Episode 55: How do you turn faith into a product for everyday use? | With Tzipi Koltiniuk, mentor for connecting to your inner infinity

00:00 Speaker 1 She’s a musician, a creator, a speaker, and a few other things along the way. But how did it all begin? How does a girl who wasn’t chosen for the school choir find the courage to release an album? What led Tzipi to start writing a daily insight that now reaches more people than she could ever have imagined? And how did she find herself flying out to perform in Russian, too? This is a conversation about courage and learning along the way. About a girl who lost her mother at age ten but received gifts from her that help her light up the world. About how each of us can move forward in her shlichus and know she’s doing the right thing. All this in an episode with Tzipi Koltunyuk, an influencer of faith. A reminder: if you enjoyed this episode, don’t keep it to yourself—pass it on. To your sister, your mother, a neighbor, a friend, 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 my health-as-a-way-of-life process, it’s all at 050-850-5770. Here’s the intro, and then we’ll begin. How can we make our lives lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and now continuing our shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. On this podcast, we’ll meet different women who bring their shlichus into a variety of fields. Through their journeys, they’ll help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created to live is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting right now. Here we go. Tzipi, how are you?

01:36 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem. The time has finally come.

01:39 Speaker 1 Welcome! What, should I tell everyone everything that happened before we got here? Wow.

01:42 Speaker 2 No, I’ll just say that the last time I came to your house was in Kharkiv.

01:46 Speaker 1 That’s right.

01:46 Speaker 2 Eight years ago.

01:48 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:48 Speaker 2 On my way to a performance.

01:49 Speaker 1 All the way back then.

01:50 Speaker 2 Yes, you were wonderful even then. You hosted me and made me breakfast, I remember.

01:55 Speaker 1 It was lovely, really lovely.

01:56 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:56 Speaker 1 When you’re there, anyone who comes—besides the women’s evening and all that—

02:01 Speaker 2 It’s like your sister has arrived.

02:02 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

02:03 Speaker 2 Right, we went out together.

02:03 Speaker 1 Yes, you came on your own, and we went to the mall after the performance.

02:06 Speaker 2 After the performance.

02:07 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:08 Speaker 2 That’s right. I still have a jacket I bought there. I had this rule that after every event abroad, I’d buy something to remind me I’d performed there, because I always went home so quickly. I never stayed very long.

02:17 Speaker 1 Right, right.

02:18 Speaker 2 So that item reminds me of it. Tzipi, you have no idea.

02:19 Speaker 1 You really did leave in the early hours of the morning—

02:22 Speaker 2 The next day.

02:23 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:23 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s how I used to do it.

02:24 Speaker 1 Wow.

02:25 Speaker 2 Those were the days.

02:25 Speaker 1 But it was amazing, amazing, amazing. So, eight years.

02:29 Speaker 2 Yes. So much has happened since we met. We also met at Tzama, and—

02:33 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:33 Speaker 2 And when you arrived—

02:33 Speaker 1 Right, and when I started the podcast. Wait a second. Yes, when I arrived—when we came to Israel, you wrote to me: “Chani, if you need any help, I’m here.”

02:44 Speaker 2 And then you came to my house.

02:45 Speaker 1 I came with the—when I was starting the talks.

02:47 Speaker 2 I look at this studio and this home now, and I think, wow, it hasn’t been that long. Where were you back then? Lost.

02:53 Speaker 1 Completely.

02:53 Speaker 2 In shock from the whole move, afraid and thinking about the future. You came with nothing—as I said, just a small bag. And seeing you now strengthens my faith that for a person who’s positive and lives with a sense of shlichus, as you do—

03:10 Speaker 1 Absolutely, baruch Hashem.

03:11 Speaker 2 Anything is possible.

03:12 Speaker 1 And when I started the podcast, I made a list of people I knew I had to have on.

03:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:19 Speaker 1 I put your name down, and we set a date.

03:22 Speaker 2 Right, and every time something came up. Sometimes on my end, sometimes on yours.

03:24 Speaker 1 Yes. At first I was pregnant, and I had a short hospital stay that happened to fall on that very day.

03:29 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:30 Speaker 1 Then we scheduled it again.

03:31 Speaker 2 We kept thinking it would work out this time.

03:33 Speaker 1 It’s wild. I mean, two and a half years.

03:34 Speaker 2 Right, but you know what?

03:37 Speaker 1 Everything happens at the right moment. Yes.

03:39 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

03:39 Speaker 1 Yes. So introduce yourself, though I think everyone knows you, but—

03:44 Speaker 2 I assume not everyone knows me, certainly not everyone in your audience. We each have our own audience.

03:48 Speaker 1 Yes.

03:48 Speaker 2 Though some of them—

03:49 Speaker 1 And we change, too. We go through things.

03:51 Speaker 2 So—and that’s right, the description changes each time. I started out as a musician, and then it became “musician and speaker.”

03:56 Speaker 1 You know, I was thinking about how to describe you. On the podcast cover, I always write something like “with Tzipi Koltunyuk,” and then—

04:03 Speaker 2 Well, I found it.

04:04 Speaker 1 And then your title. Ah, go on.

04:06 Speaker 2 I found one. I have to say, it took some searching, and it might change again in a while, because there’s the—I’m a musician; that’s how I first reached an audience. And I’m a speaker. At some point I realized I’m a mentor. I even went to study it, just to get the certificate, but mentoring is part of who I am—in my songs and in the insights I share. So I looked for a title, and it was a painful search. Like, what do you call this?

04:27 Speaker 1 It’s a bit like open-heart surgery, too.

04:29 Speaker 2 Yes. And there were stages when I let go of the need to name it. Maybe it doesn’t need a name; maybe there’s no definition. Today the closest description I’ve found is “an influencer of faith.” What I do, really, is share faith through songs, through insights, through performances and a weekly talk. If I look at what they all have in common, that’s it. And it’s faith that comes from a very deep place. I don’t mean, “Let’s teach the world how to believe.” I mean sharing my own inner work, which is ongoing, day by day, hour by hour. That inner struggle, the searching, dealing with what I call my constant tendency to glance left, toward negativity, and having to keep steering myself right. That’s where my songs and insights come from, and that’s what I share with the world. That’s really it.

05:16 Speaker 1 Yes, I relate. We have so much in common—not exactly in what we end up producing, but...

05:22 Speaker 2 Yes, in the journey.

05:23 Speaker 1 In the journey, and in our whole involvement with Chassidus.

05:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:26 Speaker 1 Ultimately, it’s about spreading Chassidus.

05:28 Speaker 2 Taking it somewhere very practical, very—

05:29 Speaker 1 Yes, and I connect so much with what you said about not coming to teach faith. Because ultimately, my passion for bringing Chassidus to people is like, “Listen, this works.”

05:38 Speaker 2 It works for me.

05:38 Speaker 1 It works for me. You have to know about it.

05:41 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I say this at every performance. I tell the women—and this isn’t an exaggeration—if I didn’t have this knowledge... And it isn’t just knowledge, of course; you have to live it and keep working at it all the time. Without it, not only would I not be onstage, I wouldn’t even be here in the audience. The women laugh, but it’s not a joke. It’s the truth. These things really are life-changing. It’s about sharing them with other people. That’s how I came to write songs. I didn’t start writing and composing songs because—

06:09 Speaker 1 How did you start, really? Start there. What...

06:12 Speaker 2 How did I start?

06:12 Speaker 1 You said you were a musician first.

06:14 Speaker 2 Right. Basically...

06:16 Speaker 1 You know how some people have been composing songs since they were four?

06:18 Speaker 2 Well, yes, I was composing songs from age thirteen, not four. I played music from a young age. I always say that—

06:27 Speaker 1 At a conservatory or something?

06:29 Speaker 2 No. A private teacher came to our home. A family with parents from Russia, eleven children, but lessons were one thing they wouldn’t give up on. Each child dropped out at some point. I stuck with it a little longer. My mother was a gifted pianist, but I got the impulse to invent songs from my father. My father is a scientist.

06:45 Speaker 1 Wow, what a combination.

06:45 Speaker 2 I knew from a young age that he invented things, so I think that’s where it came from. In my very first piano lesson, I said to the teacher, “Why do I have to play songs? I’ll invent them.” Now, I didn’t actually know how. I was six, and I made something up but couldn’t remember it by the next lesson. It wasn’t really a song. But when I did start composing at thirteen, I believe that confidence that I could do it came partly from there. I always take it as a lesson in how much we, as parents, influence our children without even knowing it. It’s not as if my father sat me down and said, “Listen, you can invent things.” I simply knew what he did, and my mind translated that into other possibilities: that it was possible, that I could invent something too.

07:26 Speaker 1 Wow, amazing.

07:26 Speaker 2 Of course, you need some musical gift to compose. And to me, composition is something deeply spiritual, not technical. These days, some people compose in an entirely technical way. With all the artificial intelligence now, you can feed in eight hits and produce a new hit that sounds like lots of other songs. But that’s not it. That’s not where I come from. It’s something very internal; I need to go through some kind of experience.

07:49 Speaker 1 It comes from the very essence of the soul.

07:50 Speaker 2 For example, I never composed music while I was pregnant. At some point, when I tried to understand why, I thought maybe all my creativity then was going into creating the baby, and that’s why the songs never came.

08:01 Speaker 1 Your energy was occupied.

08:02 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. So it just shows how deeply internal it is. And I started composing because my mother passed away when I was ten and a half.

08:11 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

08:12 Speaker 2 Then, at some point, my father remarried and we moved. The only thing in the house that was, in a way, my mother was the piano. So I would sit at it and sit at it. And how many times can you play the same pieces? I’d already stopped taking lessons.

08:22 Speaker 1 You say that as though it’s just part of the story, but—

08:24 Speaker 2 It is part of the story.

08:25 Speaker 1 Your mother passed away when you were ten and a half.

08:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:26 Speaker 1 That’s... that’s terrible. Where are you in the family?

08:29 Speaker 2 I’m the eighth child.

08:31 Speaker 1 Oh, so you had a lot of older siblings.

08:33 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:34 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s a tremendous upheaval.

08:34 Speaker 2 I say it this way because I’m at a place where, of course, I know it’s something very painful and profoundly significant in my life.

08:41 Speaker 1 It’s part of you.

08:42 Speaker 2 In an extraordinary way. I can say that, when I think about it, one of my strongest goals in life is to bring my mother nachas. That’s always there. I think it made me, from a very young age, someone who knows that life here is temporary, who hurries to do things because we won’t always be here. Not in a tragic way, in the most—

09:02 Speaker 1 Practical way.

09:02 Speaker 2 The most practical way. Yes. It made me look at this world and connect more with the spiritual, because my mother is there, so my soul is constantly—

09:09 Speaker 1 Living here and there.

09:10 Speaker 2 But I’m no longer at a point where mentioning it brings the pain back every time. Not long ago, I was at an event where someone sang a song for her mother, and all the women joined in. A medley of songs about mothers. That was hard for me, because it really reminded me of myself as a little girl at a party where everyone is singing, and what am I supposed to sing? “Mother, hold me tight.”

09:30 Speaker 1 Right. That’s what I connected with in your experience back then.

09:32 Speaker 2 Yes, but I—

09:33 Speaker 1 A ten-and-a-half-year-old girl who—

09:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:36 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s...

09:36 Speaker 2 Right. So I would sit at the piano, and how do I put it—as the saying goes, light’s advantage comes from darkness—I’d sit there feeling lost. That’s where I began composing songs. And today, I actually do all kinds of things my mother also did. My mother didn’t compose, but she played music, and she was a very, very influential person. She was an influencer when it came to emunah, really.

09:57 Speaker 1 The previous generation’s version of one.

09:59 Speaker 2 The previous generation’s version, but very forward-thinking. For example, my mother saw that immigrants had arrived from Russia and couldn’t find jobs, so they were working as cleaners even though they had degrees. She went and opened an employment center for immigrants. That was no small thing. So I do many things today that show me: I don’t have my mother, but I do have my mother. Her influence is so strong that it couldn’t have been formed only in the years before I turned ten.

