How can we experience crushing pain without experiencing it as suffering? Again and again, life brings us to a crossroads: will we hold our pain by ourselves, or let G-d meet us in it?
In this conversation, Chaya Cowen reflects on grief, personal experiences of devastation, and the leap of allowing G-d into moments shaped by self-blame and anger toward Him. She shares how the loss of her first pregnancy, which ended in stillbirth, shaped her relationship with Hashem, and offers a moving reading of Eicha as a journey through self-blame, anger, and the search for connection.
We also talk about how to pass Judaism on with honesty and joy: welcoming children’s questions, meeting the feelings beneath them, and modeling what it looks like to balance exploration with commitment.
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Chaya Cowen is a Sacks Scholar, the Head of Learning & Teaching at Beth Rivkah Ladies College in Melbourne, and oversees a comprehensive high school curriculum and teaches courses in Tanach, Jewish History, and Jewish Philosophy. She has a passion for education with a focus on meaningful, empowered and personalized Jewish learning, and explores the interface between Judaism and the wider world. Chaya resides in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and four children. She can be reached at cowen.chaya@gmail.com
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TIMESTAMPS:00:00 The difference between pain and suffering
00:15 Welcome and the episode’s central question
03:35 Meet Chaya Cowen, educator and mother
05:13 Choosing a relationship with Hashem through life’s challenges
08:57 Fertility, loss, and facing what we can’t control
11:26 Reading Eicha as a journey through grief
17:31 Why we blame ourselves after tragedy
18:37 What happens when anger turns toward G-d
21:16 The leap of letting G-d into our pain
23:02 Drawing strength from ancestors and Jewish stories
24:42 The story of Zusha and a different view of suffering
26:04 Finding a way to express and process grief
28:01 How to acknowledge pain without being alone in it
30:58 How to support someone who is grieving
34:23 The lasting mark of pain and asking it for a blessing
36:14 Helping children build a relationship with Hashem
37:11 The educator as a “midwife” to Torah
41:10 Welcoming students’ questions without judgment
45:12 Balancing exploration with commitment
46:28 Modeling beauty and meaning in Jewish practice
49:34 Teaching Torah with joy and continued learning
52:25 Finding a personal path into Jewish life
54:33 Bringing joy, Shabbos, and questions into the home
55:21 Chaya’s closing message
