The following is a transcript of Episode 7 of the Perfect Jewish Parents Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Josh: Hello and welcome to Perfect Jewish Parents, a new podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute about the joys and oys of raising children Jewishly. I’m Joshua Ladon, the director of Education for the Shalom Hartman Institute. 

Masua: And I am Masua Sagiv, Scholar in residence for the Shalom Hartman Institute. 

Josh: You know, Masua, when I taught in a Jewish high school, I would often tell my students, you should be suspect of the person that says “Judaism says,” cause I wanted to train them to understand that. Judaism is made up of people and the things that those people do together in the sacred texts, which have informed their experiences. 

So I would tell them, oh, you should point out the source for whatever you’re claiming, right? Like, oh, it says in the Torah or in the Talmud, or this Rabbi says, or that Rabbi said. I’m trying to get them to understand that ultimately the tradition is multi-vocal, and while the tradition is multi-vocal, I think it’s safe to say that the Jewish tradition takes for granted that people will want to have children.

Although it’s not always the case in reality, you can’t have a Jewish people without Jewish people. And the way most, though not all Jewish people are made, is that they’re born.

Masua: So in this week’s episode, we are going to be talking about fertility and infertility. This is not always an easy conversation in our community. Right, you said before, it’s safe to say that the Jewish tradition takes for granted that people will want to have children, maybe it demands and requires them to want to have children. And in the Jewish community, having kids becomes wrapped up with broader assumptions about what it means to be a Jew and live a vibrant Jewish life.

So while this is a Jewish parenting podcast, today we’re gonna talk about the question of what leads to Jewish parenting. We’ll talk about the vision of the Jewish family, if you will, and what are its costs, what are its challenges. Consider some of their values, expectations, connection to our Jewish tradition.

And for that, joining us today is Elana Frank. She’s the CEO and founder of the Jewish Fertility Foundation and the host of one of the top fertility podcasts, Fruitful and Multiplying.

Josh: We’ll be back with that conversation in a minute. 

Masua: Elana, thank you so much for joining us today.

Elana: Thank you both.

Masua: So, Elana, let’s start with, why don’t you tell us a bit about your family?

Elana: I’d love to. So you mentioned cost, and you mentioned what does the Jewish family look like? Well it wasn’t so easy for me. I’m a gal who went to Jewish Day School, who went even to Jewish high school, spent my year in Israel, and even moved to the Upper West Side of New York, if you know what that means.

And thought I was gonna get married and have a million babies cause that’s just what you do. And that’s just what I expected. So it didn’t go as easy as I expected. I met my husband when I was in my late twenties. We got married, we actually made aliyah, we moved to Israel, and we were gonna go on to have our million babies, after only several months of trying, I knew something wasn’t right. Went to the doctor. Got medication very quickly. In Israel, by the way, they ask you how long you’ve been married, not how long you’ve been trying. And it had been well over a year. That didn’t work. Months and months going by. My Israeli aunt asking me, why aren’t you pregnant? Do you not know how to have sex? Do you need to take a vacation and relax? Subtle, leading us to,

Josh: Oy.

Elana: It’s Israel, right? And we’re like, oh my God, maybe we don’t know how to have sex. Like we’re at that point we’re like, what is going on? Went to do many rounds of IUI, but in Israel it wasn’t costing me much.

Masua: IUI? 

Elana: IUI is the Turkey baster method.

We were doing it in the basement of a doctor’s house in Israel because my aunt gave me his information. She was in the medical system and we wanted a baby desperately, and we knew nobody who went through infertility. And this was already 14 years ago. So my husband helped me out, did what he needed to do. We weren’t getting pregnant, month after month.

After about a year and a half, we went to a doctor in Israel. And he was the first person who looked at me and told me, well, your tubes are blocked. And there was no way I was gonna get pregnant naturally, no way I was gonna get pregnant through IUI, Turkey baster. And I had to do IVF. Thank God we were living in Israel because what does that mean? Fertility treatments are free. It’s a socialized medicine country.

So I went on to be successful right away. I retrieved a ton of embryos through the process and we put in several, I started off with twins. It ended up with one child who is now 11, and one year later, we didn’t know we were gonna have easy success again, I put in a few more embryos and we ended up with twins, which also ended up with one. And we now have a nine-year-old. 

