Episode 66: Coffee in Cluj | A conversation about shlichus, sanity, and joy, with Freidy Orgad - Chabad shlucha in Cluj, Romania

00:00 Speaker 1 What kinds of Chabad Houses are there around the world? Why does a family leave the comfort of everything familiar and choose to devote their lives to other people? How do you set priorities when you need to prepare a meal for two hundred people and still stay sane—and even smile? Come have a conversation over coffee with the shlucha to Cluj, Romania, Freidy Orgad. She opens a window onto a side of Chabad House life we may know less about, and along the way shares fascinating life wisdom that will make your tomorrow more beautiful. Did you enjoy the episode? Don’t keep it to yourself. Pass it on to your mother, sister, neighbor or friend—to anyone you care about. And why meet only on the podcast? Let’s stay in touch. To follow me on Instagram, search for Chani Moskowitz. To follow my status, book workshops and lectures, or join digital programs for studying Chassidus, it’s all at 050-850-5770. The intro, and we’ll get started right away. How do 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. On this podcast, we’ll meet different women who bring their sense of shlichus to a range of fields. In their own ways, they’ll help each of us find and refine our shlichus in the world, because living the lives we were created for is the best there is. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting right now. Welcome to another episode of Shlichus as a Way of Life. Today we’re with Freidy Orgad. How are you?

01:32 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem, excellent.

01:33 Speaker 1 We had a Freddy not long ago, and now Freidy. I need to, uh—

01:37 Speaker 2 Oh, wow, I’m used to people calling me all kinds of things my whole life...

01:39 Speaker 1 Because there are so many variations of this name, it’s not—

01:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:42 Speaker 1 But this episode really came about because of the podcast with Freddy. Like I told you, Freddy talked about Chabad Houses and everything, and then I said—first of all, women asked me, “Bring us more of that. We want more Chabad Houses.” And I thought, I want to bring something different. I think a lot of people—I say women because the podcast is for women, but a lot of people—have a certain picture in their minds of a Chabad House they’ve heard about, or been to, or visited. Often they haven’t even been to one. But those Chabad Houses for tourists are the ones you hear more about.

02:19 Speaker 2 Like the well-known ones, the ones people talk about—

02:20 Speaker 1 Yes, they’re more famous. Like the podcast with Chani Lifshitz—people knew her beforehand too, it’s not—

02:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:27 Speaker 1 And I want to bring another angle on a Chabad House, one that doesn’t necessarily look like a Chabad House in Bariloche or Thailand or somewhere like that. So it worked out well: we caught you while you’re in Israel. By the way, I liked that you came after the August chaos, the bein hazmanim break and all that.

02:44 Speaker 2 Actually, it’s the perfect time to come.

02:46 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:46 Speaker 2 Though I have to say, I expected it to be less hot.

02:49 Speaker 1 Yes, well.

02:49 Speaker 2 I thought, it’s Elul and all, so it’ll be...

02:51 Speaker 1 You can’t expect anything from the weather here.

02:52 Speaker 2 You’ve just reminded me that even on Sukkos people sit outside—though some have upgraded sukkahs with air conditioning.

02:56 Speaker 1 In the sukkah, yes.

02:57 Speaker 2 Sorry. Yes, but we were fortunate to come—

03:02 Speaker 1 So why don’t you start with—

03:03 Speaker 2 At a good time.

03:03 Speaker 1 Yes. Start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? How did you come to shlichus? I think that’s really interesting to hear, too. Sometimes, you know, people ask, “Why are you specifically there?”

03:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:14 Speaker 1 No, how did it come about—

03:14 Speaker 2 “Why did you choose this place?” Because—

03:16 Speaker 1 “Why didn’t you get somewhere better?”

03:17 Speaker 2 Yes, “Why didn’t you go to—why didn’t you go to someplace like Koh Samui?”

03:19 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

03:20 Speaker 2 Even people in the community tell me, “I was in Koh Samui. Now there’s a Chabad House! You should look for something better.”

03:25 Speaker 1 Yes.

03:25 Speaker 2 Yes. So, I grew up in Kfar Chabad. Nothing particularly—

03:30 Speaker 1 Pretty classic.

03:31 Speaker 2 Not interesting, yes. I don’t know if it was just understood that you grow up and go on shlichus. But at some point, maybe in high school, after hearing about shlichus, it seemed so glamorous. And it really is, but in a different way. When my husband and I were meeting, we did talk about going on shlichus at some stage, but it wasn’t quite a plan yet. After we got married, he was in the army, and I’d already started teaching in Israel. At some point it looked as though it wouldn’t happen anymore, as though we were settled in Israel. And it’s funny: suddenly, after I’d been teaching in Israel for about two years, offers of shlichus came from several places at the same time. Truly, through hashgachah pratis, we ended up going to Bucharest. We went there to run a Chabad House for students, and I also taught in the kindergarten and school. Of course, we joined the shluchim who were already there and had been there for over twenty years—maybe close to thirty; I’ve lost track.

04:38 Speaker 3 Explain what you mean by “for students.” There’s a—

04:40 Speaker 2 There’s a medical school there where Israeli students come to study. When we arrived—this was a long time ago, eleven years ago—

04:53 Speaker 3 Wow.

04:54 Speaker 2 Yes. There were lots of Israeli students. Today the situation there is a bit complicated because of recognition by the universities in Israel and things like that, so there are fewer. But back then there were lots and lots of Israeli students, and we came to organize activities with them. I always tell people that before we left, I had this picture in my head: obviously, the students were all just sitting on the steps waiting for us to arrive. I was sure of it. I had plans: we’ll do this, we’ll do that. And then you arrive and find that it’s nothing like that. Absolutely no one is sitting there waiting for you. Absolutely no one is just waiting for you to post an invitation to a Shabbos meal. You have to work with people one by one. I really remember finding the Israeli students’ Facebook group and sending them messages on Messenger, on Facebook.

05:45 Speaker 3 Wow, just to track them down.

05:47 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. One of the stories that stands out most to me from our time in Bucharest is about a student who came over—it was Sukkos or something like that. She sat with me at the Yom Tov meal and said, “Listen, none of the students are going to come to you. The students here...” I won’t repeat what she said. “They’re not going to come, just so you know.” That was my welcome.

06:14 Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

06:14 Speaker 2 Yes. We arrived sometime in Elul, I think, and that was my welcome on Sukkos. “Don’t waste your—don’t waste your energy. You’re young, you’ve got... It’s a shame.”

06:22 Speaker 3 “Go have yourself a good cry.”

06:23 Speaker 2 Yes, as if no one was going to come. The funny thing was that she was in her fifth year then, right at the beginning of it. And the next Shabbos, suddenly I saw her show up. I said, “What are you doing here? You told me...” Because on Yom Tov she’d said that her roommate had dragged her along since they lived really close to the shul. So I asked, “What are you doing here?” She said, “I don’t know. I connected with it, so I came.” Honestly, I always joke that the rest is history. Just last Friday I was at her place. She’s already a doctor with Maccabi and Meuhedet, an established doctor with—

06:56 Speaker 3 So you’re building relationships with Israel’s future doctors.

06:58 Speaker 2 Yes, see? That’s worth a lot.

07:01 Speaker 3 A long-term investment.

07:02 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Then it was her birthday, and my husband’s birthday is around the same time—literally one day apart on the Hebrew calendar. So she brought all her friends for a birthday celebration, and thanks to her, we really got to know a lot of students. She was very, very socially active, which helped me reach them. That was when we were in Bucharest. After about—I don’t know exactly how long, maybe two years or so—my husband started getting requests from Cluj, where we are today, from students there who had heard there was a Chabad House for students in Bucharest.

07:35 Speaker 3 Wait, is Cluj short for something?

07:36 Speaker 2 Cluj-Napoca. But I’ve noticed that Romanians prefer just “Cluj.” Napoca has something to do with the Romans, or—I don’t know the politics of it exactly.

07:45 Speaker 3 Okay.

07:46 Speaker 2 So when we write it, we write Cluj-Napoca, because Cluj is also a county, and Cluj-Napoca is the city. I won’t get into all the politics. People kept sending messages to my husband: “A Chabad House should come here, a Chabad House should come here,” because there wasn’t one here, and there were students and all that. Every so often he started saying to me, “Maybe we should go there.” But as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to discuss. Whenever he brought it up, I’d say, “That’s not going to happen.” Because going there meant really starting from scratch. It wasn’t like here, where we were together with experienced shluchim and, you know, there was an infrastructure. There was a preschool; my children went there every day, um—

08:25 Speaker 3 Worlds apart.

08:26 Speaker 2 Worlds apart. And, you know, the financial burden is worlds apart too. Suddenly you’re on your own, completely on your own, and you have to raise the money and... I said, “No, it’s not going to happen.” He even asked friends about it. He had a friend who was looking for a shlichus and came to see Cluj. I really wasn’t open to discussing it. I always laugh because I don’t remember the point when I said, “Okay, fine, let’s go.” Suddenly I found myself in Cluj.

08:52 Speaker 3 Wow.

08:53 Speaker 2 I guess it took a lot of work over a long time, and in the end I was convinced.

08:57 Speaker 3 By the way, how far is it from Bucharest?

08:59 Speaker 2 With the new roads and everything, it’s a five-and-a-half-hour drive now.

09:04 Speaker 3 Oh, so it really is at the other end of the country.

09:06 Speaker 2 Yes. Usually people fly; most people fly to Bucharest. Sometimes we did too. When we went to see the house and finalize things beforehand, we took a flight, not a car. Back then the drive was probably about eight hours. But yes, it’s right near the Hungarian border. The population is different too, and the city looks different. There’s something much more, maybe you’d call it Western, about Cluj. You can see the Austro-Hungarian influence there. It’s very, very different. Even when we moved there, my helper from Bucharest came with me to help out. She took Mendy[?], who was a baby then, for a walk in the park or something. She came back and said, “Wow, listen, the people here are different.” And she’s Romanian herself, you know, from Bucharest. She said, “People here are nicer, more polite.”

09:58 Speaker 3 I bet.

09:58 Speaker 2 Yes, it was interesting that she noticed it. For me, coming from outside, it’s easier to notice. But when you’re from there, to notice that the people are different—

10:05 Speaker 3 Right. It’s not the capital, but it’s a big city.

10:07 Speaker 2 It’s the second-largest city in Romania, although the gap between it and Bucharest is enormous. I always say, how can that be? Bucharest has something like—don’t quote me on this—about four million residents, and Cluj has maybe six hundred thousand.

10:22 Speaker 3 Wow.

10:22 Speaker 2 Do you see the gap? And that’s the second-largest city.

10:25 Speaker 3 Yes.

10:25 Speaker 2 Meaning all the other cities are smaller still. I think it might be competing for that title with Timișoara, or—I’m not exactly sure which one, but—

10:32 Speaker 3 I’ll take your word for it.

10:33 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:34 Speaker 3 Timișoara.

10:34 Speaker 2 Anyway, that’s another city. Romania is huge, okay? There are about twenty million people in Romania.

10:40 Speaker 3 Wow, impressive. I didn’t know that.

10:41 Speaker 2 Yes, Romania is very, very big. But the gap in population between the capital and the city where we are is enormous. It’s really surprising. At some point—actually, at just that point when we were trying to decide—this is one of those things you only see afterward—

10:59 Speaker 3 In hindsight.

10:59 Speaker 2 In hindsight. At the time, when we were really debating whether to take that step and move to Cluj, my husband was in a group of shluchim and won a raffle for a flight to the Rebbe. A friend of his, another shliach, told him, “See? The Rebbe is calling you to make your decision there.” So we went. It was right around the Kinus Hashluchos, and I hadn’t planned to travel because I had a small baby. But my husband said, “Come with me,” and we went. For us, the purpose of the trip was to receive the Rebbe’s blessing for this step. I clearly remember us sitting in the car outside the Ohel, already on our way back to the airport, and thinking: Okay, what do we do? Do we tell the Rebbe that we’re planning to go to Cluj—

11:44 Speaker 3 And hope for his blessing.

11:45 Speaker 2 Yes. How do I... I mean, can we make promises? We did go into the Ohel. And afterward, the way things fell into place for us to move there was, for us, the Rebbe’s answer. Things worked out so we could get started. You know, approvals came through for various things, and everything fell into place in a way that made us say, “Okay, the Rebbe wants us to come here.” So we started in Cluj, and it really was a start from nothing, nothing, nothing. The students were there, but—

12:19 Speaker 3 There’s a different medical school there.

12:21 Speaker 2 Yes. In fact, today it’s more or less the only medical school in Romania that has full recognition from Israel’s Ministry of Health. That means someone who studies there and then comes to Israel has a recognized degree. Everyone who comes from abroad still has to pass a licensing exam. But today all the other universities in Romania have lost their accreditation, as it’s called. Cluj is the only city left where the university’s medical studies are recognized in Israel.

12:53 Speaker 3 By the way, I’m curious: why does an Israeli student go to Romania? Is it because of the cost?

12:57 Speaker 2 No, not at all. It’s much more expensive for them to study abroad.

13:00 Speaker 3 Oh, really?

13:00 Speaker 2 Yes. People mistakenly think otherwise. The reason is that there are very few places in medical programs in Israel, and there’s affirmative action and all that, you know. So even the very best students find themselves having to go abroad to study—in Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic.

13:19 Speaker 3 That’s something.

13:20 Speaker 2 Yes, all sorts of countries. It costs them much more than studying in Israel.

13:26 Speaker 3 Wow.

13:27 Speaker 2 There’s no comparison at all. But people often think they go because it’s cheaper.

13:32 Speaker 3 I guess you hear “Eastern Europe” and—

13:34 Speaker 2 Yes. But first of all, Romania isn’t what it used to be. It’s not that cheap anymore.

13:39 Speaker 3 Don’t look at me as if everything here is golden.

