Claim OwnershipMore to the Story with Lea Rubashkin
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© 2025 More to the Story with Lea Rubashkin
Description
Join host Lea Rubashkin as she seeks the sacred in the everyday and dares to ask the questions we often leave unspoken. Rooted in Jewish thought and spiritual curiosity, More to the Story is a space for bold conversation, tender reflection, and personal excavation.
Each episode invites listeners into deep inquiry through solo teachings, intimate roundtable sessions, and conversations with guests navigating life’s complexities with authenticity and faith. Whether exploring themes of identity, pain, belief, or healing, Lea offers a lens that’s both deeply personal and universally resonant.
This is a podcast for those who crave depth, who live between questions, and who know there’s always more to the story.
12 Episodes
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In this week’s episode, I explore the Torah’s first deep conversation about jealousy, fragmentation, and what happens when the challenge is no longer outside us but within our own family. The jealousy between brothers, the wounds inherited from their mothers, and what it means that Yaakov loses his prophecy for twenty-two years. We look closely at how Yehuda’s choice to go down as part of his search to change the new reality ultimately becomes the beginning of his own transformation, and how...
In this episode, I walk with Yakov as he leaves Charan after twenty years of inner work in Lavan’s home. Everything he lived through becomes the preparation he needs to face Esav, not only the brother he once fled, but the part of himself he has not yet made room for. We look at Yakov’s threefold approach to danger, the crossing of the Yabok River, and why he refuses to leave behind even the small jugs. We sit with his long night of wrestling, the wound he carries from it, the name he receive...
In this week’s episode, we follow Yaakov as he leaves the holiness of his parents’ home and enters the world of Lavan, a place of concealment, deception, and spiritual challenge. I explore Yaakov’s preparation, his years of learning, the dream at Har HaMoriah, and the spiritual descent that becomes the foundation of the Jewish future. I focus on Leah, the sister whose tears, prayers, and hidden world reshape her destiny and ours. We look at how our sages describe her as “destined” for Esav, a...
In this week’s parsha, I explore the story not only as the birth of two brothers, but as the unveiling of two forces inside each of us, the godly soul and the animal soul. I speak about Rivka’s clarity, her courage, and the way her prophecy becomes a map for our own inner work. I look at Yitzchak through the lens of gevurah, not as passive, but as someone who mastered his instinct so completely that he could stay present even when everything in him wanted to run. And I explore Esav not as a ...
In this episode of More to the Story, I talk about how the energy of Vayeira flows into Chayei Sarah. These parshiyos are not separate stories but one current of guidance that keeps unfolding. I speak about Avraham’s open heart, his hospitality, his prayers for Sodom, and how they teach us what it means to love without agenda. I also look at Lot’s home and how the energy of a parent shapes the moral weather of a family. I spend time with Sarah. Her abductions. Her conversations with Hashem ...
In this episode, I share a story about a book my husband handed me that cracked something open, and how discovering the legacy of Rebbetzin Devora Leah gave me language for a mission I’ve been living without knowing. The name I carry has introduced me to parts of my soul I’ve only recently come to understand. I also reflect on what it means to honor the "animal soul" within us and why it may be the missing piece in the sacred work of marriage, motherhood, and inner connection. For those lea...
In this episode of More to the Story, I talk about what it really means that Avraham believed. Not only that he believed in Hashem, but that he believed in his own ability to hear truth. He trusted what he received. He didn’t make himself small. That kind of faith is what begins every healing journey. I also speak about why the first mitzvah Avraham is given is on the body. Hashem asks him to bring holiness into the most physical and vulnerable place. We are not meant to rise above our bodie...
In this episode of More to the Story, I look back at last week’s Parsha and ahead to the one that’s coming, and I find myself standing right in between them. I talk about what it means to live with the Parsha, to feel that each week carries its own heartbeat, its own invitation to grow and return. For me, connecting to the Parsha is not about studying alone. It is about being part of a living, breathing story that moves through time and through us. Each week offers its own light, its own work...
In this episode of More to the Story, I talk about the very first Rashi in the Torah and how it is also Rashi’s own introduction to himself. Rashi asks why the Torah begins with the creation of the world instead of with the first commandment. The answer, he says, is that Hashem started with creation so that when the world accuses us of taking what is not ours, we can remember who the true Creator is. The Rebbe takes it further. He explains that the land of Israel is not only a place on a map....
This episode was recorded just before Yom Kippur. It is about Teshuvah, but not in the way I once understood it. Like much of my life, its meaning keeps evolving. I reflect on how the language of repentance has often felt like a weapon, and how I am learning to reclaim it as something tender and true. Like many of my offerings, this one is unpolished and raw. It is a voice memo of the soul, shared from the middle of the process. I speak about what Yom Kippur means to me this year, the questio...
In this Q&A, I speak from the place I’m still in, where clarity and doubt live together. I talk about nearly walking away from my marriage and what helped me stay. I share what it means to carry something too heavy alone and what becomes possible when both people keep showing up. We talk about the power of the 12-step world and the places it cannot reach. I speak about the depth of plant medicine and the quiet strength of women I’ve met along the way. I share what it means to let go of s...
In this first episode of More to the Story, I return to where it all began. Not just the beginning of healing, but the beginning of me. I talk about growing up in Crown Heights in a large Chabad family, shaped by strong voices and quiet expectations, and the inner world I carried through it all. I share what it was like to fall in love, become a mother, and then watch the life I had built start to crack open. I speak about discovering my husband’s addiction, how it stirred memories I had bur...
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