Rise & Shine with Adrienne Gold Davis

Why do some kids grow up loving being Jewish while others drift away? Miriam Belsky, a day school parent and national day school leader, joins Adrienne Gold Davis to make the case for Jewish education. You'll leave with a clearer way to weigh cost, safety, and identity for your own family.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

You did everything right, and it still didn’t work out? Measure yourself by your effort and aspirations, not your results. Rooted in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of Our Fathers, this episode will help you loosen your grip on outcomes and keep going anyway.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

This week on Rise & Shine, Adrienne explores a Jewish teaching many people get backward. Judaism doesn’t say, "Don’t judge." It says judge favorably. Give others the same benefit of the doubt you give yourself, and protect their dignity even when you disagree.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org.

Motherhood gives us a deep sense of being needed. When that shifts, it's easy to feel adrift.

On this week's Rise & Shine, Adrienne Gold Davis shares an honest admission: what she thought was generous protection was often control.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Pregnant with her first child, Adrienne was terrified she felt nothing and afraid she wouldn't love her baby.

Everyone told her the same thing: "You'll see." They were right. Love didn't arrive first. It grew with every feeding, every sleepless night, every diaper.

Jewish tradition connects ahavah, love, to hav, to give. We come to love what we give to.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

The power went out next door and stayed out for three days. My husband came home the minute it was safe to drive, found an extra-long extension cord, and ran it from our back door into our neighbors' house so their food wouldn't spoil. Nobody asked him to.

Later I told a friend about it. She isn't Jewish, and she said something I didn't expect. From everything you have taught me about Judaism, isn't that the whole point? Sharing your power and your light.

I burst into tears because she was right.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

If you are carrying something against someone who never apologized, this episode offers a place to start without asking you to pretend you are fine. Adrienne opens with what an old friend told her years later: she used to be jaded, judgmental, and very good at holding a grudge. Becoming a mother in her thirties forced her to ask what she actually stood for, and the answer came from Jewish wisdom she chose to act on before it felt natural.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Teshuvah, the Jewish practice of return, is easy to talk about and genuinely hard to do.

In this Rise & Shine conversation, Adrienne Gold Davis walks through the four steps of Teshuvah: cessation, regret, confession, and resolution, with author and educator Carly Israel, who has been sober for 27 years. Carly explains why nothing else works until you stop, why regret arrives after you stop rather than before, and how confession moves you from feeling bad about yourself to seeing the facts clearly. Adrienne is candid about her own struggle with control and what it cost her as a parent. Together they land on something you can use before Rosh Hashanah: choose one small action, repeat it every day, and let the behavior change the thinking.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

If you're listening to Rise and Shine, chances are that something you've heard here has stayed with you. Maybe it made you think differently. Maybe it gave you language for something that you were feeling. Maybe it helped you feel more connected to yourself, your Jewish identity, Israel, or the Jewish people.

Over the years, I've received thousands of messages from women sharing how Momentum has impacted their lives — from this podcast to the journey of growth in Israel and beyond. And I've seen what happens when that spark takes hold. When you inspire a woman, that impact ripples outward to her family, her community, and the next generation. And we have a lot more work to do.

So at a moment when Jewish families are navigating so much uncertainty, we have a choice about the Jewish future that we want to create. Because the future isn't something we wait for. It's something we build together.

During Momentum's Mothers Move the World campaign, September 9th and 10th, I'm asking you to build it with us. Support Momentum today, and help more women live their Jewish values, strengthen their families, and shape the Jewish future.

Visit https://causematch.com/MothersMoveTheWorld to make a donation. Thank you.

Some people irritate us for reasons we cannot explain. This episode offers a Jewish framework for what is really happening, and a practical way to use it.

Adrienne Gold Davis tells the story of a rooftop dinner in Jerusalem, where a young speaker got under her skin until the woman beside her leaned over and said the speaker could have been Adrienne's daughter. What followed was an uncomfortable education in projection: judging in others what we have buried in ourselves.

For a Jewish approach to judgment, self-awareness, and loving your fellow as yourself, LISTEN, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

If you have ever lain awake worrying that you are getting parenting wrong, this conversation is for you. Adrienne Gold Davis sits down with Dr. Michael Milobsky, a pediatrician with more than thirty years of experience and a father of seven, to sort the worries worth your energy from the ones you can put down.

