Episode 56: The Pilot and the Stork | With Gatit Shapira - media personality, social entrepreneur and creator of the show "The Pilot and the Stork"

00:00 Speaker 1 The pilot and the chossid built a home together when he was already a pilot, but she wasn’t yet a chossid. How does that suddenly happen? How do you deal with such a huge complexity in a marriage? And what does it bring out in us? The roller coasters of real life, the show, the therapy, and seeing through the lens of Chassidus—a perspective that changed her life and that she wants to bring everywhere, even to the woman standing next to her in line at the supermarket. Come hear Gattit Shapira. A reminder: if you liked this episode, don’t keep it to yourself. Just pass it on—to your sister, your mother, a neighbor or a friend. To anyone who matters to you. To book workshops and talks on life-changing tools from Chassidus and on the process of making health a way of life, call 050-850-5770. The intro, and then we’ll get started. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine, now continuing my shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who will share their shlichus in a range of fields, and through it help each of us discover and define our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live is the best there is. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting right now. Hello, Gattit Shapira.

01:28 Speaker 2 Hello, hello! I’m so excited.

01:30 Speaker 1 Welcome.

01:31 Speaker 2 Glad to be here, and thank you.

01:33 Speaker 1 I’m the one who should be saying thank you. Because I just reached out to you: “Gattit, what do you think—maybe you’d come on the podcast?” I took a chance. You know, I wasn’t even sure exactly where in Israel you lived. Sometimes it’s like, wait, what if you’re two hours away? I had no way of knowing. So baruch Hashem you’re here.

01:50 Speaker 2 Thank you so much.

01:50 Speaker 1 I’m really, really happy, and mostly curious. I have to say, with many of the women who come here, I have a fairly broad familiarity with their story. I know it, and I want to bring it to other women. Bring the microphone a little closer to you. But with you, I invited you simply because—who are you, Gattit? I want to get to know you. Your microphone.

02:16 Speaker 2 So, Gattit Shapira is, essentially, a shlucha. I learned that I’m a shlucha. I learned that all women are shluchos, really, and to me that’s Hashem’s love made visible. I mean, He had compassion on me and said, “Hang on, ma’am, you’re going, but you’re headed in exactly the wrong direction. Let Me put you in the right place, and then you can take off the way you love to.” I’ve always seen myself as a communications person. That’s the field I come from. Really, I think I’ve loved people since the day I was born. I’m very, very curious about them.

02:48 Speaker 1 Take us back there.

02:49 Speaker 2 Uh...

02:50 Speaker 1 To when you were born.

02:50 Speaker 2 To where I was born. My childhood wasn’t exactly wonderful, but I was born to very, very unconventional parents. My father was mystical, interested in the world of mysticism, and a very, very believing person. My parents were born in Egypt. My sister and I were born in Israel.

03:08 Speaker 1 They made their own Exodus from Egypt.

03:09 Speaker 2 They really did make an Exodus from Egypt. And as you know, the Jewish community in Egypt was very close-knit, but also very educated. They were Alliance school graduates and so on; they spoke French at home, along with several other languages. When they came to Israel, they spoke French to us because they said, “They’ll learn Hebrew anyway.” Of course, at age five I refused to speak any language but Hebrew, because children laughed at me and called me “momo,” “mimi,” all sorts of things that made me uncomfortable. So...

03:40 Speaker 1 And did you keep the language?

03:42 Speaker 2 Yes, of course.

03:43 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:44 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a wonderful language. We also have family in France, so that’s how we communicate with them. But anyway, things went on until the end of third grade, and then there was an earthquake in my childhood: my parents divorced. Back then it wasn’t nearly as common as it is today. Sadly, today it’s—you know, something breaks, so you replace it.

04:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:06 Speaker 2 We’ll talk about that later. I have a show—we have a show—about that too.

04:10 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:11 Speaker 2 About our shlichus as couples, what we do. And in general, I feel that a very fundamental lesson for this generation is about marriage and family. Commitment, the lessons of marriage—this is a generation with a great deal to repair in this area. I see it a lot, both as a couples therapist and through my shlichus. Anyway, that’s the environment I grew up in. After that, they placed my sister and me on a kibbutz. That was the defining experience of my life, and I very much did not want to be there.

04:45 Speaker 3 What do you mean, they placed you on a kibbutz?

04:46 Speaker 2 They simply sent us there as children from outside the kibbutz. And when people ask me in hindsight, “When did you begin to return to Torah observance?”—I had a very significant experience at that age. We arrived at the kibbutz from a very different culture, one of manners and etiquette, with a bit of a French flavor. Then we came to the kibbutz as outside children. You could say—and I say this openly—that back then we were second-class citizens. They really didn’t know how to accept children from outside. It was a very closed society, with all sorts of strange rules about family life and everything else. You know, a kind of communism and things that are so far from me. Really, Jews who have their priorities straight—I’m sorry to say that; it sounds, G-d forbid, condescending, but I’m talking about myself too, not just others—are very far from that system. Anyway, I remember that our first annual class trip, in fourth grade, was simply a tour of churches.

05:50 Speaker 3 Wow.

05:51 Speaker 2 It was shocking. I was a child who had grown up with Yom Kippur. We didn’t keep Shabbos, but tradition and faith were very present in my life. I don’t know where it came from, but I declared that I wasn’t going into that place. They said, “What do you mean? Who’s asking you? You’re going in with everyone.” I said, “No. I’m Jewish. I’m not going into a church.” I have no idea where that came from. I found this strength, as a child standing against everyone, and they punished me. They said, “You’ll be punished. You won’t get an ice pop, you won’t get this, you won’t come along on the trip.” I said, “Okay,” and I stayed on the bus all day. What it strengthened in me was my roots, my very essence. And I knew there was Someone watching over me. I can’t explain it naturally. I can’t. I was a little girl who, on the one hand, very much wanted the people around her to like her. After all, I had been abandoned, so to speak, by my parents and family, and I was desperately looking for a hug, for warmth. What I did was the opposite of what I was looking for. It was bound to turn people against me. But I stayed there, and it was a very powerful experience. So when people ask me about my journey of teshuvah, as far as I’m concerned, it began there. When you ask me what—yes?

07:07 Speaker 3 No, that very act of standing firm awakened your...

07:09 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, and it gave me tremendous strength for what came next. The road ahead was far from simple; it was very challenging. And from that day on, I felt that embrace all the time—in all sorts of places, through all sorts of difficulties and bumps in the road. I felt that Hakadosh Boruch Hu was with me. My faith grew much, much stronger. Now, I wasn’t doing anything in practice. I didn’t really know about halachos and all that. But I knew I believed, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu was there, and that He was closer to me than anyone.

