[This episode originally aired on July 29, 2024]

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today, we are speaking with Dr. Hilla Aboody, an amazing teacher, mother, wife and mentor currently living in Eretz Yisrael who I invited to come on to speak about this heavy time on the Jewish calendar.

Hilla has such a beautiful way of explaining things — it’s so deep and profound yet easy to comprehend at the same time.

A little background on her:

She is a wife and mother of five, living in Eretz Yisrael after making Aliyah 7 years ago from Brooklyn, NY. She is a teacher and Em Bayit (house mother) at Midreshet Eshel, a Sephardic seminary for post High school students from around the world. Her educational background includes studying at Michlalah and receiving her bachelor’s degree from Bar-Ilan University and a Master’s and PhD in Jewish History from New York University. She has published her study on Eliyahu the Prophet in Talmudic literature and midrashim in her book, “Through the Prism of Wisdom”. As an educator and kallah teacher, Hilla dedicates her time in guiding students to creating a relationship with Hashem and tips and tools to thrive in their marriages and in life.

In our conversation, we speak about:

-What the Jewish perspective is on sadness and pain

-How we can connect to Hashem during this time and in this unique way, especially if it feels daunting for you right now

-Why this particular time period brings about more heaviness and actually the reason why we take more precautions

-The rich energy that lies in the months of Tammuz and Av — what the letters associated with each month mean, why the sense of each month is important and what we can individually and collectively take from all of that

-Why crying is actually a sign of bravery

-Practical things you can do now to get through this time with more faith, in a more connected way to yourself, Hashem and those around you

-How to deal with difficult emotions with your kids

…and SO MUCH MORE

This podcast with Hilla is basically an hour long shiur. I got chills like 17 times as I was listening to her and it’s definitely one of the most important ones I’ve done so far in terms of our spirituality.

If there is someone you want to see on The Chai on Life Podcast, email me at [email protected] or send me a DM @chaionlifemag. Thanks again, see you next week!

Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today, I have Dr. Feigie Russ on the show.

Dr. Feigie is a licensed psychologist specializing in anxiety and OCD. With over 20 years of clinical experience, she blends her psychological expertise with a deep love for Hashem, to help individuals navigate their inner struggles. This week, she is releasing a brand new book called Letting Go: Overcoming Anxiety Through Emunah and Bitachon.

When I learned about this book I was intrigued, but when I got to look through an early copy, I was blown away. At the beginning, I was skeptical — how would this book be different than others out there on emunah, bitachon and anxiety? Dr. Feigie Russ totally turns the whole concept on its head by bringing ego into the mix. It’s a unique perspective that I hadn’t heard before, one that really clicked for me and is also super comprehensive — the book is more than 400 pages so she really tries to address every aspect around the topic. 

In this episode, I speak to Dr. Feigie about:

-What prompted her to write this book

-Her own relationship with love for Hashem and building her emunah and bitachon

-How she dealt with a really painful experience and came out the other side stronger

-A refreshing perspective on navigating anxiety and really overcoming it from a place of understanding

-How to handle uncertainty

-How ego gets in the way when it comes to personal growth AND the appropriate place for ego in living a healthy, balanced life that serves Hashem in the way you want to

-How the most difficult relationships in our lives can both teach us the most about self-love and actually get us to that place

-How to know when giving is coming from a real place or a people-pleasing place and further, how to overcome a people-pleasing nature 

-The conversation to have with yourself about knowing how you’re genuinely feeling about giving and doing more

…and so much more!

To get in touch with Dr. Feigie, you can email her at [email protected].

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today, I have Elisheva Liss, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist on the show. 

Elisheva works with individuals and couples to help improve their quality of life and relationships — most commonly treating depression, anxiety, relationship problems and anything dealing with intimacy. She has a collaborative approach, which means she looks at her work as a partnership with each client.

In this episode, we basically have a mini (or honestly, extended) therapy session about a lot of common issues women may be dealing with in the religious community, outside of it and in the unique time we’re living in.

As frum Jewish women, we live a beautiful life with holy values. We plan and often host Shabbat meals every week, opening our homes to those who need it. We bake challah, daven, say Tehillim, try to do chesed when we can, often work outside of the home, raise children, try to be a giving and loving wife, find time to learn and grow as people, find time for our own wellbeing and self-care with exercise, preparing healthy meals, maybe even our own therapy, we prepare simchas for our families, make time for friends to nourish ourselves and focus on what’s going on in their lives, and so much more — the list goes on.

Even just crafting this list — which I’m sure is still missing a lot — shows me just how much we may have on our plates at any given time. So especially when you lean more to the overachieving, perfectionist side of the mental health spectrum, it can often feel like you’re not measuring up. We are taught that Hashem gives us time to partner with Hashem in this world, and the worst feeling is to feel like we’re not utilizing that potential. How do we know when it’s enough? How do we feel okay with just not being able to do it all?

