Episode 51: I didn't choose to go through this, but I chose to go through it with joy | With Mossi Lapidot

00:00 Speaker 1 How can someone have so much wisdom about life at twenty-three? That’s an excellent question, and after talking with Mussi Lapidot, I got a very clear answer. Come hear about a girl who grew up on shlichus in Basel, Switzerland, and then, in high school, studied in Israel far from home. She thought her matriculation exams were her biggest challenge, until she started feeling unwell. After some tests, she found out one day, out of the blue, that she had leukemia. Come along on Mussi’s journey and take away life-changing insights that can change how you look at even the cup of coffee you spilled this morning. A reminder: if you liked this episode, don’t keep it to yourself. Just pass it on—to your sister, your mother, a friend, a neighbor, anyone who matters to you. To follow me on Instagram, search for Chani Moskowitz. To follow my status, book workshops and talks on life-changing tools from Chassidus, or learn about the Health as a Way of Life process, it’s all through my one phone number: 050-850-5770. The intro, and then we’ll get right into it. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz. I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and now I’m continuing my shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who bring their shlichus into a range 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 for is the best thing there is. Shlichus as a Way of Life. We’re starting right now. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Shlichus as a Way of Life podcast. Today we have a special guest. Why do I always say “a special guest”? Because I only bring on special guests.

01:47 Speaker 2 Oh, stop.

01:48 Speaker 1 Yes, but really, a special guest. Mussi, Mussi Lapidot.

01:52 Speaker 2 That’s right.

01:53 Speaker 1 Right. Have you gotten used to your surname yet?

01:56 Speaker 2 Partly.

01:58 Speaker 1 Then tell us your previous surname.

01:59 Speaker 2 Yes. I’m Mussi Wischatzky from home.

02:02 Speaker 1 When did you get married, actually?

02:04 Speaker 2 Less than a year ago—ten, eleven months.

02:08 Speaker 1 So, yes.

02:08 Speaker 2 Right at the beginning of the war.

02:09 Speaker 1 You still identify most with your previous name, too.

02:11 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

02:12 Speaker 1 So I brought Mussi here. I’d seen you here and there, and each time there was a moment of wisdom, a moment of insight. And I thought, wow, she has—okay, we won’t give away any spoilers. So take us through it. Just introduce yourself however you think best, but I do want to go back to your childhood, which wasn’t in Israel.

02:37 Speaker 2 Let’s start with childhood.

02:38 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:39 Speaker 2 Well, I grew up in Basel, Switzerland. My parents went on shlichus when I was one. I’m the oldest child in the family. So we arrived in Basel when I was one, and that’s where I grew up, until I eventually came to Israel. It’s a childhood I really love looking back on.

02:58 Speaker 1 What language, by the way? Switzerland is a bit complicated that way.

03:00 Speaker 2 Right. Switzerland is divided into regions. There’s a German-speaking region, a French-speaking region, and an Italian-speaking region. We’re in the German-speaking region, which means people speak German and Swiss German. Swiss German is a kind of German dialect. We’re near the borders with Germany and France, so there are lots of languages. At school, the second language we learned was French, before English.

03:25 Speaker 1 How interesting. So which language—or languages—do you actually speak from childhood, bottom line?

03:29 Speaker 2 Swiss German and German. Both.

03:31 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:32 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:32 Speaker 1 Nice.

03:33 Speaker 2 Very nice. A few languages in your pocket.

03:37 Speaker 1 And did English come into it somewhere too?

03:38 Speaker 2 We learned English, because it’s an international language. Especially in Europe, you’re exposed to so many languages.

03:44 Speaker 1 Yes.

03:45 Speaker 2 Of course English is one of them. But it isn’t the—

03:50 Speaker 1 Not like in Israel, where it’s the second language.

03:53 Speaker 2 No, it is—everyone in Switzerland speaks English easily. I mean it isn’t the, what do you call it, first language.

04:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:00 Speaker 2 The main one.

04:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:00 Speaker 2 The main one, that’s all. So, as I said, I grew up in Switzerland. The truth is, when people picture a Chabad House abroad, they tend to imagine something very specific, like Thailand or Ukraine, with lots of Israelis or travelers, or the opposite, more—

04:19 Speaker 1 A supportive local community—

04:20 Speaker 2 A supportive local community, something like that. In Switzerland it’s different, because there are many Jewish communities and religious centers. In Basel specifically, we have a small but established chareidi community—a strong, conservative Litvish chareidi community.

04:35 Speaker 1 Has it always been there?

04:37 Speaker 2 Always.

04:38 Speaker 1 How interesting.

04:39 Speaker 2 Always, since—there was no Holocaust in Switzerland.

04:41 Speaker 1 Right, so—

04:42 Speaker 2 So they’ve been here for two hundred years.

04:42 Speaker 1 They might not even know there was a Holocaust, I think.

04:45 Speaker 2 It’s interesting, you know, because Basel is right near the borders with France and Germany, as I told you. In fifteen minutes, I can be in either France or Germany.

04:53 Speaker 1 How interesting. A tourist abroad.

04:54 Speaker 2 Yes. And during the Holocaust, while Jews were being shot fifteen minutes across the border—

04:59 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

05:00 Speaker 2 Here they were davening three times a day.

05:01 Speaker 1 That’s unbelievable.

05:02 Speaker 2 Just so you understand the gap between—

05:05 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:06 Speaker 2 Between the countries. But oh, I keep touching the microphone and—

05:11 Speaker 1 It’s okay.

05:11 Speaker 2 Knocking it around. Anyway, what was I saying? So I also grew up within the chareidi community. I went to a chareidi preschool, and my school was a chareidi school, a sort of Bais Yaakov. I really love our chareidi community in Basel. At the same time, there was the broader religious community, where my mother works, and there was also the Chabad House, where people came who were—what’s the word? I can’t think of it. What you’d imagine a Chabad House to be, we had that too. The people who came included some who were more observant and some less observant of Torah and mitzvos, and they loved Chabad—

05:50 Speaker 1 So basically, people who didn’t really belong to the chareidi community, or here or there.

05:54 Speaker 2 Exactly.

05:54 Speaker 1 And they’d say, “At the Chabad House, I have some kind of—”

05:55 Speaker 2 They found their place with us.

05:58 Speaker 1 So who does the Chabad House serve? Presumably it’s less about a tourist who gets stranded and needs rescuing, and not— But there are local Jews who really discover their Yiddishkeit and—

06:10 Speaker 2 There are, there always are. Of course there are. It’s just obviously not on the same scale as—

06:16 Speaker 1 Who makes up most of the population? Israelis, or—

06:19 Speaker 2 Not Israelis. Locals.

06:21 Speaker 1 Ah.

06:21 Speaker 2 Some aren’t necessarily Swiss. They’re locals who’ve lived in Switzerland for twenty years, but they aren’t originally Swiss.

06:29 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:30 Speaker 2 By origin.

06:30 Speaker 1 Wow, that really is unusual.

06:33 Speaker 2 Unusual.

06:35 Speaker 1 And where were you in all this as a child? Are there—if I remember correctly, you don’t see many children out on the streets there. It’s sort of a country of adults.

06:46 Speaker 2 Well—

06:48 Speaker 1 Or is that just a stereotype?

06:51 Speaker 2 No, there’s probably some truth to it, but—

06:54 Speaker 1 I mean, are there children’s activities? Did you have friends from the Chabad House whom you spent some of your childhood with?

06:59 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Again, because I grew up in the chareidi community and went to its school and preschool, most of my friends were from there. There weren’t many girls. There were four girls in my class from first through fourth grade.

07:10 Speaker 1 Oh, how nice.

07:11 Speaker 2 And by ninth grade, there were only two of us left. So—

07:14 Speaker 1 Wow.

07:14 Speaker 2 A very, very small community.

07:16 Speaker 1 You had to be friends.

07:17 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, pretty much.

07:18 Speaker 1 There aren’t another four Leas in the country. Wow.

07:20 Speaker 2 No, so we were friends with girls older than me and younger than me. You know, that’s how it works. But in the end, most of my childhood friends—my good friends—are from there. In fact, a good friend from Basel is getting married, and I’m going to her wedding.

07:33 Speaker 1 Wow.

07:34 Speaker 2 So my childhood friends are my chareidi friends.

07:38 Speaker 1 Right.

07:38 Speaker 2 Oops.

07:41 Speaker 1 Who forgot to put her phone on silent? Me.

07:44 Speaker 2 Not me, I came prepared. Remind me, where were we?

07:51 Speaker 1 Your really close friends were—

07:54 Speaker 2 Not necessarily close friends, just childhood friends—

07:55 Speaker 1 Friends, right.

07:56 Speaker 2 The girls I was in class with. Yes, I have friends and acquaintances from the Chabad House too, but again, when did I see them? Once on Shabbos, on Yom Tov. Sometimes more often, at our house. But of course I experienced the atmosphere of shlichus: there were always guests at home, and every Shabbos we had a Shabbos meal with people. There were davening services at the Chabad House in the morning, and my father was always heading out here or there, giving classes. Our home was a Chabad House home.

08:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:25 Speaker 2 The usual, you could say. Yes.

08:27 Speaker 1 I imagine you went to Israel in the summer for camps.

08:32 Speaker 2 Of course.

08:33 Speaker 1 So did you feel that contrast—wow, how people behave here versus how they behave there? It’s not the same. There’s a certain gap.

08:40 Speaker 2 From a very, very young age, it was clear to me that I was a Chabad girl and I was different. You were either not religious, or religious, or chareidi, but not Chabad, and I was different from you. It’s funny—I had this from a really young age. I can picture it: I’m in kindergarten, a four-year-old girl, maybe four or five, sitting in a circle in the chareidi kindergarten. We’re saying the morning prayers, and before Shema Yisroel, in the Ashkenazic nusach at least, maybe others too, they say “Keil Melech Ne’eman” and put a hand over their eyes.

09:13 Speaker 1 Right.

09:14 Speaker 2 In Chabad, we don’t do that.

09:15 Speaker 1 Right.

09:15 Speaker 2 And I remember myself at four years old sitting there like this, almost deliberately. It was—

09:21 Speaker 1 A little demonstrative.

09:24 Speaker 2 And then the teacher would tell me when to join in for Shema Yisroel. I had these little moments, and it’s funny that I really remember them.

09:29 Speaker 1 That’s something.

09:30 Speaker 2 And it’s funny for a four-year-old to make a point of that. When my little sister—she’s nine now, or almost nine—was four, I looked at her and said, “When I was your age, this is what I did.” She had no idea what I was talking about. That whole thing amused me.

09:43 Speaker 1 I think it’s important to pause and say that a lot of girls who aren’t from Chabad are listening to us.

09:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:48 Speaker 1 When you or I say “chareidi” and “Chabad,” we’re not saying that there are chareidim and then there’s Chabad. Chabad is absolutely chareidi.

09:56 Speaker 2 Right.

09:57 Speaker 1 But Chabad has so much of its own character, because Chabad customs are different. And because the communities are so well established, there isn’t much mingling with other chareidi communities. So at the end of the day, it is a different community, and there are a lot of differences. Even in the nusach of the prayers: we use the nusach of the Arizal that the Alter Rebbe carefully established. There are things we take for granted, and suddenly we say, “Wait, we’re chareidi too, but we don’t know this or that or that.”

10:24 Speaker 2 Right.

10:24 Speaker 1 So that’s why we speak that way—because there are differences.

10:28 Speaker 2 There are differences.

10:29 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:29 Speaker 2 I do have to say that, obviously, we’re also very, very similar to that community. I mean, we—

10:33 Speaker 1 That’s what I’m saying.

10:34 Speaker 2 It’s the same Torah, after all.

10:35 Speaker 1 But especially for a child, those little things are huge.

10:38 Speaker 2 For a—yes.

10:40 Speaker 1 They’re big differences.

10:41 Speaker 2 I have a big picture of the Rebbe at home, probably in almost every room. I have a Chitas—a thick book with Chumash, Tehillim and Tanya—and all of that is something my friends don’t know.

10:52 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:52 Speaker 2 My father flies to New York a few times a year, to the Rebbe, to the Ohel. That’s a concept that doesn’t exist in my social circle.

10:57 Speaker 1 A completely different way of life.

10:59 Speaker 2 Yes, farbrengens and all sorts of things you grow up with that are familiar to you from the start. You have a Chabad House. Come on—I have a Chabad House. On Shabbos, I have people around me who aren’t religious; I’m close to them. That hardly exists in the chareidi community.

