88. The Unique Strengths of Jewish Women

Welcome to the Connected For Real podcast. I'm Robertson Batran Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business. And my mission is to bring God's presence into your life, into your marriage and into your business. Let's get started. 

 And we are  live, welcome everyone to the connected for real podcast. I'm Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, I'm a marriage coach for women in business. My specialty, my love, my obsession is the intersection between marriage and business and how they affect each other. And today with me, I have Rochel Miller, who has written a really amazing book, which by the way, I'm going to tell you, I love the cover.

And I want her to introduce herself and everything that she's doing, because I think this is super important for you to know about and, you know, get more information if you're interested. So Rochel, tell us about you, how you started, where you're from, all the good stuff. Okay. First of all, I want to say hello to Rebekah Grossman and thank you very much for having me.

I am originally from Massachusetts. I went to day school. My parents,  Survivors of the Second World War and that that was the years. This is going back quite a few years ago. It was very rare for the survivors to send their children to day school, but my parents believed that that was a Jewish education was.

the most valuable thing they could have offered me. I made I got married in 1975 and we had four children and made Aliyah in 1993. we Came here from Jamaica States, New York, if anybody knows that area, it's Queens, Queens, New York. And we moved to Ramot, Ramot Yerushalayim. whEn I moved, when we moved, I was really more the engine for this move because today moving to Israel is quite popular, but in 1993, 30 years ago, it wasn't quite as popular.

I was the engine because I was looking for answers to questions that I, I just didn't even know. I just was looking for answers and I was looking for all the things money cannot buy. And it really made a very big impression upon me when I came here to Israel in 1993, when I was taken by the hand to a little hole in the wall in Sanhedria, Sanhedri Yerushalayim, and introduced to this, this. 

And this is an audio. We're holding up a book called Ohel Ruchel and it's in Hebrew. Okay,  go ahead.  Yeah, this is the translation of Ohel Ruchel is the Tent of Rachel.  As it turns out this, I didn't know, but this is to the Jewish home,  what you could say the Mishnah  is to the base medrash, to the study hall, the Jewish study hall.

In other words, this is an oral transmission of Torah. It's an, and it used to be transmitted from mothers to daughters,  and it was totally absent. It's in the world we're living in today because  we became a generation of spiritual orphans.  So, when I heard that the teacher, Rebbetzin Helfer, Rabbanit Helfer give over, the first day, I had, my neshama had a meltdown.

I knew this was missing information that was vital. And actually, this is why I must have wanted to come to Israel because this wasn't available. It was written here in Israel. And it's the missing link because living in America and even living here until many, many women are unaware that this is our birthright right to have this information used to be transmitted mothers to daughters, but this is now we have to access it through the learning this book, but  today we can be a mother to our own mothers and share.

Information with them.  I'm gonna just stop you right here. I want to know what happened that the link was broken. You know, if there is a transmission from mother to daughter throughout the generations about how to run a home, how to have, you know, a healthy marriage, all the things that we all want. 

And then what happened? Where did it get lost? And how did it come back?  Tell me a little bit about that. Okay, so we literally physically we became orphaned. The Second War, the Second World War pulled mothers and daughters apart, pulled families apart. Along with that the transmission required a certain amount of family cohesiveness, and  this is, this was not available.

So I would say that would be the major impactor and made us, as I call it, spiritual orphans.  So but not to have this oral transmission is to  be handicapped in a major spiritual way.  And so when this, this book was written, it was written with the rabbinical approval.  of every type of rabbinical section.

So that means Ashkenazi and Sephardi, Hasidic,  and the whole gamut. Because to take an oral transmission and write it down, you just can't do that like that. So that's what it is.  But now it's available. It was available in Hebrew. But it was not accessible,  certainly not accessible to the English speaking world, and even to the Hebrew speaking world, because it's written in skeleton form.

So I spent 11 years with  Robertson Helfer, who is related to the author, the, who was, who wrote this, who took all the, all this, Oral transmission, which is by the way, always based on written transmission, written Torah. So we have the written Torah and the oral Torah. The oral Torah is always based on the written Torah.

So there's all, it's all of the soul quiz and that's really what I wanted to give. When I wrote this book, the simple of marriage, I wanted women to access the information and the source for the information.  I love it.  I love it. Okay. So tell me a little bit about why you called it the simcha of marriage, which I guess literally simcha would be joy, right?

It's like happiness, joy.  There is  a lot of joy missing in marriages today. Okay. This is something I work very hard to Fixed. One of the things that bothers me the most is the superficial marriages, the ones that look good on the outside, but in the inside, there's just something lacking and that is the joy of marriage.