13:41 Speaker 2 Right, not at all. It certainly was cheaper when we arrived eleven years ago, but it isn’t like that today. It really comes down to necessity: so many students in Israel want to study medicine, and there aren’t enough places. So they go abroad and come back with a medical degree. Then they just take the licensing exam, do their internship, residency, and so on.

14:05 Speaker 3 When they come there, do they usually arrive with a friend or a group, or do they come alone?

14:11 Speaker 2 Some do come as a couple, for example. But most arrive individually—

14:18 Speaker 3 And form a group there.

14:19 Speaker 2 Yes, they get to know each other there and—

14:21 Speaker 3 That’s something.

14:22 Speaker 2 And become friends.

14:23 Speaker 3 So you basically have graduating classes.

14:25 Speaker 2 Right, every six years. Six years sounds like a long time, but it goes by so, so quickly. If you ask me, that’s one of the challenges, because you become very, very attached to people. They become, I don’t even know, like your family, really, especially when you’re there. And suddenly, after six years—

14:45 Speaker 3 Bye.

14:46 Speaker 2 They go back to Israel. And to say you can stay in touch with everyone—that’s impossible.

14:50 Speaker 3 Right.

14:50 Speaker 2 There are some people. Like the woman from Bucharest I mentioned: I’m still in touch with her, we’re friends, and I was at her place this past Friday. But, you know, that’s one person here, two people there. It really isn’t easy to become so attached to someone and then have them leave.

15:09 Speaker 3 And you know they’re going to leave.

15:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:11 Speaker 3 Because it happens everywhere; sometimes even local people suddenly make aliyah and things like that.

15:15 Speaker 2 Yes, but you don’t know that in advance. There are shluchos who work with students who’ve told me, “Listen, I’ve taught myself not to get too attached.” But I feel that—first of all, I have no way of stopping it. That’s the kind of person I am. And I also feel that this is my shlichus. I don’t know how to explain it. When we become so, so close, it’s different.

15:37 Speaker 3 Right.

15:38 Speaker 2 Um, but we’re here in Israel now for the wedding of a student who finished back in 2021. So we’ve kept in touch with her.

15:45 Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

15:46 Speaker 2 Yes, she finished a long time ago.

15:47 Speaker 3 That’s what I wanted to say. Even with someone you don’t outwardly keep in touch with, you’re somehow still part of them. It’s not—

15:54 Speaker 2 No, but with her I really did keep in touch. We were in contact the whole time. Later she even came to visit me in Cluj with her partner, and we stayed in touch.

16:03 Speaker 3 So your husband will perform the kiddushin at their chuppah?

16:06 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. With Hashem’s help, he’ll marry them, and I did bridal preparation with her. And I’ll take—I’ll accompany her to the mikveh before the wedding, with Hashem’s help, and—

16:14 Speaker 3 Wow.

16:14 Speaker 2 Yes, so she’s an example of someone who finished a long time ago and we’re still in touch. But, you know, it’s one here and one there. It’s not like that with all the students, even though I really do have a connection—and can have a close connection—with many of them. But staying in touch over time, when you already have new students, is also very hard.

16:34 Speaker 3 Right. A slightly funny example, but a kindergarten teacher gets thirty children.

16:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

16:40 Speaker 3 She grows attached to them and loves them. In the good cases, anyway.

16:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

16:45 Speaker 3 For a year, and that’s it. My son wanted to go to his old kindergarten because my younger son is there now. He still feels connected to the place, but he came in and that was it. They’re different children now, a different vibe.

16:57 Speaker 2 Right, right. Now imagine that here it’s six years.

17:00 Speaker 3 Yes.

17:01 Speaker 2 Think about it: there are students we went through COVID with, and then the war. All of it together. But yes, that’s our shlichus.

17:11 Speaker 3 That’s the system.

17:11 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s the system. And when I manage to stay in touch with someone, to me that’s amazing. For me, too, because of who they are. They always ask me, like, “What are you doing?” These guys are absolutely my family there. It’s not just some kind of relationship between the rabbi and the rebbetzin.

17:33 Speaker 3 Yes.

17:34 Speaker 2 The people who come to the Chabad House are really my family. So the connection continues accordingly. Of course, you know, out of a hundred people, it’s not the same kind of connection with everyone.

17:46 Speaker 3 Of course. Life itself gets caught up in the busyness back in Israel, too.

17:49 Speaker 2 No, it’s also people’s personalities, you know. But there are some who haven’t even left yet, and I know we’ll stay in touch when they do.

17:57 Speaker 3 Yes.

17:57 Speaker 2 There’s no way we won’t. And with others, you know, there’s nothing you can do; time will take its course.

18:02 Speaker 3 Do you also have what you’d call local Jews?

18:06 Speaker 2 Yes. I always joke that our Chabad House is a boutique Chabad House. We have a little of everything. There are students, too. You know, some places have three or four hundred Jewish students. I think this year we had about a hundred students, split between Israelis and French Jews.

18:25 Speaker 3 Oh, are there limited places in France too?

18:27 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s the same story in France. It’s very convenient for the country—and I’m talking about France, okay?—that this student doesn’t cost them any money. He goes to another country and comes back to them as a doctor. You see?

18:41 Speaker 3 And how does Romania benefit?

18:43 Speaker 2 It costs the students quite a bit to study in Romania, because they aren’t Romanian citizens.

18:47 Speaker 3 They pay.

18:48 Speaker 2 They pay for their studies. They fund their own training, you see, and they come back to their country as doctors. It’s a great arrangement.

18:55 Speaker 3 How nice.

18:57 Speaker 2 So France also has a shortage of places, and we get a lot of French Jewish students—more than Israeli students.

19:03 Speaker 3 That’s a lot. If you have a personal connection with them and they come for Shabbos meals, it really is a large number.

19:08 Speaker 2 Right. Especially now that I’ve started learning French.

19:12 Speaker 3 Really? Wait, but French Jews generally do know Hebrew.

19:16 Speaker 2 They don’t know Hebrew.

19:17 Speaker 3 No?

19:17 Speaker 2 Most of them don’t know English, either. Look, some of them speak excellent English. Some are also in an English-language program. There’s a French-language program there, and most go into that; some go into the English-language program, and of course they speak good English. But I feel that part of our connection can’t develop if we don’t speak their language. So I’m working on it now, and it’s very hard.

19:44 Speaker 3 Good luck! Wow. Wait, and what about your Romanian?

19:47 Speaker 2 I speak Romanian well enough to communicate. I mean, I speak it well. Some people even tell me, “Wow, you’ve only been here a few years and you speak so well.” But to me, I don’t speak it that well.

19:57 Speaker 3 I can relate from my own experience.

19:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

19:59 Speaker 3 And you know how many mistakes you make.

20:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:01 Speaker 3 But to someone on the outside—speak Romanian right now, and I’d have no idea what’s right and what isn’t.

20:05 Speaker 2 Right. Imagine me giving a lecture on Chassidus. But no, I manage very well with Romanian. Let’s put it this way: if I know French as well as I know Romanian, that’ll be great.

20:13 Speaker 3 That’s the goal.

20:14 Speaker 2 Yes. Actually, I’ve specifically made it my goal to know French really, really well—to the point where I can give a Torah class. I said to myself, after a few years, enough; I want to.

20:21 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s a high level.

20:22 Speaker 2 Right? So I’m really trying to invest in it, and that’s my plan for the coming year too: to put real effort into studying French. Because we truly have a lot of French students. If you take a hundred, say it’s thirty percent and seventy percent—about seventy percent French.

20:40 Speaker 3 Wow.

20:40 Speaker 2 Something like that. Yes, that’s roughly the ratio, so it really does call for an investment. So we have the students, and we also have a local Jewish community of Romanian Jews. It’s a small community, certainly compared with other places in Eastern Europe, where the communities are usually larger—just a few hundred people. On paper, you know, there are maybe five hundred? I don’t know, something like that. I haven’t met all five hundred yet.

21:08 Speaker 3 You haven’t found them yet.

21:09 Speaker 2 We haven’t found them yet. Yes, but they’re there. You also have to understand that for many, many years, Jewish life there was largely forgotten. There wasn’t much activity. There is a Jewish community that holds services on the holidays and so on, but people gradually became very assimilated into their surroundings, let’s put it that way.

21:31 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

21:32 Speaker 2 Very assimilated into their surroundings. And suddenly—and it’s sad to say this—but sometimes it takes a while before they feel something is missing and want to be part of it.

21:44 Speaker 3 Even to identify as Jewish in the first place.

21:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:46 Speaker 3 And to understand that it means something to you.

21:48 Speaker 2 Yes, that it has meaning. That it isn’t just written somewhere on some document or...

21:53 Speaker 3 Yes. I remember that in Kharkov I once met a Jewish woman, and we were talking about Pesach. It was before Pesach. Now, she was Jewish: her birth certificate, her Jewish mother, her Jewish grandmother. She says to me, “Pesach? Oh, for us that’s Easter.”

22:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

22:08 Speaker 3 And you think to yourself, okay, wait a second.

22:10 Speaker 2 Or they might...

22:11 Speaker 3 She didn’t understand the whole thing about...

22:13 Speaker 2 In Romanian, they actually write “Jewish Passover,” because there’s Easter.

22:18 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

22:18 Speaker 2 “Jewish Passover.”

22:19 Speaker 3 And you think, let’s go back a few steps and explain what it means that she’s Jewish at all.

22:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

22:23 Speaker 3 It really is like that.

22:24 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. So there are many people who didn’t feel anything was missing, or who didn’t grow up around Jewish life at all. I’ll also tell you something I’ve noticed among Romanian Jews: Judaism is very much seen as a culture. Even the synagogue, which they’ve renovated, is called something like “Jewish Cultural Center” in Romanian. In other words, it’s a kind of culture.

22:52 Speaker 3 Yes.

22:52 Speaker 2 It’s culture. It’s not something for everyday life; it’s more for holidays and... So it takes time, you know, to bring it to a place where it really is our everyday life—morning, afternoon and evening, every moment, every hour. But little by little, you can see steps—very, very small steps, but you can see change. You can definitely see a change in some people. There are people who suddenly come to shul to daven every Shabbos, after years of not setting foot in a shul. So yes. We have that community, which is fairly small. And before the war, we had direct flights several times a week, so we also had travelers and tourists. Not in the numbers you get in Thailand or South America.

23:46 Speaker 3 Don’t expect that when you come.

23:48 Speaker 2 Those aren’t the numbers. Even when we had direct flights, those weren’t the numbers. Certainly not now that the direct flights have stopped, though they’re coming back soon, with Hashem’s help. But there were always some. As I said at the beginning, it’s boutique. There’s a little of everything.

24:04 Speaker 3 A little, a little.

24:05 Speaker 2 Just a touch of everything.

24:07 Speaker 3 It’s very challenging, because each audience here is a world of its own.

24:10 Speaker 2 Right.

24:11 Speaker 3 A whole world.

24:12 Speaker 2 Right. It’s also very challenging because every time you do something, you’re not quite sure: Okay, which group am I aiming for most? Who should I reach out to, and how? You know, it’s very, very complicated. Even when we think about bigger things, like the building we’re establishing, with Hashem’s help: Okay, who does it most need to serve? What goes where? And it needs a bit of everything. So you really have to work very intensively to figure out who I’m serving most day to day, who comes more on Shabbos, and who comes more for the holidays. It varies a lot.

24:48 Speaker 3 Take Rosh Hashanah, for example.

24:50 Speaker 2 Yes. And I can never really know. This year, until the last minute, I thought Rosh Hashanah would be very small, because the students haven’t arrived yet. Their studies only begin at the end of September, after Rosh Hashanah. And there are no direct flights. So I made my estimates, and then, little by little, I discovered that my estimates weren’t necessarily right.

25:16 Speaker 3 Meaning tourists are coming.

25:18 Speaker 2 Tourists, and also people from the community who would usually go to the big shul, where they would have their Rosh Hashanah meal. Suddenly I saw that they... I don’t know, maybe they’re not doing it this year. I don’t know; I don’t want to get into the politics of it. But suddenly I saw they had signed up with us, and things like that. I also saw that quite a large group of new students coming for their first year are arriving before Rosh Hashanah, with their parents or families. So I realized, okay, what I thought it would be isn’t what it’s going to be. I’m actually happy about that, even with all the work it means for me. But the holidays are often very hard for me because they come before the students start. A lot of times, there weren’t many people for Rosh Hashanah, and that was very, very hard for me. Sitting down to a Rosh Hashanah meal with twenty people—I found that really, really, really hard.

26:10 Speaker 3 Twenty people. Compared to how many this year, say?

26:13 Speaker 2 Compared to... I can’t tell you yet how many there will be this year. But when the students are here—though classes have never started by Rosh Hashanah—last year, for instance, we had a hundred people for Rosh Hashanah. So suddenly sitting down with twenty, you know, feels disappointing. To be honest, it’s disappointing.

26:32 Speaker 3 It’s all relative.

26:33 Speaker 2 Yes. People think, “But you’re doing all that work, so maybe it’s better for you if fewer people come.” No. It isn’t.

26:40 Speaker 3 But you want to know in advance.

26:42 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, I want to know in advance. I just told you that last year we had a hundred people, but only about forty actually signed up. I said, okay, if forty signed up, I have to... I’ve learned by now. We did our calculations. So with forty signed up, we prepared for seventy. Okay? Almost double. And a hundred people came.

27:01 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s crazy.

27:02 Speaker 2 And you think, wait, where were they all those months when I was sending out the registration?

27:06 Speaker 3 And this is Rosh Hashanah.

27:07 Speaker 2 And this is Rosh Hashanah, yes. Boruch Hashem, there really have been miracles every time. I always say, you know, they really are miracles—there’s food and everything. So a friend said to me, “Okay, then why do you get stressed? In the end it always...” But every time there’s that fear: Maybe this time there won’t be enough. Maybe this time something won’t...