10:28 Speaker 1 What you’re saying is so beautiful. Independently of this, I often think about looking at... about always staying connected to where we came from.

10:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:35 Speaker 1 Seeing myself in my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother. There’s something so... I don’t know, strengthening about it.

10:44 Speaker 2 Right, right.

10:45 Speaker 1 And grounding, too. You’re saying, “I’m part of something.”

10:48 Speaker 2 Yes. I’m a continuation of something. I have roots.

10:50 Speaker 1 And my children, with Hashem’s help, will continue it...

10:52 Speaker 2 And I immediately think of the women watching: Baruch Hashem, may you all have living, healthy mothers, and may you yourselves be healthy and well. But this really shows me how much influence a mother has. Enormous influence. I think about how much she managed to influence me by the time I was ten, without even talking about it. We absorb everything. I keep remembering another little thing. From a very young age, I dreamed of—by the way, this is what I dreamed of—radio. I never dreamed of performing and singing. Radio was the most I imagined, and not the kind of radio where people can see you. Radio behind the scenes, because I was very insecure and shy. But I did want to talk. I didn’t even know then that I had a voice for radio. It took me time to realize that. Years later, I remembered that when I was a child, my mother was interviewed a few times on radio stations about that project of hers. I remember the neighbor calling out to me, “Tzipi, come! Your mother’s on the radio!” But it wasn’t something I consciously remembered and then pursued as a dream. A mother’s influence on us... We’re such a huge source of inspiration for our children. In short, that’s what I’m trying to say. Anyway, I wrote and composed songs, and my biggest dream was to sell them to a singer who would sing them. That was the height of my dreams.

12:04 Speaker 1 That someone would hear them somehow.

12:06 Speaker 2 That one day I’d be sitting there—I really loved radio—I’d turn on the radio and someone would be singing my song. That was the pinnacle for me. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in His great mercy, did everything to keep me from succeeding. Truly beyond the natural order. A singer had already recorded one, but didn’t release it. A child prodigy released one, but somehow that particular album didn’t take off. And I took it really hard.

12:28 Speaker 1 The style of the songs was probably very different.

12:30 Speaker 2 They were songs... I didn’t even understand—I knew nothing about genres. I didn’t realize they were something very personal. At the same time, I didn’t think of myself as some kind of child prodigy, either. Come on, when they pick a girl to sing in the school choir, they pick the one with the very high voice. They’re not looking for someone with a rock-and-roll voice. The most anyone would say about me was that I sang very accurately. I remember that a few times, when there were choirs at my elementary school in Kiryat Malachi, they put me next to girls who sang more off-key. My voice was simply so strong, and I sang on key, so you couldn’t hear them.

13:02 Speaker 1 To cover for them.

13:03 Speaker 2 To cover for them. You see what I mean? So I didn’t think I was a singer, and I was very angry. I was angry with Hakadosh Boruch Hu and disappointed. What was the point of giving me these songs if nobody wanted them? It took a very long time—not a day or two. I was already a mother of three, by the way; it’s never too late—when I realized I was going to sing them myself. Then I understood the message I keep telling myself, one that’s part of what I’ve learned and that I share with women at performances—and this show is a performance too: Hakadosh Boruch Hu believes in us more than we believe in ourselves.

13:37 Speaker 1 Wow.

13:37 Speaker 2 What I want for myself is very limited. Sometimes I think, what, I’m supposed to give up what I want? What about me? Am I supposed to erase myself? No. Let go of it and connect to the Divine will. What He wants for you is so much greater. It isn’t limited.

13:49 Speaker 1 Right.

13:50 Speaker 2 You thought the most you could hope for was to hear your song on the radio. But no, sweetheart. He thinks you can stand on a stage. You just don’t know it yet, but...

13:57 Speaker 1 It’s very trendy today to set long-term goals.

14:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:00 Speaker 1 To say, where will I be in ten years? Where will I...

14:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:02 Speaker 1 In a way, we’re really limiting ourselves.

14:04 Speaker 2 Really limiting ourselves. And I see—I personally think there’s a lot there that’s a kind of denial of faith creeping into faith. I’ll explain what I mean. All those people who come along and say, “I have a method. Do one, two, three, four, and you’ll be a millionaire. Do this and that.” We need to keep remembering, with humility, that yes, positive thinking creates reality, and we have the power to create and bring things into being through our words and through positive thinking. But ultimately, the One who decides exactly when it will happen is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. More than once, I’ve seen answers from the Rebbe to people where he told them: Some people’s role is more to give tzedakah through money. You will give tzedakah through kind words, through classes. Not everyone is meant to be— Yes, a Jew should believe they have the potential to be wealthy, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily happen. There are all kinds of things here... And one of the insights dearest to me, which is also a song, is: I’m responsible for the effort, and the results are in Hashem’s hands. Truly. Not just letting go of the results, but knowing that He knows what’s good for me.

15:12 Speaker 1 And that He can surprise me, too.

15:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, exactly. Because otherwise, there can be so much disappointment and so much pain.

15:18 Speaker 1 Right.

15:18 Speaker 2 If I say, or someone comes and tells me, “Do one, two,” then where is Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the picture? Maybe that abundance, at that particular moment, would suddenly unsettle my marriage. There are all kinds of situations where a huge success suddenly unsettles other areas of life, and it isn’t right for me. At first, for example, I wanted to reach the biggest stages, and today I say, “Thank goodness that didn’t happen.” I would have fallen apart. Inside, I wasn’t at all ready for too much success. So it’s good that it happened the way it did. It still happened quickly, but at a pace I could handle. So if I had said, “I’ll just do one, two, three”...

15:49 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

15:50 Speaker 2 But Hakadosh Boruch Hu knows. He knows my character; He knows what’s right for me.

15:54 Speaker 1 Sometimes we try to define it, and sometimes we’re frustrated because we don’t know.

15:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:58 Speaker 1 I talk a lot about shlichus, so I hear a lot of girls say, “Oh, I don’t know what my shlichus is.” Take a breath. Your shlichus right now is to do your very best, and—

16:07 Speaker 2 I think the yetzer hara really gets in there.

16:09 Speaker 1 Hakadosh Boruch Hu leads you along a path.

16:11 Speaker 2 Right.

16:11 Speaker 1 It’s not some box you open and that’s it—there’s your whole future inside. It’s—

16:15 Speaker 2 Because today there’s so much talk about things being “exactly right.” It has to be exactly right, and—

16:20 Speaker 1 Yes.

16:20 Speaker 2 All kinds of women come along and say, “Because this is my thing, I feel like I haven’t worked a day in my life.” Statements like that make the woman looking at them say, “Why don’t I feel like this is exactly right for me?” And the yetzer hara loves that. It gets in there and tells her—

16:34 Speaker 1 It loves everything.

16:35 Speaker 2 “Don’t do it, don’t do it. It’s not exactly right for you.” That goes back to how we started, with my definition of myself. When I couldn’t find my definition, the yetzer hara came and said, “Until you know exactly what it is, stop. Stop and wait until you get it exactly right.” That’s not how it works. Keep moving forward, and along the way you’ll discover another part, and another. What matters is that I’m doing something. What matters is that I’m doing something. Just today I posted a thought: “That G-d created to do.” My father always used to say that. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created you to do. Trust Hashem with the results. That’s exactly what shlichus is. Your shlichus is to do. Whether you own a business or work for someone else, even if you’re in a temporary job—as long as you’re doing something, you’re engaged in your shlichus.

17:16 Speaker 1 Absolutely. Wow.

17:17 Speaker 2 And...

17:17 Speaker 1 I wrote down something you once said. It was sweet. It came up in connection with some story. I don’t even remember the story; maybe you do, because it was quite a while ago. You said, on this very subject, that we think too much, we spend too much time...

17:29 Speaker 2 Yes.

17:29 Speaker 1 Too much of that. You said, “Do it badly, but do it.”

17:34 Speaker 2 Wow. Oh, my father is going to feature a lot here today.

17:36 Speaker 1 So that came from him?

17:37 Speaker 2 It came from my father. Let me say something as a mother of teenagers, because it’s important to me to say this before I address the statement itself. When I was a teenager, especially because my mother had passed away and my father had remarried and everything, when my father would tell me things, I’d think, “You don’t understand.” Let’s just say, gently, that I didn’t—

17:55 Speaker 1 All teenagers are like that.

17:56 Speaker 2 I didn’t really appreciate it. And today I quote him in my talks. I have insights inspired by him, and I say, “Oh my goodness, he had such wisdom! Why didn’t I understand it then?” So first of all, I’ll say this to all mothers of teenagers: today’s teenagers—

18:08 Speaker 1 They also listen to us much more than we think.

18:09 Speaker 2 And to the teenage girls themselves: one day you’ll discover how much wisdom your parents have. That wisdom comes from the fact that they’re partners with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Even a parent who isn’t the most intelligent person in the world is given the wisdom by Hakadosh Boruch Hu to know what advice to give their child, to see what’s needed. We don’t see that as teenagers, because the first thing we want to do is pull away from our parents. That’s what a teenager does: pulls away from their parents and looks to their friends. And that’s okay. As parents, the first thing to say is, “This is a phase. The nachas will come eventually.” Here I am quoting my father—who would have believed it?

18:45 Speaker 1 And we need to hear that.

18:46 Speaker 2 Yes. So there was a period in seminary when I simply wasn’t handing in assignments, and I was having a very, very hard time. I was struggling with myself, so I also found it hard to concentrate on my studies. I sat down with my father and told him, “Dad, I have so many assignments. I’m going to hand them in. I can’t, I can’t.” I was just negative, negative, negative. Picture a typical teenager when she’s feeling awful—that was me. And then my father said, “Look, when I have to give lectures...” As I said, he’s also a scientist. The things he works on are very advanced in his field. He invented various patents in a very specific field called electromechanics. I won’t get into it. Those inventions are used today in tunnels in Jerusalem, at the Dead Sea Works, and in various government projects. I mean, those are later applications of the ideas, but the original invention was his—something that gives a warning before certain electrical problems occur. I really don’t understand it. But he told me, “Do it as badly as you can, and then improve it.” That’s what he said. He said, “I write some kind of first draft.” And that helped me so many times later on, too, when I was writing for various newspapers and had no inspiration. And there you have it, speaking of shlichus: I don’t have the exact thing, so it isn’t exact. Write something rough. Don’t send it yet. Then improve it a little, and improve it a little more. That helps me with so many things. If I’m looking for a graphic for something, I can keep thinking about it—or I can start, and then we keep improving it. Just start. Do something.

20:18 Speaker 1 Yes, because when you think about that wording, why does it work so well? Because it’s an answer to the yetzer hara.

20:22 Speaker 2 Exactly.

20:22 Speaker 1 The yetzer hara tells you, “You’ll do it badly.”

20:24 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:24 Speaker 1 “All right, fine. I’ll do it badly.”

20:25 Speaker 2 I’ll do it badly. Exactly.

20:26 Speaker 1 Fine, I’m with you.

20:27 Speaker 2 Yes, I’m with you. Exactly, exactly. Right, it isn’t exactly right, but I’m in it, and I’ll get it right as I go.

20:33 Speaker 1 Yes.

20:33 Speaker 2 Through doing. If I sit and wait, what—a voice from Heaven will come? I dream about it, by the way. I keep saying to my sister, “Where’s that voice from Heaven?” When I’m trying to decide something. Let a voice from Heaven come and announce, “Tzipi Koltinyuk, your definition is such and such.”

20:46 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

20:47 Speaker 2 “Chani Cohen, your shlichus in the world is...” We dream about that, but what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants is—

20:51 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

20:52 Speaker 2 For us to search and keep moving forward. It also changes along the way, and becomes clearer as we go. Suddenly—

20:57 Speaker 1 It would be boring, too, if it were all so clear.

20:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. And a year from now, something that feels exactly right to you today—pfft.

21:03 Speaker 1 Yes.

