Somachat Alayich - Episode 05 - Getting Married Young - Yes or No

00:00 Speaker 1 Happy to Count on You, Michal Levitin. How are you?

00:02 Speaker 2 Happy to Count on You, Chani Marzel. Thank G-d, and thank you.

00:06 Speaker 1 Huh?

00:06 Speaker 2 How are you?

00:07 Speaker 1 “Happy to Count on You” is such a cool name, because it’s really about being happy—

00:10 Speaker 2 Really.

00:10 Speaker 1 And we count on each other, and—

00:12 Speaker 2 Count on each other.

00:12 Speaker 1 On you, especially.

00:14 Speaker 2 Totally.

00:14 Speaker 1 Hashem, open my lips.

00:16 Speaker 2 In your mouth and in your heart.

00:17 Speaker 1 We’re back with another episode, another episode of the podcast. And somehow we’ve found ourselves in the story of Michal’s life. It just happened, without meaning to.

00:29 Speaker 2 That’s how Hashem wanted it. You couldn’t ask for better.

00:31 Speaker 1 Exactly. So there’s no pressure, no worry.

00:35 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu is running the show.

00:39 Speaker 1 Credit to... who was it that said that?

00:42 Speaker 2 I feel bad saying Elitzur, but maybe it was him, maybe not.

00:44 Speaker 1 No, no, I don’t think it was him.

00:46 Speaker 2 No?

00:46 Speaker 1 But it’s a beautiful song.

00:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

00:48 Speaker 1 So, we—actually, we got to “Dear Diary, Hello.” To your story, the story of—

00:58 Speaker 2 Right.

00:59 Speaker 1 The part I’m trying to figure out and understand.

01:01 Speaker 2 I’m trying too. I’ll tell you, I don’t have a diary. I’ve never written down memories or—

01:06 Speaker 1 And look how you remember things.

01:06 Speaker 2 What happened to me, or anything. I mean, it’s all in my head.

01:09 Speaker 1 Look, these days we could take whatever we want, transcribe it and make a book out of it. Just like that...

01:14 Speaker 2 Here you go, already thinking about products. You’re putting out products all day long. I can’t keep up.

01:19 Speaker 1 You can’t keep up? Slowly, slowly.

01:21 Speaker 2 Let’s do a podcast.

01:22 Speaker 1 Fine, that’s all—could do it without you. You said we’d make children’s books using the Happy to Count on You approach.

01:29 Speaker 2 Yes, I’m all for that.

01:30 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:30 Speaker 2 Books for children—that’s a must.

01:34 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:35 Speaker 2 That, yes.

01:36 Speaker 1 So...

01:36 Speaker 2 Because that’s something that’s still...

01:38 Speaker 1 So that’s something I already... I have—

01:40 Speaker 2 You’re doing it.

01:40 Speaker 1 I’m doing it.

01:41 Speaker 2 You definitely are.

01:42 Speaker 1 So what do we do with the approach? Like, with someone—

01:43 Speaker 2 With love. With love, yes.

01:45 Speaker 1 We’ll put that into it.

01:45 Speaker 2 Yes, because, you know, adults—I don’t know when I last read a book, if I ever did. If you’re interested in me, I’m not the person to ask about books. You need mental space. Like when people say, “I’m not joining your club because I don’t have the headspace.” You need headspace for a book too. It’s something that... you have to be very relaxed and commit to the process. When I open a book, the first thing I do is look at the end to see what happened.

02:10 Speaker 1 Oh, you read the ending?

02:11 Speaker 2 I only read the ending—the beginning, the middle and the end.

02:15 Speaker 1 And then you’ve got the whole...

02:16 Speaker 2 Yes, sort of.

02:17 Speaker 1 Everything you’re satisfied with.

02:18 Speaker 2 I really love books, and I really value them. So if I open a book, I need to have a lot, a lot, a lot of free headspace.

02:27 Speaker 1 Okay, but I liked—

02:27 Speaker 2 That hasn’t happened for me in a long time.

02:28 Speaker 1 I liked that approach. On Shabbos? At bedtime?

02:33 Speaker 2 If I have time, I’ll read books to the little ones. I sit with them and read children’s books.

02:38 Speaker 1 Oh, yes.

02:38 Speaker 2 So right now, that’s what interests me.

02:41 Speaker 1 Very nice. So come on, put out some books.

02:44 Speaker 2 I should, yes.

02:45 Speaker 1 I can tell you that today—

02:46 Speaker 2 Look, when I see children’s books and you get, “Daddy came, Daddy came to preschool, Daddy saw a mess.” Now—

02:53 Speaker 1 But those are early readers, for learning to read.

02:55 Speaker 2 No, just a book with, you know, “Ruti’s rag is lost. Where’s Ruti’s rag?” Come on—

03:04 Speaker 1 Do you check a book before you buy it?

03:07 Speaker 2 Well, I look at the end, see that the content is, you know, somehow reasonable, and...

03:12 Speaker 1 At the end of the day, there’s also a sea of books. There’s a flood of them.

03:16 Speaker 2 There really is a crazy overload, and most of the books are pretty—sorry to say it, but a lot of them are silly.

03:22 Speaker 1 Really?

03:23 Speaker 2 Yes, but give me a silly one and I’ll make something out of it.

03:26 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:26 Speaker 2 You see? Because I’m the...

03:28 Speaker 1 You’ll bring out the props you have at home, and—

03:30 Speaker 2 Totally. I’ll use dolls and things, and I’ll ask questions too. I know how to develop what I see. I say to them, “Look, even an ordinary book—”

03:38 Speaker 1 Wait, so why haven’t you written a book yet?

03:40 Speaker 2 First of all, I’ve started.

03:42 Speaker 1 You have?

03:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:42 Speaker 1 What...

03:44 Speaker 2 I suspected as much.

03:46 Speaker 1 What kind of book?

03:47 Speaker 2 Yes, I called it “Braini the Happy One,” something like that. I’ve actually started.

03:51 Speaker 1 Well?

03:52 Speaker 2 It’s about all kinds of situations she encounters and how she turns them into something joyful.

03:55 Speaker 1 Well?

03:56 Speaker 2 I need to give you two—

03:57 Speaker 1 Just so you know, by the time this episode comes out, there’ll already be a book.

03:58 Speaker 2 Maybe, maybe.

03:59 Speaker 1 That works too.