And we came back to America and I wasn’t done. I knew I had more in me to give to a family and things were really hard. My husband’s like, “Focus on the kids we have, love the kids we have.” Financially, it was almost out of reach in America to do IVF. It’s really expensive. Even my parents back in America were like, stop, like, just stop trying to get more. But I was going back and forth by myself to Israel to use up my residual embryos that were in the freezer.

Nothing was working. It was a very stressful time, and my husband’s like, finally, okay, I’ll give you another year. Try to have as many babies as you can in that year. We tried to adopt for several years, which is a whole nightmare in itself. When people are like, just adopt. It is expensive and it’s not like there’s so many babies waiting for you.

 We even tried to go through the foster care system, which was not easy. And ultimately, this is now like year four of doing everything we could to get a family and lots of therapy with my husband, cause he was just like, you’re a crazy person, like on this mission, and ultimately I received a donated embryo from an amazing single mom, by choice who was done growing her family.

And I carried my son, who, I’ll tell you his name, because it’s significant, his name is Matan, which means gift. And I now have a three-and-a-half-year-old who is not biologically related to me, but who I was able to carry to complete my family. So that’s my personal family journey.

Josh: Wow. That is, first of all, there’s so much in your story that’s about like A, what it means to create a Jewish family, what it means to do that with a partner, what it means to do that in Israel, versus America. I can see Masua and she is emoting and having a moment.

Masua: Yeah, I’m like, 20 different directions and, and yes.

Josh: You know, it makes me think a little bit that stress that you have with a partner, like when you’re thinking about this question of like, what leads to Jewish parenting? Not all Jewish parents do it with a partner. But many of us are creating, parenting with partners and it was interesting to hear you say, oh, I don’t know that many people with infertility.

I think we have come to realize, like, it feels like many of our friends, some with deep, deep intensive struggles. I think people talk about their struggles in different ways but the depth of where infertility shows up in our community, is robust.

It reminds me of this story. So when my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was like so superstitious. Like, I was like, oh, we can’t, we shouldn’t talk about this. We shouldn’t buy things yet, we shouldn’t do any of this. And becoming a parent as the male contributor, I didn’t live with it in the same way. It’s such an embodied experience. 

And she at some point was like, I understand your superstition, but I also need you to realize like, I’m living with this experience and I’m thinking about what it means to become a mom much earlier than you probably are, as a dad. And that’s what I’m reminded of as you were telling your story of just like the conversation and the challenges with your own partner.

Masua: I think that we grow up in the Jewish world, it doesn’t matter if we’re in Israel or in the United States, I feel we are growing up with a standard or a vision of, we are expected to be parents. We are socialized to be parents. We want to be parents, we want to have a family. You know, our tradition is filled with talking about family and parenthood, but the challenges in becoming a family and becoming parents, a lot of the times people don’t speak about them, or just recently people started talking about them more fiercely and more openly.

I have three sisters who are single moms through IVF. And all of them are saying we have these discussions all the time. On the one hand, people are still not talking about it, even though it’s not a secret. But on the other hand, today it’s easier because there are many kinds of new families. And it’s more like recognized in the Jewish community. 

Elana: You know what’s interesting? So Jewish Fertility Foundation started about eight years ago, and we do three main things to help intended parents or hopeful parents. We offer money, which goes far. We offer fertility grants. We’ve given out, I think it’s 1.2 million infertility grants and clinic discounts, which is really important. Money, money, money. But emotional support and education are equally as important. I don’t want anybody having to do the IUIs in the basement of the doctor’s house. Like that’s weird. It sounds weird and it is weird, especially if a doctor doesn’t check you. But regardless, and then, like what you were saying, there are so many options for how to grow your family today. So it’s not only IUI or IVF or adoption or surrogacy. There are even more options, embryo donation and beyond.

So we wanna make sure that people have access to that information so that they can talk about it, that they can know that they’re not alone. Because I’ll tell you, 14 years ago, 10 years ago, I was talking to nobody. I didn’t even know how to talk to people. I truly thought I was the only one in the world going through it. I mentioned something to my mom only cause she was seeing me, like inject myself with shots and she’s, you know, because your mom doesn’t necessarily wanna ask you questions if you’ve been married a little more than you should be for not having a child. They don’t know how to ask questions. We don’t know how to talk about it. But today it is a little bit easier through the work that organizations like mine and we’re doing in the community. 