So I love that the name of the book in itself is, you know, giving you the result of what you're going to get. Tell me why you picked that name. And, you know, you could have gone with a direct translation of, you know Rachel's you know, tent or something very neutral, but instead you went with this, which I really love.

All right. So it really isn't only the joy of marriage. I'll make it more general. It's the joy of relationship.  And the  punch line here is that in order to get to the joy of relationship this way, we have to have a knowledge of relationship this way.  Okay, so this way is, you know, horizontally between ourselves and other people.

Exactly.  The other way, you know, towards God. So I totally agree with you. This is something we talk about a lot. You end up strengthening yourself and your relationship with yourself, your relationship. with others and then also your relationship with God. It all works together. Tell me more about that.  All right.

So basically  we function in relationships from our we have our head and we have our heart  and both can take us. Very far away from the connection that we want to achieve in a relationship. Relationship goes deeper than my intellect and deeper than my emotions. It's on the level of the Neshama, the soul. 

And to enter into that type of connection whereby I'm,  I'm conscious of the importance of the person in front of me because of that soul.  I need guidance and the guidance comes from how God guides us.  This is what's in both the Ohel Rachel, the tent of Rachel and in the, in the simcha of marriage.

We are guided. We're not left to our own devices. Once we know what What the ideal I-G-E-A-L ideal is then we can follow with our intellect and our emotions, but we have to know what the ideal is and we can't get to it on our own. And if we rely ourselves only on our emotions and intellect, we're gonna actually get probably very far away from where we wanna be. 

Yes. If you're, if you think you can control it,  don't go there.  Dangerous area head.  It's so true. It's so true. And in my calm method, I have God right there in step two, right after connecting to yourself, you must ask God for abundance and then listen for the answer and master a higher level of consciousness.

Those are my four steps. And I love that it is. It's so clear in your book that there is guidance and there is answers that come down from, you know, from above  to support you and to hold you through it because you're not meant to do this alone. That's right. No matter of fact it's the antithesis of the world around us. 

We are we are, there's two types of dependencies here. We're a hundred percent dependent on God.  And we, and through that dependency, we learn how to be interdependent  with the people within the circumstances of our life.  So that's our, this is, this is our approach. The outside world wants to create a situation where I'm self sufficient.

I'm a self made person. I,  And actually even finding the other people in a somewhat adversarial because I'm in competition and that's not at all where the society, the Torah society is taking us is taking us into a situation. I call it the forklift. You raise the other and raise yourself in the process and you have to know how to raise your other and that doesn't come from My intellect and my emotions.

We are absolutely guided and we have  the  In in Leviticus  we have  the The verse that says, love thy neighbor as as thyself, right? And this love, what is it really based on? It's based on respecting and creating a, a groundwork  whereby there is love. Respect. There's safety.

There's I feel my importance. I feel the other person's importance. And one more thing. Redeem ability.  Nobody's perfect. And everybody wants to feel in order to feel love. They have to feel they're redeemable. You make mistakes and we can be able to judge another person favorably and say,  I realize I know it wasn't your intention. 

Right. Oh my gosh, this is so big because  one of the biggest things is  just, Oh, I can't, that's it. I can't, you know, this is something I hear a lot and you almost make it impossible for the other person to be right because you need them to be wrong in order for you to be right. You know, you, you get into a loop where you no longer have the ability to redeem the marriage because you are dependent on it.

to fail for you to feel successful, right? And that's one of the real obstacles to succeeding in marriage is being able to pick up wherever you are and say, okay, let's figure out how to make this work. You know, at any point you can always improve your marriage. Right. I would say that the quickest way I want to give you a few, a few of the. 

Approaches. And again, this is all based on a God relationship. Yeah.  So number one is to bring in the element of humility. And that means I'm willing to move over and make room for another way of looking at things because there's always another way of looking at things. And that will. It broadened the the range of of acceptance and doesn't mean I have to like another somebody else's opinion.

Doesn't mean I have to enforce it. Doesn't mean I have to rubber stamp. It doesn't mean any of the above. I have to say, wow. That's another way of looking at things. Yes, you're right. That is one way of looking at things. Or, I never thought of it that way. Wow. In other words, just give space for another person to be able to express themselves.

That takes humility. Because  To be a winner, or I have to be right, is, you know, it's not about the best  approach, it's about the blessed approach. And, it's not going to be much of a blessing if we don't make ourselves Selves and the other person feel safe. We're we're here to help each other  and important.

