Somachat Alayich Podcast - 01 - Club Meeting

00:00 Speaker 1 So yes, it was a pretty spontaneous get-together with some sweet women I’d been needing to hug for a while, but you can’t get women together without carbs. How are you, my loves? Last week I held a pilot get-together with some of the members of my club so we could get to know each other better, understand how the club affects their homes, see how we can keep moving forward—and there are even bigger dreams ahead. We sat, talked, wrote, laughed, and the highlight was a playback podcast with Chani Marzel. You’re invited to watch the first part, enjoy it, share, comment, and like. The link to the club is in the video description. You’re welcome to join, and maybe we’ll meet at the next get-together. Enjoy listening. Okay, we can hear some sounds in our headphones. You can’t hear them, but they add a little atmosphere, right? So, welcome. Happy for You in a unique playback-podcast format, with Chani Marzel, Michal Levitin, and a guest from the Happy for You club. It’s our first time, and it’s very exciting. We really want to hear about you, from you—and your guiding questions, of course. I’m basically just getting in the way.

01:10 Speaker 2 No, you’re here.

01:11 Speaker 1 And I’m here.

01:12 Speaker 2 We’re going with the flow.

01:13 Speaker 1 To draw the words out of you and bring them to her—to draw them out and serve them up. Since we have a bar concept in this club, we need some kind of waitress here. So I’m in charge of the tea, yes.

01:24 Speaker 2 We’re at a very special event. It’s the first event for the Happy for You club community. Women came here this morning without knowing one another.

01:34 Speaker 1 I didn’t know who was going to come, either.

01:35 Speaker 2 It’s amazing and moving.

01:36 Speaker 1 Really.

01:38 Speaker 2 So, come on. Hello! You’re the first person we drew in the raffle.

01:42 Speaker 3 It’s really exciting to be here.

01:43 Speaker 2 So tell us who you are.

01:44 Speaker 3 My name is Chana. I’m from Jerusalem, a mother of eight, and I’ve known Michal for a long, long time, since she was doing stand-up and posting podcasts—not the podcast with Chani or anything—

01:55 Speaker 2 Her status updates.

01:56 Speaker 3 Her status updates.

01:56 Speaker 2 What was in her status updates? What did you see there?

01:59 Speaker 3 First of all, the atmosphere at home. She’s funny, and she makes everything feel lighter, and...

02:04 Speaker 1 And it wasn’t as tidy as I made it for you today.

02:06 Speaker 3 Not tidy.

02:06 Speaker 1 By the way, I really wanted to leave the mess so you’d feel at home. I actually said, “Come on, let’s leave it, leave it as it is.” But since we hadn’t been here for two weeks...

02:15 Speaker 2 So they wouldn’t blame me for it.

02:16 Speaker 1 Exactly. We hadn’t been here for two weeks.

02:17 Speaker 3 Nice. When I came in, I saw the kitchen wasn’t... and I thought, here—

02:21 Speaker 1 See? It’s not a hundred percent.

02:22 Speaker 2 Not spotless, not spotless.

02:23 Speaker 1 Do you understand how hard I worked this morning to clean it, and she tells me it’s not spotless? Can you believe it? What?

02:29 Speaker 4 You should have left the laundry for us.

02:30 Speaker 1 I should have left the laundry for them. I can bring it down right now, so watch what you say. There are piles of suitcases. Okay, so—

02:37 Speaker 2 So tell us about yourself.

02:39 Speaker 3 I’m a mother of eight, as I said. The oldest is seventeen and the youngest is two. Challenges are—there are challenges with the little ones, and with the boys, who are more...

02:49 Speaker 2 More active.

02:50 Speaker 3 More active. And adolescence starts already at nine or ten.

02:55 Speaker 1 At a year and a half.

02:56 Speaker 2 Exactly. It just keeps going...

02:57 Speaker 3 Yes, there are those too. And the energy here really kind of—

03:04 Speaker 2 Swept you along.

03:05 Speaker 3 Swept me along. You could call it kinas sofrim. And the moment Michal launched the podcast—the first webinar—I was the first to join. I really didn’t think twice, and I usually do think things through.

03:18 Speaker 1 I can check whether you really were the first.

03:19 Speaker 3 Check.

03:20 Speaker 1 Want me to?

03:20 Speaker 3 Check whether I joined that same day. And by the way, I was in another club too, and it didn’t—I saw that it really wasn’t...

03:28 Speaker 2 We’re focusing on this club.

03:30 Speaker 3 Yes, this club has really given me something. I simply focused on it.

03:35 Speaker 2 But wait, before we talk about the club, I want to get to know you. Who are you?

03:39 Speaker 3 I work as a bookkeeper, and I’m also an emotional therapist.

03:44 Speaker 2 How do those go together?

03:46 Speaker 3 One is for a living, and the other is for my soul, my children, and the people around me.

03:50 Speaker 2 Wow.

03:51 Speaker 3 Very much so. I can sit down at ten or eleven at night and do therapy sessions because it fills me up. And we see the results in real life, so it helps me a great deal.

04:01 Speaker 1 After looking at numbers, you have to tend to the soul.

04:03 Speaker 3 Absolutely, absolutely.

04:05 Speaker 2 No, but I like that you help others, and you help yourself through helping others.