04:00 Speaker 2 I started writing it.

04:01 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:02 Speaker 2 Because I really think we can give children today the tools I give mothers in the club, starting from infancy.

04:09 Speaker 1 So I’m completely—

04:09 Speaker 2 It’s such a shame, such a shame, to wait until they reach that point.

04:10 Speaker 1 Do you know what I do with my books?

04:12 Speaker 2 Right.

04:12 Speaker 1 What am I actually doing? They’re stories I tell my daughter Libi, who’s three and a half.

04:16 Speaker 2 Wow, what stories.

04:18 Speaker 1 And she lives those stories. Today I can pass them on. I really have—

04:23 Speaker 2 Totally, that’s—

04:24 Speaker 1 And today you can—

04:25 Speaker 2 They’re such educational stories, so...

04:27 Speaker 1 Like the one before Purim about the costume. And now there’s practically a whole series following the cycle of the year.

04:32 Speaker 2 I want your series, sweetie.

04:34 Speaker 1 Well, I haven’t printed them yet. My books are digital, and I give them out—

04:38 Speaker 2 For free!

04:39 Speaker 1 Yes!

04:39 Speaker 2 No, I want—I need a book I can touch.

04:41 Speaker 1 Nice.

04:41 Speaker 2 I need that feeling.

04:42 Speaker 1 I printed one book. So let me open your mind to something. I don’t know, maybe when Michal Levitin puts out a book it’ll be different—and it probably will. But it’s a very, very crowded market.

04:53 Speaker 2 Saturated.

04:54 Speaker 1 So financially, it’s not really... I didn’t publish it; I printed it. We have a little project making books for preschools, small print runs, something like Pajama Library. Something cute. But it’s a lot of work, and I don’t have the energy to deal with it, and—

05:13 Speaker 2 Look, when I started the club, I brought in this woman, brought in that person, brought in you, brought in someone else.

05:16 Speaker 1 I handed it over to someone. I handed it over, but in the end, I’m telling you—

05:19 Speaker 2 It’s not financially viable.

05:20 Speaker 1 It’s not financially viable even just to cover the costs. So I’m happy for people to read the books. A mother wrote to me this week, “Every night we read a book from your website.” I mean—

05:32 Speaker 2 Wow.

05:32 Speaker 1 That’s incredible. So, “Braini the Happy One” is coming soon?

05:38 Speaker 2 Probably.

05:38 Speaker 1 Uh-huh. And then Shira Lali will have a book too, and maybe you’ll start putting out a series. I think it’ll be in the language of Happy to Count on You. I’ll help you.

05:47 Speaker 2 Thank you.

05:48 Speaker 1 No, today you really can publish—

05:50 Speaker 2 Honestly, it’s so simple.

05:51 Speaker 1 At the speed of light. It’s crazy.

05:53 Speaker 2 Right.

05:54 Speaker 1 How did we get here?

05:56 Speaker 2 I don’t know. How—what did we start talking about? I don’t even know anymore.

05:59 Speaker 1 Oh, that I want to figure out the... I don’t know how we got here, but let’s get back to the subject. Your place in all this—how you do what you do. We started with the stand-up, with you being onstage and what you’re like onstage, and it developed into all kinds of things from your childhood, and how school finally came to recognize your humor and give it a place. Where else did you perform before you started doing it professionally?

06:32 Speaker 2 So, when I was a child, I remember two very significant places where I performed. One was the Tzofiah residential center, which is a home for—I always get stuck on this word, because it feels so wrong for me to say it.

06:51 Speaker 1 For teenagers?

06:51 Speaker 2 Young offenders.

06:54 Speaker 1 Wow.

06:54 Speaker 2 Basically—

06:56 Speaker 1 How old were you?

06:58 Speaker 2 Nine, ten.

07:01 Speaker 1 Your mother was brave to let you do that. Go on.

07:03 Speaker 2 I go into this place. Now, imagine the trip there: it’s some secret place in the south—

07:07 Speaker 1 Were you with your mother?

07:07 Speaker 2 With my mother.

07:08 Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

07:09 Speaker 2 And one of my sisters, or another volunteer, or a friend of my mother’s. It varied each time. We’d go in a vehicle, a kind of shuttle, that had special permission to get there. They’d give the driver the location during the trip, because they don’t give that location to just anyone. It’s in a clearing, in the south.

07:32 Speaker 1 Okay.

07:33 Speaker 2 With all the fences there, getting into that place was—

07:37 Speaker 1 Like a prison?

07:37 Speaker 2 It is a prison. I mean, the girls there are either girls who committed some offense but can’t yet be sent to prison because of their age—violence or something like that—or girls who need to be protected from their families because—

07:57 Speaker 1 Oh.

07:57 Speaker 2 They went through—

07:58 Speaker 1 Like a shelter.

07:59 Speaker 2 Like a shelter. So I never knew who was standing in front of me. The ones who—

08:04 Speaker 1 What did they tell you? How did they explain the situation to you?

08:07 Speaker 2 So my mother says she took me along on mivtzoim. You know, mivtzoim. We’d go out to bring people joy, right? We’d go to all kinds of places to cheer people up. Even when I was younger, I was already going to nursing homes. Okay? So, you know, at four or five, I was already going to nursing homes.

08:21 Speaker 1 What would you do there, Chana Zelda?

08:22 Speaker 2 Chana Zelda, you know, all those performances, whatever we’d do for each holiday. One time it was Rebbes, another time it was something else. From a young age, I—

08:31 Speaker 1 You love it.

08:32 Speaker 2 Very much.

08:33 Speaker 1 Okay.

08:33 Speaker 2 Very much.

08:34 Speaker 1 You were born for the stage.

08:35 Speaker 2 Yes. So they decided to take me there too, and they told me, “Listen, you’ll see all kinds of girls who might look a little unusual, a little... But come on, we’re going to cheer them up. They—”

08:46 Speaker 1 It’s important.

08:46 Speaker 2 Important, exactly. And what I saw there really was something I wasn’t used to seeing.

08:52 Speaker 1 What do you remember?

08:54 Speaker 2 I remember feeling terribly sorry for them. Very, very sorry. I saw them as trapped, both physically and emotionally. I could see their distress. They saw me, this happy, carefree child, and they flocked to my joy for life—so much so that at one point their counselors had to set a boundary. They said, “Don’t touch her.” I remember that.