07:40 Speaker 3 Wow. What insights to have arrived at, in a sense, all on your own.

07:44 Speaker 2 Actually, yes. And also...

07:45 Speaker 3 You discovered Hakadosh Boruch Hu within yourself, really.

07:47 Speaker 2 That’s right.

07:48 Speaker 3 Wow.

07:49 Speaker 2 And it’s interesting that you say “on your own,” because at farbrengens and lectures I’m invited to, people ask me, “But which rabbi taught you?”

07:58 Speaker 3 As if there has to be someone outside yourself.

08:01 Speaker 2 There’s always supposed to be some rabbi or rebbetzin. First of all, I always say it was the Rebbe. Then someone says, “Okay, but you know...” When it isn’t a Chabad audience, or I’m speaking somewhere that isn’t exactly... they ask me, “Which rebbe?” I say, “The Lubavitcher Rebbe.” They say, “But he didn’t actually...” No. I say, “Yes, that’s what I want.” When I look at the Rebbe and read his sichos, his maamarim, his explanations of different things, and watch his videos, I say, “Wait, that’s what I want.” I don’t need someone physically beside me telling me what to do. He’s beside me, he’s with me, and—

08:32 Speaker 4 But back when you were a child in fourth, fifth, sixth grade...

08:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:36 Speaker 4 You didn’t know...

08:37 Speaker 2 No.

08:37 Speaker 4 Intellectually, about the Rebbe. So...

08:39 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s right.

08:39 Speaker 4 It was there somehow, but...

08:40 Speaker 2 I didn’t know about the Rebbe intellectually until much later.

08:43 Speaker 4 So do go on.

08:45 Speaker 2 So that was it. Of course, after four years I gave my father an ultimatum and said, “There’s no way I’m staying.” I ran away from the kibbutz, and they looked for me all day. Anyway, to make a long story short, he took my sister and me out of the kibbutz, and we set off on a new path. I found myself sort of half-and-half. I went to different schools, but I had no head for school or studying. All I could think about was surviving socially. Every time we moved somewhere, moved house, I had to find my place all over again.

09:19 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s—

09:19 Speaker 2 And that search, that search—looking back today, it wasn’t simple. It was hard, it was lonely, I was alone, but not really alone. Because when I say I felt Hakadosh Boruch Hu, I mean it. I really felt Him. So I was alone as far as other people or a social circle were concerned, but inside I knew I wasn’t alone. And I think that constant search, together with my curiosity about people and stories, is what later led me to study communications. Because communications is really everything, everything. Our whole lives are communication: at home, in public, between spouses, with children. Really, it’s all communication—

10:06 Speaker 4 Relationships.

10:06 Speaker 2 Relationships, and it’s all communication that we need to work on and improve. “Which G-d created to do”—to do means to make things right, and that’s what we need to do. And since I really am a people person and I’m curious, my husband is always saying to me, “Why? Why does that interest you? Why ask that question? Why do you care?” I tell him, “I don’t know, it’s...” He says, “But you barely know him or her.” I say, “Yes, but I want to get to know them.” He says, “But why?” I say, “Because it’s interesting.” You know?

10:36 Speaker 4 I relate to that so much.

10:37 Speaker 2 I just find it interesting. He says to me, “But what are you going to do with that?” I tell him, “I don’t know. Satisfy my curiosity. I don’t know, I don’t know.” And then, at a very, very young age, I became the youngest spokesperson for public organizations in the country. I was just twenty-three and a half when I started out in communications, as a spokesperson, in public relations and marketing. At the time, I ran public relations for the Council for Soviet Jewry, right at the height of the struggle. There were refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion. Yuli Edelstein, back then—he wasn’t in the Knesset; he was a Prisoner of Zion. And we organized all the—made all the noise and all the... Years later, by the way, I came across the Rebbe’s requests not to make so much noise with demonstrations about the Prisoners of Zion and so on, because it might actually harm them, or... But looking back, that’s interesting. At the time, though, I felt the shlichus. I felt as if the whole issue of Soviet Jewry was on my shoulders. Even in communications and public relations, I’m always looking for the shlichus. Long before I knew what Chabad even was, I said, “I can’t represent Coca-Cola or Nakshava[?]. That’s just... there’s nothing to it. I need to represent something that really has meaning.” So I always found myself working for those kinds of values. Then, many years later, when Gorbachev came to power and they opened the gates and so on, I said, “Okay, I’ve finished my shlichus. I’m moving on.” And I moved to Maariv. There I ran public relations for its book publishing division. It was very, very interesting, and there were so many experiences and encounters. The thing I love most: meeting people, especially people who write stories and all sorts of things. That was really...

12:28 Speaker 2 A great privilege. And later on, that also turned out to be an interesting stop along the way, because Oded is my second husband, okay? You really have to come to our show to understand how his father is Danny Shapira, the legendary pilot, the country’s number-one test pilot, one of the best pilots in the world. The air force and our military—really, our country—owe him a great, great deal for the security of our skies and for that whole operation. That’s the kind of home Oded came from. So his father published a book with us at Maariv. And there’s a story there: around the time we were in the army, a little after our discharge, Oded and I—long before the process of returning to Torah observance—we met and dated for about a year. Then we suddenly broke up, and we met again ten years later when his father’s book was published with us. That’s Hakadosh Boruch Hu, our Father... When I say Hakadosh Boruch Hu is always with me, I can see all the signs now. I see them openly. When you talk about hashgachah pratis—

13:32 Speaker 5 You open your eyes.

13:33 Speaker 2 Exactly. So, really—

13:35 Speaker 5 You’re also describing your whole journey of shlichus, how you know exactly why each thing happened and what was going on there. You see Hakadosh Boruch Hu with you. It’s...

13:44 Speaker 2 Look, first of all, I’m always looking for the signs, and there’s always a sign.

13:48 Speaker 5 Yes.

13:48 Speaker 2 There are always signs.

13:49 Speaker 5 Exactly. You have to look for them.

13:50 Speaker 2 You have to look for them, you have to see them. And when you’re connected to your purpose and your shlichus, you’re shown them. Because the nature of goodness is to do good. He wants to do good for us, not the opposite.

14:04 Speaker 5 Really, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is waiting for us to look for Him, to find Him, so...

14:06 Speaker 2 Exactly. This game of hide-and-seek is—

14:08 Speaker 5 That’s where it is.

14:08 Speaker 2 Exactly. Right.

14:10 Speaker 5 Wow.

14:10 Speaker 2 So...

14:11 Speaker 5 So after ten years, he suddenly comes back into your life.

14:13 Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. He came back for five minutes. Then another ten years went by.