04:11 Speaker 3 That too. I help my children a lot as well. That’s why I went into it. I do a lot of therapeutic work with my children too.

04:17 Speaker 2 Ah.

04:18 Speaker 3 And it helps a lot in general. And with the club, actually, when I joined—I’m a very serious person, let’s start with that. I’m very serious, and I’m very punctual.

04:29 Speaker 1 A bookkeeper. Well, of course...

04:30 Speaker 3 I got here exactly on time. I tried all sorts of routes on Waze to get here. I’m very much like that, and everything has to be—

04:36 Speaker 1 You were the first to arrive.

04:37 Speaker 3 Yes—wait. Yes, but exactly at eleven. Everything for me is according to—

04:41 Speaker 2 You were.

04:42 Speaker 3 Yes.

04:42 Speaker 1 Oh, right, you were early. So she was the first to arrive, yes. Okay.

04:46 Speaker 3 I do everything by the book. At home, everything has to run like clockwork—the children, getting out on time. It was all very stressful, managing a home with eight children and getting everything done, the laundry and all of it.

04:58 Speaker 2 Is all of that your responsibility? Do you do everything at home on your own?

05:00 Speaker 3 Most of it falls on the mother. My husband, G-d bless him, helps a lot, but most of it falls on the mother. You’re the one welcoming them home in the afternoon and sending them off in the morning with a smile instead of all that morning pressure, while I also have to get to work on time. And in recent years, it had started to...

05:19 Speaker 2 Creak.

05:20 Speaker 3 Creak badly.

05:22 Speaker 1 You can hear it in your voice...

05:24 Speaker 3 It was creaking badly.

05:25 Speaker 2 Creaking.

05:26 Speaker 3 Creaking. It was really becoming a problem for us. Things weren’t working the way they should at home. My husband saw it, and I felt it myself. I was very—

05:35 Speaker 2 And were you judgmental of yourself?

05:36 Speaker 3 Very. Very.

05:38 Speaker 1 I think the breaking point is when her husband sees it.

05:41 Speaker 3 Yes.

05:41 Speaker 1 When the husband notices that things are creaking, that’s the breaking point. As long as he doesn’t notice, you can keep going another year, and another year.

05:47 Speaker 3 Yes. To the point that he’d say, “Come back—let’s go back to having the joy for life you had when they were little.”

05:52 Speaker 1 Exactly. “Leave the children with your mother, and let’s get away.”

05:54 Speaker 3 Exactly. Back when they were drawing on the walls—or, not the walls, on paper—but there was more life, and it wasn’t just tasks. Because our whole day was tasks.

06:03 Speaker 2 You’d fallen into a routine that was really wearing you down.

06:07 Speaker 3 A very wearing routine. And we went through difficult times, starting with COVID and wars, and then routine after routine—

06:15 Speaker 1 Routine.

06:15 Speaker 3 A pressured routine.

06:16 Speaker 1 Routine.

06:17 Speaker 3 Routine.

06:17 Speaker 1 Yes, right.

06:18 Speaker 3 But seeing Michal, with all of that—she has unexpected things come up too, and she has children, and she has—

06:24 Speaker 1 My life is one unexpected thing after another.

06:26 Speaker 3 Exactly, like any mother.

06:27 Speaker 1 That’s my routine.

06:29 Speaker 3 Whether your flight gets postponed or not.

06:30 Speaker 2 No, she gets up in the morning and doesn’t know: will there be a show tonight or won’t there?

06:33 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:33 Speaker 3 Yes.

06:33 Speaker 2 How many shows there’ll be, whether there’ll be any, how many shows.

06:37 Speaker 3 And I really envied that about you, as I said—

06:40 Speaker 2 I wanted it to rub off on me. I wanted it to rub off on me.

06:41 Speaker 3 Very much. I really wanted it to rub off on me, and to learn how to lighten the atmosphere—how not to treat everything as though it’s the end of the world.

06:49 Speaker 2 Beautiful. I’m curious: you’re a numbers person, you’re organized, and eleven means eleven. Then you join a club that, as we’ve discussed, has a bar and has a lot to offer. How does that work for you? Do you feel you have to get through everything, or are you okay with not getting through it all?

07:03 Speaker 3 At first, I was really stressed about keeping up with everything and seeing everything—the podcasts, the table, Shabbos Mom, all of it, all of it. Then I looked at all the content and realized, “Wait a second. Stop. Take what helps you, without pressure. Why do you need that pressure?”

07:20 Speaker 2 You understood the bar concept before we even explained it.

07:22 Speaker 1 Wow.

07:23 Speaker 3 Yes.

07:24 Speaker 2 Beautiful.

07:24 Speaker 1 Because it took us a while to understand it.

07:26 Speaker 3 No, Michal also—Michal also, yes...

07:28 Speaker 2 Oh, that was when we started getting the message across.

07:30 Speaker 1 Ah, okay.

07:31 Speaker 3 Yes. When I started—I really took that to heart. So I don’t use everything, but there are things I make a point of using, so I can stay involved and not lose it.

07:40 Speaker 2 Tell her about Mom’s Stage.