09:19 Speaker 1 Weren’t you afraid?

09:20 Speaker 2 No.

09:21 Speaker 1 You must have been curious, too.

09:22 Speaker 2 I was curious, and I could also see the immediate response—what just my presence did for them. I mean—

09:29 Speaker 1 Take me into a moment you remember from there.

09:32 Speaker 2 I remember being a little girl, surrounded by girls who were much, much taller than me, with hair in all kinds of colors, piercings all over their faces, and tattoos everywhere you could imagine.

09:42 Speaker 1 That’s a mivtza, no question.

09:42 Speaker 2 I mean, to me they looked almost like mutants. Seeing people who looked like that—and yet they were so gentle.

09:51 Speaker 1 What, were they converts?

09:52 Speaker 2 They were gentle. They weren’t threatening or frightening.

09:56 Speaker 1 Wow.

09:57 Speaker 2 They were—

09:58 Speaker 1 Warm.

09:59 Speaker 2 Warm! They’d get goosebumps. They’d say, “So tell us! Say something!” Like that.

10:04 Speaker 1 So what did you do there?

10:05 Speaker 2 We’d do some kind of activity with them. It was like a Good Deeds Club, something like that. We’d bring a craft, share a little Torah thought—some kind of activity.

10:16 Speaker 1 What was your role?

10:17 Speaker 2 My role was... I don’t even remember having a defined role, but I always had to tell them something. I don’t know. I’d tell them what happened, or do an impression, or something. I don’t remember. I even sang for them. You couldn’t bring just anything in; everything was checked—

10:33 Speaker 1 Okay.

10:33 Speaker 2 You know, you couldn’t bring things in, not costumes or anything like that. I remember just being myself. I don’t remember feeling any pressure about what I was going to do for them. None.

10:43 Speaker 1 Okay.

10:43 Speaker 2 Just the—

10:44 Speaker 1 You come home.

10:45 Speaker 2 I come home and say to myself, “Oh my goodness, thank You, Hashem.” I would never want to be like that or be in a place like that.

10:50 Speaker 1 So seeing that made it very clear to you what you didn’t want to become. Wow.

10:55 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely.

10:58 Speaker 1 Would you take your daughter there today?

11:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

11:01 Speaker 1 Yes?

11:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

11:02 Speaker 1 So you’re saying it was a formative experience.

11:06 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

11:10 Speaker 1 So you felt pity and compassion there, and it filled you.

11:13 Speaker 2 Very much.

11:13 Speaker 1 Okay, what was the next stop?

11:16 Speaker 2 Basically, that and the nursing homes were what I did as a child.

11:24 Speaker 1 Okay. We’ve moved on to high school. After that first year when I performed with the balloon seller, did you perform in tenth and eleventh grade too?

11:35 Speaker 2 In tenth and eleventh grade, I was already singing.

11:36 Speaker 1 By the way, that year with the Indians, I played an Indian woman. I was one of the Indians sitting there.

11:43 Speaker 2 Where, in—

11:44 Speaker 1 In that same play.

11:46 Speaker 2 Really?

11:46 Speaker 1 Yes. There was the one with the glasses—I think Lior Wolfowitz[?] was the lead actress.

11:53 Speaker 2 But you didn’t play Indian characters.

11:55 Speaker 1 Yes, I was wearing an orange outfit.

11:57 Speaker 2 Really? You actually did...

11:58 Speaker 1 Yes, we really played Indians. I don’t quite remember what we’d planned, but—

12:01 Speaker 2 But you were sitting there, sort of like part of the set.

12:05 Speaker 1 No, no, we acted. We probably had a few lines. It wasn’t—

12:09 Speaker 2 Wow.

12:09 Speaker 1 But, uh—look, I can see your eyes popping out.

12:13 Speaker 2 I don’t remember how I missed that. Why didn’t they include me in it?

12:18 Speaker 1 Because they were afraid. You wanted to be the Indian who’d get everyone laughing, and how would they edit that out?

12:24 Speaker 2 But why did they let you do it? No, wait, wait—where’s the teacher? I want her here right now.

12:29 Speaker 1 There were Indians in the play.

12:30 Speaker 2 So why didn’t they give me that part?

12:33 Speaker 1 Because you wanted something they just couldn’t handle. So they—

12:37 Speaker 2 So you were serious Indian women? Is that it?

12:40 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

12:41 Speaker 2 Hmm.

12:42 Speaker 1 And apparently nobody remembers it.

12:43 Speaker 2 Wow, would you look at that.

12:45 Speaker 1 But then I suddenly remembered.

12:47 Speaker 2 I didn’t remember it at all.

12:48 Speaker 1 I played an Indian woman there too.

12:49 Speaker 2 Whoa. So there were Indian women.

12:53 Speaker 1 Yes.

12:53 Speaker 2 And they just sat there. You sat there like scenery, not like—

12:55 Speaker 1 No, we spoke, we cried. I don’t remember what happened there. It wasn’t—

12:58 Speaker 2 But you didn’t do impressions or anything like what I wanted to do.

13:01 Speaker 1 But I think we did—no. And there was, if I remember correctly—

13:07 Speaker 2 Oh wow, how are you going to cope?

13:07 Speaker 1 There was Lior, and she had binoculars, but the lens covers were on. So we told her the binoculars were covered. I think that was in this play, though maybe it was another one. But I was in plays too. In other years, though, you produced in twelfth grade, and what did we have in tenth and eleventh?

13:23 Speaker 2 I sang. No, I don’t remember. There weren’t any more plays.

13:26 Speaker 1 There weren’t any plays.

13:27 Speaker 2 No.

13:27 Speaker 1 Okay.

13:29 Speaker 2 That’s it. I performed as a singer on the radio.

13:30 Speaker 1 Okay. Then you finished twelfth grade, and as we said, at the graduation ceremony you set off to become international.

13:35 Speaker 2 That was a singing performance, and I went on to sing. It wasn’t stand-up.

13:41 Speaker 1 Okay. Where does the stand-up begin?

13:43 Speaker 2 We talked about that, didn’t we?

13:44 Speaker 1 Yes, but when did it become your profession?

13:48 Speaker 2 Only after I got married, really.

13:50 Speaker 1 Okay. How old were you when you got married?

13:52 Speaker 2 Eighteen and a half.

13:54 Speaker 1 Let’s talk about getting married young.