21:03 Speaker 2 You’ll say, “What is this?” It just doesn’t fit me anymore, because you’ve grown.

21:09 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

21:09 Speaker 2 And you’ve changed. That’s okay.

21:11 Speaker 1 Exactly.

21:12 Speaker 2 And...

21:12 Speaker 1 So how did you get to making an album after all that? Wait, was the album before you started performing, or which came first?

21:16 Speaker 2 No. I started performing in what you’d call—

21:20 Speaker 1 Listen, that takes incredible courage.

21:21 Speaker 2 I don’t recommend it. Honestly, when I think about that first period of performing, I think there was some kind of help from Heaven. I don’t know what was going on. Hakadosh Boruch Hu just pushed me. It’s like people who become baalei teshuvah and tell you, “At first there was this light; then it got hard, and then I had to fight for it.”

21:38 Speaker 1 Yes.

21:38 Speaker 2 At first there was a very great light. There was courage there, and even today I have no idea where it came from. I’d be glad to have it again. And you—

21:47 Speaker 1 You know, that reminds me of something. I have to stop you, because I’m—

21:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:49 Speaker 1 With you.

21:49 Speaker 2 Of course.

21:50 Speaker 1 Earlier you said that as a child you felt you could create.

21:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:56 Speaker 1 Thanks to your parents and all that. And it also occurred to me that children have so much faith in themselves.

22:04 Speaker 2 Right.

22:05 Speaker 1 So sometimes, at our age, we really need to return to that place of being a child.

22:12 Speaker 2 Right.

22:12 Speaker 1 Even beyond what we were given by others, that feeling of “I’ll do it. I’ll just do it. At worst...”

22:18 Speaker 2 I think what’s special about a child is that they don’t think about the results. That’s what’s special.

22:23 Speaker 1 If only we could do that.

22:23 Speaker 2 They don’t think about the results, and when they’re little, they don’t see those results as saying anything about who they are.

22:29 Speaker 1 Yes.

22:29 Speaker 2 Because if you watch a child learning to walk, they fall a hundred times. They don’t say, “Oh no, I’ll never learn to walk.”

22:34 Speaker 1 “Everyone saw me fall.”

22:35 Speaker 2 Right, it doesn’t embarrass them. “Oh no, what do other people think of me?” That’s what stops us.

22:39 Speaker 1 Wow, Sharon[?], that really struck me.

22:41 Speaker 2 So, speaking of how much you deal with this idea of a shlichus mindset, I think sometimes what makes it possible for us is that our sense of shlichus is so strong. I reached a point where I said: I really believed in these songs. I didn’t believe in myself all that much. But I believed deeply in the songs. I knew they came from a higher place, that they were composed from somewhere very deep inside, and that they could do women good. And I said, I don’t know. I didn’t even know where to start. I didn’t know anyone in the field. I didn’t have a single shekel—no connections, no knowledge. But I said, these songs will do good, and I’ll make sure they reach women. That was the goal. I felt very connected to it, very innocent about it, genuinely innocent. So I started taking a few private lessons, which I paid for by bartering. I worked at the school where I’d studied.

23:29 Speaker 1 Wow.

23:30 Speaker 2 And I really didn’t have anything, as I was saying. There were so many miracles along the way, too. I won’t go into every one, but it’s amazing. And I set myself a date two months later. I started in Cheshvan, around this time of year. Toward the end of Kislev, I called a friend who has a Chabad House. I said, “What date are you holding an event?” She said, “The 30th.” I said, “Great, perfect.” That gave me time—it wasn’t the first day of Chanukah. You know, it may even have been 1 Teves, right near the end of Chanukah. “I want to come sing a song.” She said, “Listen, I have a program, but I don’t have a Dvar Torah. If you come give a Dvar Torah, I don’t mind if you sing a song too.” It wasn’t one of my songs yet. It was a niggun.

24:06 Speaker 1 Ah, okay.

24:07 Speaker 2 Listen, I needed to get my foot in the door. Oh my goodness, from the moment I arranged it with her, I felt sick for two weeks.

24:13 Speaker 1 Wow.

24:13 Speaker 2 I said to my husband, “Why didn’t you tell me not to do it? Why didn’t you stop me?” And I played that niggun so many times my children couldn’t bear to hear it anymore. I got there and gave the Dvar Torah. It was a very small event, maybe twenty women. I sang the song, and they didn’t even applaud. To them, it was a niggun, and then the program went on. As far as they were concerned, nothing had happened. It was just a continuation of the Dvar Torah. For me, it was a birth. So many women contact me with dreams of doing things, or singers who dream of singing, and I think they don’t have that innocence, because they’re already thinking about Caesarea. They’re thinking about that enormous thing, about Binyanei HaUma. And I say: Start with one thing. Go to a studio now, record a song, take a step. It’s not even about an audience yet. The audience isn’t the point here. First, step outside yourself. Lech Lecha. Exactly this week’s parsha, Lech Lecha. Leave the place you know. It was an incredible Lech Lecha, and four months later I was already performing a full show that included two of my own songs.

25:13 Speaker 1 Wow.

25:14 Speaker 2 In front of an audience somewhere. It was a nightmare. I came home and said it was the last time. But two weeks later, someone called about another event, and each time I said it was the last time, and that’s how it went on. And only after—only after... Today I realize it happened very quickly. At the time it didn’t seem that way to me. After ten months, I said, “Women keep coming up to me and asking where they can hear your songs. So let’s record them. Let’s make an album.” There were miracles there too. I had no idea what I was doing. Forget an album—I didn’t know how to sing in a studio. I’d never taken voice lessons in my life, apart from about three lessons at that same school. I remember saying in the studio, while recording the first album—and anyone who listens will hear it—I told them not to put any effects on my voice. Because what was I afraid of? That I’d sound really good on the album, and then people would come to a performance and say, “But...” So the musical accompaniment is very, very sparse too.

26:02 Speaker 1 In the end, it was the opposite.

26:03 Speaker 2 Very sparse. The next album is much more developed. Yes, in the end it was the opposite. People told me, “You sing much more beautifully live.”

26:08 Speaker 1 Exactly. Do you remember when you came to Kharkiv? I mean, I thought you sang beautifully, and I knew the CD.

26:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:12 Speaker 1 But suddenly my jaw dropped and I said, “Wow, that’s not the person singing on the CD.” It was so much more—

26:18 Speaker 2 It was better. That doesn’t usually happen.

26:20 Speaker 1 Yes, it’s funny.

26:21 Speaker 2 So because I was just starting out, and because I was so afraid people would be disappointed in me, there aren’t even drums on that album. There’s a guitar. It’s that sparse. I kept telling the arranger, “Less, fewer instruments,” so people wouldn’t come to a show and suddenly feel like they were hearing nothing.

26:34 Speaker 1 I imagine that at every stage here—I mean, come on, for a religious woman to call herself a singer—there are obstacles at every stage.

26:44 Speaker 2 Not just a religious woman. Someone with a voice like mine in our community.

26:47 Speaker 1 No, it’s all of those things together.

26:49 Speaker 2 Where do we have rock music? And releasing original songs? I’ll never forget, at first various people contacted me who were interested, and then they’d say, “But why? Why don’t you sing familiar songs?” They simply didn’t understand the need for it at all. Why do we need this? Then there were schools where I came to sing, and they said, “No, we only want niggunim.” Or, “What were your influences? What did you listen to before you composed this?” To them, it was obvious I’d heard some song and composed mine under its influence. Try explaining to them what composing is.

27:19 Speaker 1 Like creating something from nothing.

27:20 Speaker 2 A completely outlandish idea. Yes. And then it was a very different genre, too. We’re used to it now—there are more songs about faith where a singer also sings about her pain. What did we have back then? Everything was so bouncy and cheerful, terribly, terribly happy.

27:33 Speaker 1 Verses.

27:33 Speaker 2 Or verses, exactly. For someone to come and share something personal... I remember quite a few people saying to me, “It’s terribly sad. The album is terribly sad.” And that broke me, because it was me.

27:44 Speaker 1 Wow.

27:44 Speaker 2 Those songs were about me. It’s okay, I got through it. It wasn’t easy. There were difficult moments, there was pain. But in the end, a year and a half later I released another album, so I must have recovered. On the second album—

27:58 Speaker 1 Wow, only a year and a half between the two albums?

28:00 Speaker 2 Yes, almost two years. I mean, I started working on it after a year and a half. At the time, that seemed like forever. I haven’t released another album in Hebrew since. Look, eight years have gone by. I’ve released a few singles, and I released an album in Russian that you had a part in.

28:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

28:12 Speaker 2 “Ma Mesaper?” But what I’m saying is, there’s really nothing like the innocence you have at the beginning. Today I know how much it costs, and I know an album isn’t profitable. I wish someone could wipe all that knowledge away and let me be a baby again. Do you understand? Back then, did I even think about who would pay for it? I took out a bank loan for the entire amount. I told the studio guy on the first album, “Let me know a minute beforehand and I’ll come in during your downtime.” That’s how it was—everything was worked out through little arrangements. You know? If musicians were coming in to record for someone else anyway, they’d record one song for me while they were there. Everything happened like that.

28:50 Speaker 1 Wow, wow.

28:50 Speaker 2 And I was lucky that the arranger, who’s fairly well known and has worked with well-known singers—Nadav Bitton—was going through a difficult period himself at the time. He heard the song “The World Was Created for Me” and connected with it. He heard a recording; I didn’t sing it live for him. And he told me, “I’m in.” The song did that for him. So that’s what I’m saying: it takes work. The work is to return to that innocence, to return to... I have a song like that, the first song on the second album, that asks, “Where is the light that was in me? Where did the clarity go?”

29:23 Speaker 1 You knew all the songs.

29:24 Speaker 2 Yes.

29:24 Speaker 1 So just say the cue and—

29:25 Speaker 2 Right. So that song says, “Return to the point.” Sometimes I ask myself—or really, I try to remember—what was that point that gave me the strength to set out on the journey?

29:33 Speaker 1 Do you know how many times that song kept me going on shlichus?

29:35 Speaker 2 Wow.

29:36 Speaker 1 I can just picture myself walking down the street, or driving home from school, listening to it and crying on hard days.

29:44 Speaker 2 Wow.

29:44 Speaker 1 And really—

29:44 Speaker 2 Looking for that point... I have to tell you, I could cry just telling you this. I’ve heard all kinds of stories. You know, every woman takes a song into her own world. I heard from a woman undergoing fertility treatments who would lose hope again and again. Then she’d listen to this song and try to remember what that point was. Why am I doing what I’m doing?

30:00 Speaker 1 It speaks to everything, really.

30:01 Speaker 2 Yes, and there was a woman going through a divorce who really had to break up her marriage. Throughout the process she had so much strength, but דווקא when the divorce came through, suddenly—there’s this thing where we want something to happen, and then suddenly she was overwhelmed with fear. Like, oh my gosh, she was leaving the familiar behind. She would just listen to this song, and I’m getting chills as I tell you this. Every time, she would sing to herself, “Return to the point,” to remember why I’m doing what I’m doing. I think a big part of our work is constantly returning to that innocence, in a world so focused on achievement and competition, appearances and numbers and financial returns. Constantly returning to that place. And really, one of the insights I love most—and maybe we’ll talk a little about these insights—is to do the work and look at the results through spiritual eyes. Because what happens when we lose that innocence? Sometimes you do start out with it. Okay, I’ve just started something new about the weekly parsha: every week, an encounter with the parsha and the Infinite, from a place of innocence. But then you go in to see how many views the video has, and below it you see other speakers, or just some content—I don’t know, kids playing a computer game—with a hundred thousand views. And then you say, “This is Torah, and this is its reward?”

31:17 Speaker 1 A computer game is...

31:18 Speaker 2 Yes, what’s going on here? And you have to bring yourself back to that point. Wait: if I’m doing this from a spiritual place but I want worldly results, I’m going to be frustrated. There’s no—there’s no—rarely do I manage to—

31:29 Speaker 1 You know what’s amazing? My immediate response is to tell you, yes, we learn Chassidus, and Chassidus teaches us about the inner dimension and everything. But Chassidus also teaches us that our automatic reactions are here to stay.