27:22 Speaker 3 It could also be that those miracles are partly within the natural order—that you have extra things in the freezer, or I don’t know what you suddenly pull out.

27:29 Speaker 2 No, look, once people are already sitting down, I can’t take anything out of the freezer. Taking something out of the freezer won’t help. But I don’t know. Maybe I’m used to how things were at my mother’s house, where cooking for seventy is basically cooking for a hundred anyway. Last year my niece was staying with me and helped me. She cooked too, and she’s also been influenced by her grandmother—my mother.

27:51 Speaker 3 The quantities.

27:51 Speaker 2 Yes, the quantities. So there really wasn’t a shortage. Boruch Hashem, I honestly don’t think there’s ever been a situation where there wasn’t enough food. Maybe to my eyes, compared with the quantities I’m used to, I got nervous when the salad plates were empty or something. But I don’t know—there have never been complaints, boruch Hashem.

28:14 Speaker 3 But people need to understand that you really do all of this from scratch.

28:17 Speaker 2 Right, right.

28:18 Speaker 3 And I saw that you already made challahs for Rosh Hashanah—

28:20 Speaker 2 Right.

28:20 Speaker 3 About a month ago.

28:21 Speaker 2 Right, because we’re here now, as you can see, and we’re only getting back right before Rosh Hashanah.

28:25 Speaker 3 No, because it’s... What kind of quantity are we talking about? How many kilos do you need for the holidays? It’s...

28:29 Speaker 2 I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I make estimates. Okay, since the students aren’t really here yet this year, though some are, we’re estimating up to sixty people, let’s say. Okay? So I prepare accordingly. I say, okay, if there are sixty people... Now, it could be that by Rosh Hashanah I’ll suddenly discover there are more, and I’ll have to rush and make more. You can’t know. But yes, I do it. And for the last two years, my niece was here with me. She really helped me a lot—she saved my life.

29:03 Speaker 3 A dream.

29:04 Speaker 2 Yes. But she isn’t here this year, and I’ve brought in a local woman. Still, the responsibility really, really comes back to me. There are things I like about that. I’m very much someone who needs to be in control, needs to know what’s going on. But it also demands a lot physically. Sometimes it’s very, very hard to stand and cook such large quantities. If I know in advance, that’s one thing. Okay, it’s stressful and physically hard and everything. But when you don’t know how many you’re preparing for, there’s also the stress of wondering whether you need more—or maybe you need less. There’s also that feeling of, oh no, maybe food will go to waste. Though I honestly don’t remember ever throwing food away.

29:50 Speaker 3 There’s always something you can do with it.

29:51 Speaker 2 It’s really rare. A very rare situation. But when you don’t know in advance, there’s also that constant element of stress. I don’t think it’s ever happened that the number of people who signed up was the number who came. I always allow for more, because it definitely won’t be exactly that—or people let me know on Friday at four in the afternoon.

30:19 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. I think this is exactly the place to say to everyone listening that sometimes people really imagine a Chabad House as this kind of place—

30:29 Speaker 2 Where there’s a kitchen and I just notify the kitchen. Yes, I simply tell them, “Listen, there are about ten more people today, so plan accordingly.”

30:36 Speaker 3 But maybe there are places where it really works like that.

30:37 Speaker 2 Yes. No, there definitely are. But you know what? I also want to say that even in a place with a kitchen and staff, in most places you can’t come to them at five in the afternoon on Friday, when they’ve probably already finished cooking, and say, “Listen, I have another twenty people,” or another ten people. In some places, even another three or four people makes a difference.

30:58 Speaker 3 Right.

30:58 Speaker 2 It makes a difference. I’m not talking about cases where someone gets stranded, okay? There really are cases where a person wasn’t supposed to be there—maybe their flight was delayed or something. Fine, that happens. But usually it’s not dozens of people. I’m not talking about what happened in Greece a few years ago, when an El Al plane arrived from New York and the passengers couldn’t make it to where they were going before Shabbos. I don’t know if you remember.

31:17 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes.

31:18 Speaker 2 Okay, those really are exceptional cases—

31:19 Speaker 3 Well, that’s a story of its own.

31:21 Speaker 2 Yes, once in a decade. I’m talking about things that happen all the time, where people just don’t understand what the problem is. “What? We’re only five more people.” And I always say: Suppose you’re cooking for Shabbos for however many people you have. Suddenly, at two or three on Friday afternoon, your son tells you, “Mom, listen, I’m coming with another five or six friends.” Would you take that completely in stride? Most people probably wouldn’t. Even if you say yes, it still takes work.

31:53 Speaker 3 It takes work, right.

31:54 Speaker 2 It takes work to get ready and host them. And sometimes people really do let me know when I can no longer make arrangements to host them, and all I can do is hope.

32:03 Speaker 3 [unclear]

32:03 Speaker 2 Hoping it’ll work out, or that there will physically be enough chairs, or I don’t know what.

32:09 Speaker 3 I think a lot of people genuinely don’t know that you can register for a Shabbos meal or a Yom Tov meal at a Chabad House. It’s just a simple Google search.

32:19 Speaker 2 Right, right.

32:20 Speaker 3 Say I’m traveling and I want to spend Rosh Hashanah in Cluj. What do I do?

32:24 Speaker 2 Type “Chabad Cluj” into Google. It’s very, very accessible. It’s the first result, and right now, when you open our website, the first thing you see is the Rosh Hashanah meal. It’s really, really hard to miss the registration. And our phone numbers are everywhere too, so you can ask and check what we have and what we don’t. I always say—I even wrote a post about this about two years ago—people, as I said at the beginning, have a picture of what a Chabad House is and what it offers, because they visited one somewhere, and they take that picture with them on vacation. But every Chabad House—I really don’t think there are two Chabad Houses in the world that are exactly alike. Each one has its own character, and so much disappointment could be avoided if you just check in advance. You checked the hotel and probably booked it in advance; you checked your flight—at the very least, you checked your flight in advance. So if you keep kosher and Shabbos and you need these things, certainly check in advance. Because sometimes I feel bad telling someone we don’t have a service they need. People need to understand that it isn’t the same everywhere. If you’ve been to a Chabad House with a huge supermarket stocked with everything, that doesn’t mean another Chabad House will have one. Really check these things, because people—if you plan ahead, you can bring what you need from Israel or change your itinerary, whatever works for you. But really, sometimes

33:56 Speaker 2 my heart aches for people who haven’t planned ahead. As far as they’re concerned, they were in—I don’t know, Budapest, for example. It’s a nearby city, so what could be different? But Budapest has, I don’t know, maybe seven kosher restaurants and a store and everything, and we don’t. So—

34:10 Speaker 3 The kosher restaurant is your kitchen at home.

34:12 Speaker 2 It’s my kitchen at home, absolutely. People think they’re all branches of the same chain. You know, like when you go to Zara. But even at Zara, they won’t necessarily have the same dress at another branch, right? So here, certainly, it’s completely different. Every Chabad House has different resources, and it can be completely, completely different.

34:37 Speaker 3 Yes, sometimes you want it to look a certain way, but you don’t have the means yet.

34:41 Speaker 2 Yes, you don’t have the means. Sometimes there isn’t a need for it. Even with us, for example, we usually have a store for the students during the year, but at certain times we don’t have many products. Right now, before we bring in products for the new year, there’s almost nothing. So if someone doesn’t ask and just lands in Cluj, they’ll find that we have milk and wine, and some meat too—not a big selection. So this is really the place to say: for your own sake, so you don’t suddenly get stuck—I don’t just mean here, okay? There are other Chabad Houses like ours. We have a mikvah, for example; some places don’t have a mikvah, and there are all kinds of differences.

35:29 Speaker 3 Right. Say you’re going on vacation and you need one. You check, there’s a Chabad House, okay.

35:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:35 Speaker 3 And suddenly there isn’t a mikvah. That could be absolutely crazy. It—

35:37 Speaker 2 Right. I’ll go even further: even if you see that there’s a Chabad House and a mikvah, call beforehand and ask. Maybe the shlucha has just given birth and they’re in Israel. Or maybe, I don’t know, they’re simply out of town.

35:53 Speaker 3 Or something goes wrong with the mikvah, and that’s it—there’s no alternative.

35:56 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. In any situation, really, just check. It can save a lot of disappointment. People say, “What? But I saw there’s a Chabad House.” So now we’ve explained that—

36:08 Speaker 3 So you’ve encountered people’s disappointment.

36:11 Speaker 2 Oh, definitely.

36:12 Speaker 3 Oh, that’s unpleasant.

36:12 Speaker 2 It’s happened a lot. I’ve met people who just can’t believe things are different from place to place. They don’t understand: “What’s the problem? Can’t you just send us—we’re in some city, I don’t know where—what’s the problem with sending us a hundred rolls?” Try explaining that you’re the one standing there making them. It wasn’t even a hundred; in one case it was something like a thousand. They said, “What’s the problem? Can’t you find a supplier and a truck to send them over?” And you’re trying to explain, “Listen, there’s nothing here. There’s no supplier, no bakery. It’s us.” Or someone called me on Friday asking for challahs. I don’t remember what time it was. She said, “I need this many challahs.” I told her, “Oh, listen, I don’t know if I have time to make them now.” People need to understand that in many places—and I’m definitely not the only shlucha—it’s the shlucha herself standing there making them. I can make challahs available, but I need at least a day’s notice. At least.

37:11 Speaker 3 Yes.

37:11 Speaker 2 So I can make them. It’s really something people are gradually starting to see. Just as people are gradually realizing there isn’t some umbrella organization that funds all the Chabad Houses.

37:25 Speaker 3 Yes.

37:25 Speaker 2 I see more and more people who... but still, there aren’t—

37:28 Speaker 3 Still not enough.

37:29 Speaker 2 Yes, there are still people who don’t know. They’re genuinely shocked to hear it. It really does seem... it really doesn’t make sense.

37:35 Speaker 3 Right, it’s beyond nature.

37:36 Speaker 2 It’s beyond nature.

37:37 Speaker 3 That’s why it’s so...

37:38 Speaker 2 But people say to me, “What do you mean? There’s no global Chabad that sends you everything each month?” And I’m like, “No, there isn’t. There isn’t, and...”

37:45 Speaker 3 If you’ve heard of it, let me know.

37:46 Speaker 2 Yes, maybe. Maybe it exists and I don’t know about it. Great—tell me! But no, there isn’t. I think people are gradually coming to understand that each Chabad House—although we’re... I absolutely see myself as part of something worldwide, okay? At the Kinus and all that, I feel it too. My children also very much feel that we’re part of something very, very big. But every part of that big thing is completely different.

38:13 Speaker 3 Yes, it really depends on the place, the needs and the resources. So...

38:18 Speaker 2 Yes. I also think people—maybe especially in Israel, though I don’t know if that’s fair to say; perhaps it’s just people who haven’t seen it elsewhere—think a Chabad House is for tourists, for travelers.

38:29 Speaker 3 Yes.

38:29 Speaker 2 It’s there so that people going abroad will have somewhere to have a Shabbos meal. Now, there are places where that really is—

38:34 Speaker 3 A Chabad House for travelers.

38:35 Speaker 2 There is such a thing. But I think—I can’t give you numbers or statistics—there are so many Chabad Houses where travelers are... well, we’re already here, and of course we’ll help them too. We’ll help any Jew, so we’ll help travelers. But that isn’t most of our day-to-day work. For us, for example, most of it is the students and the Jews who live here. There are also a few people who come to Cluj on business and are in touch with us. But tourists—how should I put it? They’re more of a side part of what we do.

39:06 Speaker 3 Yes.

39:07 Speaker 2 We’re already here, so we help them with Shabbos meals and whatever else they need, as much as we can. But that isn’t why we came to Cluj.

39:15 Speaker 3 The Chabad House is actually your home.

39:16 Speaker 2 It’s our home. Yes.

39:18 Speaker 3 I’m imagining someone who was in Thailand recently.

39:20 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:21 Speaker 3 And they sat there with guitars...

39:23 Speaker 2 How lovely.

39:23 Speaker 3 And learned late into the night.

39:25 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:26 Speaker 3 Then suddenly he arrives in Cluj and says, “Hey, where’s the Chabad House?” He knocks on your door at ten at night, when you’re just about to go to sleep.

39:33 Speaker 2 Yes. Actually...

39:34 Speaker 3 They.

39:35 Speaker 2 The truth is… yes. Where we are now is our home, but downstairs we have a space that does look somewhat like a Chabad House—a shul and… Before that, it really was right in our living room. In our first year in Cluj, before we moved here, everything was in our living room, and it was very, very difficult. So we moved to where we are now. But even now, there are advantages to having it in our home. It’s convenient when there are events; I don’t have to haul things over. But of course there are disadvantages too. As you said, in people’s minds, at ten at night, or… If it were somewhere outside our home—I don’t know how it works in Thailand, but some Chabad Houses have opening hours, you know, from eight until, I don’t know, nine at night. There’s a secretary, someone who opens up and someone who closes. Here, the feeling, and maybe the expectation, is: “You’re right upstairs. Just come down for a moment and open up. What’s the problem?” But sometimes…

40:34 Speaker 4 It’s like twenty-four seven.

40:35 Speaker 2 Around the clock. Yes, yes. Now, when we can, it’s really no problem. Sometimes we open up without being downstairs ourselves, though there isn’t necessarily much to do there. But okay, there’s coffee, something. Sometimes, though, we can’t open up. For all sorts of reasons. At the end of the day, it’s our home.

40:56 Speaker 4 The mikveh is in the same building too, right?

40:58 Speaker 2 Right, in the same building.

41:00 Speaker 4 Wow.

41:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

41:00 Speaker 4 Do you ever leave the house?

41:02 Speaker 2 Oh, that’s…

41:03 Speaker 4 I feel like you could go whole days without leaving.