Masua: Isn’t it ironic that the whole book of Genesis is filled with infertility? Like the whole of our tradition is filled with it, and it’s almost not talked about?

Elana: You know what, one of the things that we offer our communities is like, we work with everybody. Interfaith, and ortho, everybody in between. We’re with the Jewish community, but I happen to go to the mikvah during my early days. And I remember just crying there, filled with shots, like no success.

And one of the mikvah attendants was like, you know what’s going on? And I shared with her and she’s like, you know what you need to do? You need to pray. And I just like looked at her and I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Of course, I’m praying, but like, what does that even mean? And that’s a little bit of a disconnect I think, between us and our biblical sisters. Like it’s, what does that mean to pray? But yes, it’s been, this is not new. Infertility has been around since them.

Josh: If I understand what you’re saying, Elana, is that,someone just saying pray to you, it feels very like, A, they’re putting it on your shoulders, and B, it ignores the fact that we live in a community that is very social, meaning that no matter where you are in the Jewish community, you’re trying to have a child and you are seeing your friends’ successes either because you’re seeing them in regular time, you’re seeing their Facebook or Instagram posts, and so it’s like a curated life, or for those people who are in more intensive synagogue communities where there’s a, oh, I’m showing up to my synagogue all the time, and then someone is there with a kid or someone is asking me, 

Masua: Because they’re always asking.

Josh: Because first of all, like no one should ask and that’s what they do. 

Masua: I mean, yes and no, Josh. I don’t know.

Josh: Right. Oh, go on. I, uh, good. No, cause, Masua and I live in the Bay Area where it’s like people are oftentimes very intensely concerned with what someone else is saying to another. So tell us more about what you mean.

Masua: No, I’m just, I understand why asking could be very hurtful, but I don’t want us

Elana: What do you mean asking? Asking if you’re pregnant?

Josh: Oh, why don’t you have a kid yet? When are you gonna have your next kid?

Masua: I think

Elana: Oh. Yeah, that’s never okay. Never.

Masua: I know, I agree. But I will say that I would want people to reach out and not just ignore the fact. Right. So I, I’m sure there’s a way between, asking in a very non-okay way and ignoring and like, there’s no problem, no problem at all.

Josh: And not talking about the problem. Yeah. 

Elana: I was gonna say, going back a second to just the stigma, one of the things we noticed is like in Atlanta now, our organization has been around for more than seven years. And, you know, in the Jewish community of like 120,000, if you need support, if you need funding, you know where to turn.

But when we opened our second office in Cincinnati several years ago, I remember sitting in a training with veterans of infertility. So people who have kids who are older, maybe in their like twenties, thirties, they were on the other side and they were being trained to be a volunteer. And I grab my camera, I’m like, oh, can I take a picture? These are not people who are currently experiencing infertility. 

And the entire room was like, no. Like we can’t be out there. And I was like, guys, you’re on the other side. And they’re like, but we, but nobody knows we went through this. And I was like, oh, that’s a shift. That takes time. It takes time in these new locations that we’re opening up. It’s still taboo. It’s still hard to talk about. It’s still embarrassing. You still feel like you’re a failure going through this. And it really takes time through all the things that we’re doing through talking about it right now helps to ease that, stigma.

Josh: Yeah, it’s interesting because the notion of that stigma, I think it comes from lots of different places, right? Like on one hand it’s like, oh, am I less of a woman or a man? Like, I have male friends who struggle also with infertility. So like A, there’s like a body piece. And I think there’s also this community piece of like, am I not living up to this vision? Right? 

Masua: The peoples’ piece.

Josh: The people piece, like, and I think like, post-Holocaust Judaism is respondent with like, whether it’s assimilation in America. And so we have to do continuity and so then you have to have kids or, rabbi Yitz Greenberg is famous for talking about like, oh, you have to have the extra child because of the Holocaust. 

Like I think there is a sense of pressure both socially and about our body and Jewishly that feels overwhelming around having kids. I think the notion of what the Jewish family is supposed to be, I remember when I met like my first friends who were like, actually, we only want to have one kid and that’s what’s gonna be healthy for our family. And I was like, whoa, that is like so much confidence. I’m so impressed.

Masua: Not to mention those that chose not to have kids. 

Josh: Right, those that chose not to have kids. What are our assumptions about what counts as Jewish family and what Jewish family should look like?