31:41 Speaker 2 Those automatic reactions are there. Absolutely.

31:42 Speaker 1 It’s crazy. It’s crazy.

31:43 Speaker 2 Of course, and the more you—

31:44 Speaker 1 I mean, you know that.

31:45 Speaker 2 Right.

31:46 Speaker 1 But you constantly have to—I remember asking you, at a Tzama event, I made a video where I asked—

31:52 Speaker 2 Right.

31:52 Speaker 1 The people who were there.

31:53 Speaker 2 You asked me for a tip.

31:56 Speaker 1 What—something about Chassidus. Do you remember what you said?

31:58 Speaker 2 Yes. Back then I was also—I go through phases with my weight, and at the time I was feeling bloated.

32:03 Speaker 1 Oh, that was powerful. That was powerful.

32:04 Speaker 2 And then I told you that learning Chassidus—you say it, and I’ll remember.

32:08 Speaker 1 It’s like going on a diet.

32:09 Speaker 2 Right.

32:09 Speaker 1 Once you’ve learned, that’s it. Even if you don’t manage to put it into practice, you’ll always know.

32:16 Speaker 2 I compared it to someone who’s never been on a diet. She eats bourekas and creamy dishes and has no idea. Then she goes on a diet and learns about calories, nutritional values, what’s healthy and unhealthy in each food—and then she breaks the diet. But she can’t relate to that food the way she did before, because now, when she eats the bourekas, she knows exactly what’s in it. And that’s exactly it. You can’t really sink into that old enjoyment anymore—the self-pity, the victimhood, the anger. That voice comes in right away, and the more you learn, the faster it comes.

32:47 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

32:48 Speaker 2 It tells you, “Ah, this is ‘one opposite the other.’ Your animal soul is dancing around here. Get a grip.”

32:55 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

32:56 Speaker 2 Get a grip. And you can’t just—enjoy giving in to it.

32:58 Speaker 1 Yes. You talk about hypocrisy, but it’s not like that. It happens automatically. And then you tell yourself, “Sweetheart, you have learned a thing or two in your life.”

33:07 Speaker 2 And then Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in His great kindness—I see it every time—on days when I’m feeling down, He suddenly sends me a message that reminds me how one person is an entire world. There was one day when there happened to be a ranking, and I’d been nominated. I was actually very happy. It was a ranking by Moreshet; just being chosen made me feel good. I didn’t expect anything.

33:25 Speaker 1 Oh, I voted for you.

33:26 Speaker 2 Thank you. I really said, the fact that I’m even there... I also... It was just before the start of the year.

33:31 Speaker 1 A message like that.

33:32 Speaker 2 So I said, the fact that there’s an ultra-Orthodox singer-songwriter on that list is a kiddush Hashem. And people voted for me, too. What a beautiful picture. It was nice for the animal side of me, too—or for the feminine side of me, whatever you want to call it. And it was also toward the end of the year, when I was thinking about what I’d do the following year. So for me, it was a sign: next year, a new album. Absolutely. There are so many songs just waiting.

33:54 Speaker 1 Wow.

33:54 Speaker 2 For Tzipi to reconnect with that innocence and do what the world sees as this foolish thing: put out an album. It’s foolish, but in the end it’s so worthwhile. And on that very day, when I was feeling a bit like, “Okay, it’s fine that they didn’t choose me, but why wasn’t I chosen?”—I mean, come on, some of the singers there have well-oiled PR machines. You hear them on the radio. They’re also very talented, to be clear; I’m certainly not putting them down. I didn’t really stand a chance against them, but I did feel a tiny bit disappointed. Then I got an Instagram message from a woman who’d been through a high-risk pregnancy. She told me, “I went on Spotify and searched for empowering songs. I had no idea who you were, and it brought up your album. You’ve been with me throughout the pregnancy, and you were with me during the birth. Today I’m listening to the songs with a healthy baby girl in front of me.” And I say, you know, really, that’s it. What more do we need in this life?

34:42 Speaker 1 And with the whole digital world, which didn’t even exist not that long ago, you send something out into the world and have no idea whom it will reach.

34:52 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

34:52 Speaker 1 Or when it will reach them. Maybe in ten years.

34:55 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

34:56 Speaker 1 So think about the feedback you do get, and how much you don’t know.

35:00 Speaker 2 How much we don’t know. All of us.

35:02 Speaker 1 It’s crazy.

35:03 Speaker 2 The ability we have to make an impact. Once upon a time... Think about fifteen years ago. I wasn’t an official Chabad shlucha anymore, though we’d been shluchim. We’d come back from shlichus, and I was pregnant at the time. I lived in Kiryat Ekron and gave a Torah class. Who heard that class? The same eight or ten women who came to my home. Today I record a class and say, “Oh, it’s on Spotify, and on YouTube it only has six hundred views so far.” Do you know what six hundred—do you know what a room with six hundred women is? All this digital technology has given every woman the ability to have an impact. Even if you post a sentence about emunah that you didn’t even write yourself, you have no idea. Women tell me, “I posted it, and because of you, a woman opened up and told me what she was going through.” It’s just light that never ends. A candle for one is a candle for a hundred. Really.

35:51 Speaker 1 Do you remember that after Pesach I saw a video Dr. Yechiel Harari posted?

35:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:55 Speaker 1 It had some Torah thought connected to Pesach. And he shared this: “I said it at the Seder. Nobody listened to me. I said it now: ten thousand listens.” It’s really...

36:08 Speaker 2 It also shows that every woman can make an impact so easily. This has been given to us.

36:13 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

36:13 Speaker 2 We talked a little before this, and I immediately said, “Let’s turn on the microphones so we don’t miss it,” because this is the point. We started talking about our challenge. On the one hand, being in the digital world is a tremendous gift. On the other hand, there’s that challenge again of comparisons, achievement and numbers. And there’s also the challenge of all the norms and halachah and the rules each of us lives by.

36:38 Speaker 1 And making this content more popular and interesting than all the nonsense online that draws millions.

36:45 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:45 Speaker 1 And you’re there with your—

36:46 Speaker 2 Yes, all of that—

36:47 Speaker 1 Your truth, which you’ll fight for, but you feel like some—

36:51 Speaker 2 Little child standing among people who all have megaphones, trying to whisper something true. I remember Chani Weinroth, zichronah livrachah. We also did a show together, and we had many conversations about this world.

37:07 Speaker 1 A very special song.

37:08 Speaker 2 And I have a song—

37:09 Speaker 1 “Shivrei Luchos,” I think.

37:10 Speaker 2 Right, “You Have a Place in the World,” which is based on a very moving piece Chani wrote about the gap between the life she had dreamed of for herself... For anyone who doesn’t know, she had cancer for several years. It was important to her that people say “cancer,” not “the illness,” so whenever I mention her, that’s what I say. And she turned all those years into years of light, bringing light to other women through her own experience. We had so many conversations about—first of all, that song, “You Have a Place in the World,” is based on a piece she wrote about the gap between the life she wanted and what Hashem brought her, and about those broken pieces. Those broken pieces are like the broken Tablets: they, too, were placed in the holiest place, not hidden away. Hakadosh Boruch Hu holds on to our broken places, too. They belong there, because there’s light in them; they have meaning.

37:57 Speaker 1 The most exalted place.

37:57 Speaker 2 Yes, they’re in the most exalted place, and we don’t need to hide them or feel bad about them. They’re part of who we are here.

38:04 Speaker 1 What a talent, to take an article and turn it into a song. I mean, you—

38:07 Speaker 2 It really—

38:07 Speaker 1 It’s obvious to you.

38:08 Speaker 2 I have to tell you, it happened during the shivah. To me, it’s one of the most remarkable songs in terms of how it came into being, because that piece isn’t a song in any way, and yet the piece is in there and it doesn’t feel forced. I wrote the chorus based on things Chani had said.

38:23 Speaker 1 Yes, you can understand it from beginning to end.

38:25 Speaker 2 Very clearly. And it really is an example of a gift. It strengthened me so, so much during the shivah. Chani and I used to have conversations about where we stand in relation to the world, alma d’shikra—the world of falsehood. I remember saying to her, “It gets me down”—

38:38 Speaker 1 With her, it was an upside-down world.

38:39 Speaker 2 I was upside down, yes. So I said to Chani one day, “Chani, look: the silliest songs—and I won’t even give examples of the kinds of songs out there today—get millions of views. Someone writes songs about Hakadosh Boruch Hu and barely scrapes a thousand views, if that. What is that?” And she said to me, “Go into a bookstore and you’ll see that the holy books are always the cheapest, and their covers aren’t especially appealing, but they’ve been around for thousands of years.” That’s the thing: the surface, the world of falsehood, sparkles. You have to look at it that way, and not measure yourself against it. I’m following my own path. By the way, “the world of falsehood” isn’t about any particular person, G-d forbid. If we look at it properly, everyone has their own shlichus. Today I see women—and to me this is part of the signs of the Geulah—who aren’t modestly dressed, but they encourage other women to keep Shabbos. They don’t observe the mitzvos, but they learn Chassidus, and because of them other women learn too. Who could dismiss something like that? It’s incredible.

39:38 Speaker 1 That’s faith in Moshiach, in a way—

39:39 Speaker 2 Absolutely. So every woman has her own shlichus and her own boundaries, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu created her that way, suited to—

39:48 Speaker 1 Yes. No, but if there were, you know, some little thing you could put into a video that would tell people, “You should listen to this.”

39:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:55 Speaker 1 “Listen, this could change your life.”

39:56 Speaker 2 Yes, the frustration isn’t always personal.

39:57 Speaker 1 More than any joke, more than any—

39:58 Speaker 2 Right. The frustration isn’t always personal. A lot of the time it comes from believing how much good this could do. And I can tell you there was a period when people tried very, very hard to convince me to open my videos with some really provocative line, in the language of the world, and—

40:16 Speaker 1 A “hook,” as they call it.

40:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

40:18 Speaker 1 To grab people’s attention.

40:19 Speaker 2 And that’s always been very hard for me. I think, actually, this connects to how much I live with the weekly parsha, because I teach it. It’s exactly that tension between Noach and Lech Lecha. The question is always how much I should stay where I’m comfortable, where I feel this is my place, and how much I need to “lech lecha”—go forth. Because if I leave behind everything I am, then why am I who I am? If Hakadosh Boruch Hu created me as someone less provocative, more modest and more classic, I’m not going to switch to wearing loud clothes just because they’re in fashion. On the other hand, if I only do things the way I’m comfortable doing them, I won’t reach all kinds of people. So it’s always—

40:54 Speaker 1 That kind of complexity.

40:55 Speaker 2 It’s always—

40:56 Speaker 1 There’s no clear-cut answer. It’s—

40:57 Speaker 2 There’s no—more than that, you don’t have a choice—

40:59 Speaker 1 There are so many things like that. Sometimes you try to do something and it doesn’t work out. Is it not working because I’m supposed to let it go, or because these are obstacles and delays standing in the way of something good?

41:07 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

41:09 Speaker 1 There’s no way to know. If everything were so clear-cut, Moshiach probably would have come already.

41:12 Speaker 2 Bas kol, we’re waiting for you. Come and announce it.

41:15 Speaker 1 Sometimes I do feel like saying to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Give me some kind of sign. Enough.” Like—

41:20 Speaker 2 Yes, when you let it go.

41:22 Speaker 1 Yes, and then one comes.

41:24 Speaker 2 Right.

41:24 Speaker 1 You have to open your eyes, sort of. Like you said, you were feeling down and suddenly you got an encouraging message.

41:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

41:32 Speaker 1 You might not necessarily have noticed it if you hadn’t been—

41:35 Speaker 2 If I hadn’t been in a place where I was facing Him.

41:37 Speaker 1 Yes.