07:42 Speaker 3 So Mom’s Stage—I saw at first that there was less cooperation from the family with that. I do read it. I don’t always play the games with the children, but I do pass it on. I do less with that; I focus more on the messages Michal shares every Sunday, and I really try—

07:57 Speaker 2 The exercises.

07:58 Speaker 3 And the exercises, definitely. Because I really see with those that if you practice, it happens.

08:03 Speaker 2 Right.

08:04 Speaker 3 If you don’t practice—

08:04 Speaker 2 It’s training a muscle. It really is training a muscle.

08:06 Speaker 3 Exactly, it’s muscles. And the bot—it saved me in a lot of critical situations.

08:12 Speaker 2 Would you like to share one?

08:13 Speaker 3 Yes, I have a challenging child. Everyone has their own challenging one, um, and when he’s stubborn—yes, stubborn—when he decides something, it ends up in an explosion. You have to take him by force. He’s ten and a half, and there was one Friday afternoon.

08:32 Speaker 2 Are we out of time? No. Oh, that was just here.

08:35 Speaker 3 That had an effect.

08:35 Speaker 2 Oh, okay. Some kind of effect.

08:37 Speaker 3 So, one Friday afternoon, my husband left early.

08:41 Speaker 2 No, they don’t know there are sound effects.

08:42 Speaker 3 There are sound effects.

08:42 Speaker 5 There are sound effects here.

08:45 Speaker 2 No.

08:46 Speaker 5 You’ll hear it afterward.

08:47 Speaker 3 Yes. It was an hour before Shabbos, and we were supposed to drive somewhere twenty, twenty-five minutes from home. My husband had already left with some of the children, and I told him, “I need half an hour to get myself together. I’m going to rest, and then I’ll…”

08:58 Speaker 5 Nice. So you send the children ahead, rest, and then come.

09:01 Speaker 3 See? See?

09:01 Speaker 5 I really like that concept.

09:03 Speaker 3 So, forty minutes before Shabbos, I open the door and say to my oldest, “Come on, quickly, we have to leave already,” and suddenly I see him at home. I said, “What are you doing here?” Dad had left; he hadn’t waited. Apparently there had been an argument between the siblings. My son had decided he wasn’t coming.

09:19 Speaker 2 Wow.

09:20 Speaker 3 He just wasn’t coming. But there was nothing at home—no food, nothing. Normally, I really would have just grabbed him by force. Come on, we’re going. I consulted the bot. I was talking to it, and it was really guiding me, and I kept telling it, “It’s not working, it’s not working.” “Talk to him at eye level.” “It’s not working, it’s not working.” In the end, the thing that helped was simply: give him the responsibility. Trust him.

09:43 Speaker 2 Wow.

09:43 Speaker 3 And what I did felt so unlike me. Really. I wasn’t used to acting that way. With all the pressure, and my husband was on his way back to Jerusalem to pick him up, because he—

09:55 Speaker 2 Wow.

09:56 Speaker 3 I told him, “Listen, I have to get gas. I’m running out to get gas; I’ll be back in five minutes. You’re upstairs.” I went and came back. My son was waiting for me at the entrance to the street.

10:09 Speaker 2 But do you understand what you actually did there? That’s our work.

10:13 Speaker 3 That’s the work—

10:13 Speaker 2 To let go of the responsibility.

10:14 Speaker 3 Completely. That’s our work, and I—

10:16 Speaker 2 And good for you for rising above it.

10:17 Speaker 3 Taking responsibility.

10:18 Speaker 2 Good for you.

10:18 Speaker 3 So…

10:19 Speaker 2 Good for you.

10:20 Speaker 3 It really—

10:21 Speaker 2 So what’s your message to Michal?

10:24 Speaker 3 First of all, you’re a blessing to the world. You’re a light to the world.

10:27 Speaker 2 Wow.

10:27 Speaker 3 Really. Because it’s truly good news that you can do this with joy, in a good atmosphere, with a good relationship with teenagers. Because—

10:40 Speaker 2 Wow, beautiful.

10:41 Speaker 3 I have teenage girls too. Today, I… In the past it was harder; today our relationship is much better, much more accepting, with much more listening and trust. Even with all the stress of the war, and the stress of the challenges, and everything going on around us… So truly, this is a message that needs to be spread. And now we’re—

11:02 Speaker 2 So we’re spreading it.

11:04 Speaker 3 Showing the way.

11:05 Speaker 2 It’s the way to—

11:06 Speaker 3 Just a way to spread it to more, um—

11:07 Speaker 2 Right. How beautiful.

11:08 Speaker 5 Right.

11:09 Speaker 3 To more places, so they can follow this path—

11:11 Speaker 2 If there’s a mother listening right now who isn’t in the club, what can you tell her?

11:16 Speaker 3 I can tell her that this club is so supportive. There are the questions and answers—you don’t find that anywhere else. And the bot is available to you twenty-four hours a day, six days a week. Really available. It’s so supportive and understanding. I think every mother needs that support available to her when she’s struggling, because it really helps.

11:37 Speaker 2 It’s moving what you can do with technology today.

11:39 Speaker 3 With technology.

11:40 Speaker 2 Yes, amazing.

11:40 Speaker 3 It really means bringing it to a place of holiness, and elevating it, as they say.