14:18 Speaker 5 Oh, wow!

14:18 Speaker 2 No, no, you have to come to the show to... Yes, it’s a very interesting story. Yes, yes.

14:23 Speaker 5 We want to bring you here. Wait until after the...

14:25 Speaker 2 Yes, “The Pilot and the Chassidah.” That really is our shlichus today, part of our shlichus. Anyway. So then, um, where were we? At a certain point, after a difficult divorce, I had two daughters and needed to support myself, financially and in every other way. I needed to buy an apartment and figure out how to stand on my own two feet, because the circumstances really were very, very difficult. But I wasn’t worried. People around me kept saying, “Are you out of your mind? You’re buying an apartment now, you have two children, and you don’t know how long you’ll be...” I said, “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.” I mean, Hashem wouldn’t let me fall. Everything would be okay. And that courage to do things out of an unwavering faith—unwavering—that Hashem wouldn’t abandon me and my two daughters really did keep bringing me to better places. I remember when there was a huge wave of layoffs at Maariv, people said to me, “Wow, if you lose your job now, after your divorce, what will you do?” I said, “Don’t—don’t worry.” Nearly seventy percent of the staff were laid off, and not only was I not laid off, I was promoted.

15:33 Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

15:33 Speaker 2 So you can’t help seeing—

15:36 Speaker 5 Yes.

15:36 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And I kept asking myself, how do I thank Him? What do I do so that He can feel that I love Him too? Okay, He knows, but... Then I said, “Okay, the next home I build will be...” This was very innocent, because I said it would be a home of, um, faith. That’s what I called it, a home of faith. What did I have in mind? A home of faith meant that I would light Shabbos candles, for example. I didn’t see it going much further than that.

16:05 Speaker 5 Yes.

16:05 Speaker 2 I just thought lighting Shabbos candles was very beautiful.

16:08 Speaker 5 Symbolic, too, as an expression of faith.

16:09 Speaker 2 Like welcoming Shabbos and all that. Afterward you do what you want: drive, do things, eat, go to a restaurant. But it was a home of faith, in that sense. So I acquired both my faith in this path and the practical side of what to do with it entirely on my own, along the way, through all kinds of realizations and all kinds of stops in life that Hashem brought me to. At every stop He brought me to, I said, “Wait, let me look at what’s here.” And that’s how I gathered things, and little by little it brought me to—I think—to being a baalas teshuvah. I say “baalas teshuvah” because I haven’t finished doing teshuvah. We’re all...

16:48 Speaker 5 Teshuvah is ongoing.

16:49 Speaker 2 Teshuvah is ongoing. Every day anew.

16:51 Speaker 5 Your faith—and I’m asking, did you buy it at the corner store? Is it something you work at? Or do you feel it really was a gift you received? Because it does sound a little more unusual than, you know, the more common experience, where we have to remind ourselves again and again that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with us, and work on that.

17:14 Speaker 2 Right.

17:15 Speaker 5 And it sounds as though you were given that.

17:18 Speaker 2 So, I’ll tell you. I think it’s all of those things. It’s at the grocery store, but at the Divine grocery store. I mean, you know, it’s both. It’s when you want to go out in the morning and you ask yourself, “What am I going to buy?” Then you have to understand what you’re really going to buy.

17:35 Speaker 5 We want that all the time.

17:36 Speaker 2 We want that all the time. And I also think that Hakadosh Boruch Hu—I see His kindness. Okay, not because I deserve it or don’t deserve it, but that’s what I see. It’s like with the Rebbe, you know: everyone has their own experience. Everyone has their own Rebbe, too. Okay, of course he’s everyone’s Rebbe. He’s the soul of us all, but each person has a personal experience with the Rebbe. For me, the Rebbe is sweetness. That’s how I experience him. Someone else might say, “I’m afraid. I love him very much, but I don’t know—when I look at him, I’m afraid.” I experience him as infinite sweetness. When you ask me what this faith is, I think, first of all, it’s a gift. But you have to work at it, “to cultivate it and guard it,” as they say. Because we were all given a Garden of Eden. Yes, there’s no one who wasn’t given one. We were all given the Garden of Eden “to cultivate it and guard it.” And now the question is, what do you do with it? Where do you graze? Where is your mind in the first place? What draws you away? What takes you away from it? Where are you? What are you thinking? Sometimes we think we’re in a good place, and suddenly it turns out we were mistaken. It isn’t real; it’s a counterfeit, and we need to examine it and reflect. Now, I’m not saying you should be constantly taking stock of yourself. That’s exhausting. Not in a way that weighs you down. But every so often you do need to say, “Wait, who’s really in charge of this situation right now?”

19:08 Speaker 5 So it’s really about returning to that all the time.

19:10 Speaker 2 Right.

19:10 Speaker 5 Getting centered.

19:11 Speaker 2 But there’s somewhere to return to.

19:12 Speaker 5 The world pulls us away.

19:12 Speaker 2 But there’s somewhere to return to.

19:14 Speaker 5 Yes.

19:14 Speaker 2 That’s the—

19:15 Speaker 5 To remember that.

19:16 Speaker 2 The good news.

19:17 Speaker 5 Yes.

19:17 Speaker 2 Okay. I always say that if we’re walking on the main road, we can allow ourselves to stumble into a side alley.

19:24 Speaker 5 Beautiful.

19:24 Speaker 2 Because we have somewhere to return to. But if you’re walking through the alleys, it’s very hard to find the main road.

19:29 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

19:30 Speaker 2 You understand? That’s how I see faith.

19:33 Speaker 5 Yes. Wow. So your answer was really that, again, we do teshuvah every day, but you went through a very dramatic process. I mean, it happened gradually, little by little.

19:43 Speaker 2 It was sort of gradual. But my husband always says—people ask him about me, “Oh, your wife has a very short fuse,” and he says, “What are you talking about? She doesn’t have a fuse at all.” So “gradually” is a bit... You know, let’s say that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to let processes happen gradually. But from the day I discovered Tanya, it took nine months before I was no longer wearing jeans or sleeveless tops, and I wasn’t driving on Shabbos. So nine months—that’s the speed of light, really. And this happened after I married Oded for the second time. He hadn’t married a religious woman. I mean, he didn’t... It took him a long time to understand what was happening in our home.

20:31 Speaker 6 “This isn’t the same Gitti I married.”

20:33 Speaker 2 Not at all. Completely different. I mean, not just—

20:37 Speaker 6 When you say you stopped driving on Shabbos and wearing sleeveless tops and all that, those are external things.

20:40 Speaker 2 Yes, right.

20:41 Speaker 6 But the person herself changes a great deal, seemingly.