13:56 Speaker 2 Yes. Let’s do it.

13:57 Speaker 1 Let’s do it.

13:57 Speaker 2 I recommend it.

13:58 Speaker 1 Really?

13:59 Speaker 2 Yes. Very much.

14:00 Speaker 1 Isn’t she still a child? A little girl?

14:02 Speaker 2 So what? No, she’s not a little girl. Come on, we’re mature by the time we’re twelve. What do you mean, a little girl? We know exactly what we want. So actually—

14:10 Speaker 1 I don’t know. Eighteen and— I don’t know.

14:12 Speaker 2 What? What? What are you afraid of? I want to talk now to the mothers who are afraid to marry off their daughters. What are you afraid of?

14:17 Speaker 1 First of all, taking on the responsibilities of life at such a young age.

14:21 Speaker 2 And what does taking on those responsibilities at a much older age do for you?

14:24 Speaker 1 I know better who I am. I know better what I want.

14:26 Speaker 2 And how does knowing yourself better help? You’re less willing to try things. You’re more set in your ways, more weighed down, more serious, more cautious.

14:33 Speaker 1 But accepting another person into your life—

14:34 Speaker 2 It’s harder, and it’s also harder to try things.

14:38 Speaker 1 Yes, but—

14:38 Speaker 2 Because when you’re young, you tell yourself, “Okay, let’s do this, let’s try that. At worst, it won’t work out.”

14:41 Speaker 1 What do you mean, “Let’s do this and try that”?

14:41 Speaker 2 I don’t know—in your life, in your work, in what you want.

14:45 Speaker 1 But life is life. At the end of the day, when you get married, there is a commitment, a responsibility, a burden. I think eighteen and a half is too young for that.

14:56 Speaker 2 All right.

14:57 Speaker 1 We’ve gotten into a debate.

14:59 Speaker 2 Now we can start the episode. So, here’s the thing.

15:03 Speaker 1 No, I’ll tell you what’s interesting about you: both you and your daughter got married—

15:07 Speaker 2 Right.

15:07 Speaker 1 —young.

15:08 Speaker 2 And you know what? From the time she was sixteen, she told me, “Mom, I’ll be married at eighteen.”

15:11 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

15:11 Speaker 2 That really surprised me, because as a child she’d been very parental, as we’ve talked about. I don’t know if we talked about it here, but I worked with her a little to ease that sense of responsibility, because she was very, very parental. I was sure that once she turned eighteen, she’d want to run off into the world, travel, and let go of all responsibility.

15:30 Speaker 1 Enjoy life.

15:31 Speaker 2 Enjoy life. And when she came to me and said, “Mom, I want to get married,” I thought, “Oh! So I did do something right.” For me, that was—

15:39 Speaker 1 Can you understand that—I believe something can be right for one person and not right for someone else.

15:45 Speaker 2 Of course. If someone isn’t ready on any level, then obviously not. Don’t get married. I’m not saying you have to. But if you see that a young woman is mature and responsible—

15:58 Speaker 1 Did you know you’d get married young?

16:00 Speaker 2 No.

16:01 Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

16:02 Speaker 2 No, no. It wasn’t an ideal of mine to get married young. I simply found my match, but—now it’s become an ideal for me. Yes.

16:11 Speaker 1 So when she—if a mother comes to consult you, and here you have a Chabad microphone, so to speak—

16:15 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

16:16 Speaker 1 What do you tell her?

16:18 Speaker 2 If the girl knows how to get up when she needs to get up on time, knows how to make her bed, knows how to cook something basic—an omelet—and knows how to run a washing machine, there’s no reason for her to stay at home.

16:35 Speaker 1 Really?

16:35 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes. Again, that comes with the understanding that you’ll also have to help this couple grow.

16:44 Speaker 1 Okay, so it’s not that she gets married and leaves home—

16:47 Speaker 2 No.

16:48 Speaker 1 And that’s it.

16:48 Speaker 2 No, not as far as I’m concerned. Again, I’m the kind of mother who...

16:53 Speaker 1 A moshav mother who wants her children to live nearby.

16:56 Speaker 2 Yes. So I’d rather they marry young, and I’ll support them as much as needed and give them what they need—

17:01 Speaker 1 Okay, that’s an important point to make.

17:03 Speaker 2 So there you go, I’m making it.

17:06 Speaker 1 But—okay, what about when you got married?

17:08 Speaker 2 When I got married—look, I got married when I was already supporting myself financially, so that wasn’t something that...

17:15 Speaker 1 Independent, more or less.

17:15 Speaker 2 Yes, but still, I had my parents there on either side.

17:20 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

17:21 Speaker 2 I mean, if I wanted to spend one Shabbos here, one Shabbos there, I could. I had that support.

17:25 Speaker 1 Yes.

17:25 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I wasn’t thrown out; I didn’t get married and run away, or get thrown out. I received support, and also—

17:31 Speaker 1 Okay, so you do understand that at that age they need support.

17:36 Speaker 2 Yes, but—

17:36 Speaker 1 Again, you have to give them responsibility and let them deal with things themselves, and...

17:41 Speaker 2 Look, whatever age a couple gets married, if they face certain challenges, you have to address them. You have to put your head, your hands, your whole self into supporting them. I mean—

17:53 Speaker 1 Yes, but—

17:54 Speaker 2 Nobody promises that if you get married at twenty-six, you won’t need any help.

17:58 Speaker 1 Yes, but you’re more settled, more independent, you know more—

18:01 Speaker 2 And more set in your ways, and harder to help.

18:05 Speaker 1 Less flexible, you mean. Less open to change.

18:07 Speaker 2 To change. Meaning, the changes you need to make when working through things.

18:10 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

18:12 Speaker 2 I mean, when a couple comes to you and they’re already older and married, and there are gaps between them, it’s much harder to find that flexibility. But when they’re young, with an open mind, with flexibility and a lightness about them—

18:26 Speaker 1 Yes, that too. I think there’s also something the Rebbe said about giving something big to young children—that dealing with it will be easier for them. But, I don’t know, I... I got married at twenty-four.

18:38 Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

18:40 Speaker 1 Now, okay, in our community twenty-four is considered late, and it also depends on how you spend those years. I mean, it’s not that I planned it. Just as you didn’t plan it, I didn’t either. That’s how Hashem wanted it.