Elana: But what do you think about, you know, whether you’re Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, beyond, all of the holidays, everything is centered around children. Passover, you know, like just think of everything. You’re telling the story to your kids. What do you do? Well, what do you do if you’re a couple that chooses not to have kids?

Josh: Right, it has to be hard. 

Elana: What do you do if you want to have kids? There’s so many moments that you have to opt out. And we’re making it more okay to say, okay, don’t go to that bris.

Josh: Right, but to not go be a part, it’s really hard to say, 

Elana: There’s also a cost. 

Josh: Don’t be a part of this, that feels really hard. It’s, how do you construct communities? It’s not just about like, oh, so we need to make sure that we are providing financial support for people that want to have children and can’t, and the counseling, and then it’s also how do we construct communities where we are appropriately sensitive to all people. 

Like someone who just had a baby, you don’t want them to then have to think about like, oh, I can’t invite these friends, or I can’t talk about my radical transformation, having a kid, it blows your mind, and at the same time, how do you be sensitive and create communities that create spaces for these challenging,

Elana: You know, we do a beautiful thing now at our synagogue for Rosh Hashana. There’s the big tallit that comes out. What is it, Al HaNaarim?

Josh: The, yeah, the, a blessing for all the children.

Elana: So it’s traditionally very hard for people like us, right, if you’re struggling. But now we make sure, that the Rabbi makes a bracha, a blessing acknowledging all of the people who might be struggling to have children, who have lost children, and beyond. It’s a moment of like, okay, acknowledgement. You’re still invited. because you don’t wanna be left out. You wanna be invited and be able to make a choice. But also just remind people, also, how lucky you are if you got to the other side.

Masua: So there are a few phases here. The first phase is being, I want to have children and I can’t, and then you go through this phase, but then, I’m very interested between like one and two or two or three or three and four, and so forth and so on. Because I know that, so my niece asks my sister all the time for another baby. For us as an adult, I mean, we see our community, but we are adults. 

But for our kids, sometimes they are in their preschools and they see their friends with a lot of big families and siblings, and then they go back home and they ask for a baby and for a sibling. And I feel like our response is so important to how they will internalize the family itself.

Elana: So what I would say to that is my motto, and also I follow what’s going on nationally, internationally, with the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, and like there’s so many people who are researching the best methods of talking to your children, talking to your family, on how they came about and what your family looks like.

So transparency is really, really important from a very young age. So that’s kind of our motto in our house, but there’s a very big difference between like what is private and what is a secret. So like, we’re open. I shared with you how Matan came into the world. We’ve talked about it from forever. I mean, he knows that he came from an embryo that was in the freezer. He knows that he came from an egg from a donor and that he has a sperm donor. I mean three years old. We have these conversations and we have appropriate conversations with other people who ask information. I happen to be very open about it, but not everybody has to be this open.

Also my children from a very early age. It was never a secret cause a secret can feel weird about how you were created. So like we always joke with my nine-year-old, like, are you cold? Are you cold? Because he was in the freezer for a year, right? As an embryo. So like, it’s a joke, but it’s also like, that’s his birth story. That’s how he came about. We, he needed extra help. 

Now, my three-year-old, because I just said that his biological family, who we happen to have fallen in love with, and they are our family now, so we like each other. So they came to visit. Not cause they had to legally, but because we actually like them. And my three-year-old was like, well, where’s their daddy? Because remember, she’s a single mom by choice. It’s the same. And they could be a single mom by choice or a single parent for various reasons. 

But I have to say, okay, you know, Matan, there are all different kinds of families. Some families have two mommies, some families have one, some have four grandparents, some have none. Like everybody just looks a little bit different. And this just being open about those conversations so that you don’t have to pull aside your 13-year-old niece or whoever and say, Hey, I have to sit you down and tell you this is your birth story. You’re actually not biologically related to me, you don’t want to ever have those shocking conversations. It’s a lot easier to do it when they’re younger. It’s just part of the conversation.

Masua: Yeah. And I also think that it’s fine to be sad together, right? Not always be the parent that solves everything, but you know what? I want that too, and I’m sad right now, and we can be sad together. Even when you’re a four-year-old. 

Elana: Hey, my three-year-old, I’m telling you, my three-year-old, I love him so much. I love all of them, but he’s just so interesting. And this is probably not appropriate, but like we were talking about his sperm donor because I said something about like, if you eat something you’re gonna be so tall. And my husband’s like five six.