20:45 Speaker 2 Right. And even those external changes—the nine months felt slow to me, because the day I encountered Tanya, I felt I’d come home.

20:55 Speaker 6 That you’d found your...

20:56 Speaker 2 That I really had come home. And to this day I look at it—there’s, uh, I have—

21:01 Speaker 6 How did it happen?

21:02 Speaker 2 How did it happen? Tanya? It was incredible hashgachah pratis. I have a friend—people always saw me as a spiritual type. I mean, I always felt there was something more, that we hadn’t come into this world just to eat and drink and watch good movies. I always said that, and people would say, “Okay, okay, you...” And I kept hearing people tell me, “You’ll probably become religious one day.” It made me laugh. I’d say, “I don’t know why people say that to me.” But they’d say, “Yes, you’re always looking for something more. As if it isn’t enough for you...” I’d go out to a café, and I’m a happy person. I love life. I really enjoy a cup of coffee, a blintz, going out, having a good time. A good movie—it’s all great. But somewhere, I always knew that couldn’t be everything. It couldn’t be. I always said, “It can’t be that this whole world was created—

21:52 Speaker 6 There’s more to it than that.

21:53 Speaker 2 —just so we could watch a good movie and eat a good meal. I mean, why would we need all these complications and everything else?” Then a friend said to me, “Listen, Gittush, I’m hosting a Tanya class at my place.” Her sister was very ill, and she wanted to—someone had told her it would bring a blessing and so on. She said, “Okay,” and then she told me, “Come. This is more for you than for me, but I’m hosting the class.” I came, and that was it. Nine months later, that was it.

22:23 Speaker 6 You took one look and were hooked—but in the good sense.

22:27 Speaker 2 Right. And I still didn’t understand a thing. I remember that one time, two months after I’d started learning, the Tanya teacher said, “Today I’m opening the Igros Kodesh for anyone who has a question or something.” I told her, “I don’t have a question, but open it. Let’s see what the Rebbe says to me.” And the Rebbe said that I needed to start learning sichos and maamarim. It was very clear and very emphatic. I didn’t even know what sichos and maamarim were. I asked the teacher, “What are those?” She said, “I’ll explain later.” A week later I started learning sichos and maamarim. And of course, thanks to that—I mean, I’m a very diligent student. Even though I never knew how to learn in school or other formal settings, I truly never found my place there. I thought of myself as someone who probably couldn’t study. I learn from life, from the street, from situations. I observe, but opening a book and studying—that wasn’t me. Until I came to Chassidus. Then I found myself sitting for hours, delving into it. It interested me, and I wanted more and more. And that, by the way, is why—the Rebbe knew what he was asking of me. Because through the maamarim and sichos, as I went deeper and deeper, I enriched my world of shlichus. I also came to understand what I needed to do in the field of therapy, because later I became a therapist, and through that work I created Shaarim, the cards that—

24:00 Speaker 6 I saw here earlier.

24:01 Speaker 2 Yes, those.

24:02 Speaker 6 The therapy—what field is it in? What kind of—

24:06 Speaker 2 So, when I met Oded for the second time, more than twenty years ago, let’s say, I told him, “Listen, if I keep working in marketing, public relations and communications, we won’t have a life. You’re a pilot; you’re always coming and going. Someone needs to be at home holding this whole thing together.”

24:25 Speaker 6 A civilian pilot, right?

24:26 Speaker 2 No—he’s a civilian pilot now. He was a fighter pilot; he flew F-16s.

24:29 Speaker 6 Wow.

24:29 Speaker 2 I mean, he was a fighter pilot.

24:30 Speaker 6 And now he’s a civilian pilot.

24:31 Speaker 2 Now he’s a civilian pilot, yes, an El Al pilot.

24:33 Speaker 6 So he just flies to New York, say, or...

24:36 Speaker 2 No, the thing is, El Al has different fleets. You’re assigned to a particular fleet, and he hasn’t flown to New York in a long time. Today he’s in the—actually, he’s about to retire. Now he’s a senior examiner at El Al. He examines other pilots to...

24:50 Speaker 6 Certify them.

24:50 Speaker 2 To certify them and so on, either as first officers or as captains. It depends on the person and the situation. So I said, “Listen, I’m also—honestly, I’d had enough of the media by then.” I remember feeling that I’d lost my shlichus within the media, because the media had become very, very aggressive, very sensationalist, and had really lost sight of why it existed in the first place. I said, “I can’t be part of this. I have to move on.” He told me, “I’m giving you carte blanche”—a free hand to do whatever you want. But I said, we also have to remember that bringing two families together isn’t simple. He has children; I have children. With a pilot’s job, where he’s coming and going, someone needs to be here at home to hold it all together—to bring the new family together and preserve that feeling of home. So we said, okay, let’s go for something quieter. I said, “Listen, wherever I’ve been, I’ve always been the company’s therapy room.” People would come to me with their problems, and I’d try to solve them, and so on. I said, “Let’s go in that direction.” I went to—

26:01 Speaker 6 How beautiful. Look how you came to know yourself and directed yourself toward your shlichus like that. Wow, that’s moving.

26:08 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s right. I...

26:09 Speaker 6 Really, sometimes we ask ourselves—I hear it a lot when people talk about shlichus—“What am I supposed to do with my life?” And I say, “Come on, stop for a moment and think about what you’re good at and where your strengths lie.”

26:20 Speaker 2 Exactly.

26:21 Speaker 6 What do people come to you for? That’s your shlichus. Your shlichus is what’s already there.

26:25 Speaker 2 And also, what tools have you been given? I mean, um...

26:28 Speaker 6 Yes, your abilities.

26:28 Speaker 2 Your abilities. And, you know, some abilities are hidden and some are obvious. The hidden ones need us to discover them. There are so many strengths we don’t know we have until we reach a certain point—and I wish everyone would always discover them under good circumstances.

26:46 Speaker 6 Yes.

