Some doors slam shut so early, you don’t even know you’re locked out.
Other times, you’re pushed through them—and find your way back through the window.

In this powerful conversation with Talmud scholar and activist Chaya Gilboa, we talk about what it means to reclaim tradition. Not as a rebellion, but as a birthright.

Chaya grew up ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, in a world where women didn’t study sacred texts. She’s now a teacher, a mother, and a woman who can name exactly what lit up in her body when she did start learning Talmud—and what went silent for years before that.

What if the rules weren’t made for you—but you showed up anyway?

Not just showed up, but rewrote the script, turned on the lights, lowered the sound, and left the door open?

That’s what Or Alterman-Barnea did. After her son was diagnosed with autism, she realized that most cultural spaces weren’t built for neurodivergent kids—or their families. So she made one that was.

There’s a specific kind of ache that comes not from failure, but from success.

You set the goal. You crushed it. You got the title, the paycheck, the LinkedIn clout.
And then… you look around and realize:
This life you worked so hard for?
Doesn’t actually feel like you.

Let’s be honest: “What do you do?” has never really cut it.

Not when your dream job starts to feel like a straitjacket.
Not when the world is on fire and you’re trying to scale a mountain and get your kid to therapy and make a salad that doesn’t taste like resignation.

In this solo season opener, I (hi, it’s me, Chedva) ask three questions that don’t always get polite dinner party airtime:

• What do you do when your dream no longer fits?

• How do you reclaim a system built to suppress you?

• What happens when you stop optimizing and start asking?