11:47 Speaker 2 So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

11:48 Speaker 3 Thank you so much for inviting me.

11:49 Speaker 2 I was delighted. You were the first.

11:53 Speaker 3 That’s the best.

11:54 Speaker 5 Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow, wow.

11:59 Speaker 3 How wonderful.

12:02 Speaker 2 Another guest on the podcast.

12:05 Speaker 5 Welcome to Sarah, who’s come to us from Jerusalem. How wonderful! Okay. Sarah.

12:16 Speaker 2 It’s so nice to have you with us.

12:17 Speaker 5 Yes, it really is nice.

12:18 Speaker 3 I’m honored.

12:19 Speaker 5 I arrived with a dancer’s energy. Right?

12:22 Speaker 3 Yes.

12:23 Speaker 5 Yes.

12:23 Speaker 3 On top of everything else.

12:24 Speaker 5 On top of all the other things you do.

12:26 Speaker 2 You’re not hoarse for no reason. Why are you hoarse?

12:30 Speaker 3 Because I teach a lot of dance classes.

12:32 Speaker 5 Dance classes are…

12:34 Speaker 2 They take energy.

12:34 Speaker 3 It’s talking and dancing.

12:36 Speaker 2 Do you love it?

12:37 Speaker 3 Very much. It’s, it’s—

12:39 Speaker 2 Yes?

12:39 Speaker 3 Since I was about four.

12:40 Speaker 2 What does it do for you? What does it do—since you were four. Wow. That’s amazing.

12:42 Speaker 3 What does it do for me? It just makes me soar.

12:45 Speaker 2 Mm. Put that into more words, explain it more, because it doesn’t make me soar.

12:49 Speaker 3 It’s who I am. In your body, you feel—

12:53 Speaker 2 Are you moving all the time?

12:54 Speaker 3 A lot. I feel like dancing, even when I’m just sitting here, you know.

13:00 Speaker 2 Oh, is that connected to attention and things like that?

13:02 Speaker 3 No. I’m very focused. Overly focused.

13:04 Speaker 2 Oh, so that’s the other kind of attention issue.

13:06 Speaker 3 Yes.

13:06 Speaker 2 Beautiful.

13:07 Speaker 5 Is that a problem too?

13:09 Speaker 3 No.

13:09 Speaker 2 Nothing is a problem.

13:10 Speaker 5 Not a challenge. Sorry.

13:12 Speaker 2 No. Everyone has their own things to deal with, and…

13:15 Speaker 5 Oh, okay. No, I meant being overly focused.

13:17 Speaker 3 It’s a gift.

13:17 Speaker 2 No, they’re gifts.

13:18 Speaker 3 A gift.

13:18 Speaker 2 They’re gifts and challenges, and…

13:19 Speaker 5 Okay, I hadn’t thought being overly focused was some kind of challenge.

13:22 Speaker 3 No, it’s not something Ritalin would help with, let’s put it that way.

13:24 Speaker 5 It’s what? It’s…

13:26 Speaker 3 Ritalin wouldn’t help. It doesn’t solve something like that.

13:30 Speaker 5 Like…

13:30 Speaker 2 No, Ritalin wouldn’t help there, because—

13:31 Speaker 3 Exactly.

13:32 Speaker 2 You’re sitting in one place, but you hear everything.

13:34 Speaker 3 And I see so much.

13:35 Speaker 2 You see everything and hear everything.

13:36 Speaker 3 And I see this and that and that, and another detail, and I feel things.

13:38 Speaker 2 Which can be tiring, and jarring too.

13:40 Speaker 5 But those are a stand-up comedian’s traits. Seeing everything.

13:44 Speaker 3 Not so much. My husband has a great sense of humor, though…

13:47 Speaker 5 What? What do you mean, your husband has a great sense of humor?

13:49 Speaker 3 Give him anyone, and he’ll imitate them—even you.

13:51 Speaker 5 No way! How fun!

13:53 Speaker 3 Yes.

13:53 Speaker 2 And do you like humor?

13:56 Speaker 3 I live for it. I chose it.

13:57 Speaker 2 How do you know Michal?

13:59 Speaker 3 Oh, it started with her performances, and then I saw people sharing her status updates. I clicked right away, and I’ve been following her ever since.

14:08 Speaker 2 Oh, so you’ve been there almost from the beginning.

14:09 Speaker 3 Yes. I think I’ve been following the statuses for three years.

14:13 Speaker 5 I’ve been posting statuses?

14:14 Speaker 3 No, longer.

14:14 Speaker 5 No, much longer.

14:15 Speaker 3 So I…

14:16 Speaker 5 So you’ve been following the statuses for three years already?

14:17 Speaker 3 At least, as far as I remember.

14:18 Speaker 5 Okay. No, let’s say it really took off around COVID, but yes.

14:23 Speaker 3 About a year and a half after COVID.

14:25 Speaker 5 Yes. Okay.

14:26 Speaker 2 And what was it like for you to watch the statuses? What did you see there?

14:29 Speaker 3 Her life. Her interactions with the children.

14:32 Speaker 2 What caught your attention?