26:46 Speaker 2 Of course, with Hashem’s help. Really. But, um, I went to study Bach flower remedies, of all things. It might sound a little unusual, but I really connected with them. And the more I delved into sichos, maamarim, and the Tanya, the more I said, “Wait, it’s all here.” There’s a whole world of healing within the Tanya. You don’t need anything else. I also learned about more and more methods, mostly in the alternative field, of course. I took course after course, though I used them less in practice. I opened a clinic, and I said that this clinic was, in a sense, the Rebbe’s room. Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends me the people who need healing. The Rebbe blesses them; this is the Rebbe’s room. I listen and reflect something from Chassidus back to them, because that’s where the healing is. And that’s what I did, with the help of Bach flower remedies, of course, which I still love and believe in very much. Today I have less time for individual treatment, because I’ve branched out into Shaarim workshops and performances of The Pilot and the Chassidah, and I want to reach people on a larger scale rather than one on one. It’s not, G-d forbid, that one-on-one work is a waste of time—chas veshalom. Every person is a whole world. I did it for almost twenty years, and today I focus more on... Yes, but I truly saw wonders and miracles in that room of the Rebbe, in that treatment room, because each time I brought them healing that wasn’t mine. It was the healing of the holy author of the Tanya, who said over two hundred years ago that the Tanya would be the incense for all epidemics. And we have a generation with... How should I put it? It doesn’t feel right to say “epidemic”; that’s a very strong, extreme word. But let’s say there are many disruptions, things out of order and things that need fixing in this generation, and we can see them, because so many things steal our attention. So many

28:49 Speaker 2 external things steal our attention. I call them Esav’s toys. We have shopping malls and every convenience, and a highly developed digital world, and we forget that everything—everything we see—has a G-dly root. If we don’t use it for holiness and connect it to its G-dly root, it drags us down terribly. So that’s where I see my shlichus.

29:16 Speaker 7 Listen, that’s incredible. I’m realizing—wait, wow, I’m still caught up in your story of becoming observant. You went through those nine months, and I’m still in suspense. What happened next?

29:29 Speaker 2 It went on.

29:30 Speaker 7 You were there with the Tanya.

29:32 Speaker 2 I was there with the Tanya. But that’s how The Pilot and the Chassidah came about. It came out of the difficulty. It came out of hearing, every three weeks, “Okay, on Sunday we’re going to the rabbinate to get divorced.” It was very hard, because I’m also a very thorough person, and at the same time very extreme. Chassidus is trying to help me work on that. Black and white—it really takes time. It isn’t simple. Really, it isn’t simple.

29:58 Speaker 7 Mitzvos. So you go all the way.

30:00 Speaker 2 So you go all the way. But look, today I say that sometimes not doing a mitzvah—not G-d forbid abandoning it, but doing what’s possible within your circumstances—is itself the mitzvah. Because you also have to stay connected to your home, to a husband who didn’t choose this. It wasn’t what he chose at all. What guided me, though, was that Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t make mistakes. He didn’t make a mistake by putting us together. Apparently I was making a mistake in how I was bringing this into our home. In other words, Oded was right not to want it. He didn’t want it; he hadn’t chosen it. Okay, so there was something I wasn’t doing right. He felt forced, coerced. He’d say, “I’m Ashkenazi, but I feel like a Spanish converso.” He said that all the time, and we had a lot of difficult arguments. But it took me time to understand... Well, when I say it took me time—we’ve had a Tanya class in our home for fifteen years, every Wednesday at 10:30 in the morning. Everyone’s invited. Anyone listening is invited to the Tanya class at 10:30 in the morning.

31:06 Speaker 7 Who teaches it?

31:07 Speaker 2 Ah, well, we have someone who’s pure gold teaching it: Mrs. Liba Gurevich from Kfar Chabad. She really is... And also Etty Feldman. Etty teaches Chassidus; Liba teaches Tanya. It’s a wonderful group of women—observant women and women who aren’t there yet, from all kinds of backgrounds: Religious Zionists, Chabad women, and women who aren’t observant yet at all.

31:34 Speaker 7 All of the Jewish people.

31:34 Speaker 2 All of the Jewish people. Jeans and a tank top, the way I used to dress. They all come on Wednesdays at 10:30. And I think... Liba is also my mashpia, which is such a brilliant idea for our generation. A mashpia—for anyone who doesn’t yet have one, now’s the time to find one. It helps you find answers. I’m not saying magic answers, but it helps so, so much to have someone accompany you through the different stages of life. Um, one day I told Liba that Oded wasn’t willing anymore. That was it; he wasn’t willing to go on like this. He hadn’t married a religious woman. Oded felt truly abandoned, as though Hakadosh Boruch Hu had taken me away from him by force. And what made me sad was that he thought that way about Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It really hurt me that that was what he thought of Him. I said, “But Hakadosh Boruch Hu is abundant in kindness. Truly. I can’t be the one giving him a bad impression of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What am I doing wrong?”

32:32 Speaker 8 You weren’t representing Him well.

32:33 Speaker 2 I wasn’t representing Him well. Exactly. Then one day Liba said to me, “You know, you’re not Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s police officer, and your husband’s spiritual level is none of your business. That’s not your concern.” At that moment, I felt a ton of weight lift off my shoulders. I came home a different person, and my husband got a new wife. And I say this to all the women who think they need to fix their husbands, that they have to be responsible for their husbands becoming observant or things like that: no. They need to let their husbands be happy with their own choices. That’s what they need to do. From that moment on, Oded simply felt the difference. You could draw a sharp line between the time before that moment and the time after it. And the more I let go, the closer he came. That’s exactly how it happened. And it’s true with children, and it’s true with spouses. It’s true of everything. Let go. It isn’t yours. That’s part of what Chassidus teaches: what’s yours and what isn’t. Which garden bed are you watering? I mean, it’s fine to water someone else’s garden bed. It’s also much easier.

33:49 Speaker 8 Right.

33:50 Speaker 2 But come on, turn back inward. Gather yourself and start putting the right things in order. That’s it. And... I’m telling this briefly, but of course these weren’t easy things. Even bringing in a hot plate for Shabbos—all of it...

34:08 Speaker 8 Right, that’s what I wanted to press you on, so to speak.

34:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

34:12 Speaker 8 There’s what’s his, and that’s his. I try to keep what’s his his, and what’s yours yours. But in the end, it’s a home.

34:20 Speaker 2 Right, it’s shared.

34:20 Speaker 8 There are things in religion—

34:22 Speaker 2 Right.

34:22 Speaker 8 In Judaism—

34:22 Speaker 2 That you can’t compromise on.

34:25 Speaker 8 They’re family matters.

34:26 Speaker 2 Right.

34:26 Speaker 8 They’re matters for the couple.

34:27 Speaker 2 Right.

34:27 Speaker 8 They’re matters for the home, and you really do need to choose a side together.

34:33 Speaker 2 Right.

34:34 Speaker 8 Raising the children.

34:35 Speaker 2 Exactly. Hashem had tremendous mercy on us. And again, I see it as a kindness: when He brought us together again the second time, the children were already fairly grown, and we don’t have children together. He brought us together late enough that we wouldn’t have another sweet little baby. Yes, because I don’t think we would have... He says so too: we wouldn’t have made it through that if we’d had to. I mean, I would have grabbed the baby and taken him into the room. Of course that’s what I would have done. Yes. So that wouldn’t have worked. In that respect, the children who are his and the children who are mine—each of us decides for our own children. They were... yes. So that’s that aspect. But you’re right, because a home is still shared. For example, he really likes... Say the kids like their espresso, and suddenly you can’t make espresso on Shabbos; there’s a hot-water urn and things like that. So we learned to respect each other. Boruch Hashem, today it’s just me and Oded, because everyone has already flown the nest, and we’re already grandparents, boruch Hashem.