So I brought on Elisheva Liss to help me work through this concept. She is a beautiful, well-spoken therapist who actually has her own book called “Find Your Horizon of Healthy Thinking: Hack Your Thoughts and Improve Your Mood” which really was a perfect match for this topic. In our conversation, we speak about the pressures frum women face today, how to feel more comfortable with where we’re at in this exact moment and how to use our brains to develop a healthier way of thinking and honestly, enjoy the lives that we’re leading.

Here, the books she shares in the episode:

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose by Matthew Kelly

Slowing Down to the Speed of Life — by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey

Bittersweet by Susan Cain

Follow Elisheva on Instagram here.

Join her weekly newsletter here.

Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today we have Rebbetzin Ruthi Lynn on the show. 

Ruthi is a Marriage and Family therapist. For more than 15 years, she has conducted seminars, lectures and online classes for parents.

As a therapist, Ruthi specializes in parenting, teens and relational issues within the family. Her ultimate goal is to help parents have amazing relationships with their kids, to see themselves as leaders to their children and to build the next generation strong, moral and passionate. She is also the mother of 8 kids bli ayin hara so she has a little experience herself in the thick of it.

Ruthi has worked closely with Rebbetzin Sima Spetner, the renowned chinuch expert from Eretz Yisrael, and has become a teacher of her work. She was basically like an apprentice and went around Israel with her for years, eventually even taking over some of her classes. Now, she’s continuing to bring that wisdom to others.

She is running a 10-week seminar based on Rebbetzin Spetner’s teachings this summer and it starts tonight, Monday June 16, via Zoom to anyone around the world. To sign up, contact Rivky Weiss at 216-965-4107.

If you happen to be listening to this once the class is started, you can still reach out and catch up on the recordings that you missed.

In our conversation, Ruthi and I speak about 

-how she became so connected with Rebbetzin Spetner and what that relationship looked like at that time

-How to get back in touch with your intuition when it comes to parenting and why it gets lost for so many of us

-How to know when a kid’s behavior is important to respond to or you can let go a little bit more

-How we can bring Hashem consistently back into our parenting

-How Ruthi achieved such a beautiful relationship with her own kids with one of the main things she credits that to

-How to get through hectic and changing summer schedules and any upcoming travel you may be taking

-What a realistic life looks like when you have multiple children of various ages and genders under one roof

…and so much more!

This episode is informative, relatable and just so necessary when it comes to all we’re dealing with consistently as parents. I hope that Ruthi will help you take some of the pressure off and really allow you to have fun and enjoy the summer with your family. Enjoy!

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today, we have the amazing Rachel Rosenberg on the podcast. 

Rachel is a certified mindset, health, and behavior change coach who helps women break free from emotional eating, binge cycles, and the exhausting all-or-nothing mindset. Blending neuroscience, CBT tools, and over 12 years of experience, she guides her clients to build a healthy relationship with food — and with themselves. Her work isn’t about more control. It’s about freedom. It’s about peace. It’s about learning to trust your body again.

This was a topic I was excited to explore more deeply — while it’s focused on creating a healthy lifestyle, there is so much more around that that we delve into when it comes to building the life you want to be living and the habits that support it. We speak about letting go of perfectionism on that journey, how to navigate what a healthy lifestyle actually looks like for you and then the emotions that may come up along the way when getting there.

As women, our relationship with food can be layered and it’s one that comes up multiple times a day. Rachel works with women to get to a much freer place when it comes to choosing what to eat every day and just how to approach this aspect of our lives with a lot more calm.

These days, weight loss drugs are a hot topic as well and it feels that conversations around weight loss really run the gamut — first, we’re focusing more on body acceptance and not wanting to change to focusing on everyone doing weight loss drugs and how we feel about that to maybe feeling shame about wanting to lose weight and speaking openly about that to also wanting to love ourselves the way we are! — there can be feelings across the whole spectrum at different times in our lives and sometimes all at the same time. In this conversation, we speak about a lot of that. How you can feel confident and okay with wanting to lose weight if that’s your goal AND also work on loving yourself as you are.

Rachel has a new group opening up in July so reach out now! You can follow her on Instagram at @coach_rachel_rosenberg or connect via email at [email protected].

Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today I am so excited to have Rebbetzin, Author and Speaker, Sara Yoheved Rigler, on the podcast. In this episode, we are talking all about her incredible book, Holy Woman, the woman who inspired it — Rebbetzin Chaya Sara Kramer, and some Shavuot lessons we can all take to enter the holiday in the best mindset we can.

