Episode 58 - One Trip To The Western Wall Changed How We See Birthdays

What if a birthday isn’t just a date on the calendar, but a signal that something precise and generous is at work? We open up about a decade of waiting for our daughter and the chain of moments that made us rethink coincidence: a rabbi’s simple guidance to pray at the Western Wall, an unexpected family invitation to Israel, and a hospital schedule that closed every door but one. Months after she was born, a photo album quietly revealed the twist we’d missed in the rush—March 14, the day we prayed at the Kotel, was also the day she arrived.

From there, we trace how names can carry destiny. Our niece suggested “Raina,” which landed with a clarity we couldn’t force. When we needed a Hebrew name, she offered “Hadassah.” Only later did it click: Reina means queen, and Hadassah is Queen Esther’s Hebrew name. In one breath, the name honoured the Purim story and my mother‑in‑law Esther without us plotting a tribute. It felt like guidance working through family and timing rather than thunderbolts—a reminder that Ruach Hakodesh, or a flash of divine insight, can show up in everyday choices.

This story isn’t about spectacle. It’s about noticing patterns, trusting the quiet tug of meaning, and letting birthdays be markers of presence instead of performances. We reflect on how prayer, patience, and names can align in ways you only recognise in hindsight—and how those alignments can renew your sense of faith, family, and purpose. If you’ve ever wondered whether timing has a voice, or if a name can hold a legacy, you’ll find comfort and challenge here.

If this moved you, tap follow, share it with someone who needs a sign, and leave a review with the moment that resonated most. Your stories help us keep these conversations alive.

