Travel Notes From A War - ChayaLeah Sufrin On Her Recent Trip To Israel

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a last-minute, new year’s special, Unspeakable regular ChayaLeah Sufrin stops by the pod to report on her recent trip to Israel with her family. Even though she’s been to Israel countless times, this trip was different in both expected and unexpected ways. ChayaLeah talks about the desperation of the families of hostages, the morale of Israeli soldiers, what Israelis think about America these days, and about visiting the site of the Supernovo Music Festival. She also explains (sort of) how the Iron Dome defense system works. Spoiler: it’s not Jewish space lasers. She also recounts a recent family trip to Kansas and reflects on how warmly her Orthodox family was greeted by locals.

GUEST BIO

ChayaLeah Sufrin is the co-host, with Yael Bar-tur, of the podcast Ask A Jew and Executive Director at the Hillel at California State University, Long Beach. Prior to Hillel, she spent 15 years teaching high school Jewish history and was the Education Director of Shul by the Shore.

ChayaLeah has been married to her husband Boruch for 18 years and together they have 4 sons. Jewish education and building community are ChayaLeah’s two main passions - she also loves the New England Patriots.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I think everybody is, you know, just thinking about Israel all the time.
0:06.8	So I said to the girl who works behind the desk over there at the spin class, I was like,
0:10.7	oh, I'm going to be away for two weeks.
0:12.2	I'm traveling.
0:12.7	And she said, where are you going?
0:13.7	And I said, I'm going to Israel.
0:15.8	And she goes, oh, fun.
0:19.1	And I'm like, I literally looked around. I was like, what? And she's like, that's so nice.
0:25.8	I'm like, do you know that Israel is in a war? And she's like, oh, well, be safe. And like,
0:32.2	that was the conversation. Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dom. The podcast officially resumes next week, but I'm dipping in here with a special episode. It's a visit from someone who's a regular guest around here, Halea Suffren.
0:51.3	Hylea has the wonderful and informative Ask a Jew podcast, and she's usually here with her co-host,
0:57.7	Yael Bartur.
0:59.0	But I wanted to share this conversation about her recent trip to Israel, where she went with her
1:04.3	family during Hanukkah.
1:06.3	Chayle, as you may know, is an Orthodox Jew.
1:09.3	She is the director of the Hillel at Cal State Long Beach in California.
1:15.0	Hillel being an international Jewish campus organization, the largest in the world. On her podcast with
1:20.7	Yael, Haila talks a lot about what it's like to be part of an Orthodox community. She is Hasidic. Yeah, Elle is a secular Israeli,
1:30.1	by the way. And while Hailea definitely has a very specific point of view about Zionism and
1:36.0	Judaism, she's an incredibly thoughtful and curious person. And her reflections about this trip,
1:43.1	I just thought were really interesting and valuable.
1:45.8	So we talk here about what life is like these days for Israelis, what we know and don't know
	...

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