They talk through the fears that follow us from infancy onward: missed milestones, sleep, picky eating, screens, and the pressure of raising kids in an age of constant information. Milobsky offers a steadying frame borrowed from child development: parents are shepherds, not engineers. Your job is love, protection, and the right environment, not turning your child into someone they were never built to be.

The deeper thread is one every parent will recognize: so much of what unsettles us in our children points back to our own unfinished work.

LISTEN, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE this episode with a parent who needs it:

Learn more about Dr. Milobsky:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmichaelmilobsky/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_mikem
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dr_Michael_Milobsky
Podcast: "Your Kids Will Be Fine" https://yourkidswillbefine.com

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Your child's teacher spends more waking hours with them than almost anyone outside your home. Adrienne Gold Davis opens Season 30 of Rise & Shine with a case for putting the bar back up: the honor Jewish tradition asks us to give our parents extends to the people who teach our children. She also shares the pediatrician's line that reframes why your well-behaved student falls apart the moment he walks in your door.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

What if getting older is not about losing who you were, but discovering who you are still becoming?

In this episode of Rise & Shine, Adrienne Gold Davis shares seven lessons she has gathered with age: stay hungry for wisdom, tell yourself the truth, stop running from discomfort, love people without demanding sameness, and protect your peace without losing your humanity.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Is it ever okay to step back from a parent? In this episode of Rise and Shine, Adrienne Gold Davis explores one of the most painful and least-discussed questions in Jewish family life: what to do when a relationship with a parent becomes harmful. Drawing on Bowen Family Systems Theory alongside Jewish teaching on honoring parents, Adrienne unpacks why complete cutoff often isn't resolution so much as a quieter form of the same conflict, and why generational patterns repeat until someone chooses to interrupt them. She shares Jewish sources on the limits of the obligation to honor a parent, and makes the case that protecting your well-being and your children's well-being can itself be an act of honor, not a betrayal of it.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

How can we relate to the loss of the ancient temple when we never knew it in the first place?

Gratitude is not only a feeling. In Jewish life, it is a practice woven into the day from the moment we wake.

In this episode of Rise and Shine, Adrienne shares a personal story: months of caring for her husband through a frightening illness, the fear that came with it, and the renewed gratitude that followed his recovery.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Every child carries something precious inside, even when the world cannot see it yet.

In this episode of Rise and Shine, host Adrienne returns to the teaching of the Lubavitcher Rebbe that every soul is a diamond, infinitely valuable and waiting to be polished until its light shines through. Drawing on the story of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, Adrienne explores a truth at the heart of Jewish parenting: latent potential cannot emerge until someone believes it exists. She weaves together Jewish wisdom on the soul, the idea of being a "speaking soul," and what it means to recognize the hidden worth in the people we love most. For Jewish mothers, it is a reminder that believing in their child is a quiet form of leadership in its own right, one that shapes who they become.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Repair is possible, even when parenting feels painful, complicated, or far from what we imagined. In Part 2 of this special Rise and Shine episode, Adrienne continues her conversation with Momentum Educators Ruchi Koval and Jael Toledo about Jewish motherhood, adult children, family dynamics, grief, and repair. This conversation explores what happens when children make choices that challenge our expectations, including choices around Jewish identity, Israel, relationships, family traditions, and independence. Ruchi and Jael offer honest, compassionate guidance on listening to understand, managing anxiety, setting healthy boundaries, and taking our own pain to the right places so our children are not asked to carry it.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

Motherhood often comes with a deep desire to protect and hold everything together, but what happens when our children need us to step back? In this first part of a special Rise and Shine episode, Adrienne Gold-Davis introduces the parenting practice of “watch, wait, wonder".

Together with Momentum Educators, Ruchi Koval and Jael Toledo explore radical acceptance, parenting anxiety, the instinct to save, solve, fix, and the difference between real safety concerns and fear-driven control. With warmth, honesty, and practical insight, this conversation invites Jewish mothers to consider how letting go can create more connection, resilience, and trust within the family.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at info@momentumunlimited.org

What can Jewish wisdom teach us about dealing with disability? Adrienne turns to the words of our sages for guidance.

For 25 hours each week, Adrienne Gold Davis takes a vacation. Slip into endless summer, every week. Being Jewish makes that possible.