14:34 Speaker 3 Oh, she simply lives the experience with her children. She becomes a child herself, and that speaks to me because I’m like that too. I say to myself, if I’m raising children, I don’t want to—yes, a mother has authority and all that, but I don’t want those years to pass while I miss out on experiencing them with my children. I’m the youngest—I’m actually second to youngest.

14:53 Speaker 2 In her family.

14:54 Speaker 3 So yes, I grew up with older siblings, and I was the child of the family. The whole house sort of became like me, because I would put on a show.

15:01 Speaker 2 And are you still a child today? Can you still be a child?

15:03 Speaker 3 Wow. I think I’ll be a child until I’m ninety.

15:05 Speaker 2 No, what’s amazing is that you say you’ve been dancing since you were four, and you’re still living as that four-year-old girl.

15:11 Speaker 3 Yes.

15:12 Speaker 2 That’s beautiful. And you earn a living from it today too.

15:14 Speaker 3 That too. Among other things. It’s grown now.

15:16 Speaker 2 What do you do today?

15:17 Speaker 3 I have a camp. Camp Achva.

15:19 Speaker 2 What’s that?

15:20 Speaker 3 A camp for girls. It’s very focused on dance and performing. The concept of the camp is the stage.

15:26 Speaker 2 Camp is in the summer?

15:27 Speaker 3 Summer camp. Yes.

15:28 Speaker 2 It’s a camp you run in the summer?

15:29 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. On quite a large scale.

15:31 Speaker 2 It’s become a brand.

15:33 Speaker 3 Yes.

15:33 Speaker 2 How wonderful!

15:35 Speaker 5 Wow. Right?

15:36 Speaker 3 No, I don’t advertise it. Not really, but…

15:39 Speaker 5 Its reputation precedes it by now.

15:41 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem, there are people who…

15:42 Speaker 3 Work on that, but yes.

15:44 Speaker 2 You can advertise something now if you want. You have a platform here.

15:47 Speaker 3 Okay. I’ll leave that to you.

15:51 Speaker 2 So you run the camp. When do you start organizing it—around now, after Pesach?

15:57 Speaker 3 There are things happening even before that, but the intense planning really starts now.

16:03 Speaker 2 What else do you do?

16:04 Speaker 3 I also work at a Montessori school.

16:06 Speaker 5 Which is a dream in itself.

16:07 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:08 Speaker 5 Wow.

16:08 Speaker 3 An amazing school.

16:09 Speaker 5 Oh my goodness.

16:09 Speaker 2 It’s interesting that…

16:10 Speaker 5 I would move just for that school. Montessori is one of my dreams.

16:15 Speaker 2 One like that has opened.

16:16 Speaker 3 For my daughter to study there—that’s the heart of it.

16:17 Speaker 2 Girls study there. Right.

16:18 Speaker 3 It’s a way of life that I think you practice at home too.

16:20 Speaker 5 Yes, that’s right.

16:21 Speaker 3 It’s very much about independence—

16:23 Speaker 5 Very much about independence, very sensory, very experiential—meaningful learning through doing and experiencing, and—

16:29 Speaker 2 So you’re saying that from watching the statuses, you saw that you could bring that delight into your home, be a child yourself, and create that joy there?

16:36 Speaker 3 Yes, because a status is also something you see in passing.

16:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hm.

16:40 Speaker 3 It’s not like you’re—

16:41 Speaker 5 It doesn’t demand a commitment.

16:42 Speaker 3 For example, “Mom’s Stage”—sorry, I forget what it’s called—speaks to me less, because my children are small, five years old. It doesn’t speak to me as much. That’s not really something I would take from it.

16:52 Speaker 2 What do you take from it?

16:53 Speaker 3 What do I take from it? First of all, the Zoom sessions. Wow, I don’t miss them, even if I’m driving, then I—

16:59 Speaker 2 A Zoom session does mean you have to make time and put in effort. But you’re saying, “Once a month, I can give it that time, and it’s good for me.”

17:06 Speaker 3 It’s—

17:06 Speaker 2 What does it give you?

17:08 Speaker 3 Um, first of all, a broader perspective, because you bring on guests with a very broad perspective.

17:11 Speaker 5 Right.

17:12 Speaker 3 And she takes what she’s been talking about all month in her statuses and gives us tools. I’m very practical; I don’t have time for theories. I can understand theories on my own. I’ll study them myself, explore them myself.

17:24 Speaker 2 You’re looking for practical application.

17:25 Speaker 3 Practical application. For example, glass balls and rubber balls—my husband is already using that. He’s started saying it.

17:30 Speaker 5 Wow.

17:30 Speaker 2 It’s become part of the family’s language.

17:32 Speaker 5 That’s so nice.

17:32 Speaker 3 Really, truly.

17:33 Speaker 2 Amazing.

17:33 Speaker 3 And I’ve always been a very organized person. It may look like I do a ton of things, but I’m very organized, very orderly.

17:39 Speaker 5 A dancer—always having to calculate the next move.

17:42 Speaker 3 Exactly. And I’ve always done that, but suddenly this gave a name to what I do. It made me conscious of it, so I could take it and act on it. And I really did. Because of that, we managed to go to Eilat before the war—before Pesach.

17:59 Speaker 2 Wow.

17:59 Speaker 3 Because I chose which of my balls were rubber balls.

18:01 Speaker 2 And I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look—

18:02 Speaker 5 What are your glass balls?