35:34 Speaker 8 Wow, how moving!

35:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:36 Speaker 8 You don’t look like it, but you really can say that.

35:38 Speaker 2 So I can say it, yes. We have several grandchildren, and boruch Hashem, boruch Hashem. But I’ll tell you this: sometimes on Friday night my Shabbos candles are burning, and Maccabi Tel Aviv is on TV. There’s nothing I can do, because my husband isn’t willing to give up his Friday-night Maccabi Tel Aviv game. Yes, sometimes they play on Shabbos. But in general, he’s learned—he’s very respectful. He doesn’t drive on Shabbos unless he has to. Yes, when his father was in the hospital, he would. But if he doesn’t have to, he doesn’t drive, and he really tries. We already have smart lighting at home, so there’s no need to switch lights on and off. But there are lots of funny stories about how the hot plate came in, and the hot-water urn—we won’t have time for those.

36:24 Speaker 8 That’s for the show.

36:25 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s for the show. You have to come to the show to see it, because there really were some moments. Look, on the one hand, this show is terribly funny, but on the other, it sometimes brings tears to your eyes; it catches in your throat. Because it’s an authentic, true show that opens the door to our living room and tells the story. And the shlichus of this show is really to tell everyone: know that anything is possible. It’s just a matter of approach, and of strengthening your faith that Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t make mistakes. Perhaps you’re doing something wrong, because He truly doesn’t make mistakes. And the last thing is... Look, chas veshalom, I’m not talking about extreme situations where something is wrong in a relationship and there’s violence and so on. We’re not talking about those things. We’re talking about the relationships we all have, which can be challenging and sometimes hard, when we don’t always understand the other person—or ourselves within the relationship. Okay.

37:18 Speaker 8 Right.

37:18 Speaker 2 So it takes work. And it’s very easy to go straight to the other person and say, “You don’t...” Come back to yourself. Right, it takes work, and sometimes it feels unpleasant and annoying, and you want to blame the other person too. You want to—it’s easier, but it’s more childish. It isn’t mature.

37:37 Speaker 8 There’s also something in Tanya: when you learn the map of the soul, how everything works, and where our choices lie, you suddenly say, “I have my battles, and he has his battles.” And you respect that.

37:49 Speaker 2 Right.

37:50 Speaker 8 Yes, with children, with everyone. You suddenly begin to understand what they’re going through. And then I think there’s more respect.

38:01 Speaker 2 Wow, that’s such an important point you’ve just raised.

38:04 Speaker 8 Yes.

38:04 Speaker 2 Wow. That’s the point. Because only—

38:06 Speaker 8 Those are his battles.

38:07 Speaker 2 You’re so right. Because at first, in my process of becoming observant, I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anyone. He describes it better. He says, “People becoming observant see the light, while we see the headlight of the train coming toward us.”

38:24 Speaker 8 Wow.

38:24 Speaker 2 That’s how he describes it. As if I’m standing on the tracks, and the train is getting closer and closer.

38:29 Speaker 8 That really is a difficult experience.

38:30 Speaker 2 Difficult? It’s shattering. It’s a crazy experience. I mean, they change all the rules of your... They turn your home upside down, and you’re helpless because you didn’t choose this, and it’s your home, your fortress. That’s where you’re supposed to feel best and most comfortable, where you’re supposed to make your own choices—and suddenly you have no control over those choices.

38:54 Speaker 8 Wow.

38:54 Speaker 2 And I—I think I was awful.

38:57 Speaker 8 How can you say that so plainly?

38:58 Speaker 2 I think I was awful, truly awful, because I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anyone; I saw only myself. And that wasn’t right. What saved us—and the beautiful thing is that he says this himself today—was Tanya. The more I learned, the more I understood how I shouldn’t behave.

39:18 Speaker 8 Yes.

39:18 Speaker 2 Really.

39:19 Speaker 8 That’s self-awareness.

39:20 Speaker 2 And how much ego, how much pride, how much I thought I knew. Today I say, “Wait, wait, wait. I became observant because of him in the first place. Another husband would have thrown me out on my ear.” Why do I say that? Because there are often traits in our husbands that really annoy us. There are traits like that, but we have to understand: if Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t make mistakes, then there’s something about that trait that’s good for us.

39:49 Speaker 8 Yes.

39:49 Speaker 2 Okay, and we don’t feel like doing the work. But with him, for example, I’d always get so upset and say, “Oh, you’re so indifferent,” or something like that. And afterward I realized it wasn’t indifference; it was his ability to take things in. Okay? It takes him a long time to respond. He’s the opposite of me. And he developed that as a fighter pilot. Goodness, I couldn’t be a fighter pilot, do you understand? Because I react immediately. Yes, and not only for that reason—for lots of other things I don’t have. But as a fighter pilot, he needs extraordinary, extreme patience to manage the loops and maneuvers and release the bomb he needs to release at the right moment. That isn’t simple, and I dismissed it. It wasn’t right of me to dismiss it. I say this to all women: sometimes we do an injustice when we dismiss a trait that seems to annoy us, and we fail to discover the hidden source of something that’s so good for us. And why do I bring this up specifically in the context of my becoming observant? Because if he didn’t have this trait that supposedly annoys me—though it annoys me less today—then I don’t know if we would even be here today. The fact that he has such deep patience gave me the chance to do it at lightning speed, okay, and he was still able to handle it. So I often say: all of my journey to becoming observant is thanks to him. Everything that’s mine is his, first and foremost. And I also say: wow, we came from previous lifetimes; we came with a history. We didn’t come into this world with a clean slate. We came seemingly clean, but that isn’t true. We came to put right so many things from previous lifetimes. We know this. The holy Zohar speaks about it, and so on, and you

41:36 Speaker 2 don’t know what you came to put right. And I look at Oded and say, “Wow, how far I still have to go to reach his level.”

41:43 Speaker 9 Wow, that’s moving.

41:45 Speaker 2 Yes.

41:46 Speaker 9 Really. You know, you say Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t make mistakes. And for us to say that, we first have to understand the basic concept of hashgachah pratis, Divine Providence: that everything comes from Him.

41:59 Speaker 2 Right.

42:00 Speaker 9 And if everything comes from Him, then we can also say He doesn’t make mistakes. Do you see what I mean?

42:05 Speaker 2 Of course.