41:37 Speaker 2 I think if I go back to the songs and the insights, in the end it’s all a conversation with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. By the way, I started the insights—if you know those sad brown quotes, they’re much more famous than I am.

41:49 Speaker 1 That’s you.

41:50 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s me. Nice to meet you. Maybe you’ll put one up on the screen, because I arrive at performances in places—

41:54 Speaker 1 You know, that connects.

41:54 Speaker 2 Women don’t know who I am, and then the screen goes up and they say, “Whoa, that’s you?” And I’m like, “Well, thank you, insights...” Yes, they’re much more famous than I am, and I’m happy about it.

42:04 Speaker 1 You know, I see the insights too, and I think to myself, “Wow, it looks so simple—but Tzipi, how much thought goes into them?”

42:11 Speaker 2 A tremendous amount of thought goes into them—

42:12 Speaker 1 Into every one.

42:14 Speaker 2 A tremendous, tremendous amount, really. And they reach tens of thousands of people every day. I don’t even have a way to know how many. By the way, the insights began during a period when I was ill and couldn’t perform. And look how many good things happen.

42:27 Speaker 1 Something always comes out of it.

42:28 Speaker 2 Out of pain.

42:29 Speaker 1 Wow.

42:30 Speaker 2 Out of a pause, something new grows. I can’t imagine what the COVID period and the war would have looked like for me without the insights. Who would I be today without them? So there you go, speaking of defining myself: I defined myself as a musician. Then suddenly I had no music, no performances. For a long time I had very severe herniated discs during pregnancy, and I was on bed rest. And suddenly Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought something new that only adds to everything. That’s where I am. So you said earlier, when I don’t have the answer—I think that when I ask myself what to do, the place to be is one of surrender. To say: “Hakadosh Boruch Hu, if this happens, I’m okay with it.” If this performance is meant to be booked, let it be booked, and I’ll go and make it as beautiful as I can. If it isn’t meant to be booked—

43:14 Speaker 1 To really let go.

43:15 Speaker 2 To let go completely. It’s really “I have set Hashem before me always”—an insight like that. Everything is equal in my eyes because G-d runs my life. And “I have set” also means placing Hakadosh Boruch Hu before me.

43:26 Speaker 1 That’s from the Baal Shem Tov, right?

43:27 Speaker 2 Yes, and it also brings me to a place of equanimity, where I truly don’t mind. If He runs my life, and He is good, the very essence of goodness, and He wants what’s good for me, then who am I to tell Him what’s good for me? I remember that before the war began, I went through a period without performances, and I said to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Honestly, listen, if You think I need to go do something else—

43:48 Speaker 1 Yes.

43:50 Speaker 2 I’m here.” And I really meant it; I wasn’t clinging to this idea of “me.” Speaking of “me” and what my shlichus is: if I’m someone who inspires faith, I can—I was inspiring faith even back when I worked in a store as a young mother of two girls. Every woman who came in got a whole talk. I didn’t notice it then, but it was already there. Do you understand? And I’d give lots of compliments there—helping women feel seen and empowered. It was there. And I think—and I’m sure you’ll agree, because you see it in your own life—that if a person really looks deeply, she’ll see that her shlichus was always there. It always was. It’s there.

44:23 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s true.

44:23 Speaker 2 Maybe it hasn’t been defined yet. You were someone who generates faith, who produces all these different kinds of projects. I’m sure you were like that when you were single, and that there were already signs of it when you were a child. It’s not something you invented; it’s already there.

44:38 Speaker 1 It’s discovering it in more—

44:39 Speaker 2 Discovering it, connecting to it, daring to do it.

44:41 Speaker 1 What you’re saying about labels—as if one day you could have defined yourself and said, “Maybe I’ll be someone who writes insights.” There’s no label for it. It really—

44:49 Speaker 2 It just started. And when it started, I remember that at first there were reactions like, “What? Who are you, anyway, to announce some daily saying?” And, “Why does it rhyme?” And a lot of—

45:02 Speaker 1 Someone who knows Chassidus a little better can recognize the—

45:06 Speaker 2 Recognize where it comes from.

45:07 Speaker 1 It’s amazing.

45:09 Speaker 2 And by the way, about the rhymes: I believe—we talked about that animalistic voice—it’s really quite foolish. It isn’t mature, it isn’t—speaking to it briefly and in rhymes makes more sense to me than anything else. Coming at it with little slogans. In Russia, they have this thing where they teach children little rhyming verses, right? Songs.

45:28 Speaker 1 Yes.

45:28 Speaker 2 Right? They teach them short phrases and rhymes.

45:31 Speaker 1 Ta ta ta ta ta.

45:32 Speaker 2 Exactly. It really develops their minds and all that. But that negative voice inside us—that’s its level. It stays about five years old. So that’s how you speak to it.

45:40 Speaker 1 In its own language.

45:41 Speaker 2 You’re not going to say, “Oh, I’m in a negative mood. Let’s open a maamar, let’s…”

45:46 Speaker 1 Right.

45:46 Speaker 2 At certain times, fine. But in a moment of dark—

45:49 Speaker 1 Turn it into mantras.

45:50 Speaker 2 Yes, take it and shorten it, distill it. Um, so what was I going to say about the sayings? At first people said to me, “What will happen on the day you run out of insights?” And I said, “I don’t know.” I had no plan. I didn’t set out with a plan. I’m going to, uh…

46:05 Speaker 1 Right, a year of insights.

46:06 Speaker 2 I just started. So, uh, and here it is, still going, and I want—

46:11 Speaker 1 It’s interesting, too, because obviously Chassidus is endless, and—

46:14 Speaker 2 Exactly.

46:15 Speaker 1 If you decided to, you could write these until, uh, the end of time.

46:19 Speaker 2 Right. Sometimes I post an insight I’ve already posted. Sometimes I phrase a new insight that carries exactly the same message. After all, “that G-d created to do”—trust Hashem with the results—is exactly the same as “I’m responsible for the effort.” It just comes from another angle, with a quotation. And everyone knows the words “that G-d created to do” from Kiddush, so suddenly that version will resonate more with one woman. But it’s not as though every single one is a message the world has never heard before.

46:42 Speaker 1 Yes.

46:42 Speaker 2 We just need reminders, because I call it—I have spiritual forgetfulness. I know, and then I forget.

46:48 Speaker 1 It’s like exercise.

46:49 Speaker 2 Yes, all the—

46:50 Speaker 1 If we don’t keep at it, if we don’t remind ourselves and practice.

46:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

46:54 Speaker 1 You open a Tanya after not looking at it for a week, and you say, “Wow.”

46:57 Speaker 2 Right.

46:58 Speaker 1 What a—

46:58 Speaker 2 Not only that. I’ll listen to this podcast again in about a month, and I’ll say, “Wow, there’s something to what she’s saying.”

47:04 Speaker 1 Right, right, right, right.

47:06 Speaker 2 I’ve had that happen a few times when I hadn’t heard one of my songs in years. Because I can’t perform all my songs. Not every song—there’s no getting around it—you have to make yourself accessible to the audience. You can’t come to an audience passing through the market—I mean, sorry, an audience that’s come to a show that isn’t your show, that didn’t buy tickets to see you—and serve them some gourmet dish. You have to put it in a pita, the songs that are more… So there are songs I haven’t had occasion to hear in years. Then suddenly I hear one and I say, “Wow, how empow— I mean, I…”

47:34 Speaker 1 It’s beautiful.

47:34 Speaker 2 I’m not there at all. I’m not… That’s exactly the point, because we constantly need to…

47:38 Speaker 1 Yes. I’ll tell you, with the insights—you release an album of songs and that’s that. But the insights, because they’re daily, when you look at it from a little distance, through the lens of hashgachah pratis, think about it: you put out an insight and it speaks to women. It’s as though Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives you a message that women need to receive on that very day.

47:59 Speaker 2 These insights are—

48:00 Speaker 1 It’s hard to grasp. It’s…

48:01 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you what’s hard to grasp here, and I mean it. This actually answered several needs I had. First, the music: I can’t post it on every platform, and women can’t share my songs. In other words, the singer in me is very limited in how much she can put herself out there. Then the insights came along and conveyed the messages in a form anyone can post, right? Because it’s a sentence. And think about it: when this started, there wasn’t much of a culture of posting daily statuses yet. It’s been four and a half years, almost five.

48:27 Speaker 1 A little before that. Right.

48:28 Speaker 2 Yes, a little—it wasn’t a thing. Today every organization has a daily status. And by the way, to me this is exactly “the earth will be filled with knowledge of Hashem.” It’s like “a stone will cry out from the wall.” Everywhere we look—we see sayings on cars. We see them on… When was there ever such a thing? Today, when I’m driving, there’s no way I won’t come across either a chapter of Tehillim or a statement of faith. That didn’t used to happen. So first of all, it’s something that can be shared. Another thing it solved for me: I’m on social media, and as we said, I have a lot of limitations. Sometimes I’d say, “What am I going to post?” I don’t want to post pictures of myself. We talked about this too: we wear a sheitel. A sheitel is symbolic. We don’t show a hundred percent of what goes on inside our homes, and there’s modesty.

49:11 Speaker 1 A lack of spontaneity.

49:13 Speaker 2 Exactly. So—

49:14 Speaker 1 There are things you don’t—you protect your privacy. Yes.

49:16 Speaker 2 Absolutely. By the way, I remember that during that pregnancy, when I was on bed rest, once I started feeling a little better, I went to a one-time course on Instagram marketing. I sat through the course; it was lovely. I left realizing I had no way to put anything I’d heard there into practice, because all they talked to us about was: expose yourself, bring your whole self, show your entire day so people get to know you. Some things have changed a little, because I’ve loosened up a bit. Some things have to do with shyness and personality, but others are set in stone. They’re matters of halachah.

49:47 Speaker 1 Principles.

49:47 Speaker 2 They won’t change. And suddenly, because of the insights, first of all I had something to post every day. I had something. If there’s something else too, great; either way, there’s something. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu manages—apparently He has solutions.

50:01 Speaker 1 It also became a physical product.

50:03 Speaker 2 Right. So what happened—

50:05 Speaker 1 Sorry for suddenly, uh, making it physical.

50:07 Speaker 2 Not at all. I had absolutely no intention of doing that. Me, running a website with products and packing orders? Here’s another solution Hakadosh Boruch Hu found. Oh, it’s important to me to talk about this. What happened was that women kept reaching out. Where was I? There are magnets with the sayings. I already had one product with magnets; it was really the prototype. I made it at the beginning of that pregnancy, while I was on bed rest. I saw that I had nothing to do. I don’t even know where the idea came from. I thought, I’ll make… My daughter is five and a half, so that product is almost six years old. I put it out during the pregnancy: a tin box with ten magnets bearing lines from the songs. It was very, very successful. I said—

50:43 Speaker 1 Yes, I remember. Colorful ones.

50:44 Speaker 2 Yes, colorful. Listen, people want faith expressed in short sayings. That gave me, like, the… Now, what happened? Women started asking for them, and I’d also asked people not to print them. I mean, share them as much as you want, but you can’t ask people not to print something if you don’t make a printed version available. There are some things where that just won’t work. Go ahead, then, register it as a trademark. So what? If someone uses it, are you going to sue them? You have to take action. In general, you need to—

51:09 Speaker 1 The process is also very—I looked into it once.

51:12 Speaker 2 Exactly. You have to listen.

51:13 Speaker 1 Very expensive, and in the end, uh—

51:15 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, it means dealing with all that. That’s more suited to food products.

51:17 Speaker 1 There’s no real income from it.