18:53 Speaker 2 I’m sure you made the most of those years, and then you took that with you—

18:57 Speaker 1 Yes, but I look at myself—I also came to parenthood from a more mature place. A young woman who gets married without experience, without that perspective... I think the children end up raising the parents. That’s the part I can’t quite figure out, but...

19:17 Speaker 2 Look, I think that when I really was a very, very young mother, in my early twenties, it was as though I experienced childhood all over again, with all the energy of a child. I mean—

19:36 Speaker 1 A child, a child, a child.

19:37 Speaker 2 Yes, a child, a child, a child. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’m telling you, if I had had to—

19:43 Speaker 1 It worked for you, but it might not work for someone else.

19:44 Speaker 2 But what do you mean—I’m telling you, if I had had to start later, maybe instead of eight children I would have had four, because I wouldn’t have had the energy or the strength anymore.

19:53 Speaker 1 Yes.

19:53 Speaker 2 And I would already have been—

19:54 Speaker 1 But you can also see the difference between how you parented your older children and your younger girls.

19:58 Speaker 2 True.

19:58 Speaker 1 There are differences there.

19:59 Speaker 2 Fine, so what?

20:00 Speaker 1 Fine, no—

20:01 Speaker 2 They experienced me more as—

20:03 Speaker 1 No, I’m not talking about how they experienced you.

20:05 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:05 Speaker 1 In the end, each child is born at exactly the right time for them, with their parents and everything.

20:08 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

20:09 Speaker 1 But the parenting—

20:10 Speaker 2 But if there’s—

20:11 Speaker 1 I can look at myself too. I have four older children, and then there’s Libi, after a long gap. It’s a different kind of parenting. It’s much more mature parenting.

20:20 Speaker 2 True.

20:21 Speaker 1 Now, again, if we start parenting at an older age, then the number of children is probably smaller. True. But, I mean, I think there’s something here that—I don’t know if we can figure it out, but first of all, I don’t think there’s just one right answer. I mean, it has to be—

20:41 Speaker 2 Yes, but I’m talking about an approach.

20:43 Speaker 1 Oh, as an approach—

20:44 Speaker 2 I mean, if that’s the approach, obviously there are always exceptions.

20:47 Speaker 1 If your daughter hadn’t come and told you she wanted to, would you have pushed her to say yes?

20:51 Speaker 2 I wouldn’t have pushed her. Of course not.

20:53 Speaker 1 Ah.

20:53 Speaker 2 But yes, I would have recommended it to her. I mean, yes.

20:59 Speaker 1 But she probably absorbed that from you.

21:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:01 Speaker 1 I mean, if she comes to you at sixteen and says, “I want to get married at eighteen”—

21:04 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:04 Speaker 1 Then it’s in her blood.

21:06 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember that a day or two after she turned eighteen, she said, “Mom, what’s happening? Are you already working on it? Are you already looking for me?” She was really anxious about it. I remember laughing and saying, “Yes, but we said at eighteen.” “Well, I’m eighteen!” “Okay, eighteen lasts a whole year.” “No, no, no, no—now!” She really meant it.

21:24 Speaker 1 So what did you do?

21:24 Speaker 2 I contacted shadchanim.

21:27 Speaker 1 Oh, you really got started—

21:27 Speaker 2 I had to write a résumé, and I remember I didn’t know how to do it. I turned to Ruchama Steinberg and said, “Write it for me.” She wrote this rich résumé, really describing my daughter. She’d spent a lot of time at my house and seen the girl, and she wrote about her—what she wrote about her!

21:44 Speaker 1 Well?

21:44 Speaker 2 I remember that afterward it reached the man she married, and he said, “Wow, what kind of résumé is this?” If the shadchan hadn’t told me, “Meet her; forget what the résumé says,” I wouldn’t have met her. I mean, what did you write about her—a Rebbetzin? It came out so flowery.

22:02 Speaker 1 And you didn’t object—and this was before AI. Thank you, Ruchama.

22:04 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. No, they weren’t lies; it was true, but it was written from a very, very... Again, obviously this isn’t right for everyone, and there’s no fixed rule. The key to shidduchim is also in Hashem’s hands, and you need a lot of faith in that. But I think it begins with the parents’ outlook, with how they see things. I see many parents whose daughter seems ready. But they say, “No, absolutely not—not until she has her diploma, and not until she has this...”

22:31 Speaker 1 Okay.

22:31 Speaker 2 And they waste beautiful years, so to speak. So what do you care? You’ll feed one more person who comes along, another son-in-law, and support them—but let her get married already.

22:44 Speaker 1 Because what does “getting married” mean to you?

22:44 Speaker 2 They’re holding her back—

22:45 Speaker 1 What does “getting married” mean to you?

22:45 Speaker 2 Because they see marriage as a burden. I don’t see it as a burden.

22:50 Speaker 1 Okay, so what’s the approach?

22:52 Speaker 2 I—good question. I see it as another partner, as a springboard to—on the contrary, to something that brings peace of mind. Your other half has arrived; start your life. I mean, from my perspective, as long as you’re alone, you’re alone, and you’re operating with the energy of being alone. So how can you succeed? How can you receive all the abundance life can give you if you’re half a soul?

23:14 Speaker 1 Okay, so you get married young, and you don’t see it as a burden, and from there you—

23:20 Speaker 2 My life, you see, is only just beginning.

23:24 Speaker 1 So you simply—

23:24 Speaker 2 I feel—

23:25 Speaker 1 You switch into a different mode.

23:25 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. I feel that from the moment I got married, I could go places, travel, see the world. Before that, I went alone on shlichus. I felt so lost in life. I felt lonely, I felt abandoned, I felt like, “What am I doing here?” I don’t know. And...

23:47 Speaker 1 And did you feel mature?

23:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

23:49 Speaker 1 I mean, when you went alone on shlichus—

23:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

23:51 Speaker 1 That does show that you had maturity.

23:53 Speaker 2 I had maturity. I also flew to America alone before I was even fourteen, with connecting flights—

24:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

24:00 Speaker 2 My first time going to camp to be a counselor. Forget camp—to be a counselor. Well, not a counselor; it was a camp aide. Okay, an aide isn’t the same age as a counselor. An aide for a family that I— A friend from high school, Metuka Gluchovsky[?], was sitting with me on the grass, and she told me that every year she goes to be a counselor. She’s older than me. She was telling me about being a counselor. I said, “Arrange something for a sweet girl like me, too.” She said, “No problem. I’ll give you the phone number of some shluchim. Call them.” And with my broken English: “You, you—do you need help? I want to be a counselor.” “But how old are you?” “I’m thirteen and a half, but I’m going to be fourteen.” “Okay, we’ll send you some forms, and you fill them out, and we’ll see.” And we were corresponding by fax. By fax!