11:15 Speaker 1 Right.

11:16 Speaker 2 Even among my friends who grew up abroad, that’s something that hardly exists.

11:21 Speaker 1 Just that reality means living in a different way altogether.

11:25 Speaker 2 Yes, so it really did stand out. At the same time, of course, I was very, very comfortable at school with my friends, because we obviously were very similar. We were both religious and both chareidi, and we all kept Shabbos and kosher, with great care and in a very traditional way.

11:45 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:45 Speaker 2 So clearly there was—

11:47 Speaker 1 Which is really cool, by the way. I have to say, I think of so many Chabad Houses in places where the children have to study online, or on their own, or—

11:54 Speaker 2 It’s a lifesaver.

11:55 Speaker 1 It really is—

11:56 Speaker 2 It’s a lifesaver.

11:56 Speaker 1 Wow, you arrive and there’s a school—you can send Mussy there.

11:59 Speaker 2 It’s a lifesaver. It’s—

12:00 Speaker 1 Cool.

12:00 Speaker 2 As you said, it’s our miracle. My mother says that when they went out on shlichus, it wasn’t something they thought about: children and school—what would happen?

12:07 Speaker 1 Right.

12:07 Speaker 2 She says that looking back, what a miracle it is. What a miracle Hashem did for us.

12:12 Speaker 1 I even know the shlucha in Bern—I know her, she’s a friend of mine—

12:16 Speaker 2 Oh, right.

12:17 Speaker 1 And they travel an hour and a half to Basel every day—

12:20 Speaker 2 To Basel.

12:21 Speaker 1 For those schools.

12:22 Speaker 2 Right.

12:22 Speaker 1 It’s incredible.

12:23 Speaker 2 Right. It’s just—

12:25 Speaker 1 Wow.

12:25 Speaker 2 Think about it... Yes. Never mind that for us it’s barely a minute’s walk.

12:29 Speaker 1 Right.

12:29 Speaker 2 And again, you’re sending them to a place that’s ultimately part of the same world. We said Chabad is different and similar, but in the end it’s similar. A father sends his child there, knows where he’s sending him, and feels calm and confident. You understand?

12:40 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

12:40 Speaker 2 In that respect.

12:42 Speaker 1 Amazing.

12:42 Speaker 2 It really is amazing. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the chareidi community in Basel, without a doubt.

12:46 Speaker 1 Wow. So you’re growing up, and you come to Israel in the summers.

12:51 Speaker 2 I’m growing up and coming to Israel in the summers, for day camps, overnight camps, everything. It was very, very important to my parents, and I’m grateful to them for it. I remember having the time of my life. I don’t remember how much I missed it when I was little, but when I got older—around twelve, thirteen, fourteen—I really did miss it. I’d be waiting to come to Israel, waiting to see my friends and feel that Chabad atmosphere that exists, for me, only in Israel, only at camp, only in those places. It really gave me room to breathe. It—

13:25 Speaker 1 Wow.

13:25 Speaker 2 Really...

13:27 Speaker 1 Did you come to Nachlas Har Chabad?

13:29 Speaker 2 Of course.

13:29 Speaker 1 There you go.

13:29 Speaker 2 Listen, we’re from Nachlas Har Chabad too.

13:30 Speaker 1 No, I know that, but where’s the other side of your family from? Where was your home?

13:33 Speaker 2 Kfar Chabad, Zhitetsky Street [?], Kfar Chabad.

13:34 Speaker 1 Oh, okay. But you chose Nachlas Har Chabad, because Nachlas Har Chabad is Nachlas Har Chabad.

13:37 Speaker 2 No, we used to—we would go to—

13:39 Speaker 1 A little free advertising.

13:43 Speaker 2 We would go to—I don’t know if I’m talking nonsense now, or if this really happened the way I remember it, but I remember doing a day camp here and a day camp in Kfar Chabad. There’s a first session and a second session in the summer, right?

13:53 Speaker 1 They gave you a free choice.

13:55 Speaker 2 Yes, but we jumped at every opportunity. And when we got older, we went to overnight camps.

13:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:59 Speaker 2 My brother and I. The younger ones already—

14:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

14:00 Speaker 2 Reached the stage of going to camps abroad.

14:02 Speaker 1 Right, that’s becoming a thing now. That’s exactly the point—it changes so much.

14:05 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:05 Speaker 1 Now there’s a camp in Paris for so many girls—

14:08 Speaker 2 Right.

14:09 Speaker 1 From all over Europe—

14:09 Speaker 2 Right.

14:09 Speaker 1 And the former Soviet Union. Yes.

14:11 Speaker 2 Right.

14:11 Speaker 1 Incredible. It’s really changed.

14:13 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:13 Speaker 1 You were right on the cusp of that—

14:15 Speaker 2 I was on the cusp, yes. I was still going to Israel, and the camps abroad didn’t work with my school schedule either.

14:22 Speaker 1 With the dates of the—

14:22 Speaker 2 With the school dates in Basel, I—

14:24 Speaker 1 Yes. And at what point—or rather, in what year—did you move to Israel, as they say?

14:31 Speaker 2 Well, our chareidi school in Basel went through ninth grade, which meant I moved to Israel for tenth grade. I went to the Beis Chamesh dormitory in the Krayot, in Kiryat Yam—the dormitory was in Kiryat Yam, and the Chabad girls’ high school was in Kiryat Shmona. It’s a dormitory that was founded, I think, by Shild Kreutz [?], if I’m not mistaken. I really hope I’m not embarrassing myself here.

15:00 Speaker 1 Of course.

15:00 Speaker 2 The people actually running it were Rabbi Aharon Gofin and his wife, Dina Gofin. They really created a kind of—I’m sorry, I feel like I’m doing an advertisement for the dormitory, but—

15:10 Speaker 1 Credit where it’s due.

15:11 Speaker 2 Credit where it’s due. They created a kind of home for us. It’s a dormitory for daughters of shluchim from all over the world, so they can come and live there while attending the Chabad girls’ high school.

15:23 Speaker 1 But it really is a house, even in terms of the—

15:26 Speaker 2 The building?

15:27 Speaker 1 It’s a house, right?

15:27 Speaker 2 I think it is—yes.

15:28 Speaker 1 It’s not a dormitory in the—

15:29 Speaker 2 That kind of dormitory.

15:30 Speaker 1 The way people picture a dormitory.

15:30 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. Right, it’s not...

15:32 Speaker 1 How interesting.

15:33 Speaker 2 A dormitory like—yes. It reminds me of Russia, and of Itamar from earlier.

15:37 Speaker 1 No, “dormitory” sometimes has a bit of a—

15:39 Speaker 2 A negative connotation. I remember we used to take the train—we were on trains a lot, of course, going from place to place for Shabbos and vacations—and we’d talk about the dormitory and see the looks people gave us. We felt like they thought we were so unfortunate.

15:49 Speaker 1 Pity?

15:50 Speaker 2 Yes, we felt their pity. We’d say, “That’s a shame. We’re not unfortunate, and we don’t feel unfortunate either.” So at one point we changed what we called it to... What did we call it? Not a villa. Oh my gosh, I can’t remember the word.

16:04 Speaker 1 Oh, that’s righ—

16:05 Speaker 2 Some fancy word like that.

16:06 Speaker 1 What was it? The villa...

16:08 Speaker 2 Yes. Oh wow, I lost my train of thought.

16:09 Speaker 1 A shlichus villa.

16:10 Speaker 2 Sort of. So we said we didn’t want people to think we were some poor, unfortunate girls, because once we were on a train and saw two chi—two children talking about the boarding school they were going back to, and we felt so sorry for them.

16:20 Speaker 1 Wow.

16:20 Speaker 2 Because we thought, okay, it must really be a boarding school for, I don’t know, children who—

16:24 Speaker 1 Children who need it.

16:25 Speaker 2 Who need it.

16:26 Speaker 1 What was it like, by the way? It’s interesting to come and meet—what do I mean, meet?—live with girls who had supposedly been through a very, very similar journey. Not supposedly; they had been through a very, very similar journey socially, and in other ways—and suddenly you’re all together.

16:41 Speaker 2 Once you’re there, there’s nothing like it. I mean, you live with girls who are all more or less your age. Over three years, from ninth through twelfth grade, the ages are pretty close. And you live together in a house for years, and they become your family. You all come from the same background, and we’re all in the same situation: our parents aren’t there, because they’re back home abroad, and you’re on your own in Israel and have to manage. You have to call your aunts and uncles and grandparents to tell them not to wait for you to be invited over during a particular vacation, and all sorts of situations like that.

17:17 Speaker 1 That’s if you have someone to call.

17:18 Speaker 2 If you have someone to call. Or even just the fact that you go to a school with “regular” girls, so to speak—girls who come from home, whose mothers make them a sandwich for school in the morning.

17:31 Speaker 1 Wow.

17:31 Speaker 2 And you don’t have that. So the fact that you’re all in the same situation creates this sense of sisterhood—

17:39 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, like we’re all in the same boat.

17:41 Speaker 2 This sisterhood, this sense that we’re all in the same boat. And it’s amazing, because just yesterday one of my friends got engaged, so I went to the vort. Her mother came up to me—I didn’t know her, because we don’t really know our friends’ mothers unless we’ve happened to meet them—

17:53 Speaker 1 They’re far away.

17:53 Speaker 2 They’re far away. So her mother came over and said, “Are you Mussi? I feel like I have to hug every one of my daughter’s friends.”

18:00 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s beautiful.

18:00 Speaker 2 She told me, “Because you were there for each other.” I thanked her and told her she was absolutely right, because I feel I have a special warm place in my heart for every one of those girls from the boarding school, even the ones I’m not in regular contact with. I have my few close friends, and that’s it; you know, I’m not in touch with everyone. There are a lot of girls, after all—a family of twenty, twenty or thirty girls.

18:21 Speaker 1 Twenty sisters.

18:22 Speaker 2 Yes. So you’re not in touch with all of them, certainly not on a—

18:25 Speaker 1 Daily basis.

18:25 Speaker 2 Daily basis. But I really do have a warm place in my heart for all of them. I see one of them and think, “Hey, that’s my sister.” And that’s something very special that I feel only we have.

18:37 Speaker 1 You must have loads of inside jokes and things by now...

18:39 Speaker 2 Yes, but that was a while ago. We haven’t been in boarding school or in that setting for a long time now.

18:45 Speaker 1 Okay, back then.

18:46 Speaker 2 Back then, definitely—endlessly.

18:48 Speaker 1 Wow. What happens when—just out of curiosity—someone isn’t feeling well? She has a fever and stays home. Is there staff available all the time?

18:57 Speaker 2 Of course. There’s staff, there are housemothers, there are counselors. And there were counselors who slept there with us, who lived with us. Each grade in the boarding school has a housemother in charge, and if you need anything, you go to her. When you weren’t feeling well, I think she would even come to visit you and check how you were doing. Your friends were always there for you emotionally and things like that. Once, a housemother even came with me to the doctor. They really, really look after you, because...

19:23 Speaker 1 Academically, when you arrived, were you able to catch up right away?

19:27 Speaker 2 Not right away. It was a little difficult at first.

19:30 Speaker 1 Had you studied in Hebrew there?

19:31 Speaker 2 No. We studied in German. We studied in German, but the way you think is so different. I don’t know if it has to do with the mentality or just the way you’re taught to think, but in Israel it was completely different. I remember math was the hardest, and I’m sure it was hard for all of us, because—

19:53 Speaker 1 Translating from another language.

19:54 Speaker 2 First of all, translating from another language. I knew all the terms in German, not Hebrew.

19:59 Speaker 1 Wow.

19:59 Speaker 2 Plus and minus—I mean, I can’t even remember what you call them, right?

20:03 Speaker 1 Addition and subtraction.

20:03 Speaker 2 Addition and subtraction, exactly. See, it doesn’t even come to me—and it’s funny, because I did end up studying in Israel. I remember my first math lesson. I had a friend from Germany who had arrived in Israel a year before us, but she was in our grade. She came in ninth grade, and we came in tenth. There were two more German-speaking girls who arrived, including me. So she sat between us: I was on one side, and the other friend was on the other. The math teacher was teaching, and she was translating for us: “Okay, this means this, that means that, this is plus, this is minus.”

20:29 Speaker 1 Wow.