18:03 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you. Yes, glass and rubber.

18:05 Speaker 5 Yes, right.

18:06 Speaker 2 I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look: Michal and I sat down to work out the content for this, and it was really an aha moment. I was asking her questions, trying to draw out how she handles huge productions and Pesach. Suddenly, this whole idea of juggling became clear to me. It’s moving to hear how it’s taken hold and become part of a family’s language.

18:26 Speaker 3 And the app was really cool.

18:28 Speaker 5 Yes, about that, about the development—Chani, Chani worked on developing the apps.

18:34 Speaker 2 Again, it’s about knowing how to use the tools Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given us.

18:36 Speaker 5 The technological tools. You see, He gave me the technology, I bring the content, and the two go together.

18:41 Speaker 3 Right. And I want to say to everyone in the club: you offer so much.

18:45 Speaker 2 A buffet.

18:45 Speaker 3 It really is true. I only understood when you started talking about it. Until then I was saying, “Oh my gosh, then I don’t belong in the club.”

18:50 Speaker 5 You get lost among so many things.

18:51 Speaker 2 No, but if you’re a diligent student and you want to get a hundred because maybe Michal gives an exam at the end, then...

18:58 Speaker 3 There’s a research project, and I’m not doing a research project. That’s not why I’m here.

19:01 Speaker 2 So once you understood it was a buffet, what did that do for you?

19:03 Speaker 3 First of all, I just let go.

19:04 Speaker 2 Beautiful.

19:05 Speaker 3 Suddenly I understood: I enjoy the Zoom sessions, I enjoy the statuses, and I get something from them. I can just take as much as I can from them.

19:12 Speaker 2 And what do you think of the secret status? What does it give you?

19:15 Speaker 3 Wow. First of all, it doesn’t sound nice to call it a peek.

19:18 Speaker 5 But that’s what it is.

19:19 Speaker 2 At the end of the day, a status is a peek.

19:21 Speaker 3 Right.

19:21 Speaker 5 That’s what it is.

19:22 Speaker 3 But I, I—

19:22 Speaker 2 But you can understand that there’s something there... Why is it secret? Because it speaks the language of people learning in the club.

19:27 Speaker 3 It goes beyond what she shows. Like what happened when Briny cut her hair. I personally took something from that, and I think everyone else who saw it did too. It shook me. You handled it with such strength, when you could have exploded, and probably torn the whole house apart, canceled the flight, given up on everything. “I’m not going anywhere with a girl who looks like a kibbutznik,” or whatever you’d call it. Instead, you went and made her look nice and told her she looked beautiful that way. And I think that...

19:58 Speaker 2 So shouldn’t she have put that on her regular status? Why the secret status?

20:01 Speaker 3 Actually, she did put it on the regular one too.

20:03 Speaker 2 Oh, I did?

20:04 Speaker 5 Not everything I shared with you.

20:06 Speaker 2 What was on the secret one?

20:06 Speaker 5 You got the interpretation on the—

20:08 Speaker 3 Secret one.

20:09 Speaker 5 The secret one, and I made the video just for you too.

20:11 Speaker 2 Again, it’s not... I think we need to talk about this too, simply because it’s something people talk about.

20:14 Speaker 3 Exactly.

20:15 Speaker 2 We... She speaks a certain language, and someone who isn’t involved in the other things won’t—

20:19 Speaker 3 She won’t understand.

20:19 Speaker 2 She won’t understand.

20:20 Speaker 3 She won’t understand.

20:21 Speaker 2 Ultimately, a community and a very, very special shared language are being built here. So...

20:26 Speaker 3 When you see it, you see how she puts it into practice, not how she presents theories.

20:31 Speaker 2 Because she’s not a theory person. Come on.

20:32 Speaker 3 Exactly.

20:32 Speaker 2 It got a birth certificate. It, it—

20:34 Speaker 3 And everything I took from the status was about things beyond that. Like when I said to you, someone asked her, “What, you yell at your children?” And she said, “Of course I yell,” and then she shouted, “You’re amazing!” And I thought, wow, wait—that’s what her yelling sounds like. She yells, but what is she yelling about?

20:52 Speaker 2 No, she really does yell too.

20:53 Speaker 3 She yells.

20:53 Speaker 2 She yells too, and that’s okay. Sarah, thank you so much. We’re so glad you came to join us.

21:00 Speaker 5 Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sarah. Everyone, I need a moment to get my heart rate down. These things are moving me. Welcome, Nava. Come, get settled. Bring the microphone closer—really close to you, like that.

21:24 Speaker 2 Oh, wow.

21:26 Speaker 5 Hello, Nava.

21:27 Speaker 2 Hello and blessings.

21:29 Speaker 5 We’re so glad you’re here with us.

21:30 Speaker 2 I feel privileged too. Wait, no—bring the microphone closer.

21:33 Speaker 5 Nava, I... Oh, like that.

21:35 Speaker 2 I feel privileged.

21:37 Speaker 5 So do we. And I feel doubly privileged that you came here and brought me such a precious gift that I haven’t even fully taken it in yet: a portrait of the Rebbe that your husband painted.

21:46 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

21:47 Speaker 5 It’s really, really moving.