Masua: Which is, explain for the culturally inept.

Josh: Oh, five six. 

Elana: Short!

Josh: Oh, cause you do things in centimeters because you’re Israeli. 

Masua: I do things, I do not understand feet. I’m sorry. Yes. 

Elana: He’s like, Jewish short. I’m short also, so it works in our family, but his sperm donor is like six-two, which is tall and, the donor egg was from a tall woman, so he has the chance to be like tall. And I thought it was a good moment to bring up, well, you know where the egg came from, cause we’re open with them, but there’s also a sperm donor, cause you know, a sperm and an egg, make an embryo, da da da.

And then he asked all these questions like, well, where is he? Can I see him? And then I was like, oh crap. Like, okay. So I like showed him, we have a baby picture from the sperm bank, and he’s like, but I wanna see what he looks like now. Like, he was just asking all these interesting questions and then I of course come home to my husband, who’s like, what are you doing with our three-year-olds? Like, why are you talking about these things? Cause we’re also like figuring out where our comfort zones are. 

Cause I have all this information of what I wanna share because I know best practices. But my husband is like, are you sure you wanna like go down that rabbit hole right now? He’s three years old anyway, so.

Josh: Well, no, I mean like, that feels like all of parenting is always like, oh wait, the things I’m really confident in, I’m totally confident with, and then all of a sudden, I do something and my partner is totally unaware of it, and we’re like, you’re constantly negotiating. And in these particular situations, your articulation of like, my husband’s a normal person, meaning he’s not thinking about it daily. He’s not running a podcast. He’s not, it’s like, oh, these are moments in which, we’re constantly sort of trying to figure out with someone else, how do we explain this? What are the metaphors? What are they gonna know? How is it, and it’s like kids don’t remember anything except for all the things you don’t want them to remember. And then it’s like, why? Why are you talking about that one moment when I did something wrong? And that’s your only memory. 

That set of like concerns of what your kid’s gonna find out here is related to like the expectations and concerns you have for your children in general. And I think what does it mean to create a family and that vision of a family is also like, what’s the vision for your child now, five years from now, 10 years? You know, we have expectations which are oftentimes not actually what’s gonna happen of where our kids will go. 

My spiritual challenge is, I find myself irked when I’m thinking about what could happen or what will happen. And I’m wondering, how does the experience, the struggle to have a child translate into your parenting practices now?

Elana: I think I’ll start with, the five years that it took to have my last child. I always wanted four children, and it’s just not gonna happen. But I think about those moments. I was already working at Jewish Fertility Foundation. I was constantly in this space, constantly thinking about how I was gonna get that baby and get pregnant, or not get pregnant, and have a baby. It was my life and my husband like was just not there.

Like he was just, you know, we already had two kids. We were parents who were tired and, you know, it was constant. And I think about our relationship and it did survive, barely, through therapy and all of that. And by the time I finally figured out how to get embryos in my hand, like that was my last shot.

And I was physically, mentally, everything exhausted. And I remember my mom and my husband sat me down and they were like, listen, you’re gonna put both of these embryos in and whatever happens, happens, but like we’re done. We can’t do this with you anymore. And, thank God I had one child from that last batch, cause I don’t know where I would be today if it didn’t work, but it absolutely translates to the parent that you become. So, while I was pregnant with my, all my kids, but mostly the last son, I worked the hardest for him. And also, because of the field I’m in, I knew what was at stake and I just had so much more information and education as to like what could be and what couldn’t be.

I wouldn’t acknowledge the pregnancy. My sister and my sister-in-law were pregnant at the same time as me. They always wanted to take cute pictures and I was just petrified I was gonna lose the pregnancy. We don’t have any pictures of all of us together. They, they couldn’t understand it. It’s just a different mindset, while you’re pregnant, and then you give birth to this baby, and it’s a baby and you’re a mom and you’re exhausted and you’re hormonal and you’re tired and. We talk about it sometimes. I’m not the only one unique to this, but there’s this guilt feeling of like, oh my God, I worked so hard for this baby, but then you’re a normal mom or a normal parent. Right. And it’s hard.

Josh: Do you mean normal parent, like it’s hard and I’m allowed to get angry at them? I’m allowed to yell at them. I’m frustrated. I’m not that I’ve ever been frustrated or angry or yelled at a child.

