Six months of war.
134 hostages in Gaza.
The decision-makers are going on recess.
The draft law is before the High Court.
And we’re back to protesting.
How can I put this? We’ve reached a new level of insensitivity.
To me, it couldn’t be less Jewish.
We’re all frightened, confused or under pressure. Some of us are all three. It feels as if everything is collapsing.
This is exactly when we need to remember that the Creator made nature cyclical. Human lives move in cycles, and so does the life of a nation.
Let’s not behave like animals toward one another. The purpose of all this chaos is to bring us to unity.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov says that faith (emunah) is above reason. Where the intellect ends, faith begins.
Faith begins when you can’t understand what you’re going through. Life keeps hitting you, and you ask:
Why hasn’t the Creator brought me the woman I want?
Why was I fired?
Why do I have to endure such a painful divorce?
It hurts.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is when our faith is tested. When something feels terrible and you can still say, “The Creator is doing this for my good,” that is faith.
Have you ever wondered why music makes us move?
The Kabbalists say that the soul enters this world from a lofty palace, where it once heard the song of the ministering angels. When the soul hears music here, it remembers those sounds. The memory awakens a longing to leap, move and dance.
So dance a little. What could be more Jewish or more deeply rooted in faith?
Episode summary
In episode 51 of The Truth Hurts (HaEmet Ko’evet), Tal and I begin with Chava Alberstein’s “Targil BeHitorerut,” “An Exercise in Awakening.” It felt like the soundtrack to that moment in Israel: six months of war, hostages still in Gaza, the Knesset going into recess and the argument over the draft law pulling people further apart.
I approach the divide between Haredi and secular Israelis with both disagreement and familiarity. I worked closely with the Haredi community for a decade in public-sector roles and spent four years studying in a Haredi setting. I understand the conviction that Torah study protects the people of Israel, even as I believe this moment calls for a shared response. Tal and I consider proposals that would combine Torah study with military service, while returning to the need for compassion between people who grew up in very different worlds.
From there, the conversation turns to faith in times that make no sense. We explore Rebbe Nachman’s teaching that faith begins where reason ends, and the idea that faith is a muscle strengthened through use. We also talk about the cycles of a person’s life and a nation’s life, and about the difference between the broken reality we see up close and the larger picture we cannot yet see.
The episode brings that spiritual question into everyday life. We describe faith as our most powerful tool for healing and connect it to our thoughts, feelings and words, and to the belief that everything is in the Creator’s hands. How do the people, words and images around us shape our consciousness? How can we interrupt a frightening thought and deliberately place our attention somewhere else? I share examples from my work, from parenting and from my own habits on the road. We also discuss releasing anger by writing letters and burning them, cultivating joy through thought and action, and listeners’ questions about coping with pressure and difficulty.
We end with music and dance. In the Kabbalistic teaching I share, music stirs the soul’s memory of a purer spiritual place. That longing gives us another way to return to joy, compassion and love, even when we strongly disagree.
Episode transcript
The episode is in Hebrew. The text below is an English adaptation of the transcript.
Tal: Good morning, Gili.
Gili: Good morning, Tal, and hello to everyone listening. I missed this. We’re back after a break, though it was only two weeks.
On my way here this morning, I heard Chava Alberstein’s “Targil BeHitorerut,” “An Exercise in Awakening.” I thought: This is the soundtrack of our time.
Israel has been at war for six months. Apart from the War of Independence, this is the longest war we’ve had, and it still isn’t over. It’s hard to take in.
We didn’t come here to sink into darkness. We want to bring some good. Still, we need to look honestly at reality. After half a year of war, hostages remain in Gaza. In the middle of this terribly complex reality, the Knesset is going on recess. We won’t even get into that.
I do want to say something about the Haredi draft issue, because I’m worried. We already have so much chaos, and now the pressure is building on every side. In my view, there is a profound insensitivity here. It feels like the least Jewish response possible, and I’ll explain why.
We’re back to protests. Many secular Israelis are asking for help and calling on the Haredi community to share in the war effort. The Torah teaches that if war breaks out while a couple is standing beneath the wedding canopy, even the bridegroom and bride are called away to serve. At the same time, many rabbis insist that Torah study must not stop. But, beautiful souls, “It is time to act for the Lord.” This is the time to answer that call.
There have been proposals to establish yeshivas near the borders in the north, the south and the Jordan Valley. Students could devote half the day to Torah study and half to military service, helping to carry the burden.
I don’t say this from a distance. I worked closely with the Haredi community for 10 years in public-sector roles, and I studied in a Haredi setting for four years. I was fascinated by their world and wanted to understand it from the inside.
As a secular woman from Tel Aviv, I can tell you that their position comes from a deep conviction. I have sat across from Haredi people and tried to understand their worldview. They truly believe that their children’s Torah study is what protects the people of Israel. I saw how real that belief was for them.
And yet Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, has something to teach all of us. It doesn’t teach us to do nothing but sit and study. It speaks about work too. If you’re married, you signed a marriage contract, a ketubah, and accepted the responsibility to provide. Where is that livelihood meant to come from?