21:48 Speaker 2 An incredible portrait.

21:49 Speaker 5 Look at the portrait. It’s done by hand.

21:51 Speaker 2 Incredible.

21:52 Speaker 5 Show us.

21:53 Speaker 2 So accurate.

21:55 Speaker 5 Her husband painted it, and you gave it to me as a gift, and it’s so...

22:02 Speaker 2 Wow.

22:03 Speaker 5 I couldn’t have asked for a more meaningful gift for this club, which was founded with the Rebbe’s blessing, of course. It’s amazing and moving.

22:12 Speaker 2 It’s my husband’s privilege.

22:13 Speaker 5 Truly.

22:14 Speaker 2 Your husband, Roman.

22:14 Speaker 5 May it be a merit for your husband, and may you have nachas from your children.

22:17 Speaker 2 Amen.

22:17 Speaker 5 And health, and everything you truly need, because this...

22:20 Speaker 2 Thank you so much. So tell us about yourself. Where have you come from?

22:23 Speaker 3 I’m Nava, from Petach Tikva.

22:27 Speaker 5 There’s no one who hasn’t heard of Petach Tikva by now.

22:30 Speaker 3 Right, huh?

22:30 Speaker 5 You got the most attention—Iran really singled you out.

22:33 Speaker 3 Even Iran, I thought, would be more—

22:35 Speaker 2 For years people have been saying Petach Tikva doesn’t exist.

22:37 Speaker 5 Exactly, and now suddenly...

22:38 Speaker 2 Suddenly Petach Tikva exists.

22:39 Speaker 3 It exists, it’s existed for a long time. Maybe people want to ignore it, but it won’t let them. It really won’t.

22:47 Speaker 5 I think a few people from Petach Tikva just told Iran that the nuclear reactor is there.

22:51 Speaker 3 Yes, they put up a big sign at the entrance saying, um—

22:53 Speaker 5 Yes, it’s here, so...

22:55 Speaker 3 Yes, the nuclear reactor isn’t here.

22:57 Speaker 2 How’s it going for you here? You came to this gathering without knowing any of the women.

23:01 Speaker 3 Um, first of all, I love women—not in the secular sense. Yes.

23:08 Speaker 5 Here’s a woman who’s been on a journey and became observant. Go ahead.

23:11 Speaker 3 Yes, so I have room for—

23:12 Speaker 5 The terminology is, um... Yes, we, we—

23:15 Speaker 2 Welcome everyone.

23:16 Speaker 5 Welcome them.

23:17 Speaker 3 Yes. Um, I feel—

23:20 Speaker 2 You’re very sociable.

23:21 Speaker 3 I’m very sociable. I really love being around people. I do. Um, for ten years now I’ve been teaching Tanya once a week.

23:29 Speaker 5 Wow. Do you feel the Tanya in my club?

23:35 Speaker 3 Very much. Yes.

23:36 Speaker 5 That’s what matters most to me, to...

23:38 Speaker 3 And when you said you’d studied it before, but needed someone to give you tools, I thought, “Ah, that’s it.”

23:44 Speaker 5 So you need the...

23:46 Speaker 3 Because I know that not many women, even Chabad women, engage with Tanya. They learned it in school, and now it’s, “Leave me alone with that”—

23:55 Speaker 5 Exactly. I studied it all those years.

23:57 Speaker 2 We learned it—

23:57 Speaker 5 But it’s not the same as sitting down and studying it.

23:59 Speaker 2 We learned it, but we didn’t live it.

24:01 Speaker 3 Yes. So when I began becoming observant...

24:06 Speaker 2 When did you become observant?

24:07 Speaker 3 At twenty-seven.

24:08 Speaker 2 Wow.

24:09 Speaker 3 I started out with Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, but at a certain point they stopped lighting that fire in me. Wow. He also said, “There is no despair in the world at all,” but... okay. So I said, “Hashem, how did the fire go out? Goodbye. I got the idea. Bye.” You were really ready to leave? Leave everything. What do I need this for? That’s it, there’s no fire. Wow. It faded. Wow. Then a friend told me I had to hear a certain— Because at first there really was a fire? A real fire. Wow. Yes. Lights, uh... lights without vessels, sort of? Something like that. Yes. Okay. It was over within a year. Wow. Um, then a friend said to me, “Before you drop everything like that, come to one class at Midreshet Pnimiyut.” And I arrived just in time for a Tanya class. Wow. And there, through Rabbi Ginsburgh’s words, I felt that the Alter Rebbe reached every corner of my soul in a single class. Tell us that a little more clearly. Um, I remember we got to a chapter—I don’t remember exactly, one of the chapters in the forties, if I’m not mistaken—where the Alter Rebbe said... Because I’d always been thinking, “Ugh, I keep having bad thoughts about myself, bad thoughts about the world, and I don’t... I don’t know where I’m going or how to get out of this loop.” And then you judge yourself for it. And then I judge myself. Is this what life is? Negative thoughts—how do you turn them around? And there was a chapter where the Alter Rebbe said that when a person is in darkness, with dark thoughts, working on that is their task throughout life. So I said, “Okay, then I’m going to work on it. That’s my task.” It was as though you found acceptance for what you were going through. Exactly. This is my task. It’s not who I am; these are things that happened to me. Wow. And from now on I... And really, I’m a happy person. I’m funny. Um, I was just telling— Your face is so radiant. I was just telling someone