24:51 Speaker 3 And your mother—

24:51 Speaker 2 In Detroit. Okay, Detroit. So now I’m getting a ticket to go there. And I tell my mother, “Listen, there are shluchim. See? Here’s the form. Look, the telegram arrived.” A telegram—what am I saying? A fax.

25:04 Speaker 3 A fax.

25:04 Speaker 2 And she doesn’t know. I don’t know English. She sees a Chabad House logo—fine. Okay, that’s it. You understand? So I travel for the first time, and I get stopped there at customs. They stopped me as if I had—

25:15 Speaker 3 Why?

25:16 Speaker 2 Because—wow, that’s opening up a whole story. What did I have? Do we have time?

25:20 Speaker 3 I’m with you.

25:20 Speaker 2 Let’s go. So, my first flight. But first I want to tell you how it happened at all. Where did I get the money for the flight? I didn’t have money for a flight.

25:29 Speaker 3 Don’t the shluchim pay?

25:31 Speaker 2 No. They only pay from New York to Detroit. They don’t cover the whole trip. Why would they bring a counselor from Israel? Why would they pay for a plane ticket from Israel?

25:37 Speaker 3 Okay.

25:38 Speaker 2 They have their American counselors—

25:40 Speaker 3 Yes, there’s some—

25:40 Speaker 2 An Israeli girl wants to come? Pay your way to America; from America, we’ll pay. Okay. So first I want to tell you that I’m in Kfar Chabad. My mother was very, very active in N’shei Chabad there, and I used to help them. You know, as part of the shlichus and the mitzvah campaigns, that also meant setting up the hall before an event. And there was an event for Shavuos, and everyone made decorated cakes, and there was a cake competition.

26:08 Speaker 3 Oh, okay.

26:08 Speaker 2 Yes. Wow, it was one of the most memorable and enjoyable gatherings I can remember. I think my sister also entered with some decorated cake, and there were incredible cakes there. They asked me to stand at the entrance and also collect—the admission was, I don’t know, ten shekels, and a ticket to the Rebbe cost—the raffle for a plane ticket to the Rebbe cost twenty-five shekels. Now, they did this at every event—

26:32 Speaker 3 They held raffles.

26:33 Speaker 2 In the village, they held raffles for a flight to the Rebbe. I’d arrived early and set things up, and then they told me, “Before you go, just collect the money at the entrance, and then you can leave.” I didn’t stay for those events because they were—

26:44 Speaker 3 [unclear].

26:45 Speaker 2 Yes. Now, I’d just come back from babysitting, and I had twenty-five shekels. I used to do a lot of babysitting; that was my thing. Anyway, they gave me some box, a shoebox or something, I don’t remember. And I was debating what to do with my twenty-five shekels. I needed to buy myself things. But I thought, maybe I’ll put it toward the plane ticket to the Rebbe. I said, let’s do it. Okay. I put in the money I’d earned babysitting. And while we were waiting for people to arrive, I started filling out tickets. They used a system with, like, two boxes. They’d draw names. Do you remember that kind of raffle, with two boxes? In one there’s a winning slip, and all the others aren’t winners.

27:28 Speaker 3 Oh wow, that’s—

27:29 Speaker 2 Do you remember it?

27:30 Speaker 3 Annoying.

27:30 Speaker 2 A nightmare. Right.

27:32 Speaker 3 No, it’s—

27:32 Speaker 2 And then there—

27:33 Speaker 3 So frustrating.

27:33 Speaker 2 They draw one.

27:34 Speaker 3 Not a winner.

27:34 Speaker 2 Exactly. “Chani Marzel—not a winner.” This one, not a winner. That was the system. Right.

27:42 Speaker 3 Keeping people on the edge like that.

27:43 Speaker 2 So on the slip with my name, I wrote, you know, “Michal Levi. With Hashem’s help, we will do and succeed.” “Yechi Adoneinu.” You know, I wrote things there and decorated it while I waited for people to arrive. I drew airplanes—I drew on the ticket itself, decorated it, because I was the first one and it was a fresh ticket. And that was it. I put it in, and then, of course, the women came and there were more names, and so on. And I finished handling both the raffle tickets for the flight to the Rebbe and the admission. I don’t remember—maybe I wasn’t handling admission. I really don’t remember. There were already two boxes, lots and lots of slips—these went here, those went there... Anyway.

28:18 Speaker 3 You had to keep track of it all.

28:19 Speaker 2 I kept track. The event started. People had stopped coming in. I gave the organizers the two boxes of money and—

28:26 Speaker 3 You went home.

28:27 Speaker 2 I went home. I went to sleep. It was around midnight, I don’t remember exactly. My grandmother starts knocking. We were sleeping in a caravan then. Do you remember the caravan? When someone knocked on it, it went bang, bang, bang. “What? What? What?” And my grandmother wanted to tell me I’d won. You know, there were no cell phones. She says to me, “You, you, you, you!” She was so excited that I’d won a plane ticket, she couldn’t get the words out.

28:50 Speaker 3 Listen, winning a raffle like that is—

28:52 Speaker 2 Listen.

28:53 Speaker 3 That’s already more than winning an ordinary raffle.

28:55 Speaker 2 It was crazy. “You, you, you, you.” “What, Grandma, what? What about me?” “You won. You won.” “Won what?” I didn’t even remember entering. “You won, you won a plane ticket!” So anyway, I get dressed. I have to go over there. “They’re waiting for you. They want to give you your prize. They’re waiting.” I get dressed and run over. “Mazel tov, mazel tov!” “How wonderful!” The people who were still there—it was already the end of the event. And I said, “Okay, where’s the plane ticket?” They told me, “Uh, the money you collected. Take it.” Listen, I went home with the box I’d collected the money in.

29:26 Speaker 3 That’s incredible.

29:26 Speaker 2 It was surreal. To this day I have a picture of myself spreading out all the shekels.

29:31 Speaker 3 That’s incredible.

29:31 Speaker 2 And I remember—

29:32 Speaker 3 Was it enough for a ticket?