42:06 Speaker 9 And I really think it all begins and ends with faith in that hashgachah pratis. It simply changes your life and brings so much light. And if anyone still isn’t convinced she should study Chassidus, then...

42:20 Speaker 2 First of all, there’s no such thing with me. Everyone who meets me eventually ends up studying Tanya, even if it’s just to say, “All right, all right, get off my back. I’m starting.”

42:30 Speaker 9 For 19 Kislev, that’s...

42:31 Speaker 2 Right, right, right. But for us it isn’t just 19 Kislev. The light of 19 Kislev is supposed to carry us from last year until this year; it’s supposed to...

42:40 Speaker 9 With that same intensity.

42:41 Speaker 2 The same… I don’t know if it’s with the same intensity, but in its light, so to speak, in its light. I really recommend it to everyone, too. And not just that. First of all, keep a Tanya at home. That’s the first thing. Whether you study it or not. I mean, before anything else. Those who study it presumably already have one. But I often give out Chitas, the Tanya, and so on, because I say: I’ve done my part. Here, I’ve brought it to you; now it’s up to you. That’s what… I used to do the same thing in the clinic. I’d say: Okay, I’ve said everything I need to say from Chassidus, and now it’s yours. You know?

43:14 Speaker 9 You’re helping them along.

43:15 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. Now you have to connect the dots. In this generation, I don’t even know. Take this past year, this recent period—how do you get through it without learning Chassidus?

43:24 Speaker 9 I don’t know.

43:25 Speaker 2 How do you get through it? You just can’t function. You can’t.

43:29 Speaker 9 Right.

43:29 Speaker 2 I mean, I also see so many parents. Sadly, you see and meet parents of hostages, bereaved parents, and so on, who are now really connecting with faith.

43:40 Speaker 9 Right.

43:41 Speaker 2 Really connecting with faith. And you say, wow, look at these souls, where their paths take them. And I tell everyone: in this generation, everyone, everyone needs to learn Chassidus and Tanya. We can’t neglect it. And those of us who know that—the responsibility is ours.

44:00 Speaker 9 Yes, that’s a lot.

44:01 Speaker 2 Ours. No, not “ours.” Mine. People ask me, “Tell me, how do you have so many women? Where did you find them all? Who are all these people?” I say, “I don’t know. I stand in line.” Really. It’s true. My husband tells me, “Not when I’m with you. Stop embarrassing me already.” If I’m standing in line at the supermarket for too long—more than five minutes—I start talking to the woman next to me, and I ask her, “Do you know what Tanya is?” “What’s that?” And we start talking. I have women who came from those lines.

44:26 Speaker 9 Wow.

44:27 Speaker 2 Yes, really. And I think about that teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, that everything a Jew sees or hears is by Divine Providence. So wherever I am at that moment, if I really am a shlucha—after all, shlichus is life; it’s a way of life. It’s not… Okay, now I put on—

44:45 Speaker 9 That’s the name of the podcast, by the way: Shlichus as a Way of Life.

44:47 Speaker 2 Oh, really?

44:49 Speaker 9 You’re saying it, and I’m thinking, yes, yes, yes, that’s it.

44:51 Speaker 2 So you see? It’s the most natural thing in the world. We don’t put on a costume and leave the house. We’re shluchos all the time. Okay. So yes, sometimes we can give more to it and sometimes less, and that’s—fine. But when we remember that, we don’t lose sight of the central point.

45:09 Speaker 9 Right. And beyond the benefit it brings to other people and to those around us, the first benefit is to us. Because when we’re somewhere and our minds aren’t caught up in all our own unpleasant stuff, our worries, our problems, we look outward. Who needs us? What can I do here, at this point, in the next minute? No need to look far ahead. Then I’m lifted up, because I’m here for something higher.

45:35 Speaker 2 You’re not just lifted up. What you’re saying is so beautiful, because you’re also occupied with something else. So what happens? The distress shrinks.

45:43 Speaker 9 Absolutely, absolutely.

45:44 Speaker 2 It simply shrinks until it disappears. Now, of course, people will say to me, you know, there are things that, on the surface, really are hard. May we never know of them. Illnesses and other things. People truly go through things that are very, very difficult, and it’s terribly hard. You also can’t go up to someone and say, “Listen, deep down, this thing is actually very, very good.” Of course we wouldn’t.

46:08 Speaker 9 We should say that only to ourselves.

46:09 Speaker 2 To ourselves. Exactly, say it to ourselves. And when we say it to ourselves, then when we approach a situation like that, and a person in that situation, we approach them with compassion. With compassion. That’s very, very important. Without judging—just having compassion, looking carefully and seeing: Okay, what do they need right now? And I think that’s everyone’s shlichus, and everyone can do it.

46:36 Speaker 9 Exactly, exactly. And the same goes for our own worries and struggles. Yes, we need to attend to them; we need to stay on top of them. But you can’t be immersed in them 24/7. You’ll collapse. Go out and do your shlichus, then come back. And then it really does get smaller. It gets smaller. Because part of the space it takes up is what we create in our own heads.

46:55 Speaker 2 Of course.

46:56 Speaker 9 So here we say, wait, I’m here for the world. I came to give. Yes, I have things I need to take care of, sort out, get through and deal with. But there’s much more to me than that. That’s not everything. It doesn’t fill up all my space. I’m telling you, I simply see it, even with the small challenges. To us, there are tragedies and illnesses and all that, but sometimes a spilled cup of coffee can ruin your day if you’re not in the right place to know how to deal with it.

47:23 Speaker 2 Chassidus saves me again at every moment. And I’ll never forget—it was Rosh Hashanah, and everything was ready. You know, everything, everything was ready. Not Rosh Hashanah; it was one of the previous occasions. I took this whole lamb dish out of the oven, and it all spilled. And I had almost no time for anything. No time to clean it up, no time for any of it. At that moment, I took a breath and said, “Everything is from Hashem, everything is for the good, and everything will work out.” But if I’d gone into a rage—“How is this happening now? What? What? What? For heaven’s sake!”

47:58 Speaker 9 It’s so automatic. That’s what we feel like doing.

48:00 Speaker 2 But that’s… Because that was one of those times. A crisis really can be a crisis. You know, everything is ready, everything is clean, everything is set, and suddenly this happens and it all spills. That’s it. So what do you do now? I apply that situation to every other frustrating situation. And then you say: But that’s Chassidus. How can you manage without Chassidus?

48:23 Speaker 9 You can’t.

48:24 Speaker 2 You can’t. You can’t. It’s brilliant.

48:28 Speaker 9 Truly. Wow, Gatis, we’ll wrap up. I want to thank you. I usually say, “Let’s end with a message,” but this has just been a stream of messages that you can’t stop. And I’d really like, with Hashem’s help, to invite you back here. And “The Pilot and the Chassidah”—that’s your show. That’s a lovely name, by the way.

