Send us Fan Mail

Rabbinic Chaplain Chaya Lerner is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, ordained chaplain, and author of "Torah of Trauma." As a second-generation Holocaust survivor, she carries the weight of inherited grief alongside her own — and has spent decades transforming that weight into a life of service, healing, and witness. Her work bridges the sacred and the therapeutic, offering a rare integration of spiritual wisdom and clinical expertise.

Chaya's professional journey has taken her to the front lines of some of the most profound collective traumas of our time. She worked with Holocaust survivors for 21 years, walked alongside the LGBTQ+ community through the HIV/AIDS epidemic as both a professional therapist and a person personally affected, and in 2021 she served as a first responder to the Surfside Champlain Towers South collapse in Miami — helping survivors and grieving families navigate the unimaginable in real time.

Through it all, Chaya has held one unwavering belief: that grief, when met with compassion and community, can become a doorway to healing rather than a wall. She joins Live Your Legacy™ to share what decades of bearing witness have taught her — that survival is not the end of the story, and that legacy is often built in the quiet, courageous act of helping others carry their pain toward the light.

Support the show

New episodes of Live Your Legacy premiere on Tuesdays. Replays drop every Thursday at 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Buzzsprout, iHeartRadio, and more.

Thank you for listening to Live Your Legacy, where every story reminds us that legacy is not just what we leave behind, it is how we choose to live today.

Follow the show, share the episode, and stay connected at livelegacy.vip.

A Miss-U-Gram® Production