41:05 Speaker 2 I do go whole days without leaving the house. Some people might go crazy from that. For me, a lot of the time, it actually suits me. It’s comfortable. I’m not really someone who likes going out.

41:15 Speaker 4 Minister of the Interior.

41:16 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. But I do go out from time to time, though I would like to… The plan is that when we have the building, the children will at least do their schoolwork outside the home. I mean, they don’t go to school.

41:34 Speaker 4 Our children don’t leave the house either.

41:35 Speaker 2 They don’t leave the house. Now that they’ve gotten a little older, we’re really particular about getting them into activities. They really have to get out of the house.

41:43 Speaker 4 And it’s not just that they don’t go out—they study in front of a computer.

41:45 Speaker 2 They study in front of a computer, and they get up in the morning… Something that was very, very important to me was that their computer station shouldn’t be in their bedrooms. It doesn’t always work out. My daughter’s is in her bedroom, but my younger son has a small room where he studies. At least he leaves his bedroom, you know? He shouldn’t just get up, throw something on, and start class.

42:09 Speaker 4 Get a little oxygen flowing.

42:10 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, something. In our previous home, we actually had a schoolroom. It was downstairs, so at least they went down two flights of stairs.

42:19 Speaker 4 So it was a room in the house.

42:21 Speaker 2 Yes. I even made up the walls for them like a classroom and all that. But now we don’t really have the physical space. So my daughter does sit in her room with her computer, and at least my son leaves his room. But the plan, the dream, is… My daughter may have moved out by the time it happens, but at least for the ones coming after her, I want them to study somewhere in the Chabad House building, in a separate space outside our home, so they’ll get out of the house a little. Yes.

42:51 Speaker 4 Wow. Tell me, I wanted to ask you about teaching brides. You mentioned it earlier, and I know you’ve now started teaching brides over Zoom too, separately from the Chabad House.

43:01 Speaker 2 Right, right.

43:02 Speaker 4 Did that grow out of what you were already doing?

43:05 Speaker 2 So…

43:06 Speaker 4 I mean, you’d studied how to teach brides anyway.

43:08 Speaker 2 Yes. What happened was, back when I was still in Bucharest, a few of the students got married, and there was a need for me to learn how to teach brides. So I started getting involved and studying it. And actually, when I was a bride myself and taking those classes, I kept saying to myself, “Wow, one day I need to do this too.” First of all, I really, really liked the woman who taught me. I just really…

43:33 Speaker 4 Give her a shout-out.

43:33 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Rebbetzin Yurkovich—I’m still in touch with her to this day. I thought very highly of her, and I really enjoyed the classes as a bride. It stayed in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do. I didn’t know when I’d get the chance.

43:48 Speaker 4 And then you went out on shlichus.

43:49 Speaker 2 And I went out on shlichus. So…

43:50 Speaker 4 So you kind of left it behind.

43:52 Speaker 2 Yes. Well, no—that’s the thing. Suddenly, on shlichus, there was a need for it, and I started with students who were getting married and needed those classes. So I’ve been doing this for more than ten years. But a while ago, I felt I wanted to do more with it, to do it on a broader scale. And also to do something that wasn’t connected to the house or the Chabad House—something outside of…

44:21 Speaker 4 At least get out a little, virtually.

44:22 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. So I also took a professional course in teaching brides through the Rabbinical Centre of Europe. I really wanted to expand my studies in the field, so I studied marriage counseling too. I thought, “That’s connected to teaching brides as well.” And I started teaching brides who were, let’s call them, from our community. I don’t know what to call it—Chabad brides, chareidi brides. I actually landed in that particular niche by chance, because someone approached me. A friend knew a woman who was getting married and said, “Listen, I really think you’d be a great fit to teach her.” I said, “You know, up till now I’ve taught students who were getting married just a few classes—two or three. Not a full course.” She said, “Yes, yes, but I really think it would work.” So I said okay. It was during COVID, and she needed to do it over Zoom anyway. So I taught her over Zoom, and I enjoyed it so much. We did seven or eight classes, and I said, “Okay, I need to do something with this.”

45:30 Speaker 4 Wow.

45:31 Speaker 2 It took a little longer before I really expanded it. So today I teach students who are getting married. I’ve also taught brides referred to me by shluchim in other places, when they were looking for someone to teach a woman from their Chabad House. And I teach Chabad girls too. There’s a very big difference between teaching two or three classes and teaching eight very comprehensive classes.

46:00 Speaker 4 Yes, it’s a different process.

46:01 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a different process. But the satisfaction is the same, and the feeling of shlichus is definitely the same. It’s a field I’ve really connected with. Apart from teaching brides, I don’t have much opportunity to work in it day to day. I mean, we have a mikveh here and so on. But through teaching brides, I suddenly have a real place to be involved in this area of family purity. It’s grown. It’s funny where it started and where it’s…

46:43 Speaker 4 But you know, it’s lovely to see that. I think that a lot of the time, when people go out on shlichus, there’s a feeling of, “Okay, I’ll be on shlichus, but I’ve left my dreams behind.”

46:53 Speaker 2 Wow, it’s so interesting that you say that, because it makes me laugh. Every time I put together some incredible scenery for Purim—and in general, I really love putting effort into how events look, into the design, because I love aesthetics—the students come in, see it, and say, “Wow, Freidy, you have to do something with this.”

47:15 Speaker 4 I am.

47:16 Speaker 2 Exactly, I am! Someone once told me, “Wow, you have to go into event production.” That’s what I do. That’s exactly what I do.

47:23 Speaker 4 It’s beautiful to see how every shlucha…

47:25 Speaker 2 Finds her…

47:26 Speaker 4 Yes, because ultimately, you were sent into the world to live in Cluj, as things stand now, and do what you do. But you also have particular abilities that…

47:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:36 Speaker 4 You know, for your own well-being, need an outlet.

47:39 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I think it would be very, very hard to keep going on shlichus if…

47:42 Speaker 4 Without that.

47:43 Speaker 2 If your talents and the things you love doing had no outlet. I mean, how long can you keep doing something just because it needs to be done?

47:50 Speaker 4 Right.

47:50 Speaker 2 Honestly, in everything I do in this area, I bring that in so I won’t suffer through it. Even food I need to send to tourists—I’ll find some pretty packaging and pack it in an attractive way, and that makes it—

48:06 Speaker 4 Stop right there. There’s a great shop.

48:08 Speaker 2 Right? But in Romania it’s very, very hard to find things like that. We make do with what we have, though.

48:12 Speaker 4 What, they even take ceramic plates on a picnic, don’t they?

48:15 Speaker 2 Oh, yes. Or you’ll find, say, a package of disposable plates with three plates in it.

48:19 Speaker 4 Wow.

48:20 Speaker 2 Like, what am I supposed to do with that? So yes, that part is very challenging, but you find what you can work with. I really bring it into almost everything, because that’s what lets me enjoy doing it. And I think enjoyment is very... We talk a lot about kabbolas ol, about doing things because we have to, and how life isn’t a picnic. And that’s true, okay? But at the end of the day, we’re human beings with an animal soul, and we want to enjoy ourselves. We want to feel like—

48:52 Speaker 4 Right.

48:53 Speaker 2 —doing it.

48:54 Speaker 4 Ultimately, according to Chassidus, it all comes down to pleasure.

48:58 Speaker 2 Exactly.

48:59 Speaker 4 You take that pleasure and turn it into the pleasure of doing good things with it, of bringing good into the world, and—

49:04 Speaker 2 Exactly. That really connects with the Tanya classes I teach the students. I tell them that the approach of Chassidus, the approach of Tanya, is precisely not to break that part of ourselves that asks, “What’s in it for me?” There’s a model like that in customer retention. A long, long time ago, in my previous life, I worked in that field too.

49:22 Speaker 4 Your previous life. One of your incarnations.

49:23 Speaker 2 One of my incarnations. And I remember a trainer telling us that with anything a person does, you need a “what’s in it for me” model.

49:36 Speaker 4 That’s interesting.

49:36 Speaker 2 Because ultimately, with anything—if you’re trying to sell someone something, for instance—what are they getting out of it right now? Okay? And that can apply to... It sounds very shallow to people, but it isn’t, because even with something very spiritual, the question is still, “What am I getting out of this?” I—

49:52 Speaker 4 Right. Even when we give a class, we need to have refreshments. And when we ourselves go somewhere, we need something too. The animal soul is there; it exists—

50:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

50:02 Speaker 4 It’s alive.

50:02 Speaker 2 Trying to ignore it or break it—

50:04 Speaker 4 Yes.

50:05 Speaker 2 —is bound to fail.

50:06 Speaker 4 On the contrary. In this case, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave you that sense precisely so you could bring it—

50:14 Speaker 2 Into expression. Exactly.

50:14 Speaker 4 Into expression in a good way.

50:15 Speaker 2 Otherwise, it’s a waste of a gift. What else would it be?

50:17 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

50:17 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave you a talent—use it.

50:21 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

50:21 Speaker 2 Use it for good things, but use it. And I see this from two angles: using your talents, and also... For example, I once had a conversation about keeping mitzvos. Take Shabbos. Some people find Shabbos very, very hard—not being able to use their phone and so on. I always say, okay, if you’re already keeping Shabbos—for instance, if someone has already started—find what you enjoy about it. Do whatever will make keeping Shabbos enjoyable for you, rather than keeping it only because you feel you have to.

50:51 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

50:52 Speaker 2 Okay? Find what makes you feel good. With every mitzvah, in every area. That’s what I talk about even with washing dishes: find what makes you happy and what you enjoy in everything, whether it’s keeping mitzvos or—not only that, at home too. Okay? I’m not saying... There are things we do because we have to. There are things that aren’t fun, like cleaning and hanging up laundry.

51:13 Speaker 4 Cooking.

51:13 Speaker 2 Some people even enjoy cleaning, okay? But you have to have things you enjoy doing. Otherwise, you’ll constantly feel... I think it’ll reach a boiling point.

51:24 Speaker 4 Yes.

51:24 Speaker 2 You can’t spend your whole life doing things just because you have no choice.

51:29 Speaker 4 Right.

51:29 Speaker 2 So I find—

51:31 Speaker 4 In motherhood, in everything.

51:33 Speaker 2 Right. So in shlichus I find all the places where I can express that. Whether it’s designing events or... I’m telling you, even food I need to send to a group—I’ll find a way to... It really is... And sometimes I feel I have to change things up so they’ll challenge me. I was just talking about this with a friend. We often travel together, and the question came up: why not take something ready-made that someone else has already done? But that doesn’t challenge me. So I need—

52:06 Speaker 4 I think that also... What sort of ready-made things, for example? A program?

52:10 Speaker 2 A program I have no problem using. But take Purim, for example. Every year we choose a theme for Purim. Now, some themes are very easy and accessible, let’s call them that. Pinterest is full of ideas for them, and you can find accessories everywhere. Somehow, those always bore me. So I find—

52:29 Speaker 4 You go specifically for the—

52:30 Speaker 2 So I come up with things myself. I don’t know where the ideas come from, and I find accessories in all sorts of places.

52:37 Speaker 4 Because you love it.

52:38 Speaker 2 I really, really love it.

52:39 Speaker 4 And when you create it from scratch instead of taking something ready-made—

52:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:42 Speaker 4 —it creates a connection too.

52:43 Speaker 2 Exactly. So I’ll work very, very hard on it, and it definitely gives me satisfaction. Of course, we try very hard to make sure everything has content too. It’s not just about how it looks; we always connect it to the message. But the designing and sewing are part of what gives me satisfaction. And not just that. People often tell me, “But they don’t really need all that.” Of course they don’t. I’ve talked about this with other shluchos too, because you know how often we fall into comparing ourselves and saying, “I could never do something like that.” You don’t have to. You really, really don’t. I don’t think anyone in my community needs me to hang mushrooms from the ceiling for Purim, okay? They’ll be fine; they’ll have a lovely time without it too. But that’s my part, and in a way it’s a little bit for me as well. I simply enjoy doing it, despite all the difficulty involved, because there’s plenty of that. But then seeing the result—it really... I just enjoy it, and that’s what it adds. That’s definitely my personal contribution to the whole thing.

53:40 Speaker 4 That’s the beauty of it: every Chabad House reflects the character—

53:44 Speaker 2 Right.

53:44 Speaker 4 —of its shluchim. And whoever comes there, it’s by Divine Providence that this is what they need to receive.

53:48 Speaker 2 That’s exactly what I wanted to say. If I ended up in this particular place—do I feel that every day? No. But I remind myself that if I came here, it means the talents and gifts Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave me, my husband, and our family are exactly what this place needs. That’s what this place needs. And it really takes work to see that and believe it. But you do see it. I think sometimes it’s much easier to see when you look at other Chabad Houses from the outside. It’s harder to see it in yourself.

54:24 Speaker 4 Yes, that’s true.

54:25 Speaker 2 Suddenly you see how perfectly someone suits that place and those people. And often we also work on ourselves, adapting ourselves to the place so we can be the best we can be for it. That connects with what we said at the beginning: “Why didn’t you go somewhere like Kos or something?” I tell them, we don’t look at a map for the places with beautiful beaches and decide to go there. When we went out on shlichus, we were needed in Bucharest. Later, we were needed in Cluj, so that’s where we went.

54:55 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

54:55 Speaker 2 And...

54:56 Speaker 4 Hakadosh Boruch Hu leads us.

