PODCAST · religion
Soul Life
by Sruli Fruchter
Life is hard. Between deadlines, obligations, and expectations, we can feel overwhelmed and overburdened, suffocating from the pressures of living lives we don’t want. But it doesn’t need to be this way.If you’re seeking a life overflowing with meaning and purpose, love and empowerment, hope and God, then you’ve come to the right place. The Soul Life is all about using the rational, real, and logical points of the universe, along with the ancient wisdom of the Jewish tradition, to help you become the you that you want to be: your true, soulful self. It's time to start living your soul life.
Episodes
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How God Understands What Others Misunderstand
To be misunderstood is to not be known at all. The hidden responsibility and secret faith of Aharon in Parshat Tetzaveh reveal how our own, inner worlds live as our private secrets—known only to ourselves and to God. What does this tell us about faith? Please email me with any comments or…
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The Art of Re-Writing Your Life Story
What stories are you telling yourself about yourself? Our narrative identity—how we understand our life story—can define the quality of our lives. If your story is not serving you, then it's time to write a new one. We learn about Yosef's reveal to his brothers and how, in that tense moment, he...
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How to Become a Jewish Mystic and Find God
Where can we find God? Spiritual experiences can enliven and transform us, but they feel so hard to come by. This week, we discuss Yaakov's mysticism and break down what it means to be a Jewish mystic—and how we can all become one. Join us as we search for the doorway to the Divine. Please email…
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Why Do We Exist With Good and Evil?
Questions can make or break our faith. In the case of Rivka, our second Matriarch, we find her existentialism dealing with pressing, intense, and scary questions—to the point where she seems to question life altogether. Join us as we dive further into her inner life. Please email me with any...
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How Limiting Beliefs Hold Us Back From Our Dream Lives
What would you do if you weren't afraid? If you believed in the possibility of your dreams? If you didn't limit yourself? This shiur explores Sarah—our first Matriarch—and the question of limiting beliefs, that which prevents us from the life we want. Please email me with any comments or…
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A Torah that Shatters and Awakens Us with Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
Why learn Torah? Why read about Patriarchs and Matriarchs, biblical failures and triumphs, God's anger and delight? What could possibly draw a modern person into its ancient words? Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg — a renowned biblical scholar who weaves Midrash, biblical commentaries, Hasidic...
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Seeking God Together with Zevi Slavin
What does it mean to seek God together—across peoples, across faiths? In this episode of Soul Life, Zevi Slavin from Seekers of Unity joins us to discuss his work in studying, teaching, and discussing mysticism with scholars of other faiths. A Chabad Chassid at heart, Zevi speaks about his own...
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Teshuva as Self-Expression - Rav Kook Chaburah
Elul is the season of teshuva. But what exactly is teshuva? People usually say "repentance," a reaction to bad behavior or bad actions. For Rav Kook, teshuva is self-expression. It is the foundation of existence, the foundation of identity, the foundation of self. For Elul, that makes all the...
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We Have Exiled Our "I" - Rav Kook Chaburah
Do you ever feel like a stranger in your own skin? That is the consequence of exile, Rav Kook tells. "I am in the depths of exile," the prophet once declared. The "I"—the essence of selfhood, our truest selves—has been abandoned and banished. How do we reclaim our identity? How do we transform…
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The Right Atheism and the Wrong Faith - Rav Kook Chaburah
It may be time to get rid of your God. That sounds radical, but if your idea of "God" is damaging, disempowering, and destructive, then Rav Kook would suggest you stop believing. Not all beliefs are good beliefs. Some—many—are incorrect, harmful, and highly problematic. Similarly, not all atheism...
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The Happy Life - Rav Kook Chaburah
What does it take to be happy? What is the happy life? Is it attainable? How? That's the question Rav Kook answered for us in this chaburah. Rav Kook wrote about happiness—where to find it, how to live it. Everyone is chasing after happiness, but it seems like fewer people are reaching it as time...
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Experiencing the Soul of Torah - Rav Kook Chaburah
"We have abandoned the soul of Torah!" That is the cause of our distresses, Rav Kook tells us. We have the body, the structure, the skeleton, but we have forsaken its essence, its light, its life. If you have ever experienced a dread in Judaism—whether in Torah study or living Torah ways—Rav Kook...
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How to Hear the Voice of God - Rav Kook Chaburah
Have you ever heard the voice of God? No, not Morgan Freeman screaming from the heavens—I'm talking about the voice of your soul's Soul, the Source of all existence: God. In this chaburah, Rav Kook tells us how to do so. God is always speaking, he writes, but we are not always listening. Tune…
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Why Judaism Is All About Self-Love - Rav Kook Chaburah
What is Judaism all about? Servitude? Sacrifice? Community? There are many answers people will suggest. But how many would say self-love? Rav Kook tells us that the ultimate goal of Judaism relies upon the highest level of self-love. The more we love ourselves, he says, the more good we will…
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Finding Alignment With Your True Self - Rav Kook Chaburah
"When we forget the individual soul, when we stop paying attention to the inner life of a person, everything becomes confusing and unclear." Rav Kook believed that all of our problems stem from a lack of self-awareness, from forgetting that we are a ray of God's infinite light, that we are a…
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Ep. 12: Avi Fried on The Poetry of Life
Look at life like a poet. In this first season of Soul Life, we've been speaking about life in so many ways that relate to ourselves and our world. All this talk and discussion, however, cannot be isolated — they need to be matched with living. In this episode, I spoke with a close friend and...