Transcript

Rethinking Birthdays And Attention

Divine Inspiration And Naming

Ten Years Of Waiting For Reina

A Rabbi’s Guidance And The Kotel

The Photo Album And The Date

The Unchosen Birthday Becomes Chosen

Finding Reina Hadassah’s Name

Queen Esther, Purim, And Providence

Takeaways And Closing Call To Action

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast, the only podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. Good morning, everybody, and welcome. Welcome to another episode of The Trust Factor. Today is going to be a little bit different, a lot different. I want to talk to you about birthdays, and it's no coincidence that today is mine. And I'm sharing that only because I want to talk about birthdays. I never used to be a fan of birthdays. My whole life I wasn't a big fan, and primarily because they draw attention to the individual. A lot of people love birthdays for that very reason that everybody focuses in on them. It's their special day. But if you know me by now, you know that I'm not one who craves attention. All of this, the podcast, even going to video, is taking so long because I'm just not that public persona. I'm not the guy who craves attention. I'm the opposite. Leave me alone. Let me do what I need to do. Let me make this world a better place. Let me support my family and bring goodness to the people who are close to me. And let me do that without all of the fanfare and applause. I'm not interested in it. But birthdays are very important for multiple reasons. So let's talk about them. It says that everybody has Ruachodesh once, at least once in their lifetime. Ruach Hakodesh is divine inspiration, the ability to get messages from the heavens directly, without an intermediary. When does that happen? At least once. When you give birth, when you bring a child into this world, we all go through the processes of giving them a name. We have to figure out which name best suits that individual. Now we have no idea who this individual is. We have no idea of their character traits, their advantages and the disadvantages that they're going to be imbued with. We haven't got a clue. But yet we are charged with giving them a name. And that name has tremendous meaning. Volumes have been written about how powerful and important the individual's name is that you name them after. So you have to be very, very careful who you name your child after when they're born. I have heard stories, countless stories, from individuals. Each one of them is more spectacular than the next. Some of them are just so hard to believe. I wish I wrote them all down. But they are amazing stories that reflect, and I'm sure if you're thinking about this, you've probably got your own story. Now, let's talk to you, not about mine, but about my daughter's. My youngest, her name is Reina. She's going to be nine years old, coming up soon, in a couple of weeks, March the 14th, which also happens to be Adar. I'm in Adar, that's the month that we're in right now, the month of Purim. Adar 15, that's my birthday, which is Shushan Purim. Reina's is the next day. Let me tell you the story, let me cram it into this podcast because I'm gonna have to whittle it down. It can be a long one, but here's how it goes. Our middle daughter is 18, almost 19. There's 10 years between the two girls. And the reason that there's 10 years is because it was difficult for us to have Reina. We tried for 10 years. Our first two came relatively easily. But between Yael and Reina took 10 solid years. It was very difficult. And at one point we were about to throw in the towel, but my wife insisted that we speak to the rabbi. And so we brought in a rabbi who we were very close with at the time. He came over to our house and had a candid conversation with Michelle about where we were holding. And what he said was the following You already have fulfilled the mitzvah of having children. By Jewish law, you need to have a son and a daughter. If you've got a son and a daughter, one of each, you've fulfilled the commandment of Pru or Vu, which is to have children, to bring children into the world, to multiply. So for all intents and purposes, we've done it. We've succeeded. There was no reason to push for a third. But as everybody knows or should know, children are a blessing. Nobody ever passes from this world kicking themselves, regretting that they've had too many children. Many have left this world regretting that they didn't have enough children. We wanted a third, at least. And so the rabbi said, Listen, here's what you can do. If you're really committed to it, then what I would suggest is that you find your way to Israel, you get to the Kotel, and you pray in front of the Western Wall, and you pour your hut out to Hushem and ask for a baby. Now, we had no intention of being in Israel. It wasn't on the radar, anywhere in the radar. So now you have to understand the quote unquote coincidence that happened suddenly. Out of the blue, just a month or so later, we get a phone call from a family member who, so out of character, invites us on a family trip to go celebrate the bar mitzvah of their son. Never happened before, hasn't happened since. A very odd occurrence given the nature of the relationship and the individual that we're talking about. It simply came completely out of left field, and it was so much so that it took us a long time to commit to going because we treaded very carefully. But ultimately, I guess in her desire to get to Israel, Michelle wanted to go, and so we agreed. We took a trip to Israel to celebrate another family member's bar mitzvah. When we get there, we get to the coatel and there is a beautiful ceremony set up. No expense was spared. It was done beautifully, and we're involved and there's family members and it's just a wonderful time. When we get to the coatel, Michelle says to me, You go pray on your end for a baby, I'll go pray on the women's side, and God willing we'll see what will come. And that's what we did. But we all gathered at the coatel and we all prayed for a child. That was the trip. That was it. Now, fast forward, we get back to Canada. Michelle loves to take our family memories and put them into these photo books that you can print online. You upload your pictures and they get printed and sent to you. And that's what she does. So she puts all the pictures of our trip to Israel and this wonderful memory that we created into a photo album. It gets