Rejuvenation: An Initiative Born of Loss

[Music] hi everybody eve harrow rejuvenation on the land divisional network today is january 11 2021. we were still looking forward to 2021 but i'm not so much sure how much better it is so far than 2020 let's give it another few months and of course the 27th day of quebec 57.81 i hope everyone who's listening is well and that the world is moving into a slightly better place i'm not going to talk about politics because and that's that and i'm so honored though to have with me today i read about a new initiative that she and her husband affair started just about a week ago so this is hot off the press but galeem thank you so much for joining me today on rejuvenation hi thank you so tell us a little bit about uh the new initiative that you got going this week yes we launched it just last week it's a new initiative the main goal is to make connections between the jews in israel and in the diaspora so um unfortunately six and a half years ago when my son one of the three boys was kidnapped we felt a tremendous support from jews from all over the world and we realized how important it to maintain these connections in the day-to-day routine of normal times so we kept in touch with many of people who came to comfort and they support us over the years and they we have a lot of projects that trying to maintain this connection and the this special a project we call it a happy birthday to you we created a platform to create a meaningful connection between jews in israel by connecting them by the hebrew birthday and the the information will be publicized in five languages the hebrew english spanish french and the russia to reach a maximum audience and of course all the information is kept secure on the platform and it's not shared with anyone else so somebody comes into your website they put in their name and usually what we call their english birthday or really according to the christian calendar and and then you send them back what their hebrew birthday is yes it's very easy it's very easy and it's very fun and the happy project you just have to input your name email address and their birthday and you will receive your hebrew birthday and the name of someone who shares it and then you can be in contact with to celebrate together and the skype is the sky's the limit say once you establish this connection you can develop it and you don't have to wait to the birthday you can start the connection uh online so just to remind my listeners um what battalion which is a beautiful name by the way for those of you who don't speak hebrew it means the daughter of the waves yes it's unusual name also in israel so but your mother just read the little mermaid or something which maybe maybe it's really a beautiful name though it's a very calming name like the beach the water everything the see it's very beautiful for those of you who um do not remember what we're speaking about or haven't made the connection so in june of 2014 not just israel but i think a good part of the world uh spent 18 days praying for three boys who had been kidnapped by terrorists here in israel batgallim son gilad naftali frankel and anayali frach and during those 18 days which is in which in 18 days that i think are seared into everybody's mind here i remember walking around everyone walk on the sidewalk and if you saw somebody the first thing you said to them was have you heard anything yet and everybody knew right away we were talking about there was nothing else on anyone's mind and um of course the tragedy we were wedding when we found out that the boys bodies had been found but what happened during those 18 days is that it was the mothers of the boys who became very much the faces and the voices of what was happening here in israel and with all the grief and all the concern the main message that was coming out was not anger and not revenge but unity faith uh hope and really a a very positive message in a time where anyone could be excused for giving the exact opposite in you know in such an awful intense time the three of you just to to go back for those few years did you ever have a discussion about that you know was it just kind of as they say in hebrew movement it was just kind of the natural thing you didn't know each other before i believe right the three of you and here you are in these horrific circumstances how could that happen that it was a tr i mean i assume it was a choice that was made that that was going to be the tenor and the message that was given out during those nearly three weeks yes i think it's really amazing the fact that the three of us felt the same feeling uh i think it was like a mirror we felt so much strength and the huge embrace and the the tremendous say a mutual responsibility of all the people all the jews around the world and it gave us a lot of strength and it was like a mirror maybe that we felt the strength so we gave it back to the other uh people and it's really um amazed me also the fact that every each of us each of us felt the same feeling and it's just a it came spontanei together and we we never talked about it it was obviously for us and i think we felt it's so strong in our hearts all this mutual responsibility and all this [Music] the care of the the fact that the jews care about each other it's really strong and it gave us a lot of strong those days and you've continued through it's not like you took a break six years ago yes we try to continue because i think that if you understand that we can be in this special place so we must stay to continue their style connections in the day-to-day routine of normal times so it's very meaningful all the unity and all the mutual responsibility i think it's very meaningful a [Music] thing so we i tried to continue it in the day today i our family founded the sunshine organization and our main goal in sunshine is to make the world more optimistic and to show more mutual responsibility and uh we are trying to do a very small and but very meaningful thing like this project it's very a simple it's very nice and you just have you just need two minutes to write your name and your address and you got a new friend and i think if we will got a thousand of jews in those in this project all the conversation between the jews in israel and the diaspora will change and they it's almost one week from the beginning of the project and we almost have 6 000 er registers and it's amazing because we have 1 000 connections and it's just the beginning i hope that they will be a more and more registers well after this podcast definitely so absolutely for sure and it was launched on gilad's birthday is that uh yes yes we launched this last week on gilad's birthday um he would have to have been 23 on this birthday and gilas was a very a happy boy he loved birthdays and he knew all the uh the date of the the birthday of all his friends and he would always bake them a cake and they make a