20:29 Speaker 2 It was really funny, but we genuinely needed it, because you didn’t understand a word. It was a whole new language.

20:34 Speaker 1 That’s something.

20:34 Speaker 2 But beyond the language, I remember feeling that they thought differently from the way I’d been taught. Everything seemed the other way around. The order of the material was different too. I remember a friend in twelfth grade came to me when I was in tenth grade and showed me her homework. I said, “Hey, I know how to do that,” because I’d learned it in ninth grade. Some things seemed strange to me.

20:55 Speaker 1 A different curriculum.

20:55 Speaker 2 A different curriculum. Yes.

20:57 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s something.

20:57 Speaker 2 But I have to give the school credit: they really, really tried to help. And I have to give my mother credit too, because before long I had private lessons—

21:07 Speaker 1 Amazing.

21:07 Speaker 2 She really, really looked out for me and helped me. And yes, we got through it. In the end, I earned a full matriculation certificate, boruch Hashem.

21:14 Speaker 1 I’m imagining what it’s like to be a mother sending her... We’ll talk about the daughter too, but I mean being a mother who sends her daughter across the sea, and that’s it—there’s no choice. No choice. At the end of the day, you’re several hours apart by plane.

21:27 Speaker 2 Right.

21:29 Speaker 1 It’s wild. And she’s fifteen, which is... Okay, it’s true that in the old days people sent their children by train to yeshiva and didn’t know when they’d come back, but—

21:35 Speaker 2 We live in different times.

21:36 Speaker 1 Different times, yes. And it really is mesirus nefesh.

21:41 Speaker 2 Look, I can’t speak from the mother’s side.

21:44 Speaker 1 Yes, no, I’m thinking as a mother—

21:45 Speaker 2 From a mother’s perspective, yes.

21:46 Speaker 1 When we were in Ukraine, I dreaded the moment when that would come, though in the end it didn’t. In a way, it was a weight off my heart, because I lived among shluchos, and I’m still in touch with many of them. You see that this is one of the challenges both parents and children face.

22:05 Speaker 2 There’s no question. If not, if not the—well.

22:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

22:09 Speaker 2 It’s a very, very significant thing, certainly for the parents and for the children too. It’s complicated. It’s complicated. You fly off on your own at fifteen—fifteen. In my day, I even flew without a smartphone. I had a little Nokia 208.

22:29 Speaker 1 Hoping it would work in Israel.

22:30 Speaker 2 It worked, it worked, but there was no WhatsApp, no internet—just phone calls. Anyway, that’s a small thing; it’s not really the point. But you fly off as a fifteen-year-old girl. My mother flew with me the first time. She came with me, helped me get settled, came with me to the boarding school and left me there. And... it’s hard. It’s hard, because you arrive somewhere new and, in a way, you really do feel alone. I mean, you are alone. That’s it—Mom isn’t here, and Dad isn’t here.

22:59 Speaker 1 It takes time to build those relationships and that sense of closeness you were talking about.

23:02 Speaker 2 It takes time to build relationships, especially when you arrive as a shy girl. I was shy. I don’t know if I’m still a little shy.

23:08 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

23:08 Speaker 2 You arrive somewhere new, at a new boarding school with girls you don’t know. I didn’t know them. There were a few I knew of—we’d chatted on Hangouts back then, you know—but that’s not really knowing someone. You arrive at a new school, with lots of new girls and lots of new teachers, and you have to find your place. But that part, I say, is manageable, because even if I’d stayed at home, I would eventually have gone to a new school and—

23:30 Speaker 1 Yes, but going from a class of two to a class of thirty-something is—

23:33 Speaker 2 It’s a culture shock.

23:34 Speaker 1 Oh my goodness, I don’t think the brain—

23:36 Speaker 2 It was—

23:36 Speaker 1 Knows how to take in all those voices.

23:38 Speaker 2 I remember the first lesson. The teacher was standing... I think I was sitting in the second row, and the teacher stood at the front and asked a question. Now, the classroom was full of shouting and noise, and she asked a question that I knew the answer to. So I raised my hand.

23:52 Speaker 1 And I waited.

23:53 Speaker 2 And a girl sitting behind me, Mira, says, “Mussi, the teacher can’t see that. You want something? Shout.” So I put my hand down. What, I’m supposed to shout?

24:00 Speaker 1 That’s how it works. Wow.

24:01 Speaker 2 So no, I guess later on I learned to shout about the things that mattered to me, but at first it was tough. You come back to the dorm every night thinking, What is this? Who are these people? It’s impossible. How can the teacher teach like this? You’re just in shock at what’s going on.

24:12 Speaker 1 In shock at what every girl here has experienced since first grade, basically? Come on, there are already thirty kids in a group in kindergarten.

24:18 Speaker 2 Here, yes.

24:19 Speaker 1 Right, the kids grow up surrounded by that noise.

24:21 Speaker 2 Right, and you, you—

24:22 Speaker 1 And really, from the outside, it’s just unbelievable.

24:25 Speaker 2 There were seven girls in our class once they combined us, seven or eight, depending on the year. And if it wasn’t quiet, the teacher would wait a moment for complete silence, and within seconds it would be completely quiet. There was also this sort of dread. I don’t know, we were afraid of the teachers.

24:39 Speaker 1 Well, German, after all. Just kidding.

24:41 Speaker 2 Yes, maybe. And... that was it, and the lesson went on as usual. I mean—

24:46 Speaker 1 Right. I think you were also shocked by the chutzpah, for example.

24:48 Speaker 2 Chutzpah, yes.

24:50 Speaker 1 Culture shock.

24:51 Speaker 2 Culture shock, literally.

24:52 Speaker 1 Because all the girls had come from elsewhere too. You came from Switzerland, but there were also, uh, girls from Russia—

24:57 Speaker 2 Europeans, Russians. The Russian girls are very—

24:58 Speaker 1 All from the same—

25:00 Speaker 2 Background. Very much so.

25:02 Speaker 1 Wow. It really was culture shock.

25:04 Speaker 2 Culture shock.

25:06 Speaker 1 I hate to say it, but...

25:07 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s funny. Yes.

25:08 Speaker 1 Wow. And how did you cope with that feeling of being on your own—away from your family, I mean?

25:13 Speaker 2 Look, “loneliness” is a very big word. I don’t like to use it, because it gives me this feeling of “oh, poor thing,” and no, I wasn’t a poor thing. I was happy, and I wanted to be there, and I loved my friends and I loved my dorm, and I loved visiting my grandmother and my aunts and uncles. Um, and baruch Hashem, thank G-d, I have an amazing family, and I have a lot of family. My grandparents or my aunts and uncles were always inviting me over. I mean, to this day they practically fight over me—or at least that’s how it feels sometimes. They call me and say, “Come over,” and—and I have to—

25:44 Speaker 1 Wow, baruch Hashem. Really.

25:45 Speaker 2 Really, baruch Hashem, I’ve been blessed with that, and I know how to appreciate it and be grateful for it, because I have friends who don’t have that. So I know how much it means.

25:52 Speaker 1 Who came to Israel basically like a lone soldier.

25:54 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember inviting friends from the dorm to come with me for Shabbos.

25:59 Speaker 1 Like, come with me to my grandparents, because you don’t have anywhere to go.

26:00 Speaker 2 I was the one who had a home. Yes.

26:02 Speaker 1 Wow.

26:03 Speaker 2 I was the one who had a home, exactly.

26:05 Speaker 1 And still, you were far from your parents.

26:06 Speaker 2 And still I was far from my parents. And still, if there was a problem... I remember something happened—I don’t even remember what—and I was crying to my mother on the phone. She said to me, “Mussi, only you can solve this. I can’t help you.” And you’re a fifteen-year-old girl in a dorm, crying alone in bed, and you realize there’s nobody who can help you. I mean, with all the goodwill in the world—and they had all the goodwill in the world—they can give you tools, they can help you, support you, encourage you. But in the end, it’s you there, facing whatever it is you’re facing. I don’t remember what it was, but that’s the point. The particular issue doesn’t matter. And... yes, then at some point during that year, naturally, things get hard and you feel alone. You feel like you have to find your footing all over again each time, and find your own ways to get where you want to go. Literally—in the physical, practical sense, and also in your heart and your head. And then you ask yourself, Why is this happening to me? Why me, of all people? I mean, my mother and father are chassidim, and they chose to go on shlichus when I was one year old and they were twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.

27:17 Speaker 1 Kids.

27:18 Speaker 2 Kids. And they went on shlichus, and that was their choice, and they had every right to make it. But I was born into it, and I didn’t choose it. And the fact that now, at fifteen and a half, I’m alone in Israel in some hole, with a bed and that’s the only thing that’s mine, my little corner of the world—that wasn’t my choice.

27:39 Speaker 1 It was the result of their choice.

27:40 Speaker 2 It was the result of their choice. So why is this happening to me? It’s not fair.

27:45 Speaker 1 Wow. That’s a very hard feeling.

27:46 Speaker 2 They chose something, and I’m paying the price. That’s how I felt. Of course, today I know—and I knew even then—but those were the feelings I was experiencing. They made a choice that seemed incredibly special and good and exciting and important to them, but I’m the one paying the price.

28:02 Speaker 1 At your expense, as it were.

28:03 Speaker 2 At my expense, as it were. Yes. And...

28:09 Speaker 1 That’s hard.

28:10 Speaker 2 And it’s tough. It’s tough. So you spend a lot of days thinking about it on your own. You process the situation and understand what’s going on, and—

28:23 Speaker 1 Wallowing in—

28:23 Speaker 2 Wallowing in it, examining it. It’s funny. I look back, and I don’t really remember that period as hard. I’m a pretty optimistic person overall. I don’t really dwell on difficulties too much, or feel sorry for myself, or give myself over to the pain or the hardship. But that question was on my mind. I remember it coming up at certain moments, when you say, “I don’t want this. Why?”

28:48 Speaker 1 I got a raw deal.

28:49 Speaker 2 I got a raw deal, exactly. Um, and then came my turning point. I did try hard to get home in general. Switzerland is fairly close to Israel, and there were relatively cheap easyJet low-cost flights. I flew home quite a lot, for the holidays and things like that. Um, then I remember a holiday coming up. This was already after a year, in eleventh grade. Shavuos. And I call home and tell my father, “I want to fly home for Shavuos.” Was it Shavuos? It was Purim. I told him I wanted to fly home for Purim.

29:40 Speaker 1 One of those holidays when flying home isn’t a given.

29:42 Speaker 2 Not a given, and especially Purim, because Pesach is just around the corner. You’d fly there and back, and then two weeks later you’d fly again. I mean, you’re going home again in Nissan, so...

29:49 Speaker 1 Let it go.

29:50 Speaker 2 It’s a shame. Why do it for one day? And Purim isn’t such a family holiday, either. And I remember saying to him, “But Dad, I want to.” He said, “Mussi, I don’t have a problem with it. The ticket isn’t the issue. I mean, the ticket wasn’t all that expensive; I can afford it. But there has to be a reason. I don’t want to spend money for nothing.” He said, “Take a minute and call me back. Think of a good answer. Give me an honest answer.”

30:15 Speaker 1 Convince me.

30:16 Speaker 2 “Convince me. Convince me that you need to fly home for Purim.” I remember hanging up and thinking for a moment. Then I called my father and said, “Dad, let me tell you something. Last year I spent Shavuos with aunts and uncles I love very much. It was a lovely holiday. We ate the Yom Tov meal at night and another during the day, and there was cheesecake and all that. But Dad, what kind of Shavuos is it when it’s just cheesecake at a regular meal at home? I didn’t enjoy it; I didn’t feel the Yom Tov. It felt like another ordinary Shabbos, only with some cheesecake in the morning or afternoon. Where was the Shavuos I know? Shavuos at our Chabad House in Basel is incredibly busy. In the morning, after davening and the reading of the Ten Commandments—which we invite all the children to hear—we have Milk and Honey. There’s so much going on. Then there’s ice cream outside in the courtyard, and I was always one of the girls handing it out to the children.”

31:18 Speaker 1 The children flock to you.

31:19 Speaker 2 Yes. And then we’d run home and quickly eat a meal, make hamotzi so it would count as a meal—some pitas my mother had made, or something small. But it was quick, because then we’d go straight back down to the Chabad House and get the next event ready. It was this big event called Milk and Honey, with lots of big tables of savory and sweet food, and lots of people came, and another reading of the Ten Commandments. I mean, it was a very, very, very busy day, full of meaning for me.

