Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal, and today we have a really exciting episode to gear up for Shavuot with Esteemed Educator, Speaker and Kallah Teacher Nalini Ibragimov.

If you know Nalini, you already know how special she is. I had the privilege of meeting her nearly 12 years ago now when she co-founded a group called Souled, which was a weekly class for young professional women who had been on Israel trips or other programs and wanted to continue their learning while working in New York City. She is a role model to maybe thousands of women at this point through her work on college campuses, as a kallah teacher, someone who prepares brides for their upcoming wedding, Souled and other Jewish organizations.

Here’s some more formal info for those who aren’t familiar with Nailni and her work:

Nalini Ibragimov attended Barnard College and Moreshet Institute and studied Jewish history in Touro’s master’s program. She lived in Israel for four years where she taught in various institutions. 

For the following five years, she and her husband worked at Brooklyn College for JLIC, a joint program of the OU and Hillel, where she taught and ran various programs for Jewish students on campus. Nalini taught in Ateres Naava seminary in Brooklyn for 15 years until moving to Long Island a few years ago. Additionally, Nalini has taught hundreds of kallot and is a speaker for My Gift of Mikvah. She is also part of the educational staff of Core. 

Today, Nalini is the director of the Olami Women's House, which provides a living space for young professional women who seek to live in a nurturing, Torah immersive environment. If you want to apply to live there, click here!

If you're a young professional woman, you can also hear Nalini speak Wednesday nights at Safra Synagogue on the Upper East Side at 7:30 p.m.

Nalini resides in Woodmere, New York with her husband and takes great pride in her six children and the families they are building.

Now, let’s talk about our episode. In our conversation we speak about:

-Nalini’s Jewish journey and how she got to where she is today

-How she manages and balances all of the work she does with being a wife and a mother of six children

-How she decides what professional responsibilities to take on

-What Shavuot really means and the perspective we can have going into it

-How we can manage the heaviness all around us right now and channel that pain we’re still feeling into the holiday and use it to create even more connection with Hashem

-What a miracle actually looks like and how we can see more of them in our daily lives, right now

-How we can use the time we have left before Shavuot to prepare for the holiday — and why the process and the preparation are key

-How to connect on Shavuot when you’re home with little kids and not going to learn all night

-How the holiday of Shavuot is like a wedding and a beautiful lesson that we can all infuse into our marriages and our relationship to all of klal Yisrael

…and SO MUCH MORE

If you have any questions for Nalini, you can reach out to her at [email protected].

If there's someone you want to see on The Chai on Life Podcast or a topic you want featured, send me an email at [email protected] or a DM on Instagram at @chaionlifemag.

Thanks so much, see you next week!