Chapter 3

Rabbi with HEART

Nathan Pingor was completely out of control. He admits it. At seventeen, he was smoking cigarettes, sleeping around, street racing cars, flunking out of school and had completely abandoned his Jewish faith.

The root of Nathan’s troubles may lie in his parents’ divorce at age two. Though he doesn’t recall that being so difficult, when he and his mother moved from El Paso, where his father lived, to Houston, when he was seven, he began to feel his world unwind.

As a reform Jew, Nathan’s mother, Melissa Fertel, felt strongly that she wanted to have her son educated in a Jewish day school where he would be taught values and history that would provide a “familial” connection, she felt was especially important following the divorce and the move to Houston. Ultimately, they chose a conservative Jewish day school that felt warm and welcoming.

Although Nathan had a bar mitzvah at age thirteen, as is the custom, the family was not particularly religious; they didn’t keep kosher or attend Shabbat services weekly.

By the tenth grade, Nathan was in real trouble. While he is very bright and even won the school-wide poetry contest that year, he failed every class. He was acting out, desperate to find a foundation for his life.

Finally, when he was 17, his mother sent him to Utah to participate in a short-term program for troubled teens at Outback Therapeutic Expeditions. Why Utah? Utah law allows parents to send their minor children to residential treatment centers where the teens are not allowed to leave; most other states allow the teens to walk out if they choose.

The program helped, but trouble continued so Melissa began looking for a boarding school in Utah where he could get the help he needed to finish high school and get his life back. While virtually every program she considered was non-denominational, she wanted to find a school where he would not be the only Jewish teen and where the program would be open to religious practice. She settled on Discovery Academy Boarding School in Provo, Utah when they told her about a Rabbi that regularly visited the school.

Nathan had been at the school just a few days, feeling angry and isolated, when one of the faculty told him that he had a visitor. Nathan says, “I had nothing else to do.” He then met Rabbi Benny Zippel for the first time.

Within three weeks, Nathan had completely reconnected to his Jewish roots, he says he “picked up all the religion that I’d totally lost.”

Before long, Nathan wrote a letter home asking his mother to send his siddur (prayer book), Hebrew dictionary and tefillin (artifacts used for a Jewish tradition that connects participants to God and to their heritage). Melissa was blown away by the request, and took it as a sign that her son was not only connecting with his roots, but finding a purpose in his future.