I'm here to listen. There's another way of looking at things. I don't and because there's another way I have now, I'd like to request just that we open up the fields and I can share with you some other thoughts, my own thoughts,  or maybe we have to take some advice from outside and just bringing, but there's always another way. 

 it's a very healthy way of interacting and making space for the other person. And so that takes humility, as I say making another person feel redeemable  by saying.  I know it wasn't your intention when you said this to hurt me. I know.  And then you couldn't, but already, you know,  you, you've expressed that something is off, but you've given the other person that sense of redeemability.

I know it wasn't your intention. The question I'm going to pick on you today. One of the many things I hear a lot is, but he, it was his intention. He told me straight out, you know, so what do you do with that? How do we deal with the con, the conflicting information where I know that, you know, Maybe I want to believe that he didn't mean to hurt me, but at the end of the day, it hurt. Sometimes a husband is provoked. In other words, if he's getting nothing,  if he's like what I call an angry lion, If he hasn't felt in any way important, in any way redeemable, in any way safe, in any way,  then,  you know, it's like he may come back and this might be a comeback. So we have to say, you can't just take it in isolation. 

That type of expression, if he said, oh yes, he, he really meant it. It means that yes, that the couple isn't in a very dangerously, emotionally dangerous situation, but it can be redeemed.  It can be redeemed, it can be changed and say,  you know, a woman has to be able to think and say, what could make him want to do this really intentionally?

Is he getting his importance? You have to ask yourself three things. Is he getting his importance? Does he feel safe? Does he feel redeemable in this marriage?  And if the answer is no to all three, then it's a wild card. So the idea is to, you know, you're already at the precipice at that point.

You have to pull back. You have to figure out a way to pull back. I hope I'm helpful in that. Yeah, I love that. Listen, I believe that  a lot of what we can control is.  Is available to us, you know, so people say it takes two to tango So if he doesn't want to change the marriage, then there's nothing to do about it Actually, there's a lot to do about it because you can single handedly change the whole situation by creating space and by changing the dance and by allowing him to have a way out of being the bad guy, right?

So there's a lot we can control and a lot that we can do in order to save a marriage.  Is this book only for women who are in quote unquote emotionally dangerous situations, right? Like their marriage is on the rocks. It's not so good. Things aren't going in the right direction. Or would you say this is fundamental for everyone, even in an amazing marriage?

This is absolutely fundamental. It's rock bottom without it.  A person I really feel is,  is significantly deprived.  And it's very, it's very wholesome. It's very it's very accessible. The book is written in essay form, you know, sort of like the way a wife, a woman's life is. We don't, we're not, we don't necessarily have the ability to sit down and study.

This is not a studying book. This is a manual for life. It's, it's a transmission. It's something we want for ourselves. We would definitely want our children, our daughters,  daughters in law, our granddaughters to have this.  And, and, and  the point of this, it's tied into the mission of a Jewish woman. We have a mission  and our mission is in our home to bring the presence of God into our home and it comes through in our relationships.

It's very easy to, to pull things apart,  but to bring,  bring people together requires prayer. It requires a partnership with the Almighty. And I sometimes say, sometimes you have to say, God help me,  help me stay connected even though I don't feel like being connected in this moment.  And I want to just say that the quickest way to make myself feel safe.

Is by making somebody else feel safe if they feel unsafe. My level of safety has been now disrupted because if they feel unsafe, they're going to attack me. Mm-Hmm. So you have to know. You have to know what does Hashem give us?  So I like to, to introduce in any relationship the idea of.  What can we do to help each other?

Never, you have a problem. That's absolutely, it's, it's, you just can't, you can't build anything with that. That's an automatic disconnect. What can we do to help each other  is an unbelievable connector. It unites us. It brings divine presence into the relationship. And then you can ask privately, you can pray privately,  help me be creative, help me be patient  and help my husband as well.

We, I mean, a woman should be davening, should be praying for her, for her husband as well, as well as for herself. But she's the model for humility  and for  bringing in. And as I said, the redeemability, the safety, the importance, make room for another way of doing things, redeemable. I know it wasn't your intention and if the person says it is my intention,  then you have to really step back and think what's going on here and safe.

What can we do to help each other?  So how do we create safety? Let's talk about that because so far we've talked about the other two, and I think it's really important and powerful to get these practical things right. A listener is listening and saying, okay, I get it. You know, my unique strength in this marriage is that I can actually create something out of what's.

seems to be nothing or very little something. How can I create safety for myself and for my husband or, you know, other relationships?  Alright, so I'm thinking that to create an environment, you want to create an environment and in that environment, I would say you'd want to be able to pay attention to the things that we take for granted.

in our spouses and,  and bring it to their attention. You don't know what it means to me when you do the dishes, I can sit down and have a cup of coffee and have energy to go on for the whole rest of the evening. spEaking things that say, Women tend to put a scale there, so I do these many things and he, all he did was put the dishes into the sink and he rinsed them out, so what? 