31:46 Speaker 1 Full of activity.

31:46 Speaker 2 Full of activity. And I said to him, “Dad, that’s what Shavuos is to me.”

31:53 Speaker 1 Wow.

31:53 Speaker 2 “And I don’t feel like I get that there.” So he said, “I’m buying you a ticket home.”

31:59 Speaker 1 Wow.

32:00 Speaker 2 But you know—

32:01 Speaker 1 You know how to speak your father’s language. You got through to him.

32:04 Speaker 2 Yes, but I wasn’t trying to get around the question. I mean, that really was my truth.

32:08 Speaker 1 Wow, I understand so well what you’re saying.

32:10 Speaker 2 Yes, and I’ll say something else, because this is another thing I realized, and it’s important to me. Sometimes I define myself as a lazy person, or as someone with no motivation. I have no energy to work; I like to rest. And then I realized that I prefer the holiday when there’s so, so much going on, and I want to run around and prepare things.

32:28 Speaker 1 Is it possible you complained about that too, back when you were at home?

32:31 Speaker 2 Partly. But in the end, it does me good. And when I realized that I missed it and wanted it, my whole way of thinking changed.

32:40 Speaker 1 Wow.

32:41 Speaker 2 So I said: Mussi, you think you’re lazy. You think you have no motivation or energy to do anything, and that all you ever want is to rest. But you’re wrong. A lot of the time, you’re actually wrong. When it really comes down to it, you choose to do things. You want to do things. You prefer that to sleeping all day at your aunt’s house.

32:58 Speaker 1 Wow.

33:00 Speaker 2 That’s where my thinking changed.

33:03 Speaker 1 You suddenly realized what you’d had.

33:05 Speaker 2 That’s when I understood that, yes, my father and mother chose to go on shlichus, and I was brought into it—it wasn’t my choice. But today, today I choose it for myself.

33:15 Speaker 1 Wow, I have goosebumps.

33:17 Speaker 2 Today I choose it for myself. This is the path I want, this is what I’m looking for, and this is what I want for my future. More than that, it’s what I want for my children. I say, I want to go on shlichus abroad. I’m not afraid of what’s ahead. I want that work. I want that meaning in my life.

33:34 Speaker 1 Those challenges too.

33:35 Speaker 2 Those challenges too. There will be challenges wherever you are in life. It doesn’t matter where you are. I choose these challenges. It’s my choice, and I’m willing to choose it for my children too. I look ahead and say: When my children turn fifteen and leave home, I’m at peace with that. I’ll try to give them all the tools my parents gave me. And maybe I’ll even have a little more to give, because I actually experienced it more than they did. I mean, there will be things I’ve been through, so I’ll know how to deal with them firsthand. And I’m at peace with it. I think it’s something that really shaped me, and I’m very, very grateful for the path I’ve taken. I love it. I look back, and I love those years.

34:19 Speaker 1 I’m listening to you and thinking about how often in life we’re living in the middle of something, and we just live it because it’s what we have, what we were born into. Then suddenly, when it’s gone—like you described with Shavuos in Israel—we realize, wow, look what I have.

34:36 Speaker 2 Right.

34:36 Speaker 1 I hadn’t seen it that way. Some people don’t have that.

34:40 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

34:41 Speaker 1 And it’s amazing. Every once in a while, we need to take a step back, look, and say: Wow, I have this, and I have that. I’ve been blessed.

34:49 Speaker 2 To be grateful for what you have. To recognize, to know what you have, and—

34:52 Speaker 1 Exactly.

34:53 Speaker 2 And be grateful for it.

34:55 Speaker 1 Wow.

34:55 Speaker 2 You know, it’s important to me to say—I don’t know why it’s important, but I feel that this is my path in life, what I went through. I went through it in a very particular way, and not everyone who went through it alongside me feels the way I do.

35:10 Speaker 1 You’re not speaking for everyone.

35:11 Speaker 2 I’m not speaking for everyone. I came to speak for myself, because I also know people who say, “I went through it, I was alone in Israel, and it was hard. Honestly, I don’t want that; I’ll choose something else.” And that’s completely fine.

35:21 Speaker 1 Right, it’s very personal.

35:22 Speaker 2 There isn’t just one path. It’s very, very personal.

35:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

35:25 Speaker 2 And speaking of how personal it is, maybe one day my children will come and say, “Mom, I don’t want this. What you did to me wasn’t fair,” and they’ll do the same thing—take a step back.

35:31 Speaker 1 Yes.

35:32 Speaker 2 I mean, again, this is what I felt and what I experienced. And of course there are lots of opinions on both sides.

35:40 Speaker 1 So you went home for Purim. But when you came back, did you feel different? Was there any day-to-day change in how you saw things?

35:52 Speaker 2 I think that realization happened a lot earlier, in my subconscious. The phone call with my father was when I finally put it into words.

36:01 Speaker 1 You gave it a name.

36:01 Speaker 2 I gave it a name and understood what was happening. So in terms of how I felt day to day, it wasn’t one specific moment where, after Purim, I suddenly felt like a different person.

36:09 Speaker 1 Mm.

36:10 Speaker 2 I do remember that in the first year, when I was still in tenth grade, I’d go to bed, and there were nights that were hard for me. Then I’d listen to music. I had a little Nokia 208, and I had music on it that I’d listen to secretly, because it wasn’t Chassidic. I mean, I didn’t listen only to Chabad niggunim. I had the song “Small Gifts” on my phone, performed by the duo Tzemed Yeled. It was a Charedi rendition, so I felt very comfortable with it, and I’d listen quietly through earphones. “Small gifts. Someone sent me small gifts.” I remember—I’m very much a words person. I write, too, and I love listening to words. And I remember that it simply calmed me, because I said to myself: I have small gifts. I’ve been given a gift. I remember connecting it to the Rebbe too. I said: Thank you so much. This is your gift. My parents went on shlichus for you. I’m here on shlichus for you, thanks to you, because of you—however I choose to put it. And I choose to say “thanks to you,” because I’m grateful for it.

37:08 Speaker 1 Wow.

37:08 Speaker 2 I’d listen to that song and go to sleep, knowing that my heart was a little calmer now.

37:14 Speaker 1 Wow, wow. That’s really moving to hear. Because listen, look at what our choices can do. You didn’t change anything about the objective reality.

37:26 Speaker 2 Right.

37:27 Speaker 1 But you lived a different life because of that perspective. It’s incredible.

37:32 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

37:33 Speaker 1 You could have gone on feeling like a victim to this very day and made different choices in life because of it.

37:40 Speaker 2 Right.

37:41 Speaker 1 Wow.

37:41 Speaker 2 Right.

37:42 Speaker 1 Let’s move forward a little. Tenth grade, eleventh grade. Let’s keep following your path.

37:47 Speaker 2 Eleventh grade. Eleventh grade was a very hard year for me, mainly academically. It was already the year of the matriculation exams, and I found it very difficult. I’d study intensely for tests and other things, and I felt that I faced so many academic challenges that year. I had to make myself sit down, and I was learning how to make myself do that and how to do it properly. It took so much out of me, drained so much of my energy. How do I know? Because, as I told you, I write all the time. I have all kinds of poems and other things that I write for myself. And eleventh grade was the year I started writing...

38:32 Speaker 1 A personal journal.

38:33 Speaker 2 Most of the journal was written then, essentially. And that means—

38:39 Speaker 1 That’s so important.

38:39 Speaker 2 That things were challenging. Because you write when things are hard; when things are good, you usually—

38:44 Speaker 1 Yes, but it’s so important that you had that tool. Writing is amazing.

38:48 Speaker 2 It’s amazing.

38:49 Speaker 1 Really.

38:49 Speaker 2 It’s amazing. It saved me in so many situations.

38:51 Speaker 1 It lets things out. It suddenly helps you understand a situation from—

38:55 Speaker 2 It does.

38:55 Speaker 1 A different perspective, like, “Hey, here I am writing it down.”

38:58 Speaker 2 It helps you understand yourself.

39:00 Speaker 1 It’s amazing. I use it at work too.

39:01 Speaker 2 If everything’s a mess in my head and I don’t know what’s going on with me, writing lets out what’s going on in my head, and then I understand. Things fall into place for me on the page.

39:11 Speaker 1 On the page, yes.

39:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:12 Speaker 1 Wow.

39:13 Speaker 2 Then, toward the end of the year, I wasn’t feeling very well. They took me to the doctor for blood tests, back and forth again with the dorm mother, while my mother was helping from a distance. You have to understand.

39:30 Speaker 1 What do you mean, you weren’t feeling well?

39:31 Speaker 2 I didn’t feel well.

39:32 Speaker 1 It must have been something unusual for them to start doing tests.

39:34 Speaker 2 Right, because I felt very weak and wasn’t eating much. And I think, mainly, I’d lost a lot of weight. I think the main thing was that my mother—I was away from home, and my parents were getting phone calls: “Mussi doesn’t look well,” “Mussi this,” “Mussi that.” Obviously, that’s worrying. So that’s probably why they sent me for a blood test, and the results, by the way, weren’t great. My hemoglobin was eight. I remember my mother telling me then, “Women—”

40:13 Speaker 1 Like after giving birth.

40:14 Speaker 2 Nine, and mine was eight, which was really, really low. He gave me various pills, and overall I felt fine. So we also thought it was because I wasn’t eating. I’m very picky about food, and at the dorm I generally didn’t eat well. So they said, she isn’t eating, so of course she’s losing weight and she’s weak.

40:31 Speaker 1 We found the reason, right.

40:32 Speaker 2 We found the reason, so we pretty much relied on that. And that’s how that period went by, with me mostly in Israel. I wasn’t feeling so well, and toward the end I suddenly got a bit paler. In short, my parents were a little worried, but nobody really suspected anything yet. Probably because you’re afraid to think scary thoughts, so you don’t think them. Then I came home at the end of the school year for summer vacation, and we thought a little of Mom’s cooking would change things, do the trick, and I’d be back to myself. After two weeks at home eating Mom’s food, we realized nothing was changing. My father took me straight to the doctor for a blood test, and it turned out my hemoglobin was below five, which was just unbelievable. I remember him looking at me as if to say, “How are you even on your feet?” One thing led to another, we stayed in the hospital, and a day or two later we found out I had leukemia.

41:29 Speaker 1 Oh my goodness.

41:31 Speaker 2 …

41:31 Speaker 1 Did you even understand what it was?

41:35 Speaker 2 I understood what it was...

41:38 Speaker 1 I mean, someone must have had to explain the diagnosis to you.

41:42 Speaker 2 Look, I was seventeen and a half, so I was still in a children’s hospital. That meant the doctors could speak only to my father and not to me, because they weren’t required to speak to me yet. I was very glad to take a step back. They offered to speak to me because I was already older, but I let my parent speak to the doctors alone. Then my father explained it to me. The evening before, he’d told me they suspected it, and we said, “Let’s write to the Rebbe,” since I was already in the hospital. So we waited for the morning’s tests. We were very optimistic and trusted in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. My mother arrived with Igros Kodesh and a sheet of paper and a pen, all prepared, and we sat down to write to the Rebbe. We asked for a blessing and healing and, you know, joy and everything. And that was it. The next day, Dad came into the room and told me it was leukemia. It took me a moment to take it in. Then I asked him, “What is it? Is it cancer? Is that what this is? That disease?”

42:48 Speaker 1 To say the...

42:49 Speaker 2 “Is that what people are talking about?” I don’t remember if he said yes or just nodded. He was really trying to protect me. Then I said, “Will all my hair fall out? My eyebrows too?” And then I just broke down. I cried like I’d never cried in my life. How Dad didn’t cry, I don’t know. I guess he had to be the strong one protecting me. That was when I really fell apart. Mostly, it was the hair that frightened me. I think every woman is afraid of that...

43:19 Speaker 1 Absolutely. It means so much.

43:21 Speaker 2 It means an incredible amount. Then I had a day or two like that. Of course, I was still hospitalized, having various tests and things, but nothing major yet. No chemotherapy yet, nothing like that. I remember they gave me a lot of blood, and suddenly I felt better, because they hadn’t started treating me yet; they’d just given me strength. Two days went by with me feeling sad, unable to smile, unable to be happy. I guess you’d call it “depression,” in quotation marks, or shock. I don’t know the right word for it.