Masua: No, our kids are perfect.

Elana: But it feels hard to complain. It even felt hard to complain to my awesome husband because he didn’t have that sense of working so hard for the baby. Right? His attitude was always, how am I gonna pay for it? He was like, is embryo donation cheaper? When I asked him, I’m like, what if I get these embryos?

He’s like, is it cheaper than IVF? Is it cheaper than adoption? We send our kids to Jewish days. You know, how much does it cost? So he wasn’t in that. And also like, he’s a dad. He’s a hands-on dad, but like, you know, when you’re home with the baby as a new mom, you have all those feelings.

And I always felt so guilty complaining and had to remind myself, okay, you’re a mom. It’s okay to vent. You transition into normal motherhood. And I think as my kids get older, it becomes more normal. It’s hard for me in general to like take advantage of a moment, but when I look at my kids and, I think about what I went through to get them, it’s a little overwhelming.

Josh: Yeah. Oof.

At the end of our podcast, we like to close with a segment called On One Foot Parenting, where we turn the table on our guests and on ourselves and ask one of the hard questions about Judaism, religion, philosophy, politics, that our children ask us, and to turn it on this group.

So, I’m gonna ask you a question. This comes from, a colleague at the Hartman Institute in Israel, whose child asked them, is God a boy, or a girl? I’ll turn it over to you, Elana, and then to Masua, and then I’ll answer. 

Elana: They hate this answer, but I say, sweetie, what do you think? Why don’t you tell me, because then I turn it back to them, is their imagination? What am I? Who the heck knows? I don’t know.

Josh: Nice. Masua?

Masua: So I would be interested to know the motivation of the question, but at the end, I would definitely say, well, girl, obviously.

Elana: Ah.

Josh: You and Ariana Grande. 

So if my child was able to ask that question and I’m just gonna assume it’s the youngest, because the older ones would then be like, God is everywhere. And then another be like, well, God isn’t everywhere cause um, I would push them on like the notion that God has a body. God has a body and doesn’t have a body. Like I’m, we’re gonna live in contradiction. God’s a boy and a girl. 

Masua: But then it won’t promote bedtime, if you do that.

Josh: That’s true. Like at some point you’d have to cut it off or you’d have to be like, we’re gonna read a book now.

Masua: Yeah, girl. Now go to sleep. 

Elana: Do you really read your kids’ books every single night?

Josh: Well, like my wife really loves bedtime with my kids and reads, the two younger ones go to bed at the same time, and reads to them my oldest reads and then falls asleep. But she likes that moment, in that it’s a time for them to connect individually, and especially my oldest, who is a preteen, will talk to us in bedtime moments and it’s a corrective.

Masua: I’m reading stories and negotiating the number of stories for 13 years now, but, I have now, part-time, have a 13-year-old who reads stories instead of me, so that’s good.

Elana: That is a bonus. I know. 

Josh: What do you do? 

Elana: I want to be one of those parents who like reads a chapter of Harry Potter to my kid every night, but we’re not, we’re just not. 

Masua: Oh, no. 

Elana: Of course, the three-year-old for sure gets books and, the middle kid, we have to fight with him to read and he’s like, I’ll just go to bed, instead of reading and then the 11-year-old reads till like 11 o’clock at night with entry into our room every 20 minutes. 

Josh: We dream of a day when no one’s allowed to go to our room. But it’s not happening anytime soon.

Masua: There is no public space anymore in the house. Have you noticed? 

Josh: Yes.

Josh: All right. Well thank you very much, Elana. It’s been great talking with you. We wish you well and it’s been wonderful chatting.

Masua: Thanks, Elana. 

Elana: Thank you guys.

Josh: Thanks for listening to our show. 

Masua: Perfect Jewish Parents is a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where we tackle pressing issues facing Jewish communities so we can think better and do better. 

Josh: You can check out our world-renowned faculty, free live classes, and [email protected].

Masua: Our producers are Jan Lauren Greenfield and David Zvi Kalman. 

Josh: This episode was edited by our production manager, M Louis Gordon.

Masua: And our theme music is by Luke Allen. 

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Masua: If you have ideas for an episode, parenting questions, or if your kids asked you a question you want us to answer, send an email to [email protected]. 

Josh: Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.