There are genuine Torah scholars who can study day and night for the sake of Heaven. Honestly, that isn’t everyone. This moment is calling all of us.
I also want to lower the temperature on both sides. We didn’t grow up in their homes, and they didn’t grow up in ours. We weren’t raised by their parents, and they weren’t raised by ours. Even in disagreement, can we look at one another with a generous eye? Can we meet each other with compassion and as much love as we have to give?
We are living through a frightening time. Almost everyone reaches a point in life when everything seems to collapse at once. The blows come from several directions. Suddenly you’re at a low point, frightened and confused, asking, “What just happened? Is this temporary? What’s going on?”
You know that feeling of being hit from every side? I think of a self-righting doll. Every time you recover from one blow, another one comes. Just as you start to breathe, there it is: boom. The confusion can sometimes break a person down completely and put them under terrible emotional pressure.
At times like these, I believe we need to tell ourselves, “Everything is for the good.” That can bring some calm.
Look at nature. The Creator made it cyclical. Trees shed their leaves in winter, and then the season of blossoming returns. A person’s life moves in cycles. A nation does too. We are in a difficult season now, a kind of winter despite the heat outside. It is a time of decline, but days of growth, renewal and blossoming will come.
Think of a construction site, or simply a home in the middle of renovation. Living through it is uncomfortable. There is dust, debris and disorder everywhere. Yet you know that a building will emerge from the mess and that a new order is taking shape. Once the rubble is gone, you may discover how much good took shape during that difficult period. “A person is like a tree of the field.” The same pattern runs through it all.
This is where faith comes in. When everything is confused, when you can no longer tell whether the good is truly good or the bad is truly bad, and everyone has dug into a position and refuses to budge, what does it mean to believe?
Rebbe Nachman says that faith is above reason. Where the intellect ends, faith begins.
What is the difference between knowing and believing? In that moment, knowledge comes through one of the five senses. I see you sitting in front of me. I smell your perfume, so I know you’re close. You see the glass of water in my hand. You don’t believe I’m holding it; you know.
But if I tell you, “Tal, I have $1,000 in my wallet,” you don’t know that. You haven’t seen it. You can choose to believe me, or not. The intellect has reached its limit, and now the question is whether you trust me to tell you the truth.
For me, the knowledge that there is a Creator begins with Creation itself. If you want, go and investigate it. The sun is where it needs to be, neither so close that it burns us nor so far away that we freeze. Gravity has exactly the strength needed to hold us steady on the ground. Think about the body’s systems, the lungs taking in oxygen, and what the body and brain can do.
The enormous computers used by leading AI and robotics companies still don’t approach what the human body and brain can do. The brain weighs less than a kilogram and a half, yet this small organ does astonishing work. There will never be another machine quite like the body we have.
So I ask a simple question: who made all this? Look at your teeth, with incisors in front for cutting and molars in back. Your eyes are positioned at just the right height for you to see. Your ears are placed to serve both hearing and balance. Our bodies are extraordinary technology.
When I say there is a Creator, I don’t experience that as belief. I experience it as knowledge. Do we really think this whole world, with its cars, machines, homes, and our good and evil inclinations, came into being for no reason? Were you born into this particular family or neighborhood for no reason? To me, even common sense reveals an order here.
But that still isn’t faith. Faith begins when your understanding runs out and you can’t explain why the Creator is allowing this to happen to you. Why haven’t you met the woman you want? Why were you fired? Why did you lose the deal? Why is your divorce so painful?
It hurts, and that is precisely where faith is tested. Believing when life is easy is no great achievement. Faith begins when your mind says no, yet you can still say, “The Creator is doing this for my good.” That is what it means to be a believing Jew.
Sometimes I believe, and sometimes I don’t. Faith is a muscle. When someone in my practice says, “I don’t believe,” I give a couple of ordinary examples. If you’re an employee, do you believe your salary will arrive at the end of the month? Of course you do. When you drive into an intersection on a green light, do you trust that the other directions have red lights and that people will stop? We couldn’t live here without faith. It is a muscle, and we have to develop it.
That matters especially in a period of chaos, death, disagreement and division. We aren’t a political podcast, and we aren’t serving any political agenda. But we do have to wake up. The argument over the draft law has been postponed for years, and now, at this critical moment, our lawmakers have gone on recess.
All of this stirs up many emotions. In the end, we can each begin by changing ourselves and influencing the people closest to us. From there, our influence can ripple outward through the whole nation. Our lack of unity begins at home, in the way we treat our partners, children and neighbors.
If you want a good atmosphere, look at the people around you with kindness. This is true in parenting as well. I have three children, may they be healthy. My oldest is almost 20, and my youngest is 14. I have never punished my children. I couldn’t find wisdom or kindness in raising them through punishment, so I chose to guide them by looking for the good in them. Then, when something comes up that I may not be comfortable with, they come to me and ask, “Mom, is this okay?” When you look for the good, you help bring it out. That is true in any environment.