party and i think that he understand that everyone wants to feel special on their birthday and wants to be remembered so i he let know how to combine joy and seriousness and he was a much loved leader in bernark ivan was very sensitive to the needs of others so we felt that this was a very good way to share his legacy and to remember him it sounds it sounds perfect for who for who he was and who he continues to be uh after all of you um you published a book called expressing my child can you tell us a little bit about that yes it's in hebrew we call it a maya ledion we don't know what days we will bring and in english i called it expecting my child because i i really missed him and i really think about him a lot and the the bouquet it's a very uh uh we have a lot of pain but i it's very important to me to share that the book is very um after you read the book you you got the strength because they i tell i share here the stories of israel of all our community the good deeds that we felt in those days and i think that after you read this book you feel proud to be a part of the jewish nation and a lot of people are deal with a lot of situations and we don't choose the situation but we can choose how to deal with the situation and maybe people can read and maybe they can make the connection to themselves first and uh to the community also i think what we're seeing especially in these days of people being separated from each other because of the concern of getting sick how badly people need community family but of course extended community as well you know i remember during um during those 18 days um speaking to reporters who who of course were following all of you around all the time and uh you live in talmon which is a beautiful community in western binyamin there's a story that i've actually digressed for a second because there's a story that i've told about the rabbi of your community who's now the rabbi of the police right of the israel police what is his name again i have a blank on his name um it's with a hay anyway senior moment so there's there's a story that's told about him that there were um a group of israeli bikers like the big guys on the motorcycles who travel around on shabbat which in israel is really the only day off that we have and talmon is on the main road so to continue on the main road you really have to go through tanmon but it's a it's a shabbat it's a community that keeps shabbat usually the gate is closed on shabbat so they asked for permission one shabbat to be able to drive through and not only were they given permission but people were waiting for them when they came and made shabbat with them and gave them something to eat am i getting the story right there she was very special not too much whiskey they were driving but um just to instead of just kind of turning away and saying fine fine fine drive welcomed them into your community and made a shop out with them and made them feel like all jews are united from wherever we come from and our differences of opinion um this wasn't like a begrudging fine come through our community but a real welcome and i that was that and i've some of my listeners have probably heard me tell the story before because it it just seared itself onto me as an example of what talmud is and when i was speaking to journalists who many of whom had never been to a settlement many of the journalists many of the press in israel as we have around the world are what they call left wing and against the jews living in udava chamberlain and here they found themselves outside your house in talmon which you know right in the middle of binyamin being treated like family came in to eat use the bathroom camp on the lawn must have been a whole big mess and the last thing that you needed but never felt like they were intruding and just and you know you they say that there's times you can judge people by how they are in certain situations when they're angry right when they have to deal with money there's different places where you're not you can't fake it because you're all too emotional nobody was faking it during those 18 days and what they saw from your family and from talmon resonated with them i don't know if you even realize the impact that it had on people who were not primed to be sympathetic and they were sorry for the situation but who suddenly came away with also who gilad was who where he had been raised the kind of israelis that are coming out of your community which are on which only really bring honor and joy to uh to our people and um and that's rarely spoken about and that wasn't the topic then either but i think you i don't know if you know that your behavior then um went far beyond uh what the news was at the time and um i wanted to share that with you because i heard it from people that i wouldn't have expected to tell me that and that's the and so i think that this initiative that you have now and what you have been doing all these years the unity all kinds of different programs for unity are probably way beyond what you know and have affected people and a lot of people speak about unity especially these days especially in the diaspora especially let's say the united states which is going through such a difficult time but sometimes it it means more like conformity that everybody should be the same but that's not what you're saying we can be all different and feel differently think differently that different levels of belief and political opinions that doesn't mean that we can't feel the strength of togetherness and optimism and uh that's a that's a voice that is so important so um i mean what you've done is take your personal tragedy and help so many people beyond that which uh at least for me means like gilad and naftali and they're never really gone if this is what their families are doing in their memories and um it's just uh it's just an amazing thing to me and i know that i'm not the only i'm speaking out for a lot of people who have been affected over the years and i think this is beautiful with the with the hebrew birthday because um so often people don't know that there's i mean there's another calendar and some of our holidays go by that calendar um but beyond that the meaning of the hebrew date on which you were born is uh is very very special and uh a beautiful initiative did you did you have it were you thinking about it for a while um you know how did this pop into your mind this particular idea so we have a one years ago we have a very nice competition in sunshine organization and we ask people to give us an idea uh to make connection between jews here in the diaspora and this was one of the finalist ideas and i think a another thing is very special in this project this in a let's say a very hard time that we have to uh stay at home and they to be in the anime to be in the lockdown so people understanding that they can and have a connection not only with people who are living