54:57 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely. I think that if there’s one thing you encounter most on shlichus, it’s suddenly seeing hashgachah pratis, Divine Providence. You know, I grew up in Kfar Chabad, so all my life I’d heard about hashgachah pratis. But as I told you, before we went to Cluj, I was really, really worried about it. About having the children at home, and suddenly having to take care of all the finances and everything else. I had a very good friend who, a few years earlier, around the time we went to Bucharest, had gone with her family to a different city on their own. I spoke to her, and she said, “You’ll see. You’ll just see the hashgachah pratis.” Now, she isn’t someone who sees hashgachah pratis in every little thing. She’s a very realistic person. So I thought, if she’s talking like that, she probably knows what she’s saying. And it made me really, really nervous. But now I say the same thing to others, because I know that when shluchim are going somewhere, they often think, “That happens to other people, not to me.” It takes time. But suddenly you start seeing hashgachah pratis in so many things. All sorts of situations happen, and you think, “Someone made sure this would happen at exactly this moment.” We also have a very special story of hashgachah pratis about how we bought our building.

56:19 Speaker 4 The one you’re in now?

56:20 Speaker 2 No.

56:21 Speaker 4 Right.

56:21 Speaker 2 The one we bought. When I tell this story, people think I’m telling it because of the money we received. But the money is almost incidental. I mean, it’s important, but—

56:32 Speaker 4 It’s the miracle.

56:32 Speaker 2 The hashgachah pratis in how it all happened—how things happened at particular moments and came together the way they did—that’s the story. Now, this story doesn’t quite have a happy ending yet, because our building still isn’t ready. We haven’t had the dedication yet. But I’ve already seen the hashgachah pratis, and it’s clear to me that something is waiting for us. You know, there’s going to be tremendous hashgachah pratis that we’ll see. But we’ve already seen the hashgachah pratis in how the building came to us in the first place.

57:08 Speaker 4 Is it a story you can tell?

57:10 Speaker 2 I can tell it.

57:12 Speaker 4 Go ahead.

57:13 Speaker 2 My husband has already told it on a few platforms. It’s a story that stretches over a long time, so I’ll try to focus on a shorter part of it. Someone came to visit us—some Jewish man in our city knew him. He was a very big businessman, and this man told us, “Listen, he eats kosher. Make him breakfast.” I have to tell you, that morning it was really, really hard for me to put that breakfast together. But someone from the community had asked us, so I thought, all right, we’ll make the effort. I think it was sometime during COVID. We made him breakfast, and my husband sat and spoke with him a little, trying to interest him in our work. Maybe he’d want to help, to support us. This was before we had our own building, and my husband thought maybe he’d want to help us with that. But he didn’t get to speak with him for long. The man had meetings and had to leave, and that was basically it. He gave us a nice donation, but we didn’t really have any further contact with him.

58:13 Speaker 4 Life went on.

58:14 Speaker 2 I don’t remember exactly—probably two years later. It was the year of Hakhel, and our whole family traveled for the Kinus Hashluchos. As soon as we arrived, my husband got a letter from our bank in the United States saying they were closing our account. No explanation, nothing. Just closing the account. All right, he went in, and it took him maybe two days to sort it out. We were already in Crown Heights, and he took care of it. Everything was great. The Kinus ended, and on our way back we had a stopover in Turkey. Back then, you could do that.

58:50 Speaker 4 Things change so quickly.

58:52 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And just as we landed in Turkey, he got a message from the new bank where he’d opened an account saying they’d blocked it. An account he’d only just opened while we were there. He called them, and they said, “We’re very sorry, but you have to come here in person.” He said, “But I was just there. I’m on my way back to Europe.” They said, “We’re very sorry. You have to come here in person.” That was on Thursday. On Sunday he had to fly back, and he used the opportunity to fundraise for the Chabad House with another friend. So he went. He sorted out the account within—I don’t know how many hours—but he stayed there. On Friday his friend arrived, and my husband said to him, “Come, take me to the Ohel,” because he doesn’t drive there. His friend said, “Listen, I was already there on Wednesday. But all right, I’ll do it for you. I’ll go with you to the Ohel.” And as my husband walked in, he saw the man who had come to our place for breakfast.

59:50 Speaker 4 Wow, what are the chances?

59:51 Speaker 2 Yes. And the man said, “I’ll be with you in a moment. I’m going into the Ohel itself, and I’ll be right with you.” When he came out, he started talking with my husband: “How are you?” and so on. And my husband said, “Listen, there’s a building we really want to buy now, and we need help.” The man said, “All right, all right. How much do you need?” Now, you know, you have a split second to decide. If you say too much, maybe you’ll put him off. On the other hand—really, it was hashgachah pratis—my husband told him roughly the full amount we needed for the building. And he said, “You’ve got it.”

1:00:26 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:00:26 Speaker 2 Just like that. And we’re talking about large sums of money—really large sums. By then it was already Friday afternoon in New York. For us, Shabbos was five minutes away. My husband called to tell me, and I said, “All right, all right.” I thought he was exaggerating. As if this man was really going to give him the entire amount for the building. Come on. But here’s the story behind it: this Jewish man had once given a similar amount for a building, and in that merit a child was born to him. We won’t go into all the details. But this time, too, a woman was about to give birth, and he wanted a bracha that everything would be all right. I don’t know whether they’d been told anything; I’m not familiar with all the details. But he went into the Ohel and said to the Rebbe, “I’m going to pledge a large donation now, so that everything will be all right.” He wasn’t making it conditional; he was already making a vessel for the bracha, so to speak. He said, “The first person I meet who needs that amount, I’ll give it to him.”

1:01:29 Speaker 4 Wow. Oh my goodness.

1:01:30 Speaker 2 For an institution of the Rebbe. And the first person he met when he came out was my husband. He agreed to give that amount. They spent some time together over Shabbos, and on Sunday the baby was born, boruch Hashem. Then my husband said to me, “Listen, I have to stay for the bris.” Staying for the bris didn’t mean another whole week. It meant he’d get home on Monday afternoon, when Purim was Monday evening. And you already know what Purim is like for me.

1:02:02 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:02:03 Speaker 2 Oh, wow. Did I take it well and say, “How wonderful, what hashgachah pratis”? Absolutely not. Partly because I thought the whole thing was imaginary, you know.

1:02:11 Speaker 4 That was after he’d already been there for a week.

1:02:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:02:13 Speaker 4 And after you’d all been there together for a week.

1:02:14 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And I had a baby with me at the time. Maybe if I hadn’t been so lacking in faith, if I’d really believed that this was what was happening, I would have taken it differently. But it sounded like a bit of an exaggeration to me. Still, he was told, “You have to stay for the bris.” So, boruch Hashem, he stayed for the bris and came straight back for Purim. And that man truly kept his promise, every word of it and more, and helped us buy the building.

1:02:42 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:02:43 Speaker 2 And every time I look back, I think about how many things had to happen for this to happen. Because just before that, we were in New York. Everything with the bank could have worked out then. I mean, the whole situation could have been resolved, and then he wouldn’t have traveled at all and wouldn’t have met him. And at the moment they told us the bank had canceled, what do you feel? “Oh no, why is this happening to me now? Why do I need this headache? And now another flight.” At that point, you can’t see the hashgachah pratis.

1:03:09 Speaker 4 Exactly.

1:03:09 Speaker 2 You only see the mess you’re in. And then you see where it all led. Afterward, you look back and see all the points where things happened.

1:03:20 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:21 Speaker 2 And honestly, I can’t tell you that I always see the hashgachah pratis now, but this experience brings me back to it much more often. It helps me return to the thought: Okay, something just happened. I don’t know where it will lead, or what hashgachah pratis I’ll see in it a few years from now, when I look back and say, “Wow, how amazing that this and this and this happened.”

1:03:40 Speaker 4 It also happened relatively quickly.

1:03:41 Speaker 2 It happened very quickly.

1:03:42 Speaker 4 There was the incident, but within a few days—or say, a few weeks—you already knew for certain that this was...

1:03:48 Speaker 2 Right, that this was...

1:03:49 Speaker 4 Why it happened.

1:03:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:51 Speaker 4 But sometimes it takes years. Sometimes...

1:03:53 Speaker 2 Sometimes we don’t see it. We don’t see it, right. Here, as I said, you could really see the hashgachah pratis. Can I tell you that you always feel it and live with that awareness? Maybe there are shluchim who do.

1:04:06 Speaker 4 If only.

1:04:07 Speaker 2 If only. But you definitely can’t ignore it. You see it. And this isn’t the only story that’s happened to us. It’s just a very, very big story, and it’s thanks to this that we bought our building and everything. But it happens with lots of little things too: suddenly this and this and this happened, and then you saw it had happened for a reason. Now, as you said, we don’t always see it right away, or even see it at all. So—

1:04:33 Speaker 4 We don’t always connect the dots, either.

1:04:34 Speaker 2 Right.

1:04:35 Speaker 4 Sometimes a whole series of things can happen to you, and someone hearing about it from the outside will suddenly say, “Do you realize that happened because of this?” And—

1:04:41 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:04:42 Speaker 4 We’ve had a few things like that too. You say, “Oh wow, you’re right.” But sometimes, in the rush of life, you don’t see it.

1:04:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:04:49 Speaker 4 Just like the Purim story.

1:04:51 Speaker 2 Right.

1:04:51 Speaker 4 Things happened—this happened, and then this, and then this. And only when you read the entire Megillah and look at it—

1:04:56 Speaker 2 Do you see it.

1:04:57 Speaker 4 Then you say, “Wow, what a story.”

1:04:58 Speaker 2 It’s incredible. Right.

1:04:59 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:05:00 Speaker 2 So here we really could connect the dots pretty quickly. The bank fell through at just that moment, and then this happened. You think, if just one thing had been missed... Or if he hadn’t gone with him to the Ohel on Friday, then someone else might have...

1:05:13 Speaker 4 Exactly.

1:05:13 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu arranged things in an amazing way. And with Hashem’s help, we hope we’ll see the hashgachah pratis with the building too, because we’re having some difficulties with it. We already want to move in and get going. You know, you’ve bought a building, and you feel like within a few months it’ll be up and running, and—

1:05:34 Speaker 4 Obstacles and delays.

1:05:35 Speaker 2 Yes. But most of the time, I don’t really let myself complain or fall into that lack of faith anymore. I remind myself: Okay, just as Hakadosh Boruch Hu took care of us... If you’d told me a few months earlier that we would buy this building, I would have said you were dreaming. A building in the city center for that kind of money? How?

1:05:55 Speaker 4 Tell me the amount later. I’m curious.

1:06:00 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. I wouldn’t even have dreamed of it. You know what’s funny? When we arrived in Cluj, at first we had some thought of buying the first building we were in. Good thing that didn’t happen, right? And I remember it was an amount that was maybe a quarter of this, and to me it seemed... I said to my husband—

1:06:18 Speaker 4 Astronomical.

1:06:19 Speaker 2 “Come on, you’re dreaming. We can’t—”

1:06:22 Speaker 4 We don’t realize that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has no limits. We’re just so small.

1:06:28 Speaker 2 Yes, we’re used to thinking in terms of the here and now, of this world, and—

1:06:33 Speaker 4 In terms of mortgages and all that.

1:06:35 Speaker 2 And how much the bank will lend us. And now I suddenly find myself saying to other people, if someone comes to me complaining, “It’s okay. Hakadosh Boruch Hu runs the world—not the bank manager and not your boss at work.” When people used to say things like that to me, I thought it was beautiful, but it was very, very hard for me to actually live that way.

1:06:57 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:06:57 Speaker 2 Can I tell you I live that way every day and have no worries? I wish I were that kind of person. Some people manage to live with that feeling so deeply that they don’t even worry, because they already know everything will be okay. And they know that even if they can’t see how it’s okay, it’s in Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s hands and part of His plans. I’m not there at all. There are plenty of days when I worry. But when worries about different things come up, I usually try to remind myself that just as things worked out in other areas, this will work out too, in the end, the way it’s meant to. Not necessarily the way I think it should, frustrating as that is.

1:07:37 Speaker 4 Speaking of that control-freak problem again.

1:07:39 Speaker 2 Right, right, that—

1:07:41 Speaker 4 Exactly.

1:07:41 Speaker 2 You think things have to happen the way you imagined and the way you thought they would. And honestly, maybe they won’t. And—

1:07:46 Speaker 4 And maybe there’s something much better that you can’t even imagine.

1:07:49 Speaker 2 Exactly. Today I can see that there were things I really, really, really wanted to happen that didn’t happen—and thank goodness they didn’t, because much better things came along afterward.

1:07:58 Speaker 4 You know, that reminds me of something. I once heard a podcast, I think, with Yechiel Harari and a woman who’s a mentor. They were talking about vision boards. She explained how important they are, how they motivate you: you tell yourself you’re going to achieve something, and then you achieve it. And he said there’s something about a vision board that can limit you a little. You set yourself goals and targets: “In ten years, I want to be here,” or whatever. Who says? Maybe there’s something much better that could... I’m not saying not to make a vision board—

1:08:34 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

1:08:35 Speaker 4 But there really is something to the idea that we—

1:08:36 Speaker 5 Really lim—

1:08:37 Speaker 4 Set limits for ourselves.

1:08:39 Speaker 5 Yes, because as human beings we’re limited, and we see things through our limited eyes. Sometimes we don’t even think beyond that.

1:08:48 Speaker 4 Exactly.

1:08:49 Speaker 5 I’m also very much that kind of person. You know, focused on reality and what I can see with my own eyes. I’m really not one of those people who are much more spiritual, who sense things—I don’t know. This is very, very hard for me a lot of the time. I also really need certainty about what’s going to happen. And shlichus has taught me so much about

1:09:09 Speaker 4 Letting go.

1:09:09 Speaker 5 Letting go. Because first of all, we have no certainty, even when it seems like we do. We have no certainty about anything. The last few years have really shown us that. It hit us in the face—even though it was true before; we just didn’t see it as clearly.

1:09:21 Speaker 4 Exactly.

1:09:22 Speaker 5 We can’t... These days I always joke that I plan at most a week ahead, and even then I know—who knows what might change along the way?

1:09:31 Speaker 4 Open to changes.

1:09:32 Speaker 5 Yes, open to changes, because I know so much isn’t in our hands. So I always say: I do what I can, what’s in my hands, and that’s it. The rest really is up to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Because—

1:09:43 Speaker 4 Exactly.