51:18 Speaker 2 Right, you have to let go. That’s exactly it: let go. Hakadosh Boruch Hu will give me more ideas, because you can’t put limits on that. The whole question of copyright in halachah is a subject for serious discussion; it’s not something to dismiss, and it doesn’t contradict chessed. And I do set boundaries. But once in a while, when something happens, I’m not about to threaten lawsuits. That’s not what we came into this world to do. But what I wanted to say is that I started making the products when I was pregnant with my Eli, who’s three and a half now. I was in such a hurry. By the way, I don’t know why I was in such a hurry. Did it have to be born before the baby? I don’t know. Sometimes we put ourselves under pressure for no reason. And I’ll just say that both this and the album came from things people said to me. I think that if any woman listens a little more closely, she’ll see that sometimes Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends her messengers. If you hear the same sentence several times, listen. Where did the insights actually come from? What gave me the strength? Several different people told me, “With one sentence from you a day, I’m set.” They had reached out to me, and I’d encouraged them, and they had no idea those conversations would turn into Insights. Listen to what people tell you. See them as messengers. You have no idea how much it will help you find your direction.

52:28 Speaker 1 We want messages from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He sends them. We’re just not—

52:31 Speaker 2 We’re not.

52:32 Speaker 1 We’re not listening.

52:32 Speaker 2 We think a heavenly voice is supposed to... A heavenly voice is this, this... And while we’re talking about it, I can be that good messenger for someone else, too. Do you have something good to say? Someone sent me a recording today of herself being interviewed somewhere. I don’t always have time to open things. I don’t respond to everything, but I had time in the car. I put it on, listened on the way, and heard that she speaks really well. I told her, “Listen, you have the qualities of a speaker.” What do I lose by being the good messenger and telling her that? I saw it. Now she tells me, “You know, I’ve been dreaming for a long time of going out and telling my story, and to hear you say ‘wow’...” So be a heavenly voice for someone else, too. You know what I mean?

53:04 Speaker 1 Completely.

53:05 Speaker 2 I mean, okay, I believe that one day we’ll... The Geulah will come soon, today, and it will happen.

53:10 Speaker 1 I also think that someone who’s really searching, who feels completely lost and is looking for direction, shouldn’t just wait. Ask the people close to you: What am I good at?

53:19 Speaker 2 Right. Wow, that’s not easy.

53:20 Speaker 1 I actually get that question.

53:21 Speaker 2 It’s not easy to ask.

53:22 Speaker 1 Yes, but—

53:23 Speaker 2 Even for me. But yes.

53:24 Speaker 1 Because sometimes we don’t see ourselves clearly enough. You know, everyone has their own way of looking at themselves and all that.

53:27 Speaker 2 Right.

53:27 Speaker 1 But if someone asked you, you’d be so happy—

53:30 Speaker 2 Yes.

53:30 Speaker 1 —to tell someone you know well.

53:32 Speaker 2 To say good things about her, right?

53:34 Speaker 1 Because the people around us see us in a slightly different light than we see ourselves.

53:37 Speaker 2 That’s an idea. I’m sure there are women here who’ll take it up.

53:39 Speaker 1 Yes, we can be lost when it comes to ourselves.

53:40 Speaker 2 “What do you see in me, and how do you see it?” Or even, “Tell me three strengths you see in me.” Um, so I’ll tell you about putting things out into the world. Yes. About the products: when I started, I asked myself, “Why are you building a website?” It’s not especially profitable. Um, I’m not—again, it can be very profitable.

53:58 Speaker 1 Technically, all those things.

53:59 Speaker 2 Technically, shipping within Israel is very, very difficult. Israel Post is practically nonexistent. You have to work with a courier company. Shipping costs a fortune; things often break, and nobody insures them for you. You absorb the cost. There’s no shortage of challenges. Before I started, I asked myself some very clear questions: Are you going to open warehouses and import from China? No. That’s not going to happen, because I’m not that kind of person. That’s not me. I’m not a businesswoman in that sense. So it’s going to be boutique. Boutique means it will cost me more and cost the customer more, and it won’t be my main source of income, to put it mildly—if it’s a source of income at all. So what? Why do it, then? Let’s go back to one of the points. Okay, yes, there’s the shlichus, and there’s the... I have endless stories.

54:41 Speaker 1 Each person, and the shlichus she needs to carry forward.

54:43 Speaker 2 Someone who went through a medical procedure brought one as a gift for her doctor. Then she told me that the doctor says patients come in and draw strength from the sentences on the mouse pad. There are nine Insights on it. There really are endless stories, but there’s another value here, too. With performances, workshops, lectures—whatever it is—you don’t work every day. You don’t have an event every day. And I knew something about myself: I had to have something to get up for every day. Of course I have my children, the loves of my life—six children. An excellent reason. But I mean—

55:14 Speaker 1 I understand you.

55:14 Speaker 2 I mean having something to do.

55:15 Speaker 1 Yes.

55:16 Speaker 2 Because I know what happens when I don’t have something to do, and we all know: idleness is the mother of all sin. Then the yetzer comes along, and it has a microphone.

55:24 Speaker 1 It’s as though space opens up for it.

55:26 Speaker 2 By the way, it makes perfect sense. When someone has tremendous strengths, the moment she doesn’t use them, they... someone else will use them. If you don’t, it will.

55:34 Speaker 1 Right.

55:35 Speaker 2 And so—

55:36 Speaker 1 It’s good for the soul. The regularity.

55:39 Speaker 2 Some kind of... The Rebbe speaks about constancy in the soul, and performances don’t give you that constancy. I mean, you can have—look, during the Ten Days of Teshuvah I performed every day, and then during the holidays... A lot of my Insights came from grappling with how to keep myself steady through those transitions. So getting up in the morning and packing products almost every day gives me constancy in my soul. Seeing those sentences in front of me every day, sending out an Insight every day—I don’t know whom it affects. That gives me constancy in my soul. Every day I get up knowing I have a way to make an impact on this world. Especially during a war, when I’m sure I’m not the only one asking herself—and I ask myself—am I worthy of these soldiers who are fighting? Am I worthy of the sacrifice their families are making? Am I worthy... I’m not even going to get into the painful dilemma about the draft. That’s truly beyond me. I pray to Hakadosh Boruch Hu to bring the solution, both for Ahavas Yisroel and for the issue of pikuach nefesh, yes? That He bring the right solution in every respect. But meanwhile, at the end of the day, I have to ask myself what I’m contributing. And the contribution is—okay, I’ve collected money for food for the soldiers dozens of times, but not everyone has that kind of audience. A spiritual contribution can start with the smallest thing. If my child had a birthday the day before yesterday and we celebrated at home, and there was joy in a Jewish home, then I contributed to the Jewish people. That’s how to look at it. It’s not only about—do you understand? Not only about this month’s shlichus.

57:07 Speaker 3 Doing something, every—

57:08 Speaker 2 Everything you do, every bit of joy.

57:09 Speaker 3 In the end, the whole people is made up of us, of families, of—

57:14 Speaker 2 Exactly. I can tell you that since the war began, I’ve had a lot of performances, and I suddenly realized that before I even start talking about empowerment, I have to give the audience permission to be at a performance. They’re sitting there, stunned that they even went out for an evening.

57:27 Speaker 3 They don’t feel it’s acceptable.

57:28 Speaker 2 Permission. So I actually tell them: Think of the Jewish people as one body. That body is now filled to bursting with pain and sorrow. We’re adding joy to the Jewish people right now. It’s not just for—we’re not doing it for ourselves. Wow, you see the audience afterward, and you see this incredible joy. It’s amazing to watch. Especially when I was in places like Ashkelon. You tell them, “There are soldiers here. They’re not far away. We’re sending them this joy right now.” And I was at an event where the mother of a hostage was there—Guy, son of Merav. May he return soon, through miracles beyond nature, together with all the hostages. I said, “We’re sending this joy to Guy right now,” and his mother agreed with me. We’re not happy because we’ve forgotten. So that’s exactly the—

58:12 Speaker 3 Amazing.

58:13 Speaker 2 That place of having constancy and doing—

58:14 Speaker 3 It’s real. It’s that connection between souls. Yes, no, the constancy—wow, I relate to you so much. It’s one of those things.

58:21 Speaker 2 You need it, because of those extremes.

58:24 Speaker 3 No day is like the one before it. Every day—

58:28 Speaker 2 That’s why children are such a blessing. I tell myself, “Oh my goodness, I don’t know what I would...” It’s like you’re a balloon, and you have strings that tie you down to something. That’s the children. It doesn’t matter what mood you’re in. You get up in the morning, you’re responsible. You, you made that shirt, you know.

58:45 Speaker 3 Yes, sending an Insight out to the whole world is...

58:48 Speaker 2 That comes afterward.

58:48 Speaker 3 No, that’s such a crazy thing. You’re saying, “Yes, I send out an insight too.”

58:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

58:52 Speaker 3 By the way, when we were in the war in Ukraine—I don’t know if you remember—I asked you. I looked and looked, and I couldn’t find the insight myself: “Don’t waste your energy on stress and worry; G-d is running the show.”

59:04 Speaker 2 Oh, wow, I really didn’t remember.

59:05 Speaker 3 Yes, and I sent it to the group of all the shluchos in Ukraine, and everyone—

59:08 Speaker 2 Wow.

59:08 Speaker 3 They were like, “Wow, thank you. This is what we needed right now.” That was at the height of it.

59:11 Speaker 2 Wow.

59:11 Speaker 3 During the first week of the war. I mean, you really do sit down and write an insight, and—

59:17 Speaker 2 Which, by the way, was actually—

59:18 Speaker 3 I mean—

59:18 Speaker 2 Coined during COVID.

59:20 Speaker 3 Right. It can be relevant to so many things.

59:23 Speaker 2 And something very, very funny happened there: afterward, women in Russia also asked for insights in Russian. People here thought the situation was only difficult in Ukraine, but in Russia they also had—

59:32 Speaker 3 Yes.

59:32 Speaker 2 Their difficulties and—

59:33 Speaker 3 To this day.

59:33 Speaker 2 To this day. So they asked me to translate a few insights into Russian. Now, Russian is a language where—I’m serious—they need a voice from Heaven to tell them which translation is right, because everyone tells you something different. When I put out the album in Russian—

59:43 Speaker 3 No, wait, and it also has to be written so that it... has a bit of a rhythm.

59:48 Speaker 2 And it has to flow. So we finally managed to translate “Don’t waste your energy on stress and worry; G-d is running the show,” and I sent it to my brother-in-law in Russia. He said, “It would be terrible if shluchim posted something saying it’s a show. They’d essentially be saying the war is a show. You’ll get yourselves into trouble over there.”

1:00:03 Speaker 3 Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

1:00:04 Speaker 2 In Russia.

1:00:05 Speaker 3 I would never have thought of that.

1:00:06 Speaker 2 So after we finally had something, it turned out to be politically problematic. I said, “All right, dear Russians, give me a break.” We did manage—

1:00:11 Speaker 3 It’s probably also an expression that just sounds good in Hebrew, as they say.

1:00:15 Speaker 2 Yes. So we did manage to translate a few insights, and I sent them out. I really just wanted to do something good. That was also when the Russian album came into being. It had been stuck at the starting line for a very long time—six, seven years—and hadn’t happened. Then the war came, and I said, “I’m—”

1:00:27 Speaker 3 It’s funny, I remember saying to you—wait, when you were at our place, you had some song in Rus— You sang something in Russian.

1:00:33 Speaker 2 No, when I was with you in Kharkiv eight years ago, I had translated the show into Russian. I used to fly all over Russia, and to you as well. I had a chorus or two from some songs.

1:00:46 Speaker 3 Right, there was the one about “the G-dly soul,” and...

1:00:49 Speaker 2 But that wasn’t it. I couldn’t sing a whole song in Russian, because the translation was of the content. It wasn’t singable.

1:00:56 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:00:56 Speaker 2 Just a chorus or two.

1:00:57 Speaker 3 It wasn’t written as a song.

1:00:58 Speaker 2 Yes, and then—

1:01:00 Speaker 3 So I told you, “We have to do it.”

1:01:01 Speaker 2 We had to put out the album, and it was a kind of promise I’d made to the Rebbe. I had flown to Russia so many times. For me, it was a way of showing gratitude. I said, “I’ll put out an album in Russian,” but every time something else came up, and life really is busy. Going into a studio to record an album for such a specific audience—

1:01:16 Speaker 3 It’s a project. It means putting everything else aside and...