The fact is,  again, making anybody can diminish.  We want to use a magnifying glass and make a person feel safe in their home. This is, you know, a person makes an effort. They want to know it's worth their while. Making efforts worthwhile when they're acknowledged, when we can point out to them and say what you just don't know what it means to me,  you picked up the kids today.

You have no idea, and you let you freed me up, it cleared my head, it gave me an opportunity to take a breather, I was able to take a rest.  Make it, you can really make it worth the while. An environment of that appreciation certainly is going to go a long way to making a person feel safe.  I love that. I call that blame your husband for the good things because we spend so much time blaming them for all the things that are wrong and all the things that aren't working.

Like, is it really their fault? Who cares? It's useful. It's, you know, this is so, so convenient to blame it on your husband. But if you can sit down and think of all the good things that you have, right, all the things that make you happy and then turn around and say, yeah. I am so grateful that you allowed me to go get a massage, right?

Or like that you made it possible for me to have some time to myself or that, you know, Oh, I took a long shower. It was nice and hot and I didn't have to worry about coming out quickly because no kids were, you know, knocking on my door, whatever it is. Pick the tiniest little things and just enlarge it.

Like you said, take a magnifying glass and allow your husband to take credit or to get credit even for the things that He's thinking okay, I didn't do anything, but I'm happy. You're happy, right? Cause that is going to fuel your marriage. That's going to be the thing that you're going to be able to use to propel you forward.

I love that. That's so beautiful.  So creating. Creating safety is really creating spaces is being seen as being able to  see the other person for who they are, the fact that they're trying, they're really trying.  And I want to add that  the the Torah perspective is  the beginning of me  and my importance is recognizing.

Your importance.  When I can recognize your importance  and make you feel  that I see the qualities. I appreciate the qualities. When you do this, it makes it. It has so much, such a beneficial effect, right? So what happens is that that's a, that's a character development in myself.  So,  and you talk about this, I mean, there's many aspects to self esteem, but this is one of them. 

Seeing the other person and making them feel important is about making myself feel important. And  I wouldn't come to this on my own. This is not logical. This is not emotional. This is part of my relationship with the Almighty. This is what is being taught to us as women. And we bring into our home this whole atmosphere of having everybody recognize and feel important.

And that becomes my importance as well.  I love that. I love that. And  oh, there's so much that we could go into because this is such a vast topic. What  are the things that you offer? How can people get in touch with you? You know, where could they get the book? By the way, I just want to say about the book, besides the fact that it's beautiful and it's totally up my alley with the colors  and the design.

I love it. I also really enjoyed delving into it and getting, you know, getting to read it. Now, one of the things that you were saying before it is that. It's an easy thing to put down and pick up again. And that is something that I really found myself doing, you know, with all the kids around and all the happening and everything all, you know, flying. 

I was able to sit down for a couple of minutes, read a little bit, and then put it down and keep moving, keep going, keep, you know, doing. living.  And then I sat down again and I picked right up again and continued reading. So definitely one of those things that is doable and is enjoyable. I appreciate that about the book. 

Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And I want to add that the book also has very teeny, but very  impactful exercises. We call it in the book Imunim,  like exercises,  right? So to help  in the  internalize in a very easy, small way and see and feel the difference. Quite quickly. This is, this is a, this is what a Torah is a transformation of ourselves.

When we learn Torah, we are really learning how to transform ourselves. And but we need to have all the help we can get, including the little exercises. So yes, the book is divided into like three sections. There's the actual direct quotations that I translate from the Ohel Rachel. Then there's an explanation, which is an essay.

As you said, very limited form, but easy to pick up and put down and then there's these little exercises.  How people can get in touch with me. I, this is my life's work, you know, and I give four times a week. I give workshops on zoom and in person. If people care to come to Ramat Beit Shemesh, they're welcome to see me in person in my home.

