Good Advice

Whatever the issue was, she would tell me to be mevater and do what Uri wanted. “It’s not that important,” she would say

“A sk a rav.”

If there was one thing I took with me from seminary that was it. Don’t make a move in life without asking a sh’eilah.

I had become a baalas teshuvah in my teens and this advice — which I had heard over and over again from the teachers in the kiruv seminary I attended in Jerusalem — struck a deep chord within me. I was new to frum society after all and if I wanted to follow the Torah path faithfully I had to seek counsel from those older and wiser than me.

After seminary I wrote a letter to one of my rebbeim asking for guidance but he wrote back advising me to find a rav or rebbetzin in my community who could act as my mentor as he couldn’t possibly fill that role from across the ocean.

Back home I signed up for a local second-year seminary program where I developed a close relationship with one of the teachers Rebbetzin Shulberg. Rebbetzin Shulberg was married to a rosh yeshivah and she exuded simchah warmth and love of Torah. Utterly unworldly she had raised her large family in a small simple apartment with no luxuries — the Shulbergs had never even taken a family vacation — yet she was obviously not missing anything in her life. Most of all I was impressed with the rebbetzin’s palpable emunah and connection with Hashem. This was the person I wanted as my mentor.