Totally Visible with Maayan Aviv

Episode notes

Days after October 7, Merav Oren, head of FOODISH, the culinary department of ANU Museum of the Jewish People, brought baking supplies and volunteers to a Dead Sea hotel where elderly evacuees from Sderot were staying. They had all the food they needed. When the workshop ended and Merav went to wash the dishes, one woman asked to help. This, the woman told her, was what she was missing.

Maayan sits down with Merav to talk about the cancer year that drew a self-described non-cook into food, the co-working space she built for women-led startups, and a mentor she misjudged. They talk about food as therapy and the Shabbat table, why most of us find it easier to give help than to receive it, and FOODISH's plan to bring Jewish food and its stories to young Jewish Americans. Merav closes on a scene from Pretty Woman.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

1. 00:00Cold open and welcome
2. 01:38From chemo to Open Restaurants and WMN
3. 05:50We have one year
4. 09:55Soul and Roll, and baking after October 7
5. 13:36Food as therapy, and the Shabbat table
6. 16:00How FOODISH began
7. 20:37Women-led, not women-only
8. 22:22Misjudging Maya Gura
9. 25:06A curiosity that never stops
10. 26:34Resilience and asking for help
11. 31:07Taking FOODISH global
12. 36:31A lesson from Pretty Woman

Filmmaker Jonathan Dekel knows what it means to look at an image he cannot unsee. During reserve duty after October 7, he helped document footage from that day. He is still finding words for what the work did to him and to the people who served beside him.

Maayan sits down with Jonathan to talk about the distance between a soldier's mission and a filmmaker's questions, the teammates preparing to revisit their service after nearly twenty years, and his documentary work with a former hostage as a family learns to live together again. They also enter the world of Checkout, his comedy about Mossad agents whose working lives contain far more waiting, paperwork and office politics than spy films allow. Jonathan returns to a lesson from his mother: happiness may not be a lasting state, but happy moments can be noticed while they happen.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open and welcome
02:35 Growing up between LA and Israel
03:51 Documenting October 7
08:04 Soldier and filmmaker
11:16 Returning to his old team
16:33 Filming life after captivity
21:43 The people behind Checkout
27:01 What spy films miss
29:40 Speaking across the distance
34:43 Happy moments

Craig Dershowitz left Morgan Stanley for a nonprofit he had started with a few artists and a stack of hand-painted protest signs. He runs it still, now as CEO of Art Over Hate Collective, whose Healing Ink project sends tattoo artists to survivors of war and terror, so a scar can be covered by something the survivor chose.

Maayan sits down with Craig to talk about the girl in Sderot who would not go near the artists painting her bomb shelter—and then would not let go of his leg—the letter S he tattooed under his eye for his son, and the small word he and a friend inked into each other while standing in the Dead Sea.

They talk about tattoos as armor and then as something additive, the tattoo Gal Gilboa-Dalal got while his brother Guy was still in Gaza, and what it costs to be the one organizing the help.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL.
Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Cold open and welcome
02:04 — Walking away from Morgan Stanley
03:15 — Pretty signs, and a gallery in Chinatown
05:35 — The bomb shelters in Sderot
07:26 — Tattoos as armor, and adding back pieces
09:52 — When the strikes come, and who tends to the helpers
13:27 — Murals, local artists, and a concert tour
18:02 — The S under his eye
20:16 — What makes art change a mind
26:56 — One quote he keeps returning to

Pascale Bercovitch decided to be happy long before she became a four-time Paralympian. Growing up in a home shaped by her parents’ wartime experiences, she looked for flowers between the concrete on her walk to school. At seventeen, a train accident took both her legs. Her dream of becoming a dancer ended, but her plans to move to Israel did not.

Maayan sits down with Pascale to talk about the firefighter whose smile stayed with her for forty years, the dark humor she inherited from her grandmother, and the happiness she practiced until it became her own. They talk about beginning a Paralympic career at forty, the ninety-second pause between training and coming home to her children, and why asking for help can be easier with strangers. Pascale returns to the physiotherapist who told her to keep walking, and the voice she recognized across a crowded hall decades later.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Cold open and welcome
• 01:52 The accident and rebirth
• 04:52 Finding hope and angels
• 10:12 “All is good,” joy, and humor
• 15:13 One thing at a time and the 90-second pause
• 20:56 Invisible wounds and asking for help
• 28:18 A champion mindset and your own inner light
• 33:10 No regrets, “keep walking,” and a reunion

Roni Raffeld Bluth learned in two days how fast an ordinary life gets rewritten. On October 7th her husband was called up to the northern border, which for a moment felt like the safer assignment. Two days later he was severely injured on the Lebanon border. Four months on, Roni herself went back into reserve duty as an operations officer. She continued serving in the reserves after becoming pregnant with their fourth child.