Rebbetzin Rigler has become someone I’ve really learned a lot from in my own Jewish journey. I am a member of her weekly marriage webinar run through Jewish Workshops, where she helps women around the world work on themselves and improve their marriages; and I’m also someone who has really benefitted from her books. Even though Holy Woman is technically a biography, it reads like a novel and you become riveted from early on. Plus, Rebbetzin Rigler writes it with takeaways along the way so you can think about your own struggles and choices in life and become more prepared to tackle them.

In the episode, we speak about:

-Chaya Sara Kramer’s life — the prophetic nature she was born with and how she nurtured that 

-The immense challenges she encountered along the way

-How Rebbetzin Rigler met Rebbetzin Kramer and the relationship they developed following

-What defines being in a good place versus a bad place in life — this was really life-changing

-What we can learn from Rebbetzin Kramer about passing our own tests in life

-How Rebbetzin Kramer lived every day with true simcha and what we can all learn from that

-Creating more of a Oneness between us and Hashem

-What it’s like to live with bitachon versus just living with emunah

-What Judaism really says about guilt

-The main lesson Rebbetzin Rigler applies to her life daily that she learned from Rebbetzin Kramer

…and SO MUCH MORE.

The reason we are doing this episode now is because it is the 20th yahtzeit of Rebbetzin Kramer and because she didn’t have any biological children — something you’ll learn more about — she was always concerned no one would light a candle for her. 

So the goal with this is that all those listening will learn more about her and light a candle for her on her upcoming yahrzeit — gimmel Sivan, which starts on the night of 29th of May and goes into the following day, May 30. The full name for prayer is Chaya Sara bas Mendel Yosef.

More about Sara Yoheved Rigler:

Sara Yoheved Rigler is the author of seven books on Jewish spirituality: Holy Woman; Lights from Jerusalem; Battle Plans: How to Fight the Yetzer Hara (with Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller); G-d Winked: Tales and Lessons from My Spiritual Adventures; Heavenprints; and Emunah with Love and Chicken Soup: The Story of Rebbetzin Henny Machlis, the Brooklyn-born Girl who became a Jerusalem Legend. Her newest book, I’ve Been Here Before: When Souls of the Holocaust Return, is the product of 8 years of research into reincarnated souls from the Holocaust. She gives a weekly Marriage Webinar for Jewish women on a spiritual approach to marriage, with hundreds of members throughout the world. She lives in Jerusalem. Her website is: sararigler.com. Her YouTube channel is "From Within the Walls of Jerusalem", where she relates stories, presents gems of Jewish wisdom, and teaches practical life tools.

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today I have Gila Levitt on the show. 

Gila is a Torah Marriage and Intimacy Specialist with over 20 years of experience empowering Jewish women to create emotionally connected, deeply fulfilling marriages. As the creator of Heart of Marriage: Soul Satisfying Oneness, she blends timeless Torah values with the latest research in emotional intelligence, brain science, and relational well-being.

Gila’s work is grounded, warm, and deeply respectful on each woman’s inner world. She offers not just guidance—but clarity, chizuk, and a path forward for the woman who wants to become her best, most authentic self in her marriage. Through mindset shifts, emotional insight, and practical tools, she helps women align with who they truly want to be—in marriage and in life.  

This episode was one I wasn’t sure I wanted to do to be totally honest. It covers a really vulnerable topic and one that isn’t often spoken about publicly. That being said, it’s an important one, one that affects every marriage and every woman in some way so when Gila reached out, I really thought it through and it felt like a good opportunity to delve into things a little more.

Because intimacy is such a private thing, it can be one women don’t really feel comfortable getting help on or seeking support if they need it and I’m hoping this episode will help break a little bit of that stigma.

In the episode we cover a lot — from what intimacy actually looks like in a Torah marriage — the mindset around it and the body-soul relationship to practical ways to achieve more connection to it if it’s something that’s hard for you. We speak about the differences between men and women in general and in this space that could be coming up and realistic expectations to have around its impact on your marriage.

For more from Gila, visit heartofmarriage.org or reach out to Gila at [email protected].

For more classes from Gila on Kol Halashon, click here.

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If there is someone you want to see on The Chai on Life Podcast, email me at [email protected] or send me a DM @chaionlifemag.

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today, I am so excited to welcome Atara Weisberger to the podcast.

Atara is a trailblazing health and wellness coach, personal development mentor, and co-author of the transformative book How to Soul: Navigate Your Life Path with Clarity, Inner Peace, and Joy. With a unique ability to blend ancient wisdom with actionable strategies, Atara empowers individuals to break free from emotional blocks, rediscover their inner strength, and cultivate lives rooted in authenticity and joy.