printed and sent home. By the time it gets here, a lot more time passes. Eventually, about a year later, we bring Reina into the world. And we haven't yet drawn any connection. Believe it or not, we never even had the conversation because, as you know, we take things for granted. That's how we're programmed, unfortunately. We ask and we ask and we ask, and when we get, sometimes we don't even recognize how powerful or how huge and momentous this occasion is because we've asked for it and we've desired it for so long. Here we're waiting for 10 years. We finally have a third child. We bring her into the world. A few months later, we're sitting around in our living room, and Michelle is showing her photo album of our trip. And in that photo album, as she's flipping the page, she sees a picture of us at the coatel of her praying at the wall for that very thing, for a baby. And at the bottom of the picture, she writes in the caption that it is the bar mitzvah day of our nephew, and the date was March 14th. March 14th is also Reina's birthday. The same day on the calendar that we were at the coatel praying for a child, that was the day that she was brought into this world. Now that's not coincidence, because a little bit more personal information, Michelle's not capable of delivering naturally. It had to be a planned, scheduled C-section. And that's what we did. So we had the choice. We actually were given the choice to choose the date. And because it was around Purim, I thought to myself, why not give her my birthday? We'll share the same birthday. It's a beautiful day. Shushan Purim, Adar 15. We asked for it. That was the 13th of March on that year. And they said, no, it can't happen because the doctor's away. Choose another date. So we chose a different date and it didn't work out. We chose two or three times, and by then the nurse had gotten frustrated and she said, No, no, no, listen, the only day we have is March 14th, and you're gonna have to go with that date. So we took it, resigning to it. We thought we were resigning to it, but in reality there was no resignation. It had to be the 14th of March. But we only realized it months and months after she was born. We didn't even realize it when we had the opportunity to choose that date, her birthday. Shocking, shockingly unbelievable. Now the story doesn't end there. The fact that we went to the cotel on the day that we were praying for Reina was the day to the day that God brought her into the world. Shocking. Now, set that aside for a second. I was telling you earlier on about this idea to have Siata Deshmaya, the ability to name your child with the help of heaven. And we had a really, really hard time. We didn't have a name for Reina. We were going back and forth. Even after she came into the world, we still didn't know. For Ethan, no problem. For Yael, no problem. Very simple. Yeah, it was a little bit of back and forth. But we figured it out in no time. With Reyna, it just kept schlepping out and we couldn't figure out what to name her. Until our wonderful niece came along, who's very, very close to Michelle. And Clara said, Why don't you name her something related to the family? Which we wanted to do. My mother-in-law's name is Esther. But we didn't want Esther because we already had Esther's in the family, but we wanted to honor our mother-in-law. And so ultimately we failed to be able, in our mind, to honor her. And we ended up going with Clara, our niece's suggestion. She threw out a name. She said, What about Raina? And we thought, wow, that's actually a beautiful name. We knew some Rainas. It means queen. We thought, wow, beautiful. It's a nice name. And it stuck almost immediately. Almost as soon as she threw it out, we grabbed on and we said, Yes, we like that. And so we named her. In fact, our niece named her. We gave the final approval, but it came through Clara. It didn't end there because we needed to give her a Hebrew name or a middle name. And so we took the opportunity to make them both the same. Her Hebrew name should be her middle name. And so again, back to the drawing board. What do we name this new child? Her first name is Raina, we've established that. How do we come up with a Hebrew name? Same dilemma. Back and forth. What do we name her? Goes on and on and on. Clara is still in this conversation. And the same one who gave the first name gives the second name. She says, What about my Hebrew name? Clara's Hebrew name is Hadassah. And we thought, wow, that's a beautiful name, also. Clara's two for two, hitting it out of the park. Unbelievable. So we took that name and we gave her the name Raina Hadassah, thinking nothing of it. It's just two beautiful names that Clara came up with and that we ran with. Not the case, my friends, not the case at all. Because at the same time that we thought we failed, that we weren't able to name our child after my mother-in-law to give her that honor. And at the same time that we thought we weren't going to be able to name her anything that had a real religious relevance, we nailed both at the same time and we didn't even know it. Why? Because Reina means queen. And Hadassah, her Hebrew name, is Queen Esther's name. The same name, Queen Esther, in the Megillah it says her name is also Hadassah So not realizing it, just a day or two before her birth was the holiday of Purim. And we paid homage to that beautiful holiday, not even realizing it. Just through the heavens, through our niece, who was inspired, and we ultimately went with it, and she was named after Queen Esther. And at the very same time, she was named after Esther, not even realizing it, my mother-in-law. Everything was captured in her name. That event was an unbelievable example of divine inspiration, how God plays through us in this world. We think he's so far removed from us, he's not. He's here, he's with us every single day in everything that we do. It's just that certain times of our lives, like birthdays, there's divine inspiration. It's so meaningful, it's so powerful, such an important part of somebody's existence that God himself comes down through the parents' minds or through somebody connected to the family and gives you the name that you're going to name that child. That's it for today, my friends. It wraps it up. I hope you enjoyed. We're back at the book tomorrow, and I hope you have a really meaningful, powerful day. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.