48:46 Speaker 2 Oh, right. That name… At first, by the way, the name—

48:50 Speaker 9 I wanted to ask you how the show began, so go ahead and tell us. It’s interesting.

48:54 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you. The show began because I really wanted Oded to get applause for the process he was going through at home.

49:02 Speaker 9 Wow.

49:02 Speaker 2 So that’s how it started. I racked my brain over what I could do so that it would also be shlichus and he would receive that recognition. I thought, if he gets up onstage and starts talking about what we’re going through, then, first, things at home will be much better. And second, we’ll show so many couples something they can relate to. There are lots of couples, by the way, who live like this, with one more observant and one less so. And I started writing and writing and writing down all the frustrating, infuriating, difficult situations. Then one day I asked him, “Would you be willing to write? Would you?” He said, “Why?” And then he told me, “Okay, another project…” He’s used to my crazy projects. He said, “Fine, I’ll go along with you.” And, well, there isn’t time now to tell you about all the incredible instances of Divine Providence that happened during that process. Right down to who would produce it, who would direct it, who would… That level of detail.

49:56 Speaker 9 Well, that’s no small undertaking.

49:57 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent us all the people to make it happen. He chose who the producer would be, who the director would be, and so on. At first, we thought of calling it “Who Can Find a Pilot’s Wife?”—a play on “Who Can Find a Woman of Valor?” Then our amazing producer, Anat Shavi, said, “No, no, no, no.” She said, “The Pilot and the Chassidah.” Now, it has a double meaning. First of all, he really is a pilot, and I try to be a chassidah. I’m not claiming anything. On the other hand, what pilots fear most is large birds—storks, for instance—getting into the engine during landing or takeoff.

50:37 Speaker 9 Yes.

50:37 Speaker 2 And that’s what Oded felt had happened to him.

50:39 Speaker 9 Wow.

50:40 Speaker 2 So that’s why it’s “The Pilot and the Chassidah.”

50:42 Speaker 9 Wow.

50:43 Speaker 2 Yes. Now, this show really is a shlichus. During the process, we received that message many times. We made it into a very polished, professional show: a full year of rehearsals with a director, a scriptwriter, and so on. During that year we almost got divorced, because everything came to the surface. He suddenly saw how much he had given up. I suddenly saw how much I was giving up, or how much I… Everything. It was very, very hard.

51:07 Speaker 9 Wow.

51:07 Speaker 2 Every time we came home, I would write to the Rebbe, and every time the Rebbe would write back to me, “Please spread the wellsprings using all the tools you’ve been given.” And we also received—

51:18 Speaker 9 Resentment.

51:19 Speaker 2 Yes. And during one particularly difficult rehearsal, I got up and said, “That’s it. We’re closing it down. I’m not continuing. We can’t do this; it’s impossible.” Then Anat said, “Wait, wait. I have a letter. I have one volume of Igros Kodesh that my friend Miri Schneerson gave me as a gift. Let’s open it.” We opened Igros Kodesh with the question: Should we continue? The Rebbe wrote something like, “The time has come to stop insisting on winning and to live together with dignity.” That’s also how The Pilot and the Stork ends—with the Rebbe’s answer from Igros Kodesh. He gave a very detailed answer about how to live with someone who isn’t religious.

52:02 Speaker 9 Wow.

52:03 Speaker 2 It was just such a perfect answer. We said, “This can’t be!” Oded was completely amazed. How could it be that the director had just one volume of Igros Kodesh at home, and we opened it to a letter about how to live with someone who isn’t religious? The hashgachah pratis was pretty incredible.

52:22 Speaker 9 Wow.

52:22 Speaker 2 And we understood that we had to bring the show to the public. So that’s it—since then, we’ve been traveling around the country, and—

52:30 Speaker 9 Beyond what the show gives other people, you yourselves went through such a significant process.

52:36 Speaker 2 That’s right.

52:36 Speaker 9 A therapeutic one, you might say.

52:38 Speaker 2 Therapeutic, and also—

52:39 Speaker 9 Through doing this.

52:39 Speaker 2 And people who watch us onstage tell us, and write to us, that they themselves go through a therapeutic process during the show. It’s amazing.

52:49 Speaker 9 Wow.

52:49 Speaker 2 People come up to us afterward. After the show, we open up a dialogue with the audience, because everyone comes with their own pain and the differences they’re dealing with at home.

52:58 Speaker 9 Right.

52:58 Speaker 2 And the show speaks to everyone. Each person takes something different from it, and they’re all sure we’re talking about them. It’s amazing.

53:04 Speaker 9 Amazing.

53:05 Speaker 2 Everyone comes up and says to me, “You know, you were talking about us.” I’ll never forget one time when we performed at a Chabad House. A woman came up to me and said, “You were talking about us,” and I could see that they were a Chabad couple. I thought, How could that be? She said, “Yes, because we have differences too. You just don’t realize it—we all live with differences.” And suddenly I understood that this show isn’t only about a religious person and a nonreligious person. It’s for anyone who experiences a gap.

53:31 Speaker 9 A reflection of all the…

53:32 Speaker 2 A reflection of everything.

53:33 Speaker 9 Yes.

53:34 Speaker 2 And only then did Oded say to me, “Now I understand the shlichus.”

53:38 Speaker 9 Wow.

53:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

53:40 Speaker 9 A man and a woman—that’s a whole world of differences.

53:41 Speaker 2 Right.

53:41 Speaker 9 So—

53:42 Speaker 2 Right.

53:42 Speaker 9 It really is—

53:43 Speaker 2 Right.

53:43 Speaker 9 I also think that presenting it with humor, and with something that really is more extreme, helps everyone put things in perspective.

53:51 Speaker 2 “Extreme” is an understatement.

53:53 Speaker 9 Amazing! Wow, Gattit! It was such a pleasure talking to you.

53:57 Speaker 2 It really was. You’re wonderful.

53:59 Speaker 9 Thank you, thank you, thank you—and thank you on behalf of all the women listening. I’m sure they gained so much. May we truly merit to live Chassidus and finally reach the goal, the ultimate goal: the Geulah.

54:09 Speaker 2 To live with the outlook of Geulah, not the outlook of exile.

54:12 Speaker 9 Yes.

54:13 Speaker 2 And we can do that every day.

54:14 Speaker 9 To bring redemption to ourselves at every moment.

54:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

54:15 Speaker 9 Through the choices we make.

54:16 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly.

54:17 Speaker 9 In short, if you want to understand what I just said, study it.

54:20 Speaker 2 Right.