She of course, has her own personal journey to getting where she is today. Her own baal yeshiva story has shaped her mission to help others find meaning and connection in today's fast- paced, often overwhelming world. As the founder of The Tribe, a holistic wellness community, Atara leads a growing movement where spiritual growth meets modern self-care. She is very active herself and is a runner, yogi and loves to explore healthy cooking.

In the episode, we’re talking all about her new book that she wrote with Rabbi Dov Lipman which is all about reconnecting to your soul, your real inner essence which can so easily get lost in today’s world.

You know the feeling you get when you go to a really good shiur? It’s like everything just clicks and makes sense and you feel aligned with who you are really meant to be. That is this book.

Anxieties, insecurities, awkward social interactions, social media, meetings, family dynamics and more can easily make us feel like we’re not enough and can throw us off balance from knowing who we really are.

The goal of this book is to remind you of your inner essence, to give you tools to always be able to get back to your soul and to feel like you’re really living a connected life in the true meaning of the word — not the 2025 version.

In the episode, we speak about 

-Atara’s journey to writing this book

-Her main goal that she wants readers to take away from it

-How to connect more deeply to your soul and how to get back to it when you feel like you’ve strayed

-How to find balance and meaning in religious halacha and how that goes hand in hand with spirituality and a real relationship with Hashem

-Why the struggle and the process of growth is the way and why growth is never linear

-Practical tools to utilize in this world to get you back to a more spiritual place

-How we can make peace with social media and living a life in a technological world without making it black and white

-Cultivating more emunah and bitachon with the wisdom that she shares

..and so much more!

If you want more from Atara, visit Howtosoulbook.com — at the bottom you can get two free heart-opener meditations.

To get in touch, you can email Atara at [email protected].

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal and today, I am speaking with Merissa Gross, a shadchan, or matchmaker, extraordinaire.

Merissa is a ball of energy, just so much fun to be around with is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to dating.

This is a full raw, real, tachlis conversation. We really get into it. Even though I’ve interviewed other dating experts on the podcasts, I think this one is the most insightful in terms of the behind-the-scenes aspect that happens for a matchmaker. She does not hold back — she shares it all with stories and details so even if you’re not currently in the dating scene, this is an interesting one to listen to.

We speak about:

-Her day-to-day schedule and what goes into working with a couple

-How she sets parameters around who she sets up

-How the payment system works with her and other shadchanim — this was really interesting to see how it’s evolved

-How she decides who to pair up — if it really is a gut feeling or there is a system

-Addressing mistakes matchmakers make and clearing up misconceptions about the reputation so many unfortunately get

-Why you may feel frustrated with the matches that you’re getting

-How to make the best impression at a meeting with a matchmaker

-What to do if you feel like you’re not getting the best matches and how she has handled certain situations

-Red flags to look out for in dating

-The concept of settling versus not

-How to know when you’re ready to get engaged and what that feels like

...and sooo much more.

As you can see from that list, we cover A LOT of ground and even if you’re married, this is a super engaging conversation to listen in on just from a place of personal interest and as a way to help any single friends find THEIR match.

If you'd like to get in touch with Merissa, you can email her at [email protected]

When email is not possible: Israel work only number, which includes WhatsApp: 058.500.8820 

Official work hours: 9am-3pm IST

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal, and today, I am so happy to be back! Baruch Hashem, it was a beautiful Pesach holiday filled with a lot of great quality family time, cooking, decluttering, all the things we talk about on here and now it feels good to be back to the podcast!

Coming off of Pesach, we just spend time looking inward, thinking about the excess chametz we want to get rid of in our own lives, the fluff that gets in the way of who we really are, what things maybe we want to free ourselves from and be free to do. This episode is all about self-awareness, going beneath the surface, getting more to the root of who you are and it’s a beautiful continuation of that work we can bring into this new time period on the Jewish calendar. 

Dvora Henner, our guest this week, is the founder of MAXIMIZE, a home organization and life coaching business dedicated to helping women make the most of their space and time. She is passionate about self-awareness and personal growth as the foundation for stronger, healthier relationships.

In the episode, we speak about:

-Her journey from being a full-time stay at home mother to re-entering the out of the house work and finding what she wants to do

-The importance of self-awareness, how we learn more about it throughout life as different triggers come up

-How this is really the key to solving a lot of our relationship issues we may have with those close to us

-What’s going on inside of us when our emotions are challenged in a new way

-How to use the information to have a deeper, more vulnerable conversation with a loved one

-How to improve our shalom bayit

-What a woman’s needs are compared with a man’s needs and how that plays into all of this

-How we can practice more self-acceptance

...and SO much more!

This episode sounds simple on the surface but it is really so deep and thought-provoking and the perfect thing to listen to as we move through this next period.

If you'd like to get in touch with Dvora, she can be reached at [email protected].