Deep Meaningful Conversations

24 years ago during candlelighting erev Yom Kippur, Chanie Bochner made the decision that she wanted to help others who were going through the same struggle as she was. What started as a grass-roots effort to support couples experiencing infertility morphed into an international organization that to date, has helped bring over 10,000 babies into this world.

For this episode, we have the honor of speaking with Chanie Bochner who founded Bonei Olam. Bonei Olam is a Jewish organization that provides millions of dollars annually in fertility treatment funding. They leave no stone unturned to help couples achieve the dream of parenthood. They also provide various levels of support to couples facing infertility, from medical referrals to counselor support. Bonei Olam is also the founder of the incredible V’zakeini initiative that has almost 50,000 women donating a dollar at candlelighting to support couples infertility treatments. Chanie tells us about her personal journey and how she started Bonei Olam.

By the end of today’s episode, we hope you walk away inspired by Chanie Bochner’s story and have a greater understanding and sensitivity to the experience of those who struggle with infertility. If you yourself struggle with infertility, we hope you gain chizuk from this conversation with the woman who has helped so many Jewish couples make their dream of parenthood come true. We also hope you appreciate Chanie’s comments about what she wants people to understand about the experience of couples facing infertility.

We’d love to hear from you. You can find Deep Meaningful Conversations on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email us at [email protected].

Show notes:

Bonei Olam’s website:

https://www.boneiolam.org/

V’zakeini initiative:

Vzakeini - A Project of Bonei Olam

Kesher Networks Shidduch Initiative:

https://www.keshernetworks.org/

We’re entering the high holiday season. Quick, what’s the first word that enters your head?

If it has anything to do with lists, shopping or cooking, don’t worry, you’re not alone. But brownie points to any of you who thought teshuva!

This period is filled with both spiritual and physical demands. And as busy women, it’s easy to get stuck in the material demands of this season, and neglect the spiritual side. Especially if we aren’t spending much – or any – time in shul. 

This episode, we were privileged to sit down with Hudy Abrams who shares her incredible personal story about forgiveness, and what she learned from it. Hudy Abrams lives in Dallas, TX, where she is the co- director and Rebbetzin of The Jewish Learning Center, an outreach center and shul in the heart of Dallas. She runs programs, events and classes for Jewish families, and has led hundreds of women on life- changing missions to Israel. Hudy is passionate about empowering Jewish women to uncover their unique gifts and to step into their greatest selves. Her authenticity and ability to connect easily with others, as well as her transformational teaching style, have made her classes, talks and workshops popular among women across the country. To book her for a speaking engagement, email [email protected]

We wanted to know how she got to the point of being able to forgive someone close to her and what benefits she experienced from granting forgiveness. Also, we wanted to know what she would tell any of us who are living with hurt and pain, and how we can move forward from it, even if we aren’t ready to fully forgive.

We’d love to hear from you. You can find Deep Meaningful Conversations on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email us at [email protected].

Hudy’s recommended reading/listening/watching on the topic of forgiveness:

Rabbi Dr. Twerski’s book on forgiveness - Forgiveness: Don’t Let Resentment Keep You Captive

Lectures by: 

Rabbi YY Jacobson

Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

Welcome to our 20th episode of DMC! In this episode, we sit down with Zahava List to discuss mental health. She shares with us her own journey to mental health, her perspectives on stigma surrounding mental health in the frum community, and how and why she founded Chazkeinu, an organization which provides chizuk for all Jewish women coping with mental illness. By the end of today’s episode, we hope you come away feeling inspired by one woman’s mental health journey and have developed a greater awareness about the mental health issues facing so many of us in our communities. 

In this episode of DMC you’ll hear:

We’d love to hear from you. You can find Deep Meaningful Conversations on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email us at [email protected].

Show notes:

• Increase in anxiety and depression due to pandemic:

https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-covid-19-pandemic-triggers-25-increase-in-prevalence-of-anxiety-and-depression-worldwide

• Dr. Chaya Lieba Kobernick's Jerusalem-based practice, The CBT-DBT Center

https://thecbtdbtcenter.com

• Chazkeinu’s contact information

https://chazkeinu.org/

[email protected]

314-643-7627

• Zahava’s recommended books and websites:

Battle of the Mind - R' Avrohom Steier

With All I Am - Naomi Shulman

What's going on with my mother? - Rivka Kaufman

Depressed - Yoni Palmer

Calling out to you - Tehila Edelman

hopetorecharge.com

refuathanefesh.org

okclarity.com

For this episode, we’re going with “work-family synergy” instead of the ubiquitous “work-life balance.” Why? Because balance, quite literally, means 50/50. And we all know when it comes to work and home life, that’s not always realistic or ideal. Synergy connotes a combination, hopefully one that is mutually advantageous. And it doesn’t tell us that our work and our home life needs to be balanced. Sometimes it’s combined in a chaotic mixture! 

