A detailed translated guide to Nadav Nishri’s conversation with Rabbi Israel Yaakov HaCohen, a practitioner of Kabbalah and Hasidic thought introduced as a mediator with decades of experience. The original recording is in Hebrew.
00:00 — Finding a language for the work
Nadav discovered the rabbi through a video connecting mediation with Kabbalah. He recognised descriptions of something he experiences in practice: people who arrive in conflict can discover another way to relate. The invitation is to explore a language for that experience, not to present religious concepts as scientific findings.
The discussion also connects their books. Nadav introduces Mediation as a Martial Art; the rabbi describes his own long-developed writing about mediation through Kabbalah. Their interest is practical as well as spiritual: what changes in a room when people become able to hear one another?
02:24 — Love without a language
The rabbi remembers loving parents who did not know how to speak respectfully or listen to each other. The gap between affection and hurtful communication fascinated him as a child. He also describes rejection at school and an intense youthful relationship with Batya that he did not know how to contain.
His account links the search for a way of speaking with his later work. Love existing somewhere in a relationship does not automatically supply the skills needed to live together.
05:24 — A path through Australia and different communities
After military service, he travelled to Australia, worked in a market and then a chocolate factory, and met a woman experiencing violence. He describes helping her leave danger before any discussion of the relationship. They later married and had children.
Encounters with a Christian minister and a rabbi, and his eventual connection with Chabad, shaped his religious path. He later helped couples while still young, returned to Israel and lived in a secular kibbutz. He presents these crossings between communities as part of learning to build bridges. Extraordinary or spiritual moments in this story are his personal recollections.
13:08 — Connection does not always mean staying married
The rabbi says that sometimes divorce is the beginning a person needs. His work has included helping people part as well as helping them remain together. A spiritual approach does not mean preserving a marriage at any price.
He connects mediation with the Kabbalistic image of wisdom and understanding giving rise to knowledge: two ends can create something new. Nadav recognises the tension between knowing someone is the other parent of one’s children and feeling intense anger towards them. The process makes room for both reality and feeling.
23:40 — Giving, boundaries and the inner world
The rabbi describes Kabbalistic terms as language for inner processes. Chesed represents expansive giving; gevurah represents limits and restraint. Their relationship matters more than declaring one side good and the other bad. He also describes levels of the soul and the imagery of light and vessels.
These are concepts within his religious framework. They help him imagine a mediator holding different wishes together. Earlier, Nadav’s account of reading his Torah portion in Jerusalem gives another example of finding personal meaning in a tradition he had not previously felt close to.
27:54 — Broken pieces and the possibility of repair
The rabbi says his own experiences of being broken helped him understand people arriving in distress. Nadav responds by showing the kintsugi image on his book: a broken vessel repaired with gold, its joins becoming visible rather than hidden.
The image offers a way to imagine repair without pretending there was no fracture. It is not a claim that suffering is necessary, deserved or automatically beneficial. What matters in the room is responding to the person now, not ranking how much pain makes someone a capable mediator.
29:12 — Spiritual roles and human respect
The rabbi describes affection for non-Jewish friends and rejects humiliating treatment of others. In the same passage, he offers a theological distinction between soul levels for Jews and non-Jews, and links antisemitism to an unfulfilled spiritual responsibility to share light.
Those are his religious beliefs, not evidence of unequal human worth or an established explanation for hatred. Responsibility for antisemitic behaviour remains with those who practise it. The practical strand of the conversation is whether one can meet another person with care instead of answering hostility with humiliation.
33:21 — Keeping a direction in an uncomfortable place
He recounts an unexpected visit to an adult-entertainment venue in Florida and interprets his response through the image of gathering spiritual sparks. His point is that someone can encounter an uncomfortable setting without abandoning their values.
Nadav develops a ladder image for mediation: attention to the life people want to build can make movement possible. Looking forward does not mean denying trauma or refusing to hear the past. They connect faith with responsibility: belief is not a substitute for practical action or care.
41:22 — A real difference about carrying the work home
The rabbi observes that a mediator may keep thinking about participants long after a paid session ends. Nadav responds that he deliberately practises setting those thoughts aside. Between sessions he does not know what is happening in their lives, and his assumptions may be wrong.
Nadav favours putting his thoughts openly on the table in the meeting, without manipulation, and trusting participants’ responsibility. Protecting his attention and family life is part of sustaining the work. Their shared enthusiasm does not erase this difference in professional approach.
43:48 — Technology and the work that remains human
Nadav discusses the difficulty of turning mediation training into actual practice, then describes translation and AI tools as ways to make knowledge available across languages. His “reverse Tower of Babel” image expresses a wish to restore communication rather than divide it.
The distinction he draws is between access to information and the human work of community and connection. Tools for drafting or translation do not themselves establish legal accuracy, professional qualification or consent. His international websites and courses are examples he describes during the recording, not a promise that technology replaces judgement.
48:00 — Speaking to someone who does not want to listen
The rabbi describes a reluctant participant who gradually became more attentive during a conversation. His language is that words from the heart can reach the heart, rather than remain a contest of clever arguments.
Nadav imagines someone who has followed life’s expected steps yet remained inwardly alone, then experiences separation as a collapse. He emphasises staying with that person compassionately. The aim is to create room for listening and choice, not to bypass someone’s refusal or guarantee that affection will change every person.
53:09 — Batya asks what Kabbalah adds
Batya joins the conversation and asks a precise question: both speakers value sensitivity and repair, so what additional layer does Kabbalah bring? The rabbi replies with pregnancy and birth. Mediation, in his image, prepares capacities that people will use in the life after the agreement.
He wants attention to remain on how people will continue living, whether together or apart. He also describes Kabbalah as an inner approach that need not depend on a label or outward religious appearance. This is his account of its meaning; participants do not have to share it for their needs to be heard.
59:13 — Participants build the next chapter
Asked why very different people came together, Nadav declines to judge their earlier choices. He asks where they want to go now. His movement from mourning to a delivery room is another metaphor for acknowledging loss while preparing a new reality, not a fixed timetable for grief.
He stresses agency, including a woman’s ability to choose separation, and wants ideas to come from the participants rather than be imposed by the mediator. The closing discussion recalls relatives who informally helped with family disputes and the need for community today. The practical invitation is compassionate presence, shared direction and decisions made by the people whose lives are at stake.
Listen to episode 154
Original Hebrew audio and video. The text is an edited episode guide, not a verbatim transcript or an English recording.