44:01 Speaker 1 You were also going through a kind of grieving process, coming to terms with the news.

44:05 Speaker 2 Coming to terms with the news. And remember, this was the summer before twelfth grade. Every girl in high school is just waiting to be one of the big twelfth-graders, for the performance, the festival in the middle of the year, and camp Shabbos. There are so many things the twelfth-graders do, and you wait all through high school to get there. I thought, “What? I’m going to miss all of it.” Anyway, after two days—I think it was a Tuesday, though I might be wrong—Dad was with me at the hospital the whole time. Mom came in the evening with containers of food she’d brought. There’s no kosher food in Basel, so there was a period—

44:45 Speaker 1 Wow.

44:45 Speaker 2 And no Mom’s cooking. So she came, and we sat down together. She’d arranged a babysitter for my younger siblings at home. We sat at this tiny white table in my hospital room, maybe a meter by a meter, and we were eating. I was sitting there, Mom beside me and Dad across from me, and it was completely silent. We were just eating because we were hungry. I think I had an IV in my arm or something. I mean, by then we were already in the thick of it. And I realized I couldn’t go on like this. I raised my eyes, looked at Mom and Dad, and said, “I want to be happy.” Then I looked at Dad sitting across from me and said, “But how do I do that? How do I do that? I can’t.”

45:34 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

45:38 Speaker 2 I’ve told this story a few times, and I usually say that he told me something then, but I don’t remember what he said. I only remember what I understood. After he said what he said, I understood that this was a decision I had to make, that it was all in my mind, and that if I decided to be happy, I could be happy. “The mind rules the heart,” it says in Tanya. The Alter Rebbe says I can make my mind rule my heart. I can decide in my mind that I want to be happy, to feel good emotionally, to work with my feelings so that my heart—

46:24 Speaker 1 Will awaken.

46:24 Speaker 2 Will awaken, so that my heart will—yes.

46:27 Speaker 1 Awaken joy.

46:27 Speaker 2 Awaken joy. Exactly. And at that moment, I decided.

46:33 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s incredible.

46:35 Speaker 2 At that moment, I decided—well, we decided. You know, one person affects another, and my parents were also—

46:40 Speaker 1 We decided—

46:41 Speaker 2 Incredibly strong.

46:43 Speaker 1 We decided, but ultimately they could have decided all they wanted.

46:45 Speaker 2 They could have decided all they wanted. In the end, it was up to me.

46:47 Speaker 1 Yes.

46:47 Speaker 2 But maybe I made it possible for them. Maybe that’s how to put it. My deciding that also allowed them to be in that place. Because you can’t do it the other way around. You can’t go to someone who’s struggling or facing some difficulty and say, “This is nothing; you can do it.”

47:02 Speaker 1 Right. You can only say that to yourself.

47:03 Speaker 2 You can only say it to yourself, and once you’ve said it to yourself, everyone around you can say it too.

47:08 Speaker 1 Wow. In a way, you actually made it possible for them to support you wholeheartedly.

47:12 Speaker 2 Yes, probably.

47:13 Speaker 1 Because otherwise, they would have had to keep affirming that you were a victim and that you really were in a terrible situation.

47:17 Speaker 2 Right.

47:18 Speaker 1 Because that’s what would have comforted you in that frame of mind.

47:20 Speaker 2 Right, you’re right. Yes.

47:21 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s incredible.

47:23 Speaker 2 So it was actually the other way around. Because we spoke earlier about my being at the dorm and not at home—sorry. This was also a moment when I understood that the reality was there. It was a fact. I couldn’t change reality. I had leukemia. I now had to undergo chemotherapy. All my hair was going to fall out. I had a long process ahead of me, and I had no choice but to go through it in order to heal, to recover. There was no other option, no magic treatment. But what I could change was my attitude toward that reality, and that’s what I chose to change. I chose to say, “I can do this. I’m strong. I’m happy. I have good things in my life.” I would look at what was good, because I had an amazing family and amazing friends, and I had—and so much good was coming my way. Do you know how many gifts I got? There were lots of positives in it.

48:24 Speaker 1 To this day, you’re...

48:26 Speaker 2 To this day, yes, I received gifts. I mean, I made a choice. It sounds funny, but I really chose to look at those things. They might seem small and insignificant, but they made my day.

48:36 Speaker 1 Ultimately, the mind rules the heart. It’s not as though you can just say, “The mind rules the heart, the mind rules the heart,” and become happy. You have to bring in thoughts that awaken joy.

48:44 Speaker 2 You have to—I think that in every—

48:46 Speaker 1 Think for yourself about why, for yourself.

48:46 Speaker 2 In every situation in life—and I’m speaking only from my own experience, okay?—there are always points of light. There are always good things. You can choose to take them in or to ignore them, but they’re always there, and I chose to notice them. I chose to see the gifts and say, “How wonderful. Thank you for the new phone I got.” Yes, it’s nice. What can I say? It’s nice. Thank you for the jewelry, thank you for the set—it made me happy. Seeing my friends made me happy. My friends visited me every week. Two girls flew to Basel to see me.

49:17 Speaker 1 Wow.

49:18 Speaker 2 And they were amazing, and so was the staff at the school dormitory who made it possible. Two friends came to see me almost every week, back and forth on Mondays and Thursdays. It gave me so much life, and again, that was what I chose to focus on. So it’s absolutely a choice. It’s an approach. But I realized I couldn’t do otherwise. I realized it was either depression or living life and being happy. Depression wasn’t an option, because to me, that isn’t living.

49:49 Speaker 1 Right.

49:49 Speaker 2 I couldn’t live like that. So I chose to go all in on the other path.

49:55 Speaker 1 It’s incredible, because it changes your immediate reality, but medically it’s also hugely significant.

50:01 Speaker 2 Very significant.

50:02 Speaker 1 Body and soul. When a person is happy and optimistic, the body follows.

50:07 Speaker 2 It’s interesting that you say that, because I think I’d been hospitalized for two weeks—it was really in those first two weeks—and not everyone knew I was sick yet. Later on, we told people openly; we didn’t hide it. But at first, you know—

50:25 Speaker 1 You had to let people know.

50:26 Speaker 2 Let the people close to us know first. We weren’t there yet. So, completely out of the blue, a friend of my husband’s sent him a photo of a letter from the Rebbe. It had nothing to do with anything else. It was a whole letter, not a very long one. I don’t remember all of it. I remember one sentence the Rebbe wrote in Yiddish—I’ll say it in Hebrew. He says... I need a moment to remember, because I hadn’t thought about it beforehand. “The world says that healing will bring happiness, but I say lechatchila ariber: happiness will bring healing.”

50:59 Speaker 1 Wow.

51:01 Speaker 2 And I remember we read it and said—

51:03 Speaker 1 There it is.

51:03 Speaker 2 That’s it. That’s what we’re doing. Happiness will bring healing.

51:08 Speaker 1 Wow, wow, wow.

51:10 Speaker 2 So that really guided us, the whole family.

51:14 Speaker 1 Did that decision sustain you the whole time, or did you have to work at it?

51:20 Speaker 2 To keep it up? In general, it sustained me. Of course there were moments—

51:26 Speaker 1 Yes.

51:26 Speaker 2 When I broke down. Most of them were about my appearance, about my hair. That was what hurt me most. I said, I’m willing to suffer—I’m not afraid of physical suffering. I said, I don’t care if it hurts, as long as I can still look good, as long as I can be—

51:44 Speaker 1 Look like yourself.

51:44 Speaker 2 Be pretty, be... No, it’s hard, it’s hard. Be myself, be able to—

51:48 Speaker 1 How did you cope with that?

51:48 Speaker 2 Look at myself in the mirror. It was very, very hard. It was very hard. Even after I recovered, it took me a very long time to heal from that, to make peace with it. For a long time after I’d recovered, I still couldn’t—I didn’t look at photos from back then. Photos where I didn’t look good. Sometimes I did look good; it depended on the situation, on the stage I was at. But it was very hard for me to look at how I’d been, because I felt like I’d been ugly.

52:30 Speaker 3 Wait, but why?

52:30 Speaker 2 Because you—

52:31 Speaker 3 I’m trying to understand. You had hair then. I thought it was the opposite, that you longed for...

52:35 Speaker 2 No, the opposite. After I recovered, I looked at photos from when I was sick.

52:40 Speaker 3 Oh, from when you were sick.

52:41 Speaker 2 Sorry, I wasn’t clear.

52:42 Speaker 3 Yes.

52:42 Speaker 2 From when I was sick, and it was hard for me to see them. Unlike other things, I never had a problem talking about what I went through, or about the chemotherapy. I never had a problem with that, and I still don’t. I didn’t even have a problem talking about my appearance, but it always stung somewhere, and it still does. But seeing a photo where you’re all swollen from the treatments, and maybe you have a tan line, or a wig that doesn’t quite sit right because your eyebrows aren’t quite there either, and...

53:16 Speaker 3 Wow.

53:16 Speaker 2 There were so many things going on with my appearance... I wasn’t always comfortable seeing that. And I feel that, too, is slowly healing more and more. But it’s a very painful point. I remember moments back then—I remember the moment I discovered that my eyebrows were starting to fall out too. It didn’t happen at first; it happened somewhere in the middle. And I said, okay, my hair—I put a wig on my head. But my eyebrows, what am I going to do about them? And I cried, because enough already, how much more can there be? Then came another moment when I tried to lift myself up, and I told myself, “Hashem knows what’s good for me.”

54:05 Speaker 3 Wow.

54:06 Speaker 2 “And He knows what’s right for me, and He knows I can cope with any challenge He brings me, because He gives me the strength.” I believe that for every challenge Hakadosh Boruch Hu brings a person, He also gives them the strength they need to face it. So I said, if I have this enormous challenge on my shoulders, I must have a lot of strength to fight it, to face it. And there was something else that guided us. I just remember saying this to myself, actually putting it into words, because you have to force it into your head when you’re not in the mood, when you’re not in that place. I said, “Everything is for the good, everything is for the good, everything is for the good. I accept it with love.” Things like that. You simply say these phrases aloud to yourself so they sink in. And I remember that for a while we used to say—I think Rachel Bolton says this—“When something happens, don’t ask ‘Why?’ Ask ‘What for?’” Not “Why did this happen to me?”

55:03 Speaker 3 Which so many... Yes.

55:05 Speaker 2 “Why did this happen to me?” What will it give me? What’s it for? What will I learn from it?

55:10 Speaker 3 I think she’s quoting Viktor Frankl.

55:12 Speaker 2 Could be.

55:13 Speaker 3 He says that instead of asking “Why?” you should ask “What for?” Right.

55:16 Speaker 2 Exactly. So there are moments like that. Then you say, come on, I can handle this, and you put on a—sometimes you even put on a happy face and act happy, because you believe that from doing it not for its own sake, you’ll come to do it for its own sake. If I act happy, eventually it will affect me. And it did affect me.

55:35 Speaker 3 It works. Sometimes you instill strength in yourself, and...

55:38 Speaker 2 Right.

55:39 Speaker 3 It simply works. It doesn’t work because we manage to fool ourselves. It works because of how the brain operates: certain words we hear, or certain body movements, cause hormones to be released.

55:51 Speaker 2 Right, and they affect us.

55:52 Speaker 3 They do their work.

55:52 Speaker 2 They do their work.

55:54 Speaker 3 It’s incredible.

55:54 Speaker 2 Exactly.

55:55 Speaker 3 It’s incredible. It’s as though you’re drawing on all the clichés that once—

56:00 Speaker 2 I...

56:01 Speaker 3 That once seemed like clichés to you. No, I really mean it. I think of other situations where I’ve felt this way, other challenges. There are things we grow up hearing all the time. When you’re an eight-year-old girl and someone tells you, “Think good and it will be good,” and “Everything is for the good,” you’re like, okay, thanks, next. It just passes you by. But we have this whole basket full of things, and then—

56:29 Speaker 2 You need to learn how to use—

56:29 Speaker 3 Suddenly it’s the moment you need them.

56:31 Speaker 2 Right. I really believe in clichés. I always have... I remember I was always saying clichés too, all kinds of sayings and slogans. Later I realized that some of my friends—I don’t want to say they looked down on it—thought, okay, she’s just living in a fantasy, acting like she knows something about life. Then, after some time, a friend told me—I don’t remember if it was when I got sick or even after I recovered—we were talking, and she said, “Back then, I thought you were just saying those things. When you got sick, I suddenly realized you actually meant what you said. That it really is your truth, that you weren’t just making it up.” So I thought—

57:08 Speaker 3 So do you think that, in a way, you came into this prepared? That you had a very high level of awareness that let you work on yourself?

