Molly Resnick When Molly Resnick was in her 30’s, she was quite successful in her field, journalism. As a producer for NBC News, she had interviewed the likes of Henry Kissinger, Menachem Begin, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Sean Connery. Born in Bulgaria and raised in Israel, she grew up in a secular family and came to America with dreams of making it big.
“In 1972, I left the land of milk and honey to go to the land of gold and money.”
“In 1972, I left the land of milk and honey to go to the land of gold and money,” she said.
Resnick worked her way up from PBS to NBC. She was living her dream, but soon, something was about to change.
Right after “Saturday Night Fever” came out, she was set to interview the star of the movie, John Travolta. She wrote in her introduction to her interview that while Travolta was a fabulous dancer, not all of the critics thought he was a great actor. Travolta’s agent objected to the introduction and said that she couldn’t say that. She told him if he didn’t like it, they were welcome to leave. And they did.
“As they were leaving, I asked Travolta, ‘Don’t you have anything to say on the matter?’” she said. “He shrugged and didn’t say anything. That was the moment everything burst for me. He was this megastar and he couldn’t decide the fate of his own interview. I thought, ‘My goodness, who are we interviewing? There must be more to life than this.’”
Resnick took a leave of absence and traveled to Panama, Peru and Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, she met a Chabad-Lubavitch family that showed her how to light candles to bring in Shabbat.
“I met the daughter of the rabbi at candle lighting,” she said. “She impressed me tremendously. She was 10 years younger than me but so knowledgeable and intelligent and impressive. I couldn’t get enough of her.”
Suddenly, Resnick found herself questioning her existence and beliefs. She carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in her pocket, but she said she didn’t know anything about her own constitution, the Torah.
“I was totally ignorant when it came to Judaism,” she said.
Resnick slowly learned more about Judaism through the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. She also met her husband, Dr. Lawrence Resnick, through Chabad; he happened to be the Rebbe’s doctor.
Because of the close connection her husband had with the Rebbe, Resnick got to meet the Rebbe and have a personal meeting with him.
“I was so used to meeting famous people, but when I met him, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before,” she said. “It was really remarkable.”
As Resnick became more observant, got married and had children, she started to spend less and less time at work. In 1986, she left media altogether and founded an organization called Mothers Against Teaching Children to Kill and Hate (MATCKH) after a wave of Palestinian-Arab terrorism in the 1990s. She also started speaking about her story and Jewish topics such as marriage and modesty to Jewish communities around the world.
“Learning about different things in the Torah really opened my eyes,” she said. “I literally fell in love with it. Even when I was kicking and screaming about things that seemed not to make sense, I said, ‘This is Godly and superhuman and true.’”
Resnick, who lost her husband in 2004 after 25 years of marriage, has three children: two sons and a daughter. Two of them are now Chabad shluchim (emissaries). Her son has nine children and her daughter has seven children, respectively.
“They are following the Lubavitch way,” she said.
While life didn’t turn out how Resnick thought it would when she was younger, she’s grateful that she found Judaism, became observant and is able to share meaningful Jewish teachings with the world.
“When I learned about Judaism, there was a total turnaround in my worldview,” she said. “The minute you start learning it, you’ll find that it’s just so brilliant and inspiring.”
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