1:01:18 Speaker 2 Exactly. And some time after I announced it—I wrote a Facebook post, I think seven years ago, saying I wanted to do it—I went to the Kosel that summer and ran into you. You had come to Israel, and you happened to be at the Kosel that very day, on your birthday.

1:01:33 Speaker 3 Right.

1:01:34 Speaker 2 You said, “Tzipi, I told my husband I wanted to give some money to tzedakah for something good. I thought of your Russian album, and suddenly here you are.” It was crazy.

1:01:43 Speaker 3 I think I wrote to you about it that day or the day before, something like that.

1:01:47 Speaker 2 No, I saw you at the Kosel. You hadn’t written to me. You had been thinking about it.

1:01:50 Speaker 3 Oh.

1:01:50 Speaker 2 It was—

1:01:51 Speaker 3 Right, I said it to my husband on the way. I told him on the way that I’d seen your post.

1:01:55 Speaker 2 You were from Kharkiv, I was from Rechovot, and we ended up at the Kosel on the same day.

1:01:57 Speaker 3 I wanted it to go toward some project, you know, something that would happen—that it would help move forward.

1:02:01 Speaker 2 Amazing.

1:02:03 Speaker 3 No, I suddenly saw your daughter. I was like, “Is that Tzipi’s daughter? No, it can’t be. It can’t be. That can’t be her.” We’d talked about it on the way to the Kosel. It was just—

1:02:11 Speaker 2 You know, it meant much more than the money. Because in the end, I’d promised I would do it, but once someone has already put up some money for you, it doesn’t matter how small a part it is of the total amount. That’s it—there’s no turning back.

1:02:24 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:02:24 Speaker 2 And when the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out, I said, “That’s it, Tzipi, you have to do something to help the women there.” I was also going through a difficult period myself just then, and working on something like this did me so much good. It was an amazing experience. You tried it too. We had so much—

1:02:39 Speaker 3 It was crazy.

1:02:39 Speaker 2 We had to figure it out. The translation was—wow. Endless messages back and forth between me and the translator. Because in Russian, there’s this thing where so much is expressed in the negative. Like, instead of saying “happy,” you say “not sad.” That’s just an example, but a lot of things are phrased negatively.

1:02:53 Speaker 3 You know, people manage with it.

1:02:54 Speaker 2 Right. No, I mean, for the listeners—I insisted that it be as positive as possible, and that it rhyme, but without letting the rhyme change the meaning.

1:03:04 Speaker 3 You know, the Russian language is full of negativity at its core.

1:03:06 Speaker 2 Totally. And harshness.

1:03:08 Speaker 3 “Normalno.”

1:03:09 Speaker 2 Terrible.

1:03:10 Speaker 3 Yes, “neplokho,” that sort of thing.

1:03:11 Speaker 2 “Byvayet khuzhe.” It happens—there are worse things.

1:03:14 Speaker 3 “It could be worse.” It’s just crazy.

1:03:16 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:17 Speaker 3 Translation is so much more than a technical process.

1:03:22 Speaker 2 Anyone who heard my conversations with the translator would have been amazed. I’d say to her, “No, you can’t translate it that way—that’s not what I meant. Wait, let me explain.”

1:03:29 Speaker 3 You start to notice so many things.

1:03:31 Speaker 2 Insisting on every comma, really. And where was I supposed to get the Russian for it? My Russian isn’t good enough to translate. So I had Google Translate open, and next to it I went onto a Russian rhyming website.

1:03:45 Speaker 3 Wow.

1:03:46 Speaker 2 And arguments, arguments. “No, then we’ll change the previous word too.” “No, I’m not willing to use that just because it rhymes.” And listen, take the song: “Inside me is a G-dly soul; You breathed it into me. And no matter what happens around me, my worth is infinite.” I’m telling you, it came out more beautiful in Russian than in Hebrew, which is—

1:04:00 Speaker 3 Wow.

1:04:01 Speaker 2 I sing it at women’s events. So, not many people bought the album, but since then I’ve performed a lot. A lot of immigrants arrived from Russia, and there were all kinds of events here run by Chabad for immigrants and by community centers for Russian speakers. Suddenly I could come and sing entire songs in Russian, thanks to the—

1:04:16 Speaker 3 Nothing else like it exists. No one else is doing that.

1:04:18 Speaker 2 That album really—well, it takes incredible concentration. Yes, we won’t get into that. But—

1:04:23 Speaker 3 Right, you have Russian as a native language, but not really.

1:04:26 Speaker 2 It’s not really my native language. It’s not. It was there in the background, with guests who came and spoke it. My parents didn’t speak Russian with us.

1:04:33 Speaker 3 Wow.

1:04:33 Speaker 2 It was the language they used for their secrets.

1:04:35 Speaker 3 So you really learned it.

1:04:36 Speaker 2 We were shluchim in Russia for a while, and then my mother-in-law is from Ukraine, so she speaks some Russian. I picked my way through it.

1:04:43 Speaker 3 Yes, but to go from that to—well, it’s a difficult language.

1:04:46 Speaker 2 By the time I came to perform for you, I’d started to become more comfortable with it. At my first performances, I simply memorized everything. Someone translated the show for me, and I spoke like a parrot. If anyone threw me off, I couldn’t carry on. And with time—ultimately, practice is the way. Even with learning, they talk about reviewing something a hundred times: you review it, and you get better. There really are no shortcuts. It’s the same with the music. People say to me, “Wow...” On my next album, I’ll sing much better than I did on the second album, and better than on the first. There’s no way to start with your third album. And what about vocal training? Vocal training comes from real life. The best lessons come from doing it and learning how to—

1:05:29 Speaker 3 Through doing it.

1:05:29 Speaker 2 Yes, through doing it. Learning to get better. There’s no magic to it.

1:05:33 Speaker 3 It’s interesting that you say not many people bought the album, but then there were the performances. You said albums aren’t really profitable anyway. Once, people would make a CD, everyone would go to the store and pay sixty shekels—

1:05:44 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:45 Speaker 3 Buy a CD, and—

1:05:46 Speaker 2 Even today, when an artist releases an album, they still want a physical version. I mean, even the Russian album is on a USB drive, but you still want it as a gift, because someone might want to give it to somebody else. And it has a presentation, with a booklet and something tangible. Today there’s also an enormous amount of copying, first of all.

1:06:02 Speaker 3 Everything is on Spotify.

1:06:03 Speaker 2 And you upload them to Spotify too. So what does Spotify bring you? Next to nothing. Ah, really, you have to think about it more broadly. I mean, if these songs carry a really important message I want to bring into the world... Look, I crowdfunded my second album, so yes, I covered the costs. But you can’t approach it thinking about profit. Where does the return come from? If the songs are really, really good, and they’re songs I hadn’t brought out before, they lead to new bookings—even in places where I’ve already performed. If I didn’t have “Kumi,” where would I be today? How many times can people hear the same songs, “The World Was Created for You”?

1:06:34 Speaker 3 Right.

1:06:34 Speaker 2 It brought something new. So yes, in the end there is a return, but the return is—actually, I think this is a really important point we haven’t talked about. It’s not about sitting there with a calculator all the time. Business advisers today also tell you there’s a kind of system: you take action, and in the end you don’t know what will lead to what. You don’t know how many, uh, speaking engagements will come from the podcast, or how many—

1:06:57 Speaker 3 Women ask me, “Do you make money from the podcast?”

1:07:00 Speaker 2 That’s exactly the question.

1:07:01 Speaker 3 It’s an excellent question, and one I ask myself. Yes, exactly. In the end, it’s about going with what you believe in.

1:07:06 Speaker 2 Right, and it will come back to you.

1:07:07 Speaker 3 If it feels right to you, and you’ve received that—again, it’s not a heavenly voice, but you know it’s the right thing.

1:07:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:07:15 Speaker 3 Go with it, and it will definitely help. You don’t know how or from where.

1:07:20 Speaker 2 There’s that idea of “Cast your bread upon the waters.” You do something, and where will the return come from? I don’t know. It’s like with the products. Sometimes my return is hearing from a shlucha who bought a product for a woman she’s close with, and because of it, that woman started listening to my classes and began to grow closer to Yiddishkeit.

1:07:37 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:07:37 Speaker 2 That wasn’t what I had in mind, so did I profit from the product or not? I don’t know.

1:07:40 Speaker 3 It’s amazing to imagine that.

1:07:40 Speaker 2 I did profit. So we have to broaden our idea of what it means to profit a little. And again, I have to be honest: I’m not always in that mindset. Sometimes I suddenly sit down with a calculator and start doing the math. Not about money, right? But why am I doing this at all? And now what? Here I am, going on Friday, because I don’t have another day, to record two episodes for “A Meeting with the Parsha” and “The Infinite,” and then I’ll come home and cook. It’s not as if I have—well, the servants haven’t arrived yet. We’re waiting for the Geulah.

1:08:09 Speaker 3 You’d need a few servants anyway.

1:08:11 Speaker 2 So on the way there, I might say to myself, “Why am I doing this?” People are in their kitchens now, and I’m going to record for next week. The bigger the thing you’re doing, the more the yetzer hara lurks in the corners. That’s the basis of Tanya, right?

1:08:23 Speaker 3 Absolutely.

1:08:23 Speaker 2 That struggle is... It’s all good, it’s okay.

1:08:26 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:08:27 Speaker 2 It’ll get stronger.

1:08:28 Speaker 3 The work, in the end, is somehow to really live it.

1:08:33 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:33 Speaker 3 It’s a bit of a cycle. You’re not involved in this for no reason; it came from you. But ultimately, you have to sit down for a moment and say, “Okay, where am I today in relation to everything I say and teach and—”

1:08:46 Speaker 2 Right. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu is testing you all the time, too.

1:08:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:08:49 Speaker 2 Let’s see whether you live what you say. And it’s not only about living what you say; it’s about moving on to the next level. Because what you said yesterday—you understand? There are new challenges all the time. I think that when people ask me about the insights, I do live them. I draw strength from them myself. They’ve become a kind of language in my head. Okay? Sometimes that language annoys me, because let me be upset for a minute, right?

1:09:11 Speaker 3 Like with the diet.

1:09:12 Speaker 2 Okay? I come to an event, and suddenly there are so many unexpected things happening at events. You can’t say, “Fine, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.” Sweetheart, you’re going onstage in half an hour, and now there’s a sound technician who’s upset because he had an argument with the community-center director, and he won’t talk to you. Why? What happened?

1:09:28 Speaker 3 Oh my goodness.

1:09:28 Speaker 2 Immediately, what comes to mind is: Everything is by Divine Providence. Whatever happens, it’s worth passing it through the filter of hashgacha pratis. Sometimes I don’t even have time to argue with that thought. I immediately approach him positively and find a way through, really with a positive attitude, because if I panic, nothing will get done, and the audience will be here soon. But when I have a bit more time, there’s an argument in my head. A voice says, “Oh, here you go with your faith. No. Something like this has never happened to you before.” And I say, “It’s okay, everything’s fine.” There’s a whole discussion in my head. But when it’s a short sentence with something deep in it, it wins. And it’s no accident that I keep working with these insights. Maybe afterward you can also put up a link to the mailing list, so people can get them every day. By the way, I don’t think every sentence speaks to every woman at that particular moment. There’s no way. But even if—

1:10:15 Speaker 3 You also have the—

1:10:16 Speaker 2 Twice a week—

1:10:17 Speaker 3 Those powerful ones that—

1:10:17 Speaker 2 The ones that stayed with you—

1:10:19 Speaker 3 By heart.

