in the wall. I don’t need to see it—there it is in the Torah. I don’t need to see it on a television channel.” And that choice, choosing life, isn’t escapism. It’s not escapism. It’s the opposite.

1:16:47 Speaker 5 Exactly. It’s a fine line.

1:16:49 Speaker 2 Completely. It’s a fine line, but it’s very, very clear to me. In a little while I’m going to put on a load of laundry, take it out, hang it up and fold it. And that’s my victory over Hamas.

1:17:03 Speaker 5 Wow, Hadas.

1:17:05 Speaker 2 Okay, so to finish, a Chassidic story.

1:17:07 Speaker 5 Okay.

1:17:09 Speaker 2 In the town of Premishlan there was Rabbi Meir of Premishlan, and he had chassidim. Chassidim immerse in the mikveh every day. Now, in summer and spring, that’s no problem. The way to the mikveh is straightforward. But in winter it gets a little more complicated. You have to climb a mountain, and it’s covered in snow. So the chassidim would take a longer route around it. But Rabbi Meir of Premishlan, summer, winter, fall and spring, would go to the mikveh over that mountain and never slip. The chassidim knew: that’s Rabbi Meir of Premishlan. We’re not the Rebbe; we’ll go around. One day, some people who weren’t chassidim came to town and said, “What? That old Jew can climb the mountain? Surely we can climb it. We’re young. We’ll take walking sticks, and we’ll make it.” They went up, slipped, and ended up breaking their legs. They had to go to the hospital, and Rabbi Meir of Premishlan came to visit them there. They asked him, “Rebbe, how did you do it? How can you, an old Jew, climb the snowy mountain when we can’t?” And he answered, “Someone who is connected Above doesn’t slip below.”

1:18:19 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:18:20 Speaker 2 So someone who is connected Above doesn’t slip below.

1:18:23 Speaker 5 Hold on to what’s Above.

1:18:24 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:18:26 Speaker 5 Wow, Hadas. I wish you—there’s so much we can take from this podcast into everyday life. And maybe I’ll say this, even though I feel the story was the high point. But I want every woman to leave with something. Sometimes we come away with a lot of light and no vessels to hold it. So: live. Believe in Divine Providence. It sustains us in the little things too, in the silly things, in everyday life. You’re allowed to complain. It doesn’t make you strange. But afterward, catch yourself and throw yourself into life, because if you keep complaining all the time, nothing will happen. And I’m coming back to this idea of living, because we also want this podcast to be for the elevation of the soul—

1:19:04 Speaker 2 For the elevation of the soul of my beloved husband, Elisha Levi, son of dear Rabbi Tzvi Meir.

1:19:10 Speaker 5 So dear to you.

1:19:11 Speaker 2 We’ll meet in dreams, Elisha, because I understand it’ll be hard to meet you up there.

1:19:15 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

1:19:16 Speaker 2 Because we couldn’t stand in your presence.

1:19:18 Speaker 5 That’s it. And take something on—each of you, every woman who’s listened to us and stayed with us this far. Take on something small, not big. Something small, like we said about the tiny movements in Pilates.

1:19:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:19:27 Speaker 5 Something small that adds life to your day-to-day life. Something that’s hard for you because you don’t treat yourself to it, because you don’t give yourself enough. Invest—get up and chop a salad every day. Why? Because you’d rather say, and it’s easier to say, “Oh, poor me, I don’t have time, and I never get around to it, and this and that and the kids.” Something...

1:19:44 Speaker 2 Tiny.

1:19:45 Speaker 5 Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. And that’s what you can give Hadas and Elisha, so that it will be for the elevation of his soul, with Hashem’s help. Thank you so much, Hadas.

1:19:56 Speaker 2 Thank you, Chanale.

1:19:57 Speaker 5 It was a pleasure to talk with you. It was supposed to be under different circumstances, I have to say.

1:20:02 Speaker 2 We don’t choose the circumstances.

1:20:03 Speaker 5 But yes, we began with Divine Providence, and we’re ending with Divine Providence. This was meant to happen today, at this hour, at this moment. So thank you so much.

1:20:11 Speaker 2 Thank you to all the women listening.

1:20:12 Speaker 5 Thank you.