The key to my livelihood locked me out of real life

As told to Rivka Streicher

“Ephraim,” my wife called.

I looked up from my laptop, startled into reality. “I’m working,” I muttered. I could hear my son clamoring for a bedtime story. Rena gave me a pointed look, and shook her head. I met her eyes for a brief moment and sighed. Then I turned back to the screen.

I grew up in an “American-style” home. Sure, we were frum, but it was relaxed, a little more liberal. There was a large TV screen taking center stage in the living room, and from a young age I followed it all, news, sports, and movies on cozy winter nights.

As I grew older, though, I found myself veering to the right. I did well in yeshivah, and then left home for beis medrash, part of a chevreh of other serious guys. We worked on our avodah, our learning, and our tefillah, and along with that growth came a firm resolve to keep the media of my youth at bay. It wasn’t who I was anymore.

But sometimes I felt like I was carrying baggage, a world-weariness from all the cynicism and sensationalism I’d absorbed on screen, but I knew that all I could do was look ahead. And I did.

For more than ten years, from age 19 to 30, I abstained from the media and movies. I can’t say I didn’t look at a short current events clip if someone showed it to me, but it bore no resemblance to my screen habits growing up. In that time, I got married and then the kids came along. I was in kollel, we were as yeshivish as anyone else on the block, and the home I was building looked significantly different from the one I grew up in.

I have a good voice, and I took small gigs singing at weddings to supplement our income, but it was Rena’s job that was keeping us afloat. After a few years and a few children, though, I realized something had to change.

I have a deep connection with the Skverer Rebbe, whom I got to know as a bochur, and I go into Skver from time to time for Shabbos, a yahrtzeit, or special occasions. The Rebbe has a phenomenal memory, he can keep track of what’s happening with multiple people and families, and each time I went with a kvittel to ask for a brachah for my family, I felt we were just picking up from the last time. And during my last few visits, he wouldn’t just ask how my learning was going, but also “What’s with parnassah?” I got the hint. It was time to relieve my wife of the burden of supporting our family.

I joined Torah Umesorah’s Aish Dos training program for rebbeim and was offered a job as soon I completed it. The offer wasn’t so exciting — just an hour a day teaching Chumash at a local cheder — but I figured it was a good way to get into the field, and I accepted it. I only found out later that the institution was on shaky footing. There was little financial backing, and not much of a hanhalah; the principal was basically a one-man show. Overburdened and overworked, he wasn’t able to focus properly on discipline, and it filtered down to the boys. Within a few weeks that daily hour teaching sixth-grade Chumash became a nightmare. The comments, the chutzpah — they were nothing short of emotional abuse. I was slaughtered on the altar of the teacher’s desk every day.

The days bled into one another and somehow, I made it through the year. The school year finished early, supposedly because of busing problems. A few weeks later the news was out: The school wasn’t opening its doors again after the summer.

While rationally I knew there had been big problems in the school, and that clearly it was them and not me, it was still a grueling experience, and I’d lost my ambition and idealism to teach. I wondered if I could ever be in chinuch again, if I had anything left to give.