1:09:44 Speaker 5 I have no control. I have no control. That also gives me a lot of strength in other situations. If I really want to achieve something, or even really want to convince someone of something, I say, “Okay, I’ll do my hishtadlus.” The rest is no longer up to me. I hand it over, because there’s a limit to what we can do and accomplish.

1:10:06 Speaker 4 And how much stress that saves you.

1:10:09 Speaker 5 Yes, it saves me a lot when I manage to—

1:10:12 Speaker 4 When we manage to do what we need to do.

1:10:13 Speaker 5 Put it into practice. And just recently I saw a line somewhere: How many minutes have you spent worrying about things that worked out in the end?

1:10:23 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:10:24 Speaker 5 Like, how many of us are there, and what’s going to happen, and how? In the end, it somehow worked out. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t make practical preparations in this world and just live with “Well, everything will be fine.” We—

1:10:34 Speaker 4 Of course, [unclear] for Rosh Hashanah now.

1:10:36 Speaker 5 Exactly. So we need to make the preparations we need to make within the natural order and in this world. But that’s the point: I do what I can up to here, and from here on, we leave it in other hands.

1:10:50 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:10:51 Speaker 5 Because we don’t always have control over the results. We don’t have control over the results.

1:10:56 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:10:56 Speaker 5 Period.

1:10:57 Speaker 4 You know, listening to everything you’ve said, I hear how it all keeps coming back to the same point: the more we bring Hakadosh Boruch Hu into our lives, the easier things will be for us.

1:11:07 Speaker 5 Absolutely.

1:11:08 Speaker 4 And really, when you’re growing up as a child, as a teenager, you say, “Okay, fine, that’s the sort of thing grown-ups say. My grandmother says this and that, okay.” And then, when you start living real life, you realize there’s no other way. It’s incredible.

1:11:20 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:11:20 Speaker 4 Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu really is in everything.

1:11:23 Speaker 5 Now listen, I can—

1:11:24 Speaker 4 The question is whether I see it.

1:11:25 Speaker 5 Not only that. I can also spend that same time being incredibly stressed about something—whatever it is in each person’s life—and carry that stress around. Will it change the situation? Probably not. It will only change how I behave, how I feel, and how I am toward the people around me. This is something I work on with myself constantly. Say there’s an event at the Chabad House, and some things have worked out and some haven’t, but that’s it: there’s nothing more I can do, and people are arriving now. I remind myself that I’ve done what I could up to this point. Now it’s in Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s hands. And beyond that, people pick up on how you are. What they’ll take away from here isn’t whether the flowers were arranged exactly right.

1:12:10 Speaker 4 Oh, absolutely.

1:12:11 Speaker 5 Right? What matters much more is whether you smile at them and are kind to them.

1:12:15 Speaker 4 Whether you’re present in the moment.

1:12:16 Speaker 5 Yes, whether you welcome them warmly. That matters so much more than— They don’t know what you planned. I keep reminding myself of that, because I’m very good at saying it to other people, but I have to keep reminding myself: they don’t know what you planned. You have a picture in your head, but what you have will be lovely enough. The main thing is to be relaxed and kind right now.

1:12:40 Speaker 4 You remind me of something that happened last year, I think on Simchas Torah, or maybe Rosh Hashanah. We had guests here for the meal, and suddenly, at the end, I said, “Oh! There was meat, too.” I’d served chicken, and somehow, with all the commotion—

1:12:53 Speaker 5 You forgot.

1:12:53 Speaker 4 The meat stayed on the hotplate. Everyone laughed and said, “Oh, why didn’t we get to enjoy it? Why didn’t we taste it?” And then you say to yourself, wow, I could have not even made that meat—

1:13:04 Speaker 5 Right.

1:13:04 Speaker 4 And everything would have been absolutely fine.

1:13:05 Speaker 5 Maybe you could have gone to bed an hour earlier.

1:13:07 Speaker 4 Three fewer salads, and everything would have been fine. It’s so, so true.

1:13:11 Speaker 5 Right. And I’ve really noticed that what stays with people is the experience of how I treated them. One year, we had a Pesach Seder with a lot of people. I don’t remember exactly how many—a lot for us, okay? When you’re a shlucha in Thailand, that’s—

1:13:23 Speaker 4 Don’t compare yourselves to me.

1:13:25 Speaker 5 We had around 220 people, I think, or 200. There were over a hundred—something like that. At the beginning, sorting out the seating took a little time. Some things had been missed; I don’t know. It took a while. And I remember how incredibly stressful it was. And these weren’t necessarily local people who would forgive you because they know and love you. As far as they were concerned, they’d just arrived for a meal. I kept telling myself, “Freidy, the way you treat them is what will shape their experience.” So I went over to them and said, “Oh, I see you haven’t been seated yet. Don’t worry, I’m finding you a place. You’ll have a place.” And I said it with a smile, pleasantly. Nobody was angry. People were like, “Of course, of course, it’s fine.” When you approach people warmly, they pick up on the situation. But if you’re caught up in your own stress and don’t bring out your warmth and friendliness, they’ll be left with the experience of not having had a place. In the end, everyone did get a place, everyone was happy, and it was all fine. But before they could start feeling upset about it, I could see how this changed the whole experience for them—even the way they waited. At first, some were waiting with frowns on their faces. But the moment you went over and said, “I’m so sorry. There’s a place for everyone; we’re just getting it sorted,” the tension immediately eased, and they waited—

1:14:58 Speaker 5 Patiently. And that’s what stays with them, too. In the end, it’s the atmosphere, the feeling of how they were treated, and whether anyone even spoke to them. That isn’t simple when there are 200 people. People, all the—

1:15:11 Speaker 4 Absolutely. What do you mean, “not simple”? It’s a huge undertaking.

1:15:14 Speaker 5 Yes. I saw it with my own eyes, and it’s something I work on very, very hard. Everything I arranged and prepared beforehand is wonderful and important—I’m not minimizing its value. But once people arrive, what they’ll really leave with is the way they were treated. It’s the smile, the fact that you remembered them—that’s what they’ll take away. And that’s also what will determine whether they connect with whatever content you’re presenting at the event. If people feel comfortable in their surroundings—and that isn’t always in our hands, okay? If they’ve just had an argument with someone, I can’t control that. But insofar as it is in my hands to make them feel good, they’ll be able to connect with whatever you share. Whatever is happening at the event, they’ll be open to taking part in it. So the decor and the food and all of that are important. I put a lot into them.

1:16:19 Speaker 4 Like me. I know.

1:16:20 Speaker 5 Yes, I put a lot into them. But once the event starts, that’s really what I put the most into. Sometimes it takes work. You know, we’re human. Some days you feel one way, some days... yes.

1:16:32 Speaker 4 You’ve been on your feet all morning, preparing everything, and then in the evening—

1:16:35 Speaker 5 Yes, all morning if you’re lucky.

1:16:35 Speaker 4 You still have to find another burst of energy. It’s crazy.

1:16:37 Speaker 5 All morning if you’re lucky. Sometimes you started several mornings earlier—

1:16:39 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:16:40 Speaker 5 One after another. Yes, with hardly any sleep and all that. But really, that’s where it’s worth putting in the effort. That’s what I’ve experienced over the years. You really learn so much with time.

1:16:54 Speaker 4 That’s it. The way you speak, it’s as if you have the life experience of several decades.

1:16:58 Speaker 5 I don’t know, but I really feel that I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned to let go of so many things, and to delegate things that I once thought, “No, I’ll do it exactly the way I imagined and dreamed it.” But it’s not worth ending up exhausted and unpleasant, or having my children suffer because of it. That’s something I remind myself of all the time. It’s something very, very... You know, people come here. It always makes me laugh when people come, see the children, and say, “Wow, it must be so hard for them.” Once my daughter asked me, “Tell me, Mommy, what does she want?” They don’t see it that way. I really think it depends very much on how we present it to them. Wherever you are in the world, even in Kfar Chabad, a child can feel deprived and feel that life is hard. And in Cluj, a child can feel happy, on top of the world. Chas veshalom, I’m not dismissing their difficulties, okay? That’s not where I’m coming from. My point is that wherever you are, there are advantages and disadvantages. You can focus on what you’re missing, on what you don’t have, on the fact that they don’t have friends. That’s real; it is a difficulty. Every time we’re in Israel, you know, my motherly guilt goes into overdrive when they’re with cousins and friends and they’re happy, and then we have to travel back to what feels like the middle of nowhere. But really, ask my children. I always say that when people ask me, “But isn’t it hard for the children? Aren’t they unhappy?”

1:18:19 Speaker 4 I’ve been with them. We know.

1:18:19 Speaker 5 So I tell them: ask the children. Don’t ask me; ask them. And the children say, “No, we meet our friends at school, online.” I mean, from their perspective—look, they don’t... Especially now, they don’t know anything else. This is their life, nonstop.

1:18:37 Speaker 4 Right, because the children they meet at camps are also children who—

1:18:40 Speaker 5 Children who are going through the same things.

1:18:41 Speaker 4 That’s their routine.

1:18:43 Speaker 5 Yes. And of course we make every effort for them to see their friends whenever we possibly can. We invest so, so much in it—physical effort, money, everything.

1:18:57 Speaker 4 So that means—

1:18:57 Speaker 5 It’s not—

1:18:57 Speaker 4 Give an example. It means, say, flying with a girl to a bas mitzvah.

1:19:02 Speaker 5 To a bas mitzvah—

1:19:03 Speaker 4 That’s incredible.

1:19:04 Speaker 5 Or driving her for about three hours—three hours in the best-case scenario, okay?—to our neighbors in the next country. From there she goes to the airport, and from there to summer camp. Or actually flying with a child, dropping him off at camp, coming back, and then flying to pick him up. That’s what my husband did this year with our Mendel.

1:19:25 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:19:25 Speaker 5 He went with him to Germany, dropped him off at summer camp, came back, and then flew there again to bring him home.

1:19:31 Speaker 4 How much time do you at least get in between?

1:19:34 Speaker 5 Yes, it really does take a lot. But people think, “Oh, how nice for them to go to summer camp,” as though it’s some kind of luxury. I wouldn’t deny them dental care, and it’s the same with this. They need it.

1:19:50 Speaker 4 Oxygen.

1:19:50 Speaker 5 It’s oxygen. It really gives them... You know, it’s not that they’re miserable in between. They aren’t. But they absolutely need it. People ask them, “What’s it like for you here? Isn’t it hard?” And my daughter really did say, “But what does she want?” It’s not that they don’t understand why people ask whether it’s hard for them, but they say, “It isn’t hard for me.” That really is how they see it. So I try to make sure that every event doesn’t become an ordeal. It used to be that way. There were years when every event was an ordeal for the whole family, and I realized it couldn’t go on like that—not for me, not for them, not for anyone. So one thing I can say, in any area, wherever I am, is that it really comes down to preparing in advance. Preparing in advance. I was never someone who was used to doing that, but over the years I’ve learned. I keep asking myself, “Okay, what do I want?” I really try to picture the day of the event, or the day of Yom Tov. What will it be like? I want it to be calm, so I can... For example, we just had my son’s upshernish. We held the whole thing at home and cooked everything ourselves. I knew that the event started at seven, and at five I wanted to go to the park with the children for photos. My husband said to me, “In what...”

1:21:12 Speaker 6 “In what universe?”

1:21:14 Speaker 5 “What are you talking about?” I said, “No. If we prepare in advance, that’s what will happen.”

1:21:18 Speaker 6 We have less than three weeks left. So thank you for the tip.

1:21:21 Speaker 5 No, no, and that’s what happened. It had seemed like a distant dream to me. I’d see other shluchos do it and say, “Wow, how do they manage that? There’s no chance I’ll ever get there. It’s imaginary.” But I prepared in advance, and at the last minute I dropped some things, because I said, “I’m not giving up going out now.” The children knew we were going to the park, too. They were stunned. “Are you sure? On the day of the upshernish? Are you sure? Have you lost your mind?” So I dropped things. I didn’t make another kind of cookie. Do you think anyone needed them?

1:21:52 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

1:21:52 Speaker 5 You know the answer. I dropped things, and I set myself a cutoff time. Whatever I managed to do by then, wonderful—that’s what there would be. Whatever I didn’t manage, we would do without. I did the important things, the things that mattered to me, well in advance. I made sure we’d have those.

1:22:05 Speaker 6 That’s so important.

1:22:05 Speaker 5 Of course. Obviously it also takes getting help, and that takes resources, but it’s possible. And it isn’t necessarily a matter of people saying, “Well, she could afford a helper,” or whatever. It’s not just about that. It really is about planning and allowing enough time. So if I know I won’t have a helper, for example—right now, with Rosh Hashanah, I know we’re arriving right before Rosh Hashanah. We arrive Friday, and Rosh Hashanah is Monday. I don’t know exactly what help I’ll have. So I’ve already been preparing whatever I can for over a month, freezing things, putting them away, and getting organized.

1:22:42 Speaker 6 How big is your freezer?

1:22:44 Speaker 5 That’s the question I’m always asked. But I really do have several freezers. We have—

1:22:49 Speaker 6 At least there’s that...

1:22:50 Speaker 5 Yes, yes. We have a room with, I don’t know, six or seven freezers in it.

1:22:55 Speaker 6 Wow.

1:22:56 Speaker 5 Usually they’re—you know, we’ll see what happens when the meat arrives. I saw an empty freezer, so I happily filled it.

1:23:02 Speaker 6 Do you bring in a container from Israel, then, or is it from Europe?

1:23:05 Speaker 5 No, no. We don’t bring in a container. We get the meat, the wine, and the dry goods from Europe, every so often. After all, we’re in Europe. It’s not—

1:23:16 Speaker 6 Right.

1:23:16 Speaker 5 It’s not like China or Taiwan, where they need to bring things in months ahead of time.