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Ep. 11: Dr. Erica Brown on The Gift of Leadership
Are you growing others in your leadership? We are all leaders in our own lives. There are always people who follow us, who we guide, and who we lead — whether at home, work, or social environments. Leaders dare to create and design, to serve others, and as souls, it's something natural and...
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Ep. 10: Rabbi Dr. Yakov Nagen on The Essence of Peace
If we can't live with inner peace, how can we expect to live with world peace? In this episode, I spoke with Rabbi Dr. Yakov Nagen about what is the essence of peace — or shalom, in Hebrew. Finding balance and harmony within ourselves and with others has the power to change everything. I loved...
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Ep. 9: Do Your Beliefs Bring Burdens or Blessings?
Every day, we have blessing and curse set before us; we choose which one we want. Our beliefs and our perceptions determine what world we live in, whether it's one of chaos and catastrophe, or harmony and happiness. The secret is that we have the power to change our beliefs, to design our lives…
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Ep. 8: Changing Your Life and The World
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" This famous question in the Jewish tradition reminds us that only we can bring the change we seek in our lives. Only we can give ourselves our best lives, and if we forsake that opportunity, then we cannot expect tomorrow to be different from today.…
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Ep. 7: How Giving Can Make You Happier
If you want to be happier, try giving to others. It may seem counterintuitive, but giving to others is, in truth, giving to ourselves. Study after study has shown that when one gives to someone else — in whatever form — they will be significantly happier. This is natural for all souls, as each...
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Ep. 6: Our Spiritual Connection to Nature
We are all gardeners in the divine garden we call nature. There's a reason people so often find the beauty of our world to be breathtaking, almost as if there's something transcendent about it. Everything in the world is an expression of God, a ray or spark of His Endless Light, and we see this…
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Ep. 5: Loneliness and The Importance of Community
Being lonely is real and hard. Feeling like you are unheard, unseen, and unreceived — without any recourse to abate that feeling — breeds the pain of loneliness. Tune in to learn how community can bring immense healing to our loneliness and to see the role community plays on the international...
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Ep. 4: The Soul of Our Souls and Our Best Friend: God
Many people find the word “God” triggering, and I believe rightly so. That three-letter word is often packed with painful and problematic notions of a “being” consumed by control, anger, wrath, enslavement, punishment, judgment, and death. It makes sense that a “being” with those associations can...
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Ep. 3: If We're Rational, Why Do We Self-Sabotage?
Why do we hold ourselves back from being our best? Self-sabotage is incredibly common, and it's not unique to any type of person or background. But just because we struggle with self-sabotage, doesn't mean we need to lose to self-sabotage. In this episode, we're going to re-understand what...
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Ep. 2: Living as a Soul and Protecting Human Rights
You don’t have a soul; you are a soul. That is the single, most important idea I learned that completely changed my life. In this episode, we unpack what it means to be a soul and why it matters. This is the most foundational step to living our soul life. From there, we see how the understanding...
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Ep. 1: Finding Global Spirituality
Welcome to the Soul Life Podcast! This platform is all about sharing the deep, powerful ideas that changed my life and led me on this journey to living my soul life. Too often, we compartmentalize the meaning and purpose of our lives into a box we visit on certain occasions — it makes our…
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Dreaming of the Future on Yom Ha'atzmaut
"When Hashem returns us to Israel, we will be like dreamers" (Tehillim 126:1). On Israel's 73rd birthday, we sit here, like dreamers. This shiur is centered around understanding the miracle of Israel and dreaming about what comes next for the Jewish People. However, imbued within this specific...
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Finding Inner Freedom on Pesach
What does it mean to be free? Why do we sometimes feel so constricted in our lives? In this podcast, we'll see that freedom and enslavement are about much more than who is physically imprisoned in chains. On Pesach, as we reflect on our historical redemption from Egypt, that same light of...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Life is hard. Between deadlines, obligations, and expectations, we can feel overwhelmed and overburdened, suffocating from the pressures of living lives we don’t want. But it doesn’t need to be this way.If you’re seeking a life overflowing with meaning and purpose, love and empowerment, hope and God, then you’ve come to the right place. The Soul Life is all about using the rational, real, and logical points of the universe, along with the ancient wisdom of the Jewish tradition, to help you become the you that you want to be: your true, soulful self. It's time to start living your soul life.
HOSTED BY
Sruli Fruchter
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Soul Life have?
Soul Life currently has 29 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Soul Life about?
Life is hard. Between deadlines, obligations, and expectations, we can feel overwhelmed and overburdened, suffocating from the pressures of living lives we don’t want. But it doesn’t need to be this way.If you’re seeking a life overflowing with meaning and purpose, love and empowerment, hope and...
How often does Soul Life release new episodes?
Soul Life has 29 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Soul Life?
You can listen to Soul Life on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Soul Life?
Soul Life is created and hosted by Sruli Fruchter.
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