a in their city they have a connect they can have a connection also by zoom or over internet with people who are living far away and this is very special very good time to make a new connections between the people do you have a a list of like you know famous people who were born on like certain days i want there must be somewhere i know on the internet everything is available um yes but we we asked some celebs to join to our special initiative and every week you will find the new one so it's a promise surprise yes that's great you can have the same birthday as i don't know barbra streisand or something maybe maybe we have a nutshell so maybe some of the uh people heard about it so another roof you can see her birthday on our website on a happy birthday to you or maybe on sunshine website and you will find another celebs okay okay the the best quarter is something to accept again support we have something to look forward to the best birthday present that i ever got was a granddaughter which took quite a bit of planning on the uh on the part of my daughter way months in advance so i share a birthday with her so um so that's yeah yeah which is coming up rapidly i think i think that's when we meet someone that was born in our same dates it's something very emotionally it's very exciting because we we believe that we was born in some very special day some a very special period so i think that when we met someone that is in our same birthday it's really make us a to feel exciting so i hope that this initiative will make the right connections between the people and it'd be interesting to see if they have let's say the same personality traits because you know they say that judaism doesn't believe in astrology in the sense of we check our horoscopes every morning and this is what's going to happen but there is an idea that hashem there are certain personality traits that you are going to need during your life that hashem puts into you you're going to need to be stubborn it's hard to deal with this when we have stubborn children but there's something that's going to happen in their lives it's going to need them to have that trait what they do with it of course is up to them and that so hashem makes sure that your neshama that your soul is born into a time where that's the dominant trait so it's it's he's still in control it's it doesn't just happen it's not fate so it would be interesting to see maybe you have a master's degree in education if i'm not mistaken yes yes yes so it might be interesting currently now i am currently the director of the zionist archives it's a new job and it's really exciting me uh but i came from the education yes of course right so i'd be interesting to see if people find that uh you know that they're connected in more than one way could bring a lot of things together okay but can you do you have any other plans uh any other ideas can you share is it still a secret i have but i can't share okay with what hashem you will heard when everything will be ready and i i just want to compliment you i heard you a few years ago your english is fantastic now thank you so much i i working very hard for this and it's really complicated it's very good compliment for me thank you no it's not easy but really it that's the language of that mainly that people speak in the diaspora at least uh most of it and um and i think in order to make connections uh you worked hard to do the truth is when everything happened six and a half years ago i realized and understand that if i want to be in touch and to be connection between the jews and the diaspora i just need english so i just sit and and learned and it's very hard for me but i do i do it yeah it's a difficult language to learn but i know from people whom you met friends of mine and people that now know you um in the united states and in canada and in australia um the circumstances are not how they would have liked to meet you but how much you've enriched their lives and that you've gone out to speak in different communities of course the last few months you haven't been able to do that but hopefully in the near future um we will look down and come back soon yeah because zoom is good and all this and thankfully we have the ability to connect with you and i are both in the same country they're people who are watching listening to this from all parts of the world and that's an incredible thing that we can communicate with people even though we're far but there's still nothing like being in the same room with someone seeing their body language you know even giving them a hug remember hugs feel the hug yeah to feel the hug exactly and uh so hopefully those days we'll come back soon and um and we can make up for for some of the time and and learn the lessons of this year and uh you know make the best of it and uh and connect as you said connect with uh maybe we can share the website absolutely yes okay so you want to spell it out for me okay dot world exactly how you heard me a l two a's okay a easy to remember also beautiful okay everyone so get in there and put in your information and let's see who you uh who you share your birthday with and um and also just the other things that that galen has done over the years her book expecting my child um you can find amazon we all have reasons that put that can push us over things that stress us even that wouldn't necessarily stress anyone else and this is not a competition there's things that i find easy that other people find devastating and there's things that i think are going to completely break me that other people you know uh are able to cope with and so we all have our personal baggage and our personal strengths and weaknesses and i think that your book really speaks to that what you can learn out of it the optimistic side of things and what you can take out of it because it it for most of us anyway is a choice um what we do with our grief what we do with our pain and if we you know can look on the positive and try try and do that as you have then then there's a better tomorrow and so thank you for all that contribution that you have given to the jewish world and also to the non-jewish world there's many people who look towards israel who look towards your family and uh and gain a lot of strength and learn um from that of of how we can deal with terribly difficult situations so uh batgirl shire thank you so much for joining on rejuvenation and uh thank you everyone for listening i um i got my children got my first vaccine two weeks ago getting the next one next week and uh so far no tail or anything strange like that and just hoping really for health and for everyone to uh to to be healthy and to come back to a healthy place and uh and learn whatever it is we were supposed to learn from this little awful year so thanks to ben and to tabitha um for helping me put this out eat hair rejuvenation ongoing division take care everybody goodbye [Music]