57:16 Speaker 2 I mentioned eleventh grade on purpose when we started talking, and how I had so many challenges with my studies and cried so much during that time. I mentioned it because I felt that it wasn’t for nothing that I had such a challenging year academically. I went through a very long process that year, and so much of it, in the end, is emotional—it’s in your heart, in what you feel, in your state of mind. It made me understand that there’s such a thing as a process, something I need to go through. Things might look dark right now, but I’m at the end of the tunnel. Eventually I’ll reach the light. I mean, there’s a path leading me somewhere. So I remember that when I got sick, I felt grateful for that difficult year at school. It sounds completely unrelated, but I felt it had given me so many tools. I came to the next challenge prepared.

58:12 Speaker 3 Wow. That shows how challenging school really was.

58:16 Speaker 2 It was very challenging. No, in the end it wasn’t about the academics themselves. In the end, it’s all—

58:21 Speaker 3 Right.

58:22 Speaker 2 It’s all in your mind, all in your heart.

58:23 Speaker 3 But it really is true, what I always say: you practice when the stakes are low. So when I’m used to doing that work—whether it’s school or a cup of coffee spilling on me in the morning—of truly believing in hashgachah pratis, that it was meant to happen—

58:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

58:36 Speaker 3 And smiling despite it all, I’m training that same muscle, using that same tool.

58:42 Speaker 2 Right.

58:42 Speaker 3 And then, when the big challenges really come, you have the tools—

58:48 Speaker 2 You’re better able to bear it. You’re familiar with it already.

58:50 Speaker 3 Exactly. Meaning, don’t dismiss the supposedly small challenges.

58:54 Speaker 2 Right.

58:55 Speaker 3 Because that’s where—

58:56 Speaker 2 Yes. Although sometimes I felt it was easier for me to deal with the big things. Not because they’re easier, but because you feel you have no other choice. If I’m not happy, I’ll be depressed, and I can’t afford to be depressed. I have to save my life. Whereas what happens if I sleep another hour this morning? Nothing. So I’ll start my morning... In a way, with the big, significant things, sometimes it’s clearer to you and easier to do—not easier, but clearer in your mind—and so you do what needs to be done.

59:28 Speaker 3 Yes.

59:28 Speaker 2 As opposed to the everyday things, where it can be so much harder for us to manage the routine, the day-to-day—

59:33 Speaker 3 By the way, you see that in—just an example—in Jewish practice, too. Meat and milk, say, is very clear to us. Shabbos is very clear to us. But with the things that seem small—and each person has her own areas—modesty, growing spiritually, and a million little things, that’s where it’s hardest.

59:50 Speaker 2 Right.

59:52 Speaker 3 Wow. Wait, do you remember the moment they told you, “That’s it, it’s behind you”?

59:58 Speaker 2 The illness?

59:59 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:00:01 Speaker 2 Yes, though it wasn’t such a significant moment in that sense. My treatment lasted two years altogether. There were six months that were called the intensive phase—six months of intensive treatments, losing my hair, all of that. Afterward I had another year and a half of much gentler treatment. I’d already gone back to a normal routine. I just took a pill every day, a very, very low dose of chemo, but it didn’t really affect me. I was living a normal life. So for me, the moment I finished was when the intensive phase ended, because after that I was back to normal. But I do remember the moment I finished completely, because that was the moment when... Wow, you’re reminding me of things.

1:00:55 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:00:55 Speaker 2 The moment when—

1:00:57 Speaker 4 I told you I’d catch you off guard with my questions.

1:00:58 Speaker 2 Yes. The moment I took off the necklace. I’ll explain. When I got sick, a coin from the Rebbe was set into a necklace for me. Before that, I hadn’t wanted one, because I felt, who am I to wear a coin the Rebbe touched around my neck? I didn’t feel—

1:01:22 Speaker 4 That it would cheapen it.

1:01:23 Speaker 2 Comfortable. Yes, I didn’t feel comfortable with it. Then, when I got sick, my father told me he wanted to make me a necklace. I think I’d just woken up from anesthesia after some surgery or something. He asked me what design I wanted, what kind of setting. I agreed, because I felt that now I needed—

1:01:48 Speaker 4 Like a sort of amulet.

1:01:48 Speaker 2 Like an amulet. I needed to feel that the Rebbe was with me. I needed his watchful care. So yes, an amulet. The doctors called it my lucky necklace.

1:01:59 Speaker 4 There you go.

1:02:00 Speaker 2 I told them, “Yes, yes, my lucky necklace,” because I wore it to every procedure involving anesthesia and everything else. If I couldn’t wear a necklace, I had a dollar from the Rebbe under my pillow. They knew I had this lucky item. I wore that necklace for two years. And on the day I took my last treatment pill, I took the necklace off.

1:02:29 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:02:30 Speaker 2 Because I said, “Thank You. Thank You, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, for protecting me until now.” I had felt that protection. I’d felt close. And now I keep the necklace, but in a drawer. I’m not giving it to anyone else. It’s mine. The coin is mine, the Rebbe is with me, but I don’t feel comfortable wearing it around my neck everywhere. It was also a kind of sign to myself: that’s it, you’ve recovered. Maybe this is the sign that you’re fully well.

1:02:58 Speaker 4 Some kind of act that—

1:03:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:00 Speaker 4 Makes it tangible.

1:03:01 Speaker 2 Yes. Because when I got it, I remember thinking, “I wonder—”

1:03:07 Speaker 4 “When will I take it off?”

1:03:07 Speaker 2 “When will I take it off? Will I take it off when I recover, or will I wait longer?” And then I felt that I wanted to—

1:03:14 Speaker 4 Mark it for yourself, really.

1:03:15 Speaker 2 Mark for myself that I’d finished that journey.

1:03:17 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:03:18 Speaker 2 Yes. Boruch Hashem.

1:03:20 Speaker 4 Touch wood. Wow. And then—

1:03:22 Speaker 2 Comme ça.

1:03:24 Speaker 4 That’s incredible. Do you feel today, walking down the street, that you’re someone who’s been through something firsthand that sets you apart from the rest of humanity?

1:03:36 Speaker 2 Not too much. Boruch Hashem, I went back to ordinary life.

1:03:40 Speaker 4 You went back to getting annoyed at the little things.

1:03:43 Speaker 2 I went back to complaining. I went back—

1:03:45 Speaker 4 Boruch Hashem. Really, Boruch Hashem.

1:03:46 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem. I do notice it in situations that become bigger and more significant again. Then it reminds me of that time, of the strength I need to summon in that moment, the emunah and bitachon. Those are things I feel I need to put into practice again. I always try to put them into practice, but then it’s much more intense, much bigger, much more significant.

1:04:16 Speaker 4 Well, there you go: I did it, I got through it that way, so...

1:04:18 Speaker 2 Yes. So it is something I feel, and I do end up talking about it in different—

1:04:28 Speaker 4 It’s an inseparable part of you.

1:04:29 Speaker 2 It’s an inseparable part of me. Yes.

1:04:33 Speaker 4 So in the end, did you make it to the Festi and all those things?

1:04:37 Speaker 2 Oh, good question. I did.

1:04:39 Speaker 4 I’m suddenly trying to work out those six months, when exactly that was.

1:04:42 Speaker 2 So, the six months did stretch out a little, because sometimes treatments get extended and unexpected things come up. The Festi performance usually takes place around Rosh Chodesh—during Adar. That was a leap year, so my high school said, “Let’s do it in Adar II,” to improve my chances of being there.

1:05:00 Speaker 4 That’s so lovely.

1:05:01 Speaker 2 And I made it. I’d also returned to Israel two weeks before—

1:05:04 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:05:04 Speaker 2 Before the Festi. Really close. But my friends made sure to keep me involved in the story the whole time, asking, “Which dance are you going to do?” They did everything they could to keep me in the loop.

1:05:15 Speaker 4 You know, at the beginning you said you had a different kind of bond because you lived together and had so much in common. And I’m thinking, wow, that really helped you afterward. There are friends, and then there are friends.

1:05:25 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:25 Speaker 4 Who...

1:05:25 Speaker 2 One thing that’s important to me to say before we get into that: I also have very good friends from my class who were there for me while I was sick. Friends who weren’t from the dorm, Israeli girls, whom I love very much. They were very, very close to me, no less than the girls from abroad.

1:05:45 Speaker 4 Yes, of course. You were just talking about what you had in common, so...

1:05:47 Speaker 2 But what we had in common there... Yes. What can I tell you? I love my friends.

1:05:57 Speaker 4 That’s so moving.

1:05:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:59 Speaker 4 Because I don’t think everyone can say, “My friends are like sisters,” and truly mean it.

1:06:07 Speaker 2 My friends are like sisters, and I mean it.

1:06:09 Speaker 4 And they were there for you in the hard moments.

1:06:11 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:06:11 Speaker 4 Literally.

1:06:12 Speaker 2 Literally. There, the facts speak for themselves, don’t they?

1:06:15 Speaker 4 Right. But you had this very immediate test. Like, yay, you were friends a year and a half ago—let’s see you now.

1:06:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:23 Speaker 4 Did you arrive at Pesti with hair?

1:06:25 Speaker 2 Of course not.

1:06:26 Speaker 4 Right, it takes time until...

1:06:28 Speaker 2 Oh, I was wearing a wig. Want to hear more than that? I went back to the dorm wearing a wig. I shared a room with girls while wearing a wig.

1:06:38 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s crazy.

1:06:39 Speaker 2 It’s crazy, and it’s funny, but in some ways that was the part I found much harder. Mentally and emotionally, going back to Israel—to my routine—was much harder for me in some ways than being at home. Because, like I told you, physically, I’m not afraid of physical pain. I can handle that; it doesn’t scare me. But emotionally, I was so, so confused when I went back to Israel and to my routine. Because I’d supposedly just gone back to normal. I went back to my routine, back to the dorm, and everyone was in this mode of “Mussi’s back, everything’s normal.” I was in this mode of “I’m back”—I was sure everything would be normal now, just like it had been. My parents, the dorm, the staff, my friends. But in the end, you find yourself in the dorm with friends who are talking about things they experienced over half a year without you.

1:07:37 Speaker 4 Oh, right.

1:07:38 Speaker 2 And you’re sitting with them in a circle, and you don’t know what they’re talking about. You don’t get the jokes or—these are new experiences you didn’t share with them.

1:07:44 Speaker 4 Because that’s a significant stretch of time.

1:07:46 Speaker 2 It really is. Eight months is a long time. And these are friends who live together, like sisters, like family. It’s like coming home after eight months away. You don’t know what’s been going on.

1:07:56 Speaker 4 You’re out of the loop.

1:07:57 Speaker 2 You’re out of the loop. And more than that, in a dorm, the girls change. So there were lots of new girls who’d arrived at the start of the year, and I hadn’t had a chance to get to know them. There were new circles of friends—

1:08:07 Speaker 4 They don’t know you, and you’re like, “Excuse me, I’m Mussi. I was here before you.”

1:08:10 Speaker 2 Right. Actually, they did know me, because who didn’t know me at that point? They’d heard all about me.

1:08:14 Speaker 4 Whether they wanted to or not.

1:08:15 Speaker 2 Exactly. And I—I understood this even then, but I wasn’t thinking enough about them. I was busy with myself, trying to work through my own things. But they, my friends, were also intimidated. I was just talking about this with a friend of mine recently. Mussi Vishatzky comes back after being sick and away for eight months—how am I supposed to treat her? How am I supposed to... It was much easier when they came to see me at home. First of all, I was in charge of the situation, and for them, too, it was two people with me, one-on-one. It was much clearer, much more flexible, much more comfortable.

1:08:48 Speaker 4 Because there’s a specific situation there, whereas here everything’s supposedly normal.

1:08:51 Speaker 2 Here it’s supposedly normal, but nothing is normal. And she is my friend, but... And then it was also exam season, and I had lots of accommodations, thank Hashem. So there was a lot of material they had to study for exams that I didn’t have to study at all. They’d pair up to study, while I didn’t need to—but at the end of the day, I was alone.

1:09:09 Speaker 4 Set apart.

1:09:10 Speaker 2 It’s just so many...