Maayan sits down with Roni to talk about the text she sent half an hour before the ambush, the brother-in-law who said everything was okay before she asked, and the months her children watched their father come home in a wheelchair, unable to speak. They talk about Alumot Krav, the podcast Roni built for the wives of the wounded, the WhatsApp group of more than seven hundred women who speak a language nobody else does, and the daughter they named for light.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS00:00   Welcome and introduction02:25   October 7, and the relief that he went north03:42   The last unanswered text06:38   The knock at the door08:20   The parts that took years to register11:10   Back in uniform, pregnant without knowing12:28   What the children saw15:53   Living with a new reality19:02   The family story, and Alumot Krav22:45   Seven hundred women, one language27:06   Noam, and the daughters’ stories32:31   A thousand soldiers

Edward Karan has spent thirty years advising institutions and wealthy families at the highest levels of finance. He now spends much of his time coaching people who are just starting to get their own money in order, because the industry he came up in, as he puts it, was never built to help most people.

Maayan sits down with Edward to talk about money and what it has to do with resilience: what people are really afraid of, the rule he brings to every money conversation, and the story of his great-great-grandfather, the rabbi known as the Chafetz Chaim, who put interest-free lending on the map in a book, a practice Edward has carried on through twenty-one years with the Hebrew Free Loan Society.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS

00:00   Cold open and welcome
01:42   From Wharton to relationship finance
04:42   First clients: himself and his parents
07:39   Is financial stress its own trauma?
10:09   Where to start: a coach and one page
14:24   Interest-free since 1892
19:15   The bias against asking for advice
20:45   No shame, no blame
22:25   Donor fatigue and the next generation
28:23   One thing this year: inaction to action
30:14   Speak the future out loud
32:56   Don't stay with it alone

The sun is shining in Orange County, and Maya Vorobyov is about to call her staff in Israel and ask them to film themselves running to a bomb shelter. She knows how the request sounds. She also knows it is the only way anyone fifteen hours away will understand.

Maya runs TalkIsrael, which trains young creators to tell Israel's story online, on what she calls the second battlefield. Maayan sits down with her to talk about the childhood in Ramle with grandparents who had hidden their Jewish identity, the call to her former commander after October 7th when she wanted to fly home, why most of the hate online is written by bots rather than people, and what an invisible wound looks like in someone whose job is holding everyone else up. Hers showed up at one in the morning, when she looked down and saw her hands shaking.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS

00:00   Cold open and welcome

01:03   Ramle, immigrant grandparents, and the IDF bands

03:21   California at 25, and the students afraid to speak

04:33   October 7 and the call to her commander

06:27   Building TalkIsrael

10:16   The second battlefield and the bots behind the hate

11:51   Iran 2.0: filming from the shelter

15:08   The guilt of being here

19:10   Why authentic beats polished

26:07   Dark humor and the invisible wound

27:54   One a.m., hands shaking

29:38   Advice to young Maya, and compassion

Omri Bezalel has lived in two worlds that rarely meet. He spent five years in Shayetet 13, Israel's most elite naval commando unit, fought in the Second Lebanon War, then moved to New York, graduated from NYU with honors, and became a novelist and filmmaker. His novel Silent Waters draws on his own service. His film Listen follows an Israeli intelligence officer facing an impossible choice.

Maayan sits down with Omri to talk about the fear that filled his high school years, the training he came to quit in week two (and the instructor who wouldn't let him), and the writing that may be what kept him whole. They talk about empathy as a soldier's tool and a writer's requirement, the difference between what happened and what it felt like, and what it means to put a book and a film into the world after October 7th, when no one wanted to touch it.

A podcast from American Friends of NATAL. Produced by POLDHU.

CHAPTERS

00:00   Cold open and welcome

02:11   Kenya, Dallas, and falling in love with Israel

05:36   The training: fear, loneliness, almost quitting

11:05   Did writing save you?

13:34   Empathy and the other side

18:30   Work the world wasn't ready for

26:52   Therapy, Australia, and the unit today

30:05   Story truth vs happening truth

36:25   Sadness without regret

42:44   Trust the arch