Pay attention even to how you call someone from across the house. If you shout, “Keren, come here for a second,” what tone are you using? Calling from a distance can sound very different from speaking face to face. How can we create unity when we speak to each other that way? Are you at peace with yourself? With your wife or husband? Do you speak gently to the people nearest to you?
It all ripples outward from our closest relationships. If we want to stay grounded, we can begin with goodwill: a generous eye and good thoughts.
People always ask me, “How do I hold on to good thoughts?” First, it takes work. It takes a decision. You can’t keep your thoughts clear while constantly filling your mind with things that aren’t good for it. That is why we’re taught, “Turn from evil and do good.”
When you hear gossip or cruel words, when you see an argument, or when you switch on the television and people are shouting, get away from it. We need to protect the clarity of our consciousness. It is fine to stay informed, but we also need to clear out what we have taken in. If you don’t clear your consciousness, your reality won’t be clear either. Our surroundings, our language and everything we expose ourselves to leave a strong, lasting impression.
Directing your thoughts involves choice. When an unpleasant thought appears, I tell myself, “No, no, no. Focus somewhere else.”
A client told me this week about his own method. “An unpleasant thought came up,” he said, “and I told myself to remember the multiplication table. It was so hard for me in fourth grade. Learning it was a real project, and my mother sat with me all summer. Now, whenever a bad thought appears, I ask myself: What is 9 times 6? What is 9 times 6? What is 9 times 6?”
He told me that the question takes his mind somewhere else. Instead, he works through the multiplication table. I said, “That’s brilliant.”
We each have our own web of associations. When I’m driving and an unpleasant thought comes up, I start adding the numbers on license plates. I’m not joking. I also use numbers for numerology because I receive messages from the universe. Either way, I’m giving my brain another task and training it to focus somewhere else.
That is the choice: what will you focus on? If the thought comes back, redirect your attention again. Think of a cherished memory. Ask yourself what you’re grateful for. Keep bringing your mind back.
Like attracts like. When you remain in negative thoughts and feel bad, that is what you draw toward you. If you keep saying that there are no apartments, that everyone is raising prices and that you’re always the one who loses out, then you may find yourself being shown an unrenovated three-room apartment for 7,500 shekels in some neighborhood in Rishon LeZion. Why? Because what you expect is what you receive. Where you place your attention matters enormously.
Faith comes before everything, and we also have to admit that we don’t always manage it. Sometimes we believe, and sometimes we don’t. But we return to the knowledge that there is a Creator, that He made, makes and will make all things.
Faith can dramatically lower anxiety and fear, because you know there is Someone in charge, Someone holding everything in order. If you struggle to understand that, study anatomy. Learn about your body and see what a masterpiece it is, how precisely it was made, and how even today’s technology cannot reproduce what He has done.
More than anything, this episode is meant to lift people’s spirits. These are murky times, and reality truly feels broken. Still, there is an inner reality and an outer one. In my inner reality, this is one point in time. From the outside, it doesn’t feel temporary at all. It feels completely real.
Someone looking at me may think, “That woman is crazy. She’s disconnected. She doesn’t understand what is happening.” I want you to know that I am fully connected to what is happening. I see it clearly.
Think of a work of art. You can move closer and closer until you see every tiny detail. But if you want to understand what the artist intended, you have to step back. Then step back again, until you can see the whole picture.
Life, beautiful souls, is like walking into a movie halfway through, watching for five minutes and leaving. You don’t know what came before, and you don’t know what will come after. Faith is what will carry you through. With faith, we will win.
Now that we’re back from the break, we’re beginning a second round. We loved ending each episode with a song last season, and those songs brought us more feedback than anything else. The choice is never random. We put real thought into it.
Have you ever wondered why a person starts moving when music plays? Without music, bouncing in place might seem strange. Add music, and it feels completely natural.
The Kabbalists offer a beautiful explanation. They say that the human soul comes into this world from a lofty spiritual palace. Before descending here, it was accustomed to hearing the song of the ministering angels. When it hears music in this world, it remembers the sounds of the World of Truth. It longs to rise.
What happens when we dance? We leave the ground. We jump, and gravity pulls us back. In this teaching, dance comes from the soul’s longing for the place where it once heard the angels sing. The teaching also says that the Chamber of Music stands close to the Chamber of Holiness.
This is why we choose our closing songs so carefully. We want the music to reach every cell and touch the soul. We want it to awaken the joy that longs to cleave to the Creator and return to a pure place without judgment or criticism.
From that place, I can look at a Haredi man who refuses to enlist, disagree with him and still feel compassion and love for him simply because he is part of Creation.
One last thing before we finish. Passover, the festival of miracles, is approaching quickly. Ahead of Passover, I’m holding the one-day Releasing Guilt, Resentment and Anger workshop (in Hebrew). I’m offering it again because the previous workshop was a success. I believe it is the best preparation a person can make for the holiday. All the details are below.
Sign up, and come dance. Have a good day, beautiful souls. Dance. Let this song lift you.