29:33 Speaker 2 Almost enough. Almost. Something like three-quarters of the cost.

29:38 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

29:39 Speaker 2 Three days later, the first grandchild in our family was born. I mean, my mother’s first grandchild. We had a nephew.

29:45 Speaker 3 A nephew.

29:45 Speaker 2 A nephew, right. And my mother didn’t have money for a ticket to travel to the bris. So she—

29:51 Speaker 3 You gave her your winnings.

29:52 Speaker 2 I gave her my winnings. She bought a ticket. She told me, “When you want to go, I’ll buy you one.”

29:56 Speaker 3 Ah.

29:57 Speaker 2 And that’s what happened. So when I wanted to go that summer—

30:00 Speaker 3 Ah.

30:01 Speaker 2 My mother paid. Of course, by then it cost twice as much, but never mind. She’d promised, and she—

30:05 Speaker 3 Thank you, Mom.

30:06 Speaker 2 Thank you, Mom, absolutely. And I flew there. It was the last flight of—remember Tower Air?

30:17 Speaker 3 Yes.

30:17 Speaker 2 When everyone got stranded with Tower Air because they went bankrupt? So this was their last flight. I mean, it was the cheapest option. It had a connection—no, not a connection, sorry. It was a direct flight. I’d booked a direct flight to New York with Tower Air. In the middle of the flight, they announced that we’d be stopping in France.

30:34 Speaker 3 Yes.

30:34 Speaker 2 Because they were running out of fuel.

30:36 Speaker 3 Really.

30:36 Speaker 2 Something happened there. I don’t know. The beginning of the airline’s collapse. It really was the company’s last flight. Anyway, we’re stuck in France. We weren’t supposed to land in France. They give us food vouchers to use at the airport. They give us—

30:52 Speaker 3 And you’re alone.

30:53 Speaker 2 I’m alone. All alone. It’s my first flight—my first time on an airplane.

30:57 Speaker 3 Wow.

30:57 Speaker 2 I wasn’t even fourteen yet. My first time on a plane, and we land in France. Now, the French don’t speak English. I mean, they do speak English, but they—

31:06 Speaker 3 No, they insist on not speaking it.

31:08 Speaker 2 Things like that. I say, “Can I call my family?” I need to let them know about the stop. I have to tell them. My sister is waiting to pick me up in New York. I don’t know how to let her know.

31:22 Speaker 3 There are no cell phones.

31:23 Speaker 2 So I’m making a fuss with everyone. I tell them, “I have to let them know, I have to let them know, I have to let them know.” Eventually the airline brings over someone with a sheet of paper, and everyone can write down a phone number. They promise they’ll call our families and tell them there’s a delay. Think about it: no websites, no internet, nowhere to check. It was a different era. I mean, only if my sister had gotten to the airport and seen on the—

31:46 Speaker 3 That it was canceled.

31:47 Speaker 2 The flight had been canceled, but she wouldn’t know that from home. Okay? She was supposed to leave for the airport—a drive of an hour and a half—just to find out. And I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t, because I knew there was—we didn’t know—there was no estimate, no estimate. So I wrote her a message in English, with my English: “To my sister there is a delay and don’t come to airport I will take a taxi.” Something like that. I hoped they’d call her. They never called her. They never passed on the message. Seven hours of

32:19 Speaker 3 waiting.

32:19 Speaker 2 Waiting, when I should already have landed in New York.

32:22 Speaker 3 Wow.

32:22 Speaker 2 Waiting there. Meanwhile, I met two girls who weren’t religious but were Israeli, and we started talking. Naturally, everyone finds the other Israelis, and you know, after seven hours you’re looking for company. They told me they were on their way to America to work at a camp through the Jewish Agency, and they were going to be counselors somewhere in Virginia. I told them, “I’m going on behalf of Chabad to be an assistant in Detroit.” How nice, how cool! “What does Chabad do?” It turned into a nice conversation. In the end, they gave me their Bamba and Bisli, which were kosher, and I gave them my vouchers for the sandwiches that were…

33:04 Speaker 3 Not kosher.

33:05 Speaker 2 Right, and we were all set. I was happy with my Bamba and Bisli, and they had their sandwiches. Great. Then a flight finally came. Off we went. We landed in New York. We landed in New York, and we’re standing there. It’s the first time I’m seeing these tall Black American kids, and I’m like, wow—I’m amazed by everything. Everything is big, everything is, you know… Okay, the girls are ahead of me and I’m behind them.

33:33 Speaker 3 I’m picturing it in my head.

33:34 Speaker 2 I’m behind them in line, and the customs officer sees us talking the whole time. When they get to him, he asks, “Are you together?” Meaning, are you together? So they tell him, “No, she is a counselor in Detroit. She’s a counselor in Detroit. We are in Virginia. We’re in Virginia.” Okay, fine. They go through. “Hello to you.” Now I’m tiny, he’s huge, and he says, “You’re going to be a counselor?” You’re going to be a counselor in Detroit? And I say, “Yes.”

34:08 Speaker 3 Oh, that’s work.

34:09 Speaker 2 He looks at my visa. Police officers come over, take my suitcase and take my passport. “Follow me.” “Follow us.”

34:18 Speaker 3 Oh, no, no, no.

34:20 Speaker 2 I’m thinking, okay. Where to? Where to? What’s happening here? I get to this hall, and my heart sinks. People from every corner of the world—now listen, to me it’s like a comedy sketch. I see—

34:33 Speaker 3 But did it feel like a comedy sketch then?

34:34 Speaker 2 First of all, I was terribly curious, and I was scared too, because it was sort of like being detained. They close the door behind you, and you go into a place like an auditorium. There really was tiered seating, and a stage with people sitting on it like judges. I mean, they were conducting something like a hearing on the spot: who can enter America and who can’t. And you see people being deported, screaming and crying, families from Africa, you know, in African dress. You can’t imagine, you can’t imagine. Indigenous people. Listen, I’m seeing people dressed in all sorts of ways—Hispanic people.

35:17 Speaker 3 It sounds like some kind of dream.

35:19 Speaker 2 I see Charedim crying, praying. Listen, groups and groups of people, each with their own story, their own appearance, their own clothes. I said, “What am I doing here? What am I doing here?” And now I really start to—I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.

35:34 Speaker 3 Alone.