1:09:13 Speaker 4 Side effects, so to speak.

1:09:14 Speaker 2 Side effects. And don’t forget, I had a wig on my head.

1:09:19 Speaker 4 You were taking medication.

1:09:19 Speaker 2 And I was coloring in my eyebrows. And I was taking medication that supposedly didn’t affect me, but in the end it did, because every morning I’d wake up with a little nausea, and other things... These were minor things, minor, okay? I didn’t even complain about them then. But today I understand they were part of what confused me, because I didn’t understand what was happening to me. We’d said, “Mussi’s going back to her routine, to ordinary life,” but nothing was ordinary. Nothing was ordinary, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to cope, and everyone thought that... It was terribly confusing and terribly, terribly hard for me.

1:09:53 Speaker 4 And you arrived in Adar II, then went home for Pesach, and then the end of the year was already coming up. You didn’t really have a chance to settle in. It was enough time to suffer, but not enough time to go through a process of...

1:10:07 Speaker 2 Maybe. I also had—I had—

1:10:10 Speaker 4 Twelfth graders don’t really study after Pesach, if I’m not mistaken.

1:10:12 Speaker 2 Right, but you’re still in the dorm, because you’re studying for your exams.

1:10:15 Speaker 4 Oh, right, right.

1:10:15 Speaker 2 And there’s the whole life of the dorm, you know?

1:10:17 Speaker 4 Yes. So you’re actually in the dorm more.

1:10:18 Speaker 2 So yes, I had enough time. I was in the dorm a lot. And...

1:10:25 Speaker 4 Hold on a second, it looks like you’ve got something urgent.

1:10:26 Speaker 2 No problem.

1:10:29 Speaker 4 Hello? Boruch Hashem, who is this? Yes. Okay, then substitute that for this. Yes. Yes, that’s great. Bye, thank you. All right, so you’re not left wondering: the supermarket called to ask if they could substitute one kind of milk for another. Do whatever you like, just let me continue.

1:11:03 Speaker 2 Where were we? The dorm? So, like I was saying, it felt as though every two weeks there was a new challenge. Every moment I’d realize something else. And then, around Lag BaOmer, came another really significant moment: I decided to take off the wig. I’d had enough, and my hair was starting to peek out. There was no way to hide it, and it was bothering me. And think about it: I was in the dorm, wearing the wig 24/7. I wouldn’t take it off in front of anyone because I was embarrassed and uncomfortable. I’d get into bed with the wig on and cover my head, and then...

1:11:39 Speaker 4 You practically slept in the wig.

1:11:39 Speaker 2 I practically slept in it, yes.

1:11:41 Speaker 4 Oh, wow, wow, wow.

1:11:42 Speaker 2 Which is a bit much, you know.

1:11:44 Speaker 4 No, it’s inhuman.

1:11:45 Speaker 2 Yes. So I took off the wig, and my hair was cropped really short, and I was a pretty, cute girl. But I—it wasn’t comfortable. You feel very, very exposed. First, because you’re not used to it, and second, because you didn’t want it in the first place. I’d always had long hair. I’d always wanted hair, and I’d never dreamed of having short hair, certainly not a boyish crop. Then I came to school, and it was another shock, a culture shock. And I knew I was strong, which is why I did it, because I was drawing on all my strength. This was what I needed to do now, because I wanted to live, right? That was always the feeling behind it. But every step like that drains so, so, so much energy out of you.

1:12:25 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:12:26 Speaker 2 So I had another very hard six months. But that was it. After that, I settled into a routine.

1:12:37 Speaker 4 Oh my goodness, that’s crazy. All through middle school and high school, you must have been like, “Oh my goodness.”

1:12:43 Speaker 2 All the things she went through, and...

1:12:46 Speaker 4 You can fit in so much, you know.

1:12:47 Speaker 2 You can fit in a lot. So many life lessons in a short time.

1:12:51 Speaker 4 I also think it’s so beautiful how you handled it. Wow, it’s beautiful. That was the reality, but you were genuinely so self-aware, and so... Because you say your friends didn’t know what to make of you. Nobody gets instructions on how to respond in situations like that, because nobody really knows what advice to give. Maybe you want them to ask how you are? Maybe you don’t want them to ask how you are? Maybe you want them to keep their distance, or maybe you want them to come closer?

1:13:15 Speaker 2 You don’t kn—let’s start with the fact that you don’t know what you want.

1:13:17 Speaker 4 You yourself—

1:13:17 Speaker 2 You yourself are confused.

1:13:18 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:13:18 Speaker 2 Is there anyone who... Even my mother and father, the doctor—nobody knew how I would experience it. They didn’t know themselves. Nobody knew anything.

1:13:26 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:13:26 Speaker 2 I mean, I don’t blame anyone, okay?

1:13:28 Speaker 4 Yes. But what I’m saying is that, in the end, you drew strength from within yourself.

1:13:32 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:13:32 Speaker 4 You weren’t dependent on everyone around you.

1:13:35 Speaker 2 I knew I couldn’t depend on the people around me, so I made sure to—I told myself I’d break the ice each time. I’d jump into the water first, and then everyone else would jump in with me. I remember arriving that first day with my hair cropped short. I’d gone back—I had to fly home to Basel for a particular medical treatment that I could only get there. I flew there every month for about a year. I’d fly out and come back the next day, really just for the night. I flew there wearing the wig and decided I’d come back without it. I also decided to leave the wig at home so I wouldn’t have the option of putting it back on. Enough—I needed to separate myself from it.

1:14:13 Speaker 4 That took courage.

1:14:15 Speaker 2 An unbelievable amount of courage.

1:14:16 Speaker 4 You must have drunk a cup of courage.

1:14:17 Speaker 2 The courage of a lifetime. You can’t get through a life like that without it. So I flew back, and I had an English exam that same day. My mother arranged a taxi for me. It picked me up straight from the airport and took me all the way to the Krayot—a two-hour drive. She also brought a sandwich she’d bought for me in Kfar Chabad.

1:14:35 Speaker 4 Whoa.

1:14:36 Speaker 2 I arrived hungry, you know. Anyway, um, I walked straight into school with my hair cropped short, and—another foolish act of courage on my part—I hadn’t told anyone. I figured they’d see me and deal with it. I didn’t have the energy to prepare them. On the flight, I’d written to a few of them that I’d landed. “Hey, I took off the wig”—I told maybe three, four, six friends. But it was a big school, and there were twenty girls in my class. Anyway, I got there, and the girls were like—

1:15:00 Speaker 4 Whoa.

1:15:00 Speaker 2 Just in shock. Um, then I went into the bathroom and cried my heart out. Then I went to my matriculation exam, and, um...

1:15:06 Speaker 4 I have to know: did you pass that exam?

1:15:08 Speaker 2 I did, I did.

1:15:10 Speaker 4 Where was your head? That was something.

1:15:12 Speaker 2 It was an English exam, so at least it was relatively easy for me. It wasn’t something I had to—yeah, yeah. No, if it had been another exam, I probably wouldn’t have passed.

1:15:19 Speaker 4 Whoa.

1:15:19 Speaker 2 And I went back to the dorm. I went back to my room and shut myself in, because it was hard for me. That evening we had a barbecue out in the yard for Lag BaOmer. We lit a fire—it was probably a few days early. All the girls were outside, and I just didn’t have the energy to go out. I couldn’t face them all, and it was easier to stay in bed. Then my counselor, Shira—bless her—texted me: “Mussi, how are you? Come out.” I said, “Yeah, why not? Everyone’s there.” You know, I was hesitating, and then I said, “Come on, I’m going.” I got there, and everyone was already there. I sat down, and everyone was acting normal, and I was acting normal, and everyone knew that—

1:15:56 Speaker 4 We hadn’t noticed at all that you didn’t have your wig on.

1:15:59 Speaker 2 What?

1:15:59 Speaker 4 You look so beautiful.

1:16:00 Speaker 2 Nobody said anything, and I was also—

1:16:02 Speaker 4 The elephant in the room.

1:16:03 Speaker 2 The elephant in the room was awful, and I can’t stand elephants in the room. I can’t live with one for a second. I remember sitting on the steps next to my counselor and saying, “Shira, wait, do you have your smartphone here?” Because we all kept in touch by phone. She said yes. I said, “Give it to me. I need a selfie.” I took the phone, snapped a selfie, went over to the other side of the fire and said, “Girls, everybody, come here.”

1:16:23 Speaker 4 Whoa.

1:16:23 Speaker 2 That was it—I’d broken the silence around the elephant in the room. I stood in front of everyone, everyone saw me, everyone took pictures with me. That picture was going to be sent to the mothers’ group now, too. Everyone knew that Mussi Neshatzki[?] had taken off her wig.

1:16:34 Speaker 4 What a release.

1:16:35 Speaker 2 Yes, I let it go.

1:16:37 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:16:38 Speaker 2 And... yes, I used to do foolish things.

1:16:41 Speaker 4 That’s really not foolish. I understand—

1:16:43 Speaker 2 It was brave—it was very smart. I mean, I realized that was what I needed to do to let go of it myself and to let everyone else relax, too. I’m sure that, in the end, for all of them—

1:16:51 Speaker 4 Of course.

1:16:51 Speaker 2 Actually, I never asked. I’d be interested to ask, but I believe—

1:16:54 Speaker 4 You don’t need to ask.

1:16:55 Speaker 2 It’s pretty obvious, right?

1:16:56 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:16:56 Speaker 2 That I got—the elephant out of the room.

1:16:58 Speaker 4 Right. The hardest thing—you mentioned the elephant in the room—the hardest thing is when people don’t talk. The hardest thing is not talking, and hiding something eats away at your soul.

1:17:08 Speaker 2 Right.

1:17:10 Speaker 4 What does it mean to hide it? Besides, you couldn’t hide it.

1:17:11 Speaker 2 I couldn’t. If only I could have.

1:17:13 Speaker 4 So that makes it even more obvious. It’s right there.

1:17:15 Speaker 2 Right.

1:17:15 Speaker 4 And we’re supposed to pretend we didn’t notice and cover it up? No, let’s talk about it. Maybe you even laughed about it, I don’t know, but—

1:17:22 Speaker 2 Later on, when I was further along in seminary, I had a friend who would... My hair had grown a little by then. I mean, there was a bit more of it. Um, this friend would come up and do this to my hair. I’d say, “What are you doing?” “It feels so nice.” She’d play with my hair, and by then I was okay with it. But that was after we’d already worked through some of it. It’s a very long process.

1:17:42 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:17:43 Speaker 2 Um, it’s interesting. We talked about this earlier, and I wanted to add something. You asked where it meets me today. The truth is that for a long time, right after I recovered, I spoke about it in talks. I was invited to speak, and I talked about it—sometimes with my father, sometimes alone. My father is an international speaker, too. Um, and I spoke about it very, very freely. But at a certain point, over the last year or two, when people asked me, I started saying I didn’t speak about the illness anymore, because I felt it wasn’t what drove my life today.

1:18:18 Speaker 4 You wanted to leave it behind?

1:18:19 Speaker 2 I wanted to leave it behind—no. What I’m saying is, there’s no point in coming just to talk about myself. I love talking, I love standing up in front of people, I love the podcast, but I don’t see any point in coming just to talk about myself. If it isn’t relevant to my life today, let me talk about things that are. Let me share messages I’m living by today. Sharing something I lived through in the past felt like quoting an earlier version of myself.

1:18:40 Speaker 4 Like a historical story.

