Spiritual Interest       

It used to be that budding baalei teshuvah would put their lives on hold in order to have a totally immersive yeshivah experience. Not today. Someone on the cusp of his career will seriously hesitate to step away, but even so, here’s one investment model that’s producing returns

Andrew grew up surfing in his native Tampa, and while he usually surfed on Long Beach since moving to New York, this particular day found him on Beach 60th Street in Far Rockaway, much closer to home.

“Insiders know that surfers don’t bother each other when they’re trying to catch waves,” Andrew says. “But suddenly a guy was making conversation with me in the ocean — he said I was looking up at the sky and smiling, so he got a good vibe.”

That guy was Jonathan, born and raised in a traditional Jewish family in Morocco, currently in dental school in New York and living on a friend’s couch. He missed the beach back in Casablanca and would occasionally hop on a ferry from Manhattan to Beach 100th Street, where he’d rent a surfboard and hit the waves. But that day he found the surfboard rental closed, so he walked 40 blocks to a store on Beach 60th Street, got a surfboard there, entered the ocean, and met Andrew.

After discovering they were both Jewish, Jonathan told Andrew how things were looking down for him: He had learned briefly at Yeshiva University a few years back, but since entering dental school he’d become completely disconnected from any Jewish learning or community. He acutely felt the decline and it pained him, but he didn’t think he could do anything about it while in school. To make things worse, the friend whose couch he slept on was about to send him packing. He had nowhere to go… and had always wished he could live near the beach.