1:23:20 Speaker 6 Right.

1:23:20 Speaker 5 Boruch Hashem, at least we’re spared that. But I really have learned. It took me a long time. Planning is a skill you develop—what to prepare and how to prepare it. People always ask me, “What, you freeze it and it comes out okay?” They don’t know it’s been in the freezer. Of course, you freeze what can be frozen. But it saves so much, and you come into Yom Tov or an event a different person, a completely different person. The whole atmosphere at home, for the children, is a completely different experience. When we went to the park, for instance, we actually left at the time we’d planned. The children were stunned.

1:24:00 Speaker 6 Were you stunned?

1:24:01 Speaker 5 I was, yes. On some level I’d said, “That’s it. I’m setting the time, and it’s going to happen.” Can I tell you I believed one hundred percent that it would?

1:24:09 Speaker 6 You had a photo session booked.

1:24:10 Speaker 5 I had already booked the photographer. Let’s start with that.

1:24:13 Speaker 6 Oh, okay, so you gave yourself a—

1:24:14 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:24:15 Speaker 6 You committed yourself, so to speak.

1:24:16 Speaker 5 Yes. And honestly, I’ll tell you, I also cut a few things. There was something I didn’t get to, some cookies or whatever it was. I said, “Then no, we won’t have them.” I set myself a cutoff—maybe two in the afternoon, I don’t remember what time—and decided that whatever I managed by then, great, that’s what we’d have. Whatever I didn’t, we wouldn’t. Of course, I’d done enough in advance of everything essential for the program. And whatever wasn’t essential just wasn’t there. And it was an amazing event.

1:24:41 Speaker 6 There are children, there’s a husband, there’s food. Everything else is a bonus.

1:24:45 Speaker 5 Exactly.

1:24:46 Speaker 6 I’m telling myself that now, right?

1:24:47 Speaker 5 Yes, exactly. No, I—I’m very good at hearing that from other people or saying it to other people.

1:24:54 Speaker 6 Yes.

1:24:54 Speaker 5 But then, suddenly, I put it into practice. And I really feel how, with every event, every holiday, it gets better. I’m here to say that if you’d told me this at the beginning, when I was in that crunch seven years ago, it would have seemed hopeless to me. I would have said, “No, only if I have five helpers, only if I have this, only if I have…” No. It really, really makes a big difference. Of course, first of all, I do want to say to anyone who’s still drowning somewhere that it obviously also depends on having enough help. If you remember, I wrote about that back then too. I wrote that having help is definitely significant. And I’ll tell you something: years ago, if I saw a shlucha doing everything herself—the shlichus, all of it—with no helpers, I’d think, “Wow, she’s incredible. She’s unbelievable.”

1:25:41 Speaker 6 Totally.

1:25:42 Speaker 5 G-d forbid, I’m not taking anything away from her now. But later I was at a Chabad House somewhere—I won’t say where—and the shlucha was sitting there. Everything was running like clockwork, okay? It was the Shabbos meal, there were lots of people, several hundred people sitting there, and she was sitting with her children. I don’t think she got up even once to tell the staff something. They handled it themselves; everything ran like clockwork. And suddenly I learned something. I said, “Wow, this is what it means to run things.” Not that I’m taking anything away from someone who does it all herself. Sometimes you have no choice but to do it all yourself, okay? I really want to qualify that.

1:26:11 Speaker 6 Within the limits of what we can do.

1:26:12 Speaker 5 But sometimes—and I can say this about myself, from my own experience—my husband would say to me, “Get help, get help,” and I’d say, “No, what?” It felt as though it would somehow diminish what I’d done, or I don’t know what. Today I understand that it absolutely doesn’t. Some people simply get stuck on this idea of bringing in help. There’s no value in collapsing, okay? Shlichus isn’t… That image of a shlucha who’s collapsing, but is this Wonder Woman who gets everything done and succeeds at everything all by herself—that’s the wrong way to look at it, okay? The goal—let’s call it that, though again, everyone has different possibilities—is דווקא to reach a place where you’re free for the things that aren’t physical. Because I’ve really seen that once I have help with the physical things—cleaning, cooking—suddenly I’m free to prepare a Tanya class. I’m free to focus on my shlichus.

1:27:13 Speaker 6 On what only you can do.

1:27:14 Speaker 5 Yes. Not that cooking isn’t part of your shlichus. I stand and cook too. G-d forbid, I don’t want it to sound as though I’m saying otherwise. But what I am saying is that there’s no mitzvah to collapse, no mitzvah to do absolutely everything yourself. And whenever you have the option of getting help—you know what, it doesn’t even have to be paid help; it can be volunteers from the community, okay? I can say about myself that I find it very, very hard to ask people in the community for help, even though they really want to help. So often they say, “Just tell me to come. Just tell me.” And suddenly I learned to call the students. There have been many situations where they truly saved me. There are three students we’re very close with, and they came over. There was one Shabbos when I had to cook for more than a hundred people—just an ordinary Shabbos sometime in Teves, not some special occasion.

1:28:06 Speaker 6 [unclear]

1:28:06 Speaker 5 Yes. It happened that there were a lot of students at the Chabad House, and we also had to send food to a group, and… I called them. They came right over, and they stayed at my place until around four in the morning, I think, even though they had classes at eight. Yes. Wow. They didn’t leave until they’d made sure I was finished. Wow. Until they were sure they could go. And they helped me with whatever I needed. Really, there was nothing they wouldn’t do: “Okay, what needs doing now? And what’s this?” That’s very, very unlike me. A year or two earlier, I would have stood there doing it all myself and collapsing. So it’s about being willing to ask for help. Again, not just paying for help. I’m talking about our children sometimes, too. Our children. We don’t always know how to ask. “Oh, it’s fine, I’ll do it myself. I’ll manage.” There’s this model that’s been built up of the perfect woman: she does everything herself, she’s a perfect mother, her house is spotless, and, you know, all of it. It’s impossible. All these impossible demands placed on women today. And I’m here to say that you can be a wonderful, amazing woman. What do I mean, “can be”? You will be a wonderful, amazing woman even if you have lots and lots of help, and you’ll have the emotional capacity—because in the end, the strain will show up somewhere. You know, it’s… I hope you say this in your classes for brides, too. Yes, yes, I do. Listen, this is an instruction from the Rebbe as well. I actually saw a letter from the Rebbe about getting help. There’s no mitzvah that says that because you’re the mother, or the wife, or the shlucha, you have to collapse.

1:29:42 Speaker 5 Absolutely not. You can be a wonderful, devoted, amazing shlucha even if you don’t do everything yourself. Some people will probably hear me and not believe I’m the one saying this, because I was very much someone who did everything herself. I also had this feeling that if I didn’t do it myself, it was somehow worth less. Yes, you grow up with a certain idea of what’s normal. Yes. And you see other shluchos and wonder how they manage to do all that. But often, if you ask them, they’ll say, “What do you mean? I have a helper, and I have this, and I have that.” That doesn’t diminish what they do for a second. Or she has no choice and she’s collapsing. You can’t keep that up. Yes, you can’t. You can’t burn the candle at both ends. You can’t burn the candle at both ends. Exactly. And today, with everything, I really think about where I can get help or how I can plan ahead so I don’t reach the point of collapsing, staying up all night, and arriving at an event after not sleeping for three nights. Because that has happened to me. If I compare Mendos’s chalakah five years ago with the chalakah now, it’s unbelievable that it’s the same—come on, what?—the same kind of event. That it’s the same person and the same kind of event. I arrived in such a completely different state. And I can’t tell you that either event was lacking in any way. Okay? The only significant difference was how I arrived at the event. Exactly. What kind of state I was in. We’re coming up to the holidays, and I think this really connects.

1:31:09 Speaker 5 I want to say this to every woman listening: most of the women listening to us aren’t running a Chabad House with meals for a hundred people. Right. But sometimes even when it’s a meal at home for the few sweet children Hakadosh Boruch Hu blessed me with, I’ll get there completely drained, having spent time on things that didn’t really matter. Right. No, I’ll tell you—because of what the world tells us. Sometimes we’re busy finding the right pin for the dress. Now, I’m not saying that if that’s what brings you joy on Yom Tov, you shouldn’t do it. Of course. Right. Enjoy it. But I’m not always doing what brings me joy on Yom Tov. I’m doing what the system thinks is supposed to bring me joy. Right. No, I’ll tell you something. People often say to me, “Oh my goodness, how do you do it? I have ten people to host, and I’m already...” So first of all, the things you said really do apply to everyone. If it’s very, very important to you that the napkin and whatever else be just so, prepare ahead of time. And remind yourself how you want the atmosphere at home to feel. Let that be the picture you keep in mind. Is it worth crying now, or being in a bad mood with your husband or the children? Is it worth it? Probably not. I’m here to say: it isn’t worth it. Everyone is much better off, okay? Even if the storage room is messy, heaven forbid, or dirty, or somewhere else is dirty—what will make the difference at home, and what the children will remember when they’re grown, is what the atmosphere at home was like. And that’s something

1:32:37 Speaker 5 that I—I’ll tell you, it probably sounds as though my home is all fairies and butterflies all day—

1:32:41 Speaker 7 There’s no such thing anywhere in the world, except in your imagination.

1:32:43 Speaker 5 No, and that it’s all happiness at my house all day. Absolutely not, okay? I have my butterflies too.

1:32:48 Speaker 7 And precisely because it’s something you work on, you can say that.

1:32:51 Speaker 5 Exactly, exactly. It’s something I’ve worked on, am working on, and will probably keep working on until 120: this whole question of... First of all, I don’t know if it’s politically correct to say this today, but the mother is responsible for the atmosphere at home. There’s no getting around it. The father is very important, of course, with all due respect to his role. But ultimately, the one who changes the atmosphere at home, who makes it happy, is the mother. Think back to a Friday evening or something like that—what creates the atmosphere? It really is the mother. And when you remember that shlichus, that role, it becomes an awareness you carry with you. You say, “Okay, what do I want the first night of Rosh Hashanah to look like in my home?” So maybe there’ll be less honey cake with writing on it, or whatever it is that stretches you beyond your capacity. So what? What matters is what the atmosphere will be like for you, for the guests, for the children, for everyone. For you too. You might be wonderful on the outside, but inside you’re collapsing—I don’t know—emotionally.

1:33:49 Speaker 7 Right.

1:33:50 Speaker 5 So anyone making her Rosh Hashanah lists now, or whatever it may be, should really think: “Okay, up to this point, I don’t want to do less. I’d be really disappointed if there were less than this.” Beyond that, if it isn’t worth the atmosphere it will disrupt, or the sleep I’ll lose, or the fact that I’ll collapse, or...

1:34:09 Speaker 7 Right.

1:34:09 Speaker 5 That’s really what I often do. I make lists. Do I stick to everything on them? Sometimes I even—you know what? Sometimes I add things to the lists because I have time, because they come easily, because I have someone to help me. But honestly, this is my life’s work: to ask myself, personally, whether something is worth what will come with it. Is it worth the stress, the atmosphere, the... And people say, “No, no, I’ll work on myself and I’ll still be nice even if I don’t sleep for three nights.” Enough—that’s an unrealistic expectation of yourself too. Be realistic with yourselves.

1:34:44 Speaker 7 No, and you’re also supposed to celebrate Rosh Hashanah somehow. You’re...

1:34:49 Speaker 5 Yes, and with joy.

1:34:51 Speaker 7 Make time for it. Fit in some davening. Come on, you don’t have to be a martyr.

1:34:55 Speaker 5 Right.

1:34:55 Speaker 7 It’s all okay.

1:34:56 Speaker 5 That’s it. These days, I value that much more than the idea of suffering on shlichus. I’m talking about shlichus because that’s where I am, but I mean parenting or teaching too. I think it applies to everyone, wherever she is. People think the more you suffer, the more elevated it somehow is. Absolutely not. We didn’t come into this world to suffer. Not at all. If you’re doing something, you need to enjoy it too, which connects back to what we said at the beginning about...

1:35:25 Speaker 7 Right.

1:35:26 Speaker 5 What do I get out of it?

1:35:26 Speaker 7 And a lot of the time, the suffering comes from—I’ll give you an example: the yetzer hara doesn’t come up and say, “I’m the yetzer hara. Hello, come and do such-and-such.”

1:35:33 Speaker 5 Right.

1:35:34 Speaker 7 It might be the day before Yom Tov, when the thought suddenly occurs to you: “Maybe I’ll make homemade challah.” I’m talking about a woman who lives here in Israel, planned to buy challah, and usually buys challah. How great! Out comes the mixer; the kitchen becomes a mess. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t. Sometimes it works out and there’s time. Go ahead—homemade challah, how lovely! But often it’s just the yetzer hara in disguise, saying, “Come on, be a warm, loving mother,” and all that.

1:35:55 Speaker 5 “Come on, be perfect, and you’ll have something to post, too...”

1:35:57 Speaker 7 Exactly. The kitchen is out of commission for four hours.

1:36:01 Speaker 5 I remember a shlucha once saying to me—I don’t remember the context—I wasn’t sure I’d manage to do something, and she said, “Freidy, at worst, you just won’t post pictures.” That’s what she said, and it really stayed with me. So I keep reminding myself: okay, at worst there won’t be pictures from this activity or this event. Then there won’t be.

1:36:17 Speaker 7 Right.

1:36:17 Speaker 5 So people won’t see the “failure”—in huge quotation marks, because it isn’t really a failure. But I keep reminding myself, as part of this work I do on myself: Am I doing this because it’s really needed, or because I want to post a picture, or have people think, “Wow, what you do is so perfect”? It’s constant work, because the yetzer hara is very good at tempting you to go overboard so people on Instagram will compliment you, or whatever.

1:36:47 Speaker 7 Because it knows that will also drain the energy you need for the things that really matter.

1:36:50 Speaker 5 No, it also finds the easy opening.