Join us for this DMC with Dr. Marian Stoltz-Loike who is the Dean of Touro’s Lander College for Women and guides young women not only on their educational journeys, but also in finding ways to balance work, family and community.

In this episode of DMC you’ll hear:
The challenges facing frum women in careers, trying to juggle professional and domestic responsibilities
Tips about managing school/work and family
How women can know how and when to contribute communally

We’d love to hear from you. You can find Deep Meaningful Conversations on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email us at [email protected].

See you next episode! 

This episode really feels like a tackle. We’re talking about kallah classes, in other words, premarital education. Frum women have many feelings about their kallah classes. Kallah classes are typically where engaged women learn about the laws of family purity. When it comes to premarital education about intimacy, the amount of information shared in a kallah class is going to depend on numerous factors: when you took your kallah classes, who your teacher was, and possibly the community you’re in. So in hindsight, some women feel that their kallah teacher did a thorough job of preparing them for marital intimacy, and others feel that the topic was hardly addressed.

Kallah classes have changed over the past number of years. There has been a communal recognition that kallah classes need to be thorough in covering more ground, from intimacy education to addressing relationship-building skills. Long gone are the days when kallah classes were just about niddah and preparation for the mikvah. 

At the forefront of this educational shift in kallah classes is Rochel Goldbaum. Rochel is a highly-sought after international speaker and focuses on marital harmony and intimacy in the Jewish home. She’s a dating and relationships coach, and mentors other professionals in the field. Rochel’s a leader in dating mentor training and kallah teacher training. She’s also the Education Director of MyGiftofMikvah.org.

In this episode of DMC you’ll hear:

We’d love to hear from you. You can find Deep Meaningful Conversations on social media, or you can email us at [email protected].

Humor is much more than cracking jokes and stand-up comedy routines. Tapping into the full power of humor has emotional and physical therapeutic benefits. It’s also a tool that is sourced in our Torah tradition. All in all, humor is actually good for you, and we wanted to know how we can utilize it more in our everyday interactions to improve our lives. Enter Yaffa Palti, who uses humor masterfully in her shiurim and social media content. As you’ll hear in this episode, Yaffa had us laughing – and we definitely felt great after this interview!

In this episode of DMC you’ll hear:

We’d love to hear from you. You can find us on social media, or email us at [email protected]

Tackling the topic of marriage DMC-style, we’re going with the assumption that everyone who is married experiences some sort of struggle or conflict. That there is at least one area in everyone’s marriage that needs improvement. But sometimes when we hear about “habits of highly effective marriages”, we can easily walk away feeling deflated and uninspired, disappointed that we don’t have those “effective habits” in my marriage. In this episode, we speak to Kayla Levin, Jewish marriage coach and the host of the “How to Glow” podcast, about her pick of 5 effective traits of a healthy marriage and what role we can take to make our marriages stronger. Even if we aren’t where we want to be yet, our goal with this episode is for us all to walk away feeling that we have the tools and newfound perspective to get there.

We’d love to hear from you. You can find us on social media, or email us at [email protected]. Don’t forget to check out the video of this episode on Meaningful Minute’s YouTube channel!

Show Notes:

Kayla’s website

https://kaylalevin.com/

Kayla’s podcast, How to Glow with Kayla Levin 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-glow/id1447257206

Social media: keep or delete? This has been the conversation of late in the Orthodox world, and Alex and Rivki get deep and meaningful about their relationship with social media, and why they're choosing to grapple with it -- and silence notifications. 

If you have any topics that you’d like to listen to Alex and Rivki have a mini DMC about, email them at [email protected].

Show notes:

The Social Dilemma documentary

https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/

Faces of Orthodoxy social media account

https://instagram.com/faces.of.orthodoxy?igshid=YzAyZWRlMzg=

On this episode of DMC, Alex and Rivki tackle body image. They share their thoughts on how this impacts frum women: the messaging we receive about our weight and size during our upbringing from home and peers, pressure due to shidduchim, pressure to keep off weight after the wedding and post pregnancy, and more. The guest for this episode is Rachel Tuchman, LMHC.  Rachel’s specialty is educating on weight stigma and diet culture, as well as starting conversations about mental health on social media.

In this DMC with Rachel, you’ll hear:

We’d love to hear from you. You can find us on social media, or email us at [email protected]. Don’t forget to check out the video of this episode on Meaningful Minute’s YouTube channel!

Show Notes:

Rachel Tuchman’s website

https://www.racheltuchman.com/