1:18:41 Speaker 2 A historical story. I didn’t want that. Let me talk about what’s happening today. I face challenges today, too. They’re less dramatic, less interesting, less suited to the screen, you know. But I just didn’t want to talk about the illness. Then, a few months ago, I was invited to give a talk. She really wanted me to speak, and she wanted a whole hour. I agonized over whether to do it. I also thought, what would I talk about for an hour? What would I talk about for an hour? It seemed far too long, and I’d never done it before. I remember sitting with my husband and saying, “Listen, if I talk about the illness, if that’s the subject, I can easily fill the hour. I already have a fifteen- or twenty-minute talk prepared, and from there I can take it in all sorts of directions, toward other subjects I do want to talk about. But I don’t want to talk about the illness.” And he said, “Mussi, I think you’re running away from it.” I thought about it for a bit and said, “You may be right.” Because it’s true that it happened in the past, and it’s true that it doesn’t drive my life today and I don’t encounter it in every part of my life. But there’s no question that it’s part of me. There’s no question that it helped make me who I am today. It’s part of me, and I can’t run away from it. I’m trying to run away from it, forcing myself not to talk about it, and that isn’t right. It isn’t right to force anything. So if you have something to say, say it. If you don’t have something to say, don’t

1:20:10 Speaker 2 say it—but don’t force yourself not to talk about it. Then I understood that it was okay to talk about it, because it really is a moving story. No, I’m kidding, but it really does have messages. There really are things I want to share with people who listen to me, because I believe very strongly in what I’m saying. More than that, I realized that my beliefs—the lessons I took from that story, what I learned from it—are things I do live by today. The story belongs to the past, but the lessons, what I learned, and the messages I have to share, even with myself, are all relevant today. Wow. So... send invitations. Call Mussi. You can invite me and call me, but mainly, I’m saying to myself again that I’ve learned—I’m learning—to feel comfortable talking about it. It isn’t just a fascinating personal story; I feel that perhaps I also have a shlichus in it, and I’m allowed to use it. I want to tell you, you said all of that in one go, and my mind is already putting it together: at first you were thinking about yourself—maybe people would see you as someone stuck in the past, someone building a career on her story. Yes. How would people see me? And then suddenly you put yourself aside. It’s not even how people would see me; it’s how I’d see myself. Yes, that natural part of us that’s self-focused, in the best sense of the—yes, yes. And then suddenly you say—or your husband reflected it back to you—“Hey, Mussi, you have a shlichus. Let it lead you.” Yes. “Let it lead you, and don’t apologize for it.” Yes, even more so. Because,

1:22:03 Speaker 2 Because, from the outside, as someone looking at you, I’m thinking: What difference does it make if it happened twenty years ago? You have an incredible life lesson here. You need to— Right. You can’t— I was at a point where I said— You need to pass it on. Um, I don’t want to be Mussy and her personal story. Yes, I understand. You know what I mean? Yes. I don’t want the illness to be what defines me, because I’m so much more than that. I want to tell you something for a second that’s— Yes. From a completely different world, as it were. But when we arrived from Ukraine—and it’s a long story, a really long one, but I’ll make it very short—when my husband and I started giving a talk about it together, and later also separately, I remember we kept saying, “So, when will people stop inviting us? This should get boring really quickly.” Because at first everyone was talking about it, and after three months a little less, and then a little less; it wasn’t in the news anymore. But people kept inviting us. And one day I sat down and thought to myself: Why is this interesting? Why is it interesting? Enough, it’s not in the news anymore. It’s already— Even today, I still go and give talks, and when I tell the story I say, “Two and a half years ago,” and I think to myself, Chani, this happened two and a half years ago. That’s ages ago. Why is it interesting? Yes. I’m already in a completely different place within this whole story. And the answer I give myself—what shows me why it’s still interesting—is that there’s a story here with a message. A message. There’s a story here with such a powerful message that people hear it, and they hear you too, and you turn their

1:23:27 Speaker 2 stomachs upside down. You make them cry and laugh, and they leave different from how they came in. So it makes no difference whether someone is telling a story that happened to them thirty or forty years ago. For instance, this just came to mind: I’d love to hear someone talk about the Disengagement, how they got through it and what they took from it. Right. Does it make a difference to you that it was—wow, I feel so old saying this, because I was in middle school then—almost twenty years ago? Or exactly twenty years ago. No, now it’s eighteen, nineteen, I don’t know, but— I don’t know exactly either. A story is a story. That’s true. But I do think you have to be careful that the story doesn’t remain just a story. Yes, right, you’re right. “A story is a story” isn’t the right way to put it; a message is a message. A message is a message. A message is a message. A message is a message. And if someone needs to hear it, they need to hear it. And in a way, I think it takes courage to put yourself aside and say, “Yes, I have a message, and I’m going to bring it into the world at any cost, because the world needs it.” And in a way, I didn’t go through all of this for nothing. It has a continuation. It has a continuation. Right. Both in your messages and in... Again, where I am today, I feel I understand that my process of healing from the illness—it’s funny to call it that, because not physically, of course; baruch Hashem, physically I’m completely healthy—but mentally and emotionally, I feel that in some ways I’m still in a healing process. I’m not entirely at the end of it yet, in all

1:24:56 Speaker 2 kinds of ways. Um, look, what we go through in life shapes us. Yes. It’s part of us. Yes. I talk about this in the talk I put together. At the beginning, I spoke about the point when I decided to be happy, right? Right when I began the process of the illness—the process of recovery, of healing, really. Right. And I said there that I realized my mind rules over my heart: that with my mind, with my head, I could choose to control my heart and its feelings. Today I’m at a point where I understand that it’s true, my mind does rule over my heart; it can control it. That’s true. It’s all true. Everything written in Tanya is true. And I connect that with the fact that it’s true that Hashem gives every person the strength to face the challenge they’re dealing with. But even when you have strength, you need to know how to use it properly. In other words, it’s true that I’m facing a challenge now, and I’ve been given the strength to deal with it, but I need to know how to use that strength. It’s there; the question is how I direct it where it needs to go. So yes, my mind can rule over my heart, but first I feel I need to look at what’s in my heart, let it out, give it room. Everyone talks about this today, all the coaching and everything—that’s language you hear a lot. But I really connect with it because I’m experiencing it myself. I need to let my heart open up, let it hurt, let it say, “This is hard for me. I’m sick. It’s okay for this to be hard for me. It is hard for me. I was taken out of my home. I’m going through a difficult time.” Not ignore it. My mind—

1:26:49 Speaker 2 My initial approach was: I’ll ignore the bad—sorry, I’ll ignore the bad and see only the good, and that’s how I’ll control my heart. I won’t see what hurts it; I’ll control it and see only its good side. But I don’t think that’s right. I think you do need to see what doesn’t feel good in your heart, acknowledge it, make room for it, understand what it is and where it comes from. And then, when my heart is clear and whole, I can let my mind rule over it. That’s absolutely right, and it’s in Tanya too, by the way. It’s in Tanya too. Those moments of sadness—taking them to a place of, “Okay, I’m sad right now,” being there, and simply knowing when to stop. Exactly. I think the word “rule”— Not being afraid to be there. Yes. The word “rule” can sound like a kind of tyranny on the mind’s part, as though it’s saying, “Only me, only me.” But on the other hand, taking control of a situation means knowing how to manage it. So I’m in pain— Right. But once I understand that I’m in pain, let’s manage it. Well said. Let’s not let it manage me. Well said. Why is it important for me to say this? Because I think we hear a lot about “the mind rules over the heart” in all kinds of settings—at farbrengens, in conversations, in talks, at school, in high school. It’s a familiar concept; we know it and hear it all the time. And for the most part, at least for me, I don’t remember anyone explaining that distinction to me. They said, “The mind rules over the heart,” and I thought that meant I had to control it—as you said—tyrannically, with a heavy hand. Yes. But the truth is that apparently it needs to be the opposite. And that’s something I’m learning now.

1:28:22 Speaker 2 So I... amazing. Yes. Wow. See how important it really is to study things in depth. Though I’m putting what I just said aside for a second, because I’d say that what you knew then was probably— Right. Not probably. What you knew then was right for you. The fact is, it helped you cope. Absolutely. And what you know now is right for you now. Again, I don’t reg— I don’t regret the path I went through at all. I think that at that ti— at that point in time, as you said, that was my way of coping. I probably couldn’t have done it any other way, and that’s what got me through it. You know what’s amazing? Today, when I look back, I don’t see the pain or the chemotherapy. I see how good things were for me. The gifts. Are you kidding? I remember, a while ago... I needed a computer. Two years ago. I needed a laptop. No, it was two years after I... recovered. Anyway, the timeline isn’t exact— Enough, you haven’t said how old you are. I’m twenty-three. Okay, now do all the math. Twenty-three; I got sick when I was seventeen and a half. I needed a laptop, and the first thought that came to me was, “Why didn’t I ask for a laptop when I was sick?” As if maybe, if I’d had a little more time, I could have gotten a laptop too. What do you mean, Mussi? You’re crazy! You had, like, a window of time to... I had a window of opportunity, and it closed. Now I can ask for anything I want, but— But look how incredible the power of thought is, and the power of... Wow, wow, wow. Not thought. Maybe your outlook too, your approach to life, because that’s really...

1:29:50 Speaker 2 The time of gifts. The time of gifts. Yes. Wow, that’s wild. It’s wild. I think you’re proof that life experience and insight aren’t a matter of age; they’re a matter of... A matter of... Quality, not quantity. Absolutely. Maybe. No, not maybe, because when I asked how old you were, I thought, wow, if we hadn’t said— Though you did say you got married recently, and you sound young. But wow, it feels like I’m talking to someone with a whole lot of experience. Look, I went through a lot in two and a half years. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Incredible. Such significant things. We need to wrap up. Honestly, I just got a call from the preschool, and I feel bad. Just kidding. But there’s something I want to ask you. Every so often I get messages—you know, a podcast is also, in many ways, a kind of entertainment—saying, “My mother is undergoing medical treatment, and the podcast really strengthens her and helps her pass the time.” What I’m trying to say is that women listening to you are dealing with... Wow. With medical issues right now, at this very moment. So you’ve said so much, but I think that from where you are now, healthy in every sense of the word, you could give us something to close with—something that brings this topic to a close with strength, because you’ve given us a lot of strength. Something that stays with you in the most tangible way. And it’s okay if we just ask you to come up with... No, yes. To speak to them, to someone who is dealing with something now or will be. I think it’s something I’ve already said: understanding that you aren’t the one controlling the situation, that Someone greater is controlling it, but you are the one who controls how you’ll be in that situation, your attitude toward things. I

1:31:48 Speaker 2 think that when this really sinks in... Penetrates. Penetrates all the way through, I think it changes your life. I’m always a little afraid when people ask me to speak to all kinds of people, because in the end, I went through something medical, but something very specific, and there are people going through things much harder than what I went through. So I’m... I’m careful. I’m careful because I don’t... But I think you can apply this more broadly. When you feel something is hard for you, and you say, “No one understands me,” and then someone comes along and gives you advice, you think, “Well, she only had that illness. If she knew what I have, if she knew what I’m going through, she’d say something else.” And maybe that’s true. Fair enough—you’re speaking from your own experience. But from my experience, what guides me is knowing that I don’t control the situation; I can only control how I’ll be in it. That I really do have the strength to deal with anything G-d brings me, because I believe G-d sends me strength when He sends me a test, something to face, or a challenge. I believe that with all my heart. And I believe we have strengths that... I remember there was a period when I was sick when I said, “G-d is actually paying me a compliment.” Wow. “He gave me something this big to deal with because He knows I can. So who am I to say no?” That was at a very particular moment, and it’s not what I thought every moment of my life, okay? But it does... It reminds me of the story about what the Rebbe said to someone, a young man who was assimilating. Do you know that story? I don’t know. There was a Jewish young man

1:33:35 Speaker 2 who was about to marry a non-Jewish woman, and at the last moment someone managed to bring him to the Rebbe. He spoke with the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said one thing to him. He said, “I envy you. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives you such a great test, it means He knows whom He has given it to. I don’t have tests like that.” Amazing. And that really resonates with me. Amazing—you’ve brought it full circle. It really resonates with me. Letting Hakadosh Boruch Hu lead us, in the sense of seeing... seeing Him. Yes. I’ll say it again: if you’re facing something hard right now, something that feels huge and heavy and overwhelming, it means G-d believes you can do it. Wow. Wow, that gives me chills. Mussi Lapidot. Mussi Vishatzky Lapidot. Mussi Vishatzky Lapidot. Thank you so much. Truly. Thank you. It was such a pleasure, and so strengthening, to talk with you. I’m sure everyone who heard you received a special kind of strength. I really did put you on the spot. I have to say, podcasts start in all sorts of ways, but we met in Kfar Chabad, and suddenly something clicked for me. I said, “Mussi, what do you think about this?” So there was a bit of a process. It took time. Yes, but I’m so glad it happened. And I actually want to end on a different note: call Mussi and invite her to speak. I come from that world now, and I’m telling you, it has incredible power. More power than any podcast, any story or status or whatever thirty-second clip. To really sit with someone and experience it together with them. So I wish you great success going forward, and thank you. Thank you so much.

1:35:08 Speaker 2 Thank you, Mussi. Thank you, I enjoyed it. Thank you.