26:01 Speaker 3 that when I was little, I wanted to be Tzipi Shavit. Ah. Then, after you become observant, you don’t have a Tzipi Shavit like that. You have Michal Levitin. So when I came to one of the... you know, you go to conferences, and I saw Michal, I said, “Wow, there’s a Tzipi Shavit of the Chabad world, with all those rhymes!” And the rhymes really, uh... They found their audience. Absolutely, absolutely. And then, uh, I think it was only two years ago that I started watching your status updates, and the children and I laugh all the time. “Put on Michal’s status! Put on Michal’s status!” Wow, that’s so moving. Michal, what’s it like for you to hear that?

26:42 Speaker 6 I don’t know, I... I have no... I don’t know. Everyone’s going to Jumbo. I want Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.

26:52 Speaker 3 We have our own versions. Wow, wow, wow. Yes. So then, when she came out with “Same’ach Alayich,” I really liked the whole idea of... “same’ach” and... there I go again, making excuses... the wordplay. The wordplay. It took me about a day, and then I said, “What? What? What is there even to think about?” And I want to tell you that you’re a huge inspiration. And why did I write down “calm”? Because... No, that’s what I wanted to ask. In my home, uh, there are six of us siblings, and, um, a lot, a lot, a lot of shouting. We even talk by shouting; everything is shouting. And at sixteen or seventeen, I realized I needed to lower my voice. Yes, my voice also gets very loud sometimes. The neighbors might even... Absolutely. The neighbors would ask too, and... they’d shout to my mother, “[unclear].” So I knew I had work to do on my tone, to bring it down. Because sometimes, when your voice is loud, people can’t see who you are; they get defensive. You came to that realization at sixteen? Yes. Wow. But after my chil... So I was doing okay until the children came, and then... Then I cranked up the volume again. Because you know, when we have children, we immediately become a reflection of our parents. Only afterward do we find our balance and do the work of figuring out who we are. Wait, we’re talking Tanya here. When the children come, your child arrives, and then it all comes up. Yes. It’s a soul that takes... It took me time to absorb that, and working on it is much harder. When you’re working on yourself alone and choosing who will be around you—it takes awareness. Exactly. It takes work, absolutely. And just seeing you in your status updates, and... I can’t get to all the... Right. Oh yes, but especially the zooming out,

28:36 Speaker 3 the glass balls—it took me a little while to take that in, but I called it “skipping over.” Nice. Especially on Pesach, I brought it to Nava[?]: “Skip over the whole glass-ball thing; skip over what matters and what doesn’t. Do some skipping.” Nice. Pesach is about skipping over too. Nice, that’s wonderful too. Yes, I have to say. Nice. It’s so lovely when women take what I say and put it into words that feel easy and good for them. It’s fun. It’s not Turkish. And when I have time, I open up a Zoom session I missed to watch it, and... Right, you really bring in these women—I know them, and every one of them is amazing. Uh, and that’s it. And just... So what am I saying? Just seeing you and realizing that it’s possible to speak without shouting really affects me. I sort of forget that. And that gives you a sense of calm? Yes, it calms me. Peace of mind? Yes, yes. Ah, you mean “calm” as in peace of mind. Peace of mind. I see her and see that you can speak, and you can, uh... Listen, I love it. I want to be in Shomron too. Wow, you’re wonderful. Thank you. But your story is very moving, because you were about to leave, all set to go, and then it was as though the Alter Rebbe came and spoke to you. Absolutely. Yes, really. Truly, wow. Yes, and today you feel he’s with you. It took me time to call myself a Chabad chassid, because back then, at the midrasha, as someone who had become observant, I thought you had to be born into it, or at least have seen the Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe had touched me, but the Rebbe wasn’t really answering me through Igros Kodesh. So... A chossid of the Alter Rebbe. I’m a chossid of the Alter Rebbe. Okay. But I went through a crisis. I’d been at the midrasha for four... years, and I lost several people dear to me, and they told

30:21 Speaker 3 me to write to the Rebbe. I always said, “He doesn’t answer.” Then one time I opened Igros Kodesh, and the Rebbe answered me: he, um, offered me comfort twice. Wow. In a remarkable letter about matters of the soul and what I needed to work on more. That’s where the connection began. Today you feel connected? Connected. And this was also the year I said, “I’m going to the Rebbe.” I have a black mark on my record in America, you know, and he wrote to me, “You’re already with me.” I said, “I’m going to the embassy. I don’t care what happens.” And you went? And I got... Okay, we could do a whole podcast with you. After five years of having that black mark on my record, with all the procedures involved, through the Rebbe’s bracha I got my visa from the embassy within an hour. It was the most meaningful year of my life. Amazing. We need to finish, but I do want to say one thing. Think about it: you came to that Tanya class, and Rabbi Ginsburgh, who was speaking, didn’t know who the soul was that had arrived. Think about how you’re doing that for souls today. Absolutely. How moving. It’s a privilege, it’s a privilege, and the light comes back to you. That’s why I... So how wonderful that you’re with us in the club. Thank you. Nava[?], thank you. Thank you.