1:10:19 Speaker 2 And sometimes something new is born, too. Something new is born. A few months ago I met a woman who’s looking for a shidduch, and it really touched me. I thought about what it’s like to be in that place of waiting. Now, when you’re waiting in your work or your business, at least you can keep doing things. But a shidduch is something where you—it’s like someone who’s never had a child. She says, “Maybe I’ll never have a child. Maybe there’s no shidduch for me.” It’s terribly hard. It’s not like things you’ve succeeded at before. It’s a real difficulty. So I wrote this insight: Make a vessel for the blessing, believe it will come, and be joyful in the meantime. I’m in love with that insight. It’s new—well, relatively new, right? It isn’t an old one. So I always believe—like you said, infinite—that another one will be born. And if not, then it won’t.

1:11:00 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:11:01 Speaker 2 But that’s exactly it for her. She needs to reach out to shadchanim, go on dates, maybe add something in her spiritual life—but be joyful, because otherwise...

1:11:13 Speaker 3 Exactly. Tell me, let’s finish with some encouragement for the period we’re going through. You probably do this all the time in your workshops. Maybe tell us a little about what you do, too—workshops, talks.

1:11:26 Speaker 2 These days I, uh—first of all, if you have time—

1:11:28 Speaker 3 I saw you have something with a vision board.

1:11:30 Speaker 2 Yes, the vision board is really only during Elul and Tishrei.

1:11:33 Speaker 3 Ah, that’s something else entirely.

1:11:34 Speaker 2 People don’t really stop in the middle of the year to think about their vision. Actually, that workshop came about because I’d been doing it myself for a few years, and with my daughters. For their birthdays last year, I did a vision workshop with them. Then I said, “Okay, next year I’ll do this.” And I was invited to all kinds of preparation days for teachers and preschool teachers. That was a bit of a problem, actually, because they have so many dreams, while the principal who invited me wants them to remain teachers and preschool teachers. So that was a little... I had to sort of—

1:11:57 Speaker 3 Censor it.

1:11:57 Speaker 2 Say that one doesn’t rule out the other, and it’s all fine. You can do both at the same time.

1:12:01 Speaker 3 It does clash, but it doesn’t.

1:12:02 Speaker 2 That’s actually a very powerful point. I don’t have to physically leave my workplace to make my own “Lech Lecha.” Today we live in a world of people with multiple roles. I can be a teacher and also have a business that nourishes my soul, and—

1:12:14 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:12:14 Speaker 2 No, I really don’t have to go somewhere else. So at a certain point, various things happened that made me realize there are places that don’t have the budget for a performance, or don’t need one. They have thirty women they want to be active participants. That’s also why I went to study formally to become a mentor. When you bring this kind of content to smaller groups, without the songs, you want to come with more tools. And tomorrow I’m starting a group-facilitation course that lasts a few months.

1:12:40 Speaker 4 Oh, nice.

1:12:41 Speaker 2 Because one of—

1:12:41 Speaker 4 Oh, I studied that.

1:12:42 Speaker 2 One of the things that happened to me—really?

1:12:43 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:12:44 Speaker 2 One of the things that happened to me at forty is—

1:12:45 Speaker 4 It was on Zoom. I need to do it again.

1:12:48 Speaker 2 Wow. So that’ll add something, I think. I want to become more professional in everything I do, alongside all the faith I have in it—to know that I have more tools. So today I do workshops and talks without music, and I do performances. In the workshops, we also create something around an insight: each woman chooses an insight and decorates it, and then we go around and share. I sing a song there too, and I speak. Essentially, it’s all the same, because the message in the workshops isn’t different from the one in a performance.

1:13:16 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:13:16 Speaker 2 The topics I deal with are the same ones: struggling with the yetzer hara, self-worth, faith and trust, joy, and taking action while letting go of the outcome. Those are the messages. Just yesterday, someone asked if I could give a talk on family purity. I told her, “As of now, no. I don’t feel that’s my shlichus.” I can’t do everything, okay? And if someone calls me before Purim and asks, “Can you do stand-up?” I tell her, “I’m a little funny, but I’m not a stand-up comedian.” I mean, come on, I’m not limitless either. But today, when someone approaches me, I can offer her a range of options and see what fits. Sometimes they book a performance for thirty women because it isn’t an audience that wants to participate—they just want to listen to singing, you know? So now I come with lots of options, and it’s more enjoyable for me too, because workshops are sometimes in the morning. And talks, for example, don’t involve dealing with the sound system—everyone has a microphone—so sometimes the content can go deeper, because you’re not occupied with breaks between songs. Each thing has its own advantage. There’s no one thing that’s best. Each has its own advantage and suits a different audience. I think, if there’s a message to share... Since the beginning of the war, in those first weeks, I fell apart. While I was falling apart, I sent out insights. While I was falling apart, I did a Zoom session with uplifting songs. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t falling apart. It was very, very hard for me. What lifted me up was that one day someone called and asked me to come sing for a woman who was very ill. I really didn’t want to go at that point. We had tried to come before, but her blood counts had dropped and we couldn’t visit her.

1:14:57 Speaker 2 And then I said, “Tzipi, what if she isn’t here next week? It doesn’t matter how you feel. Get up and—get up and do it.”

1:15:04 Speaker 4 Get up.

1:15:04 Speaker 2 Get up.

1:15:05 Speaker 4 Like the album.

1:15:06 Speaker 2 Exactly. And I went to her and sang for her, and I told her, “You should know that you helped me. I didn’t come to help you.” From that moment, I changed. I mean, I got up. Like—

1:15:15 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:15:15 Speaker 2 Before that, I had only been doing things over Zoom. That let me stay in my pajamas, you know? I wouldn’t agree to come perform in person. I’ll never forget, they wanted a performance in Jerusalem. I told them, “Get someone else. I can’t do it.” Now, two days later, I traveled to Jerusalem to see that woman. What changed? That moment of moving myself and saying, “There’s someone here who needs me.” I think that’s our remedy. To say, “Okay, yes, I’m afraid, I’m struggling, but someone here needs me. The Jewish world needs me.” Not to put myself at the center, because if I’m at the center, then if I’m not doing well, I’m not doing well—so what am I going to do? I wasn’t doing well. When I came to her, I wasn’t doing well. Then suddenly, when I saw her—she has since passed away; may this be an elevation for her soul. I can’t remember her mother’s name offhand, but her name was Freidel; may this be an elevation for her soul. When I saw her, I suddenly thought, “How could you have considered not leaving the house? Who are you not to go?”

1:16:11 Speaker 4 It’s as if we suddenly move to another planet.

1:16:13 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:14 Speaker 4 When you go out to do something, especially when it’s hard and you can’t even picture yourself doing it, can’t see it happening, you suddenly say, “Wait, I’m a different person.”

1:16:24 Speaker 2 That’s the remedy. It’s no coincidence that the Rebbe wrote to so many people who told him they had a child in crisis or something like that: find someone for the child to help; give the child a chance to volunteer. Really, what does it mean for a person to be poor, with nothing to give? Even if a woman has no money, as long as she can still have an impact on someone, she isn’t poor. So I ask myself, “Whose life can I touch?” I can even say something kind. It doesn’t always have to be something huge. But once I go out and do something, and at the end of the day I ask myself and know that I did something today, I’m in a different place. And the amazing thing is that the Rebbe taught us this. When the Rebbe began the mitzvah campaigns and all those efforts involving small actions, there was a lot of criticism. People said, “What, you’ll tell a Jew it’s enough to put on tefillin? Then he’ll settle for just tefillin!” But reality has shown that isn’t true. First of all, every mitzvah has value in its own right, and it’s explained in Tanya that at the moment he performs it, he is a complete tzaddik. But it’s precisely this—and we’re coming back to that saying: do it badly if you have to; do the bare minimum. Do it now; do a little. That will make you want to do everything in your power. In other words, it’s precisely when you set aside the thought, “Oh, I have to start an organization now and do all that.” Let’s do something small. “Wow, that felt good.” And then I’ll do another thing, and another, and another.

1:17:37 Speaker 4 You know, your shlichus is right here.

1:17:40 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:17:40 Speaker 4 You don’t have to go looking for it.

1:17:42 Speaker 2 You’re already a shlucha. You’re already a shlucha.

1:17:44 Speaker 4 You just have to discover it.

1:17:45 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:17:46 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:17:46 Speaker 2 Discover it and carry it out, even in the smallest way, with bittul, and in every way you can. Each time, Hakadosh Boruch Hu puts you somewhere different. During the holidays, for example, my shlichus was in the kitchen, and that was okay. I didn’t sit in the kitchen asking, “Why am I not onstage?”

1:18:01 Speaker 4 You know, people often talk about smiling at someone because it could change their mood. It sounds so clichéd, right?

1:18:05 Speaker 2 But it’s real.

1:18:06 Speaker 4 A few days ago was my grandfather’s yahrtzeit.

1:18:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:18:11 Speaker 4 And he was a person—Berke Wolf, yes.

1:18:15 Speaker 2 Quite a personality.

1:18:16 Speaker 4 He brought light—he lit up so many people’s lives.

1:18:19 Speaker 2 A trailblazer in communications and in spreading the very concept of communications.

1:18:22 Speaker 4 Yes. So...

1:18:23 Speaker 2 And look, you’re carrying on your grandfather’s work too.

1:18:25 Speaker 4 Yes, absolutely. So that day I wrote, “In his memory, smile at one person today.”

1:18:30 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:18:30 Speaker 4 Go brighten someone’s day, because he brightened so many people’s lives. Then I went out to run some errands, and I said to myself, “Wait, what did you write for people to do? You told everyone to do it, and what about you?” It was hard for me because I was in a certain mood that day. Well, you know, we’re always caught up in our thoughts and everything. And I said, “Do it precisely because it sounds so clichéd to you.” Listen, it was incredible. Really. I always say this in talks too: smile at someone, and so on. You know, it just rolls off the tongue by now. But it’s so real, because the moment you smile, you feel good too. It feels good. It’s amazing, I think.

1:19:04 Speaker 2 We’ve come down to the very smallest thing.

1:19:05 Speaker 4 Yes. I think, let’s go out with this message: take what seem like clichés and turn them into mantras.

1:19:14 Speaker 2 Actions.

1:19:15 Speaker 4 Something we actually live.

1:19:16 Speaker 2 Small actions.

1:19:16 Speaker 4 Into actions. Take those insights—which is such a big thing you’re doing—and live them. Sometimes it’s easy for us to see the world as two separate tracks: there’s the theory, and then there’s “Yes, but in real life...”

1:19:28 Speaker 2 It isn’t really like that.

1:19:29 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:19:30 Speaker 2 That’s exactly the point: to bring faith down—

1:19:32 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:19:32 Speaker 2 —into everyday life. And it changes your life; life becomes completely different. No matter what someone’s level of mitzvah observance is, in the end I say that the greatest bonus of faith is this peace of mind: knowing that I’m watched over and that everything is for my ultimate good. So if I’m not enjoying that, then...

1:19:53 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:19:54 Speaker 2 I’ve missed the...

1:19:55 Speaker 4 Taking the treasures and using them.

1:19:58 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. May we merit to do that, with Hashem’s help.

1:20:00 Speaker 4 With Hashem’s help.

1:20:00 Speaker 2 Thank you for the privilege and for giving me this platform.

1:20:01 Speaker 4 Thank you, Tzipi. Wow, this was lovely, and it happened at just the right time.

1:20:06 Speaker 2 Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s another message: things get delayed.

1:20:11 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:20:11 Speaker 2 Everything happens in its time. His time. He’s the one managing the calendar. Everything happens at the right time.

1:20:15 Speaker 4 Exactly. Thank you, and may we merit to hear good news.

1:20:17 Speaker 2 Amen. May you merit to announce it here.

1:20:18 Speaker 4 Now we’ll have to—

1:20:19 Speaker 2 Do a podcast for the arrival of Moshiach.

1:20:21 Speaker 4 With Hashem’s help.

1:20:21 Speaker 2 I already have an image ready: “Cleared for publication: Moshiach has arrived.” I’m just waiting to announce it.

1:20:28 Speaker 4 Wow, how wonderful!

1:20:28 Speaker 2 May that be the only “cleared for publication” announcement we have, with Hashem’s help.

1:20:30 Speaker 4 Amen, amen, amen.