That's where I give the workshops. From, but for people who are abroad or in other parts of the country, or can't make anything. So it's always available by zoom. So the workshops are 1 hour workshops. They're on Monday at 11 a. m. Israel time Tuesday at 10 a. m. Israel time Tuesday at 8 p. m. Israel time, which is the specific class that I set up just recently for the people abroad and Wednesday at 1130 a. m. So if people go to the website, Simcha of Marriage they will find my website and the schedule of classes, but not the last one. The eight o'clock, eight o'clock class is just, just beginning. A matter of fact, if people come into, come in this week, it'll be very wonderful to have you. And if people want to come into the workshop this week, which is free, please send me a email, thesimchaofmarriage@gmail.com  and and no age, even though the book is, this was a very confusing, the book is has Simcha marriage with H, but the website is without the H Simcha and Gmail is without the H. Okay. And that's how we develop a relationship. In other words, the workshops are the form of. The relationship and subsequently, I have been traveling throughout the United States for many, many years.

I just want to add that in  2014, my husband was diagnosed with nobody should know of it with ALS.  And that abruptly stopped my my traveling, but it didn't stop my working on the book. I worked  throughout the whole five years that I was taking care of my husband. I worked on the book and I was still teaching the classes.

But the traveling was not I curtailed the traveling, but now I'm in a different stage and I'm thankfully remarried. My last, new last name is Lyons, L Y O N S, but people know me as Rachel Miller.  And I would be so happy to connect with anybody and everybody. I'm... I just love the Jewish women. I love this Torah, this transmission, and I know that with it, life will be much happier in all our relationships and we will feel the comfort.

And the cushion of having that special relationship with God in all our relationships.  Oh, I love it. I love it. Okay. Let me give you some feedback. You guys, if you're in audio and you're not watching this,  it is so beautiful to watch how you have gone through so much. Learned so much experienced so much and you're showing up, you know, and you're making these classes and you're making them available for people and writing the book and getting it all out like Every single step takes so much courage and so much effort and so much getting out of your own way And you know from my perspective as a marriage and business coach I want to just focus on the business here a little bit.

It is not easy to take something that you know is a gift that God gave you and that you are meant to, you know, now move forward with and take it to these levels. So first of all, congratulations on the book. Congratulations on all of that you've done. And, you know, I'm really applauding your,  your Courage to show up and to do the thing that you are here to do.

And I think, you know, the way that we titled this podcast, the unique strengths of Jewish women, I think that is our strength, the strength to know that we are here to serve God, that we are here to be guided by God, right? Not only do we need to serve, but we're given the tools we need in order to serve and we're guided through it so that we don't have to do it alone.

And that's one of the best.  I want to add one more thing that I'm although the book is based on 30 years of teaching, I have the privilege of having been a co author. In other words, there's another author, her name is Rebecca Allen, who is brilliant, and so you're humble, and she helped me take all these, Thousands of hours of a sheet of workshops that I gave and format it with me.

And actually, the Emunim, the exercises that are in the book are exclusively her contribution. I wanted to mention that. That's beautiful. It's really beautiful.  Oh my goodness, we can go on forever, but this was such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming, for sharing with us.

It's so practical, so to the point, and what I love is that we are so aligned, so if somebody is listening, and this is the reason why I have this podcast and I do these lives, If you find that somebody, you know, tickles your spot and is like, Oh, I want to learn from her. She seems legit. I am here to tell you, this woman is legit.

Go and listen, go and show up because this is amazing. What she is teaching is aligned a hundred percent. If you can connect to God and you can get to a place where you can receive the answers and continue moving within your strength and within your. uniqueness. That is your superpower. So definitely check her out.

And you know, we wish you a lot of good luck with the book and with the classes. Thank you for showing up. I want to make sure to remind everyone that there is the intimacy masterclass that I am running. If you, I'm putting it up here on the screen so that you can sign up connectedforreal.com/intimacy. 

It's going to be a masterclass 90 minutes long where we talk about intimacy, especially during hard times. This is the second time I'm running the intimacy masterclass. The first one was the basics of, you know, what to do when the fireworks are gone and how to bring back the excitement and all that stuff.

That is, You know in the first one and you get instant access to that and this one is the second level We're actually taking it deeper and creating a rock solid marriage that is from the inside out So we're focusing on intimacy both emotional and physical so that you can create that cushion that we're talking about really to Make your marriage come alive and allow it to spill all over into all parts of you.  I see here that we have a comment. So let's just give her a second Thank you for giving us a landscape now. Oh, I love it. We have a comment that thanked us for being here So thank you  I love it  Thank you all for listening. If you loved it, let us know. Please get in touch with Rachel Miller at  simchaofmarriage at gmail.

com. I love that. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. 

 And that's it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn't it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode. 

Can you share it with them?  I am Rebbetzin Bat chen Grossman from  connectedforreal. com. Thank you so much for listening and don't forget you can be connected for real.