Ordinarily, I make my parnassah through tourism. Baruch Hashem, I am a real estate agent for tourist apartments for people who are interested, and I take them to nice, interesting places. But for the past several months almost no tourists have come to Eretz Yisrael, and I’ve found myself lacking work.
The hours of the day pass, and I want to fill them, not only for the money but also in order to do something beneficial and good for the sake of His Name yisbarach. Perhaps the time has come for me to go back to working in chinuch, I said to myself. Early on, during the first years of my marriage I was a melamed, and afterward I worked in outreach. I gave shiurim to baalei teshuvah, and I merited to bring the light of Yiddishkeit to precious young men who were very far from Torah and mitzvos.
I made contact with a rosh yeshivah of a yeshivah for baalei teshuvah in my area, and we arranged a time to meet.
I arrived at the yeshivah and was shown to the rosh yeshivah’s room. A pleasant avreich with a smiling countenance greeted me, and we started talking about my past experience and my current occupation. When he asked about my methods of working with bachurim, memories surfaced, and suddenly a flash of lightning seemed to shoot through my head. That lightning went through the rosh yeshivah as well. Each of us recognized the other, and the interview ended with a clear decision on the part of the rosh yeshivah: “You’ll certainly come to work here! You possess keen discernment. You understand bachurim, and you will be a treasure for us.”
This is the story:
When I was still a melamed, I had a nice boy in my class from a respectable family. His older brother, a teenager, had left the yeshivah. It was a very sad story. The boy had broken free of all shackles and was doing whatever he pleased. His parents were horrified and tried everything in order to bring him back. The boy’s mother asked me to speak with him and try to reach him.
I told her I would try. How? I had no idea. I had never before dealt with struggling teens