35:34 Speaker 2 Yes, alone. Fine, then it’s my turn, and they’re using a loudspeaker. You can hear everything, every name they call. I hear the names and I’m laughing—what names! Saychik, Barry—all these strange names. Then this huge Black guy calls out, “Miss Lewis,” and I’m like, okay, I make my way down there. And I have nothing with me, right? They took everything. I don’t have my bag, my wallet, anything. I go down there, and he asks me, “What are you doing here in America?” And I’m like, “I just came to visit.” “You’re going to be—” You’re going to be a counselor. A counselor, and you don’t have a work visa. So I tell him, “No, it’s not exactly work. These are friends, they’re family, and I’m going to help.” Then he asks if I have any official paperwork from them. Suddenly I remember that I filled out their health declaration. So I tell him, “In the suitcase you took from me, there’s a document in there.” They bring back the suitcase and let me take out a paper. I give it to him, and he sees that this is actually something organized, that I’m going to an established place. But I’m just incriminating myself more and more. I think, “Oh my goodness, what am I doing?” Suddenly I realize that the more I talk to him, the more I incriminate myself. I decide I’ll say I don’t understand English. I’ll say I don’t understand English. So I tell him, “What? I don’t understand what you’re saying. I don’t—I know some English but not a lot.” Then he says okay and calls an interpreter. There’s an interpreter, and he speaks to me. I tell him, “Listen, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m—I’m

37:09 Speaker 2 American. I just haven’t completed the process yet. My father is American. I haven’t done the paperwork yet, but I’m American.” So he tells me, “Okay, we’ll check that. But in the meantime, don’t say anything else. Just answer yes or no. Don’t get into explanations.” He helped me, honestly, he helped me. He tells me, “Answer yes or no.” Anyway, the officer starts asking me questions. Yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, no. After a few minutes, the interpreter comes over and whispers to him that I really am American and just haven’t completed the process. Then they give me a warning and tell me, “We’re letting you go this time, but on condition that the next time you come, you must enter as a citizen.”

37:39 Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

37:41 Speaker 2 This whole process took a few hours. Anyway, I come out—

37:45 Speaker 4 That was [unclear].

37:46 Speaker 2 I—yes, absolutely. I come out of there. Wow, wow, wow, wow.

37:51 Speaker 4 Do you fall apart?

37:51 Speaker 2 Thank Hashem. No, but the family was waiting for me, and I didn’t even know how to tell them about the seven hours of trouble and all of this. And it turns out that because of that whole process, I missed my connecting flight.

38:05 Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

38:06 Speaker 2 To Detroit. I was sure I had a day to spend with the family and then fly, but I missed it. I mean, I had to—and I missed a flight, and I arrived—eventually I caught another flight. I got to the family I was supposed to stay with. I was supposed to arrive with everyone else, all the new counselors, and get to know them. Instead, I arrived when everyone was asleep. I got into bed, and when I woke up in the morning, there were all these unfamiliar faces looking at me.

38:33 Speaker 4 Tell me, did you just go with the flow? What was going on?

38:35 Speaker 2 Hi.

38:37 Speaker 4 I have to understand what was going on there. Did you just go with the flow?

38:39 Speaker 2 Of course I went with the flow. What other choice did I have? Of course. And I’m like, “Hi, okay, hi, who are you?” You know?

38:47 Speaker 4 Was there no room to feel sorry for yourself? No room for—

38:51 Speaker 2 No, it was an adventure. Come on, I felt like I was in the middle of an adventure, like I was in a movie.

38:55 Speaker 4 So you were living in a movie.

38:56 Speaker 2 I was living in a movie. It was—wow, it was crazy. It was crazy.

39:01 Speaker 4 Oh my goodness, you really need to make a movie. Listen, I can see it as you’re talking; the wheels are turning in my head.

39:09 Speaker 2 It was crazy. And that’s it. Actually, the following year I completed the citizenship process, and after that, whenever I entered America, it was “Welcome home.”

39:18 Speaker 4 Oh, wait—

39:20 Speaker 2 Yes, but—

39:20 Speaker 4 So basically, you didn’t get married at eighteen. In those circumstances, I think you would have gotten married four years later, so…

39:29 Speaker 2 Yes, but—

39:30 Speaker 4 Just kidding. But there’s no question.

39:31 Speaker 2 I went through a lot along the way, but still—

39:34 Speaker 4 So wait, let’s sum this up, because we could talk here for hours and I want us to wrap up.

39:38 Speaker 2 Yes.

39:39 Speaker 4 The point is, it’s not the age, it’s what you’ve done with yourself. I mean, when it comes to getting married, if you’re coming from a place of maturity and awareness and you know what you’re getting into—of course we go into it and give Hakadosh Boruch Hu the reins to everything—but it’s not child’s play. So it’s not the age, it’s what you’ve done with yourself. For you it worked at eighteen, for me it worked at twenty-four, and for someone else it works at thirty. The point is to be aware of that, and may Hashem help everyone find their match.

40:15 Speaker 2 Amen. Amen.

40:16 Speaker 4 Because shidduchim—that’s not a simple world.

40:18 Speaker 2 True, but I still recommend starting young. I’m n— I’m not taking that back—

40:24 Speaker 4 No, no, no, I’m completely with you. I think the message came across very, very clearly. But then let’s be parents who help our children get to age eighteen.

40:32 Speaker 2 Definitely. So give them a regular responsibility at home. Start giving them—of course.

40:36 Speaker 4 Wow, we talked about so many things. Good thing we still have to wrap up.

40:40 Speaker 2 Yes. Keep in mind that your child needs to get married at eighteen. I mean, give them what they need to go out into the world.

40:48 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

40:48 Speaker 2 To me, mothers who take everything, everything, everything, everything on themselves—no, no, no. It’s just that—this, this, this is a handicap. I mean, it’s a kind of...

40:56 Speaker 4 Wonderful. So thank you, Michal.

40:58 Speaker 2 Thank you, Chani. What a—

40:58 Speaker 4 It’s so much fun with you. And the story—I don’t know, I need to take a breath and absorb it, but, okay, let’s go.

41:04 Speaker 2 Let’s go.

41:05 Speaker 4 We’ve been here... I have no idea how long we’ve been talking, how much there is. Let him send me the material.

41:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

41:12 Speaker 4 I’ll tell him, “Oh my gosh, go.” I mean, we talked about the—the arrest in Lod with the—