I

t had been a long day in the office. My lunch break was reduced to some urgent follow-up phone calls and by 8 p.m. when I’d finished my charts, I was famished. So off I went to the mehadrin place on the corner for a lafa falafel with the works.

Shlomi, the effervescent proprietor, knew me well enough to wrap it up with Turkish salad, fried eggplants, and a good helping of schug. He even tossed in extra fries to make me smile.

The restaurant was packed, but I found a place at a corner table where I dropped off my bag while I went to do netilas yadayim. When I came back, a pair of American yeshivah boys were sitting at the table and scarfing down their shwarmas. They were absorbed in their own conversation and I was happy to sit quietly and respond to a few overdue messages.

But these were two loud fellows and they were laughing a bit too heartily for me to ignore. I was a little curious as to what was going on, so I tuned in.

“I can’t believe she just wired you more money, Sam,” one said to the other. “How’d you convince her you needed $2,500 for seforim?”

“I don’t know how she fell for it, Eli, but now we got more than enough to cover the hotel in Turkey for a full week.”

I didn’t like to hear this kind of stuff but I kept silent. Who was I to jump in at this point?

“Eli, we’re gonna have a blast,” the boy went on. “You can party hard for cheap in Istanbul and we’ll get an awesome hotel and have more than enough to spend on whatever we need.”

“Hey, and we won’t even need our fake IDs to buy beer there!” said Eli as he high-fived his friend from across the table.

I don’t think I intentionally made a face, but apparently it must have looked otherwise and Sam was happy to make a comment in my direction.

“You wouldn’t get it, Rabbi. This stuff is good times.”

Not sure if he was addressing me, I told him honestly, “I’m not a rabbi, but I know a bit about good times and it doesn’t sound like you guys are heading for them.”

Eli laughed and punched his friend in the shoulder, drawing a big yelp and a reprisal punch from his friend.

“Who are you then?” they asked simultaneously.

“I’m just Yaakov, a regular guy you know. Not someone you’d have to listen to,” I said. “But would it help you if I said that I’m a pretty well-known psychiatrist? Would that suddenly make me a decent source of information?”

“You an expert or something?” Eli smirked. “Because Sam needs a good psychiatrist — he’s too crazy to see anyone who doesn’t know his stuff!”

Eli punched him in the arm again and they had another good laugh.

“Would you guys listen to me for a few minutes if I really was an expert psychiatrist and I told you that you were headed in the wrong direction?”

“Why not?” said Eli. “And you can tell me if I’m crazy like Sam.”

“Great,” I said. “But to be honest, I can’t tell you anything about anyone here because this isn’t my office, it’s a falafel shop. I can tell you that it sounds like you guys are looking for fun in the wrong places, though.”

“What do you mean?” Sam questioned.

“What I mean is scamming your mom out of $2,500 to go to party in Turkey for a week. How is that possibly going to end well for you guys?”

Eli laughed nervously and punched Sam again, but this time he didn’t get too much of a response beyond an “ouch.”

They both looked a little uneasy as I continued, “I’m not here to play rebbi, or psychologist. I’m just here with a bit of common sense. I mean, conning your mother out of money to go drink yourselves into oblivion for a few days isn’t ever going to work out. Don’t you think she’ll see a credit card purchase in Istanbul or hear from your rebbi that you’ve missed a week of shiur together?”

Eli began to answer back before Sam — the source of this financial windfall — told him, “Pipe down and let the doctor finish what he has to say.”

“…And that’s if you guys don’t get in trouble and need an international lawyer to bail you out.”

Eli started to protest again but Sam quieted him once more.

“…Or it could be even worse after you go to the wrong neighborhood, someone kidnaps you, and you end up in a video on CNN with a bag over your head and some angry Arabs standing behind the two of you.”

“Enough!” said Eli. “Okay, I get it! But don’t you know it gets boring just learning Bava Metzia and Bava Whatever all the time?”

“Of course I do. That’s why you guys also need to learn the Ben Ish Chai’s peirush on aggadeta. That’s why you have the Maharshah to bring you through the stuff that seems esoteric.”

“But we’re bored sitting in yeshivah all day,” Sam whined.

“Then go on a trip already. Not like the one you have planned — to go get in trouble in the middle of Turkey, but somewhere good like Tzfas. Or go hiking in the Negev. Or go to daven haneitz in Bnei Brak and get a brachah from Rav Chaim shlita.”

“Okay, those seem like decent ideas,” said Eli as he and Sam nodded in unison.

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

Eli and Sam chuckled for a moment before the latter decided to ask me, “So… are you really a famous psychiatrist or what?”

“Nah, I’m just a gardener,” I said with a big smile on my face. “I farm Shivas Haminim  — olives, figs, pomegranates, you name it.”

“Really?”

“Tomatoes, too. I love growing tomatoes.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Eli. “So we’re going to Istanbul after all!”

“It’s not good advice just because I’m a regular guy?” I asked.

Sam nodded. “No, it’s still good advice. Listen Eli, I’m gonna give that money back to my mom. I can’t go when my conscience is killing me like this.”

Eli acquiesced. “Okay, I guess you have a point. I don’t want to end up on CNN anyway. Maybe we should just go to Tzfas for Shabbos.”

“But why’d you tell us that you were a psychiatrist?” asked Sam. “Don’t you think it’s also a little bit dishonest for a regular guy like a gardener to say that kind of stuff?”

He had a good point. Maybe I should come clean. In a lot of ways, though, I was a gardener, not to go wild with the metaphor, but I like to help my patients get the sunshine and water that they need to grow into healthy individuals. After a moment or two, I was about to make a comment on whether or not it was worse for a psychiatrist to say he’s a gardener or the other way around.

Instead Eli broke the silence. “He told us he was a shrink so that we’d listen to his advice… duh! Otherwise we’d never have listened to him, which would have been a shame because he’s pretty on the ball.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So, who’s ready for a zimun?”

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 709. Jacob L. Freedman is a psychiatrist and business consultant based in Israel. When he’s not busy with his patients, Dr. Freedman can be found learning Torah in The Old City or hiking the hills outside of Jerusalem.  Dr. Freedman can be reached most easily through his website www.drjacoblfreedman.com.