1:36:52 Speaker 7 Right.

1:36:52 Speaker 5 It goes where it’s easy. So a lot of the time I say, “Okay, either I won’t photograph it, or I’ll make my peace with how it is.” There are so many things that, in the past, I never would have accepted. I don’t know what I would have done to make them turn out a certain way. Today, I can make my peace with them even if they turn out like this. And the main thing I keep in mind is, first of all, the atmosphere at home. That applies to every woman, wherever she is. As you said, it can guide you in every area. And then there’s how I’ll be with people. For me, it’s when I meet people, but it doesn’t matter—it could just be family or anyone else. How will I show up? How will I arrive? Often the consideration is also that if I give this up, I’ll feel disappointed and keep walking around disappointed afterward. So in that case, no, I will make the effort. But you have to keep having that conversation with yourself.

1:37:44 Speaker 7 Come back to your priorities.

1:37:45 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:37:45 Speaker 7 To the...

1:37:46 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:37:46 Speaker 7 Why am I doing this at all?

1:37:47 Speaker 5 Why am I doing it, and for whom?

1:37:53 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:37:53 Speaker 5 For whom? And it might be for me. Sometimes my answer is, “For me, because I want it this way. I want that thing to be there.” It could be—actually, it probably is—that no one else will care, but it’ll make me happy. I’ll enjoy having that particular thing at the event. That counts too.

1:38:09 Speaker 7 You’re worth that result too.

1:38:11 Speaker 5 Yes. You’re worth a great deal. You absolutely need things for yourself too. You can’t always do things only for others. Someone once wrote that people can’t understand how shluchim live all the time for others. And it’s hard for me to say I spend every day feeling that I’m only doing things for other people. I’m not that holy.

1:38:37 Speaker 7 Right.

1:38:37 Speaker 5 Honestly, a lot of things give me a sense of satisfaction. I’m happy to do this. I don’t feel like some prisoner who spends all day doing things for other people because I’m such a righteous person doing shlichus. Really, really not. People will say to me, “Wow, what mesirus nefesh, what mesirus nefesh.” And I tell them, I understand why they see it that way. You know, the children don’t have schools and all that. But I tell them, we’re very happy doing what we do. I don’t go around every day feeling that I’m sacrificing myself. I don’t think I could survive living with that feeling.

1:39:11 Speaker 7 Right.

1:39:12 Speaker 5 As though I’m sacrificing myself all day. Not at all. I really love what I do. Sometimes I work very hard, but someone living in Kfar Chabad works hard too. When I lived in Kfar Chabad, I worked very hard. It may be a different kind of hard, with different challenges, but it’s like what I said about how the children grow up. Every place has advantages and disadvantages. Anywhere, you can be the most miserable person or the happiest.

1:39:34 Speaker 7 Absolutely.

1:39:35 Speaker 5 And where I am, I really look for what makes me happy and what feels good to me. Because at the end of the day, I’m not some—you know. We’re human beings with a nefesh habehamis, an animal soul, and I find [unclear]. Of course there are things I do that I don’t enjoy. It’s not as if I dance through every day. Am I happy? Yes. But I also have days that are hard.

1:39:59 Speaker 7 But you keep that in mind. That’s what you’re working on right now.

1:40:01 Speaker 5 I do keep it in mind. And when I’m in a place where I don’t feel good—say, I go through a period when I see that I’m not happy, that I’m not finding joy in what I’m doing—I stop and say, “Okay, what would make me happy to do right now?” Sometimes it’s something that doesn’t seem connected to what’s going on. I suddenly decide, “I’m doing this project now,” but it’s for me. It makes me happy, it’ll do me good, and I think that’s important enough. It’s important for everyone, because when you feel good—it sounds like the biggest cliché, but it’s true. I remember a shlucha standing up at a convention and saying this too: if the shlucha feels good, things are good for the children at home, for her husband at home, and for the community. It affects everything. It’s unbelievable how much power we have.

1:40:48 Speaker 7 Absolutely.

1:40:48 Speaker 5 How much it affects everything. I always tell brides this when I teach them before their weddings, too. If you’re happy, it will affect your home, your surroundings, your children, your workplace. When you don’t feel good—and I know people have probably said this about ten times already on this podcast—

1:41:05 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

1:41:05 Speaker 5 And it sounds like a cliché, like, “Yes, do this,” but I—

1:41:09 Speaker 7 But sometimes you hear something a hundred times, and you just need to connect with it for it to—

1:41:13 Speaker 5 No, but even if I heard it from someone else, I might say, “Okay, there she goes with the clichés.” It’s just that I’ve seen what happens when I do something with joy, rather than, “Ugh, another Shabbos meal.” There are Fridays when I don’t have the energy to cook for—it doesn’t even matter if it’s twenty people or thirty. It doesn’t have to be a hundred people; even fifteen. I don’t have the energy. And yes, sometimes I complain too. I don’t go around all day saying how wonderful everything is. I complain sometimes, and sometimes I have no energy. But very often, when I’m at that point, I catch myself. Then I’ll go make something I actually want to make, or I’ll say, “Enough. Don’t go around with that…” I don’t want my children to grow up feeling that their mother is miserable and has to do all this. You know what I mean?

1:42:01 Speaker 7 Yes, yes. That she’s happy doing what she does.

1:42:02 Speaker 5 You know when I notice it? If I start complaining and then my daughter says, “Okay, Mom, do you want me to do it?” I catch myself and say, “No, no, everything’s fine.”

1:42:12 Speaker 7 Right.

1:42:12 Speaker 5 And I realize it’s not that my children must never see it. They can see us when we’re struggling too. They don’t need to see us as superwomen. But I tell myself, enough. I don’t want to give my children the impression that I’m miserable, or that we’re miserable and we’re—

1:42:25 Speaker 7 Victims, kind of.

1:42:26 Speaker 5 Victims, exactly. And it’s very easy to fall into that place.

1:42:29 Speaker 7 True.

1:42:29 Speaker 5 Of “Oh, now I have to cook for a hundred people,” and “Oh…” I don’t know—each woman in her own situation. Even if it’s twelve people, it doesn’t matter.

1:42:35 Speaker 7 Absolutely.

1:42:36 Speaker 5 It’s very easy for us to slip into that, and that’s okay too. It happens sometimes. We’re human. But, let’s put it this way, most of the time, okay? Like that eighty-twenty idea?

1:42:47 Speaker 7 Right.

1:42:47 Speaker 5 Most of the time, we should be joyful and have that mindset of, “Okay, what can I do right now with what I have?” Because someone listening might say, “Well, that’s easy for her to say. She has help, she has who knows what.”

1:43:03 Speaker 7 What you just said really connects to what we were saying earlier, and I think we’ll finish on this point. You can say, “Well, she has this, and that woman has that.” When you arrived in Cluj, it was a process for you to understand, “This is my place.” We’re talking about shlichus here—and on this podcast generally, shlichus as a way of life. Every woman really has her own shlichus. And a lot of the time, we don’t have that peace of mind, because we say, “Maybe my shlichus is somewhere else. Maybe—”

1:43:35 Speaker 5 Something deeper.

1:43:37 Speaker 7 Yes. Who says?

1:43:38 Speaker 5 Right.

1:43:38 Speaker 7 Who says that because I live in, I don’t know, let’s say Rechovot, maybe my shlichus isn’t waiting for me somewhere beyond the—

1:43:46 Speaker 5 Mountains.

1:43:46 Speaker 7 Mountains of Nepal.

1:43:47 Speaker 5 Right.

1:43:48 Speaker 7 Yes. And that’s exactly the yetzer hara. The ability, as you said, not to feel like a victim starts with believing in that hashgacha pratis: “A person’s steps are established by Hashem.” I’m where I’m meant to be.

1:44:01 Speaker 5 Sometimes that’s only true at this point in time—

1:44:03 Speaker 7 Yes, exactly.

1:44:04 Speaker 5 It doesn’t mean you have to stay there your whole life.

1:44:05 Speaker 7 Right, that’s okay.

1:44:07 Speaker 5 But if you’re here now, if Hakadosh Boruch Hu has placed you in the situation you’re in right now… These are very nice words, and even as I’m saying them, I think that if I heard someone else say this, I’d go, “Oh, here come the clichés.”

1:44:17 Speaker 7 Right.

1:44:18 Speaker 5 But it takes work. Living with that awareness is a lifetime’s work. I don’t think anyone can expect herself to have that awareness all the time.

1:44:27 Speaker 7 Yes, but to recognize that when that feeling comes up, it’s doubt. Doubt is Amalek. When I feel, “Maybe not. Maybe I was supposed to do something else.”

1:44:35 Speaker 5 Oh, that happens so often.

1:44:37 Speaker 7 “Maybe I was supposed to have different people around me.” And it just—

1:44:40 Speaker 5 “Maybe if only I’d done this or that, things would have turned out differently.”

1:44:43 Speaker 7 Yes.

1:44:44 Speaker 5 Now, people sometimes hear this and think we’re saying we can give up responsibility: “Well, it’s hashgacha pratis.” No, that’s not it. I’m not giving up my responsibility, but my responsibility has limits. I can do what’s in my power up to a certain point.

1:44:55 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:44:56 Speaker 5 From there, it really is hashgacha pratis.

1:44:58 Speaker 7 Each person has to know, honestly, within herself, how far her abilities really go and where it’s just those voices, that background noise.

1:45:05 Speaker 5 True.

1:45:06 Speaker 7 In my own situation, for example, I could stop every day and say, “Wait, maybe not. Maybe we weren’t supposed to come to Karmei Gat.” You could drive yourself crazy that way. But whenever I go back and remember how we got here and what led us here, I see the hashgacha pratis. And that brings us to the bottom line: each woman should know her own bottom line. Why are you where you are? Why do you work in the profession you work in? Maybe you need to change professions. That could be.

1:45:32 Speaker 5 Exactly. I was just about to say that this doesn’t mean people shouldn’t make changes in their lives sometimes.

1:45:35 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:45:36 Speaker 5 But if, say, you try and it doesn’t work out, or things like that, you shouldn’t despair. At the same time, sometimes you have to understand that maybe, for now—and maybe not for life—I’m meant to be where I am. This comes up a lot on shlichus. Especially on shlichus. People always ask us how long we’ve come for, and I hope for as short a time as possible, right? Because Moshiach should come. But we don’t have a date when it ends. And a lot of times the thought crosses your mind: Wow, maybe we shouldn’t have come here. Maybe. I don’t know.

1:46:08 Speaker 7 Someone else might have done it better than us.

1:46:10 Speaker 5 All kinds of thoughts like that. Maybe we should have been somewhere else, you know? And then I remind myself that things wouldn’t have fallen into place the way they did for us to get here if we weren’t meant to be here. There’s no way. There’s no way all these things would have happened. Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose us, and the Rebbe wanted us to come to this place, be here, and do what we’re doing. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t constantly think about how to do more, how to improve and take things further. It doesn’t take away our responsibility. I think there’s a very fine line between saying, “Well, you know, it’s hashgachah pratis”—

1:46:48 Speaker 7 Right.

1:46:48 Speaker 5 —and remembering that we also have free choice. They go hand in hand all the time.

1:46:51 Speaker 7 Yes, it’s complicated.

1:46:52 Speaker 5 Yes, all the time. On the one hand, exercising free choice—meaning, doing what I can—and then leaving room to say, “Okay, from here on, it’s up to Hakadosh Boruch Hu.” I do everything I can on my end. Beyond that, it’s up to Him. Sometimes I say this to students before an exam. You know, they’re in a panic. I tell them, “Listen, you need to study. I’m not going to tell you to just say a chapter of Tehillim and that will do it. It will help—prayers always help—but you also need to study.” We have to make a vessel within the natural order. But do the most you can. That’s it. From there, it’s in Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s hands. There’s nothing more you can do. Or they talk to me about all kinds of plans for the future, how they’re going to do this and that. I tell them, “Okay, plans and aspirations are important, but we always have to remember, in every area, to leave room for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Leave Him room to arrange things.”

1:47:47 Speaker 7 So He can come in.

1:47:48 Speaker 5 Yes, we have to give Him room.

1:47:50 Speaker 7 Absolutely, absolutely.

1:47:51 Speaker 5 And especially, you know, since they’re going to be doctors. We keep reminding them that “permission was given to the doctor to heal.” In other words, a doctor can do what’s possible within the natural order, and the rest is up to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And really, that’s true in every area. In every part of our lives, as you said, we leave room for Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

1:48:14 Speaker 7 Absolutely. Wow, it’s amazing to think that there are many doctors in Israel whose whole approach to medicine might look different because, at some point, they passed through the Chabad House in Cluj.

1:48:25 Speaker 5 At some point... in Cluj, or at one of the many Chabad Houses for students.

1:48:28 Speaker 7 For students, yes.

1:48:28 Speaker 5 It’s worth mentioning that they didn’t live in Cluj.

1:48:30 Speaker 7 Well, Freidy, thank you so much. We’ll wish everyone—I hope the podcast goes up before Rosh Hashanah.

1:48:35 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:48:35 Speaker 7 So, may you be inscribed and sealed for a good and sweet year. And as the Rebbe says...

1:48:39 Speaker 5 Amen.

1:48:39 Speaker 7 Sweet. May we see it openly. May we not need—you mentioned stories of hashgachah pratis that Hakadosh Boruch Hu...

1:48:44 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:48:45 Speaker 7 ...sends flying our way.

1:48:46 Speaker 5 May we not have to decide for Hakadosh Boruch Hu how He shows up there, but may we see it...

1:48:49 Speaker 7 May we see it...

1:48:50 Speaker 5 ...openly.

1:48:50 Speaker 7 Without effort, without anything. And the complete Geulah, with Hashem’s help.

1:48:53 Speaker 5 Amen.

1:48:53 Speaker 7 Thank you so much.

1:49:19 Speaker 5 Amen.