E ric’s was the kind of baal teshuvah story we all love to hear at the Shabbos table.
He grew up in a suburban town and graduated with a degree in finance from NYU. But he soon felt the emptiness in the business world and — following a hike up the Appalachian Trail and a winter spent skiing in Idaho — Eric became a rafting guide in Utah.
Yiddishkeit was totally off his radar — until a frum tour group showed up for a bein hazmanim vacation and hired him for a trip down the river. After two of the bochurim were grounded with a stomach virus the trip was in need of one more Yid for their minyan so one of the guys jokingly asked their tour guide if he was Jewish. “My mom’s mom was ” he responded and before you knew it he was tied up in tefillin and part of the daily minyan for the eight-day trip.
A few phone calls from the bochurim back to their rosh yeshivah and a scholarship was put together for Eric to fly to Israel and study at Aish HaTorah. The rest as they say is history. He married began a family and continued in kollel. Today he’s a tour guide specializing in hiking and rock climbing outside of Jerusalem and he continues to learn on his days off.
