How can retired men make a smooth adjustment to their new lives, navigate the psychological transition, learn to restructure their days, and open themselves up to possibilities they couldn’t have seen in an earlier stage in life?
It came like a bolt out of the blue.
After more than four decades, the Hebrew day school where Rabbi Nosson Fisher* worked gently informed him that he wouldn’t be returning the following school year.
It wasn’t that they were unhappy with his performance as a high school rebbi. On the contrary, he was viewed as one of the most popular and respected teachers. The school simply wanted to bring in younger rebbeim to revitalize the Jewish Studies department, the executive director told him.
“I didn’t know what hit me,” Rabbi Fisher says. At age 62, he thought he was at his prime both physically and intellectually. He even trained younger colleagues on how to work through their teaching and classroom-management challenges.
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