About Rochel

 

When finding a life coach it is very important to find someone that you feel comfortable with. It is a Jewish concept that everyone has a zivug or shidduch (soul mate) in marriage, that they are destined to meet. This concept also applies in other aspects of life, such as with whom you will be good friends with, who will be your enemy, and also where and in what house you are destined to live in. This doesn’t take away from our free will to choose, but we will naturally be drawn towards these zivugim. Finding a life coach is no different. It should be someone you feel you could have a lasting and respectful relationship with. If there is a lack of a connection between you and your life coach you will not feel free and open to express yourself. This is why I give a small autobiography of myself so you can know more about me.

I was born in Arizona in 1979. My family (this consists of my parents, my older brother, and me) and I were not yet religious, this came later on when I was a teenager. My father was a captain in the US army so we moved quite a bit. My parents always said we weren’t any specific type of Jew. We were Conformadox, which means we were what ever the chaplain was at the time. I lived after that in Alabama, Germany, and then NJ. Everywhere we moved my parents always tried to give us some identity of being Jewish. We were always members of a congregation and went to a Sunday school. My parents had a love and respect for Judaism but never new how to apply it since they weren’t raised religious. When we lived in Germany, I was around seven at the time, my family would travel to as many old and ancient Jewish places we could find. Germany is rich with a Jewish past but unfortunately a lot of it was destroyed during the Second World War. We went to old and destroyed synagogues and mikvos (this is a small pool of rain water used for spiritual immersion for purity. We also went to concentration and labor camps destroyed by the Nazis (may their name be erased) at the end of the war. I was too young at the time to really understand the meaning of these places, but these experiences had a profound impact on the hearts and souls of my parents. My parents were always very open minded people and wanted us to be exposed to many different types of people and cultures. In school, everyone in the schools I went to were also in the military services, I had friends from every different religions and background possible. This made me a far more tolerable person later in life when we became Orthodox, towards those that are different, and I used this in getting involved in outreach. When we returned to the states we were stationed in NJ. We settled, since my father didn’t have to move around anymore for different duties. Here our journey back to Judaism began. NJ has no loss of Jews so we tried to find our niche in a congregation. We went from one synagogue to an other and never fit in their. We seemed to be the only fish out of water that was there not for social reasons but to pray or grow. Interesting enough all four of us started to come closer to Judaism together, yet separately. Each of us had our own inspirations and reasons but we all did it more or less around the same time. It started with my parents. My father is an electrical engineer so he has a very scientific and analytical mind. He heard about the codes that were being discovered in the Torah and this finally gave him something to base his heart on. My mother was always naturally a Yiddishe heart. She is kind hearted and was always volunteering and getting involved to help others. Becoming religious was a natural next step for her. Slowly my parents started to keep things in the house to try to become more religious, while attending classes and reading books about Judaism. As I spoke about before everyone and every incident has a destiny and a shidduch. We were sent, obviously by the hand of Hashem, time after time to just the right people to help us on our journey, that we weren’t even aware that we were taking. My brother and I were reluctant to join my parents. We were both teenagers and my parents in their great wisdom never pushed anything in us. My parents tried to start keeping shabbos by not turning lights on or off or by not going out to appointments or shopping. They told my brother and me that we could join them if we wanted at meals or in keeping shabbos. I had a TV in my room and my brother had his computer so we were allowed to do what we wanted in our rooms. We were respectful of this, and eventually we did start to join them.  Our first real shabbos we experienced was I think the most eye opening and changing for us. We went to Monsey, NY to the daughter of a friend of ours. This friend of ours, Clair (may she have an aliyah in shamayim) was a real inspiration in her own right. She became religious at the age of seventy, taught herself to read Hebrew and walked about three miles to shul every shabbos.  We had never heard of Monsey, NY and we were going to these complete strangers, who were as “ultra orthodox” as you can get. We arrived and were greeted with the warmest welcome possible and felt like part of the family instantly. After that weekend we felt more confident and inspired that what we were doing was the right choice. My father and brother later went up back to Monsey for a different shabbos for a learning retreat to Or Sameach Yeshiva. This was my brother’s turning point. As much as my brother and I always had a lot of friends we were always upset by the lack of morals they had. So for my brother to spend a weekend with boys of the yeshiva, who in contrast to what he thought the average teenage boy was like with chasing after girls and getting drunk, was blown away by their good character and desire to do what was right and truly good. After that shabbos my brother never took off his yarmulke again and wanted to go to Israel to learn. My metamorphosis was like my brothers. I hated public school and the shallowness. I embraced the chance to go to a religious Jewish high school. I was at that school for two years, it was a more modern school and I felt I had outgrown it and wanted to move on. I was very active in NCSY (this is a Jewish youth outreach organization). I was in NCSY for three years, all of which I was chapter president of three different chapters. I was very active in all of the shabbatonim (shabbos retreats) and events. I became, even though I was young, a role model for a lot of other NCSYers. I loved doing outreach and guiding my other piers. After two years in the high school I was in my family and I moved to Lakewood, NJ. We finally for the first time found a community and shul we felt comfortable in. I went on to Bais Kaila, the main Bais Yakov high school, in Lakewood. I was once again blown away by the maturity and greatness of the girls there. I had literally all two hundred girls on the first day come up to me to gat to know me. I loved the girls, the teachers, and the atmosphere there and was truly blessed to have that experienced. After high school I went to Israel to seminary for the year. I fell in love with Israel right away and didn’t want to go home. I knew I belonged there. I returned home in the summer and after a few months I joined a vocational collage with a friend of mine to become a medical assistant. It was a six month course that taught how to do and read EKGs and how to take blood and finger sticks. It also gave a full anatomy course. I worked at an OBGYN office after but got engaged shortly after that. The office I was working for wasn’t Jewish so they had a hard time with giving me hours off for Jewish holidays, for the wedding and for sheva brachos. I decided to leave there and after I got married wanted to work in a religious atmosphere. I found a job at a rest retreat for women who just gave birth, and worked in the nursery caring for the newborns. We decided that we belonged in Israel and made Aliyah. I now have four precious children, whom I adore, three rambunctious boys and one angelic girl. For the past seven years I’ve been helping my husband with his outreach website, guiding and helping thousands of Jews and non Jews. I decided to use my analytical mind and experience in guiding and helping people, so I became a life coach. Thanks to my very vast and rich background in almost everything I am able to relate and connect to almost everyone.

To make a short story long I feel it is my life’s purpose to make the quality of life for others better, by utilizing their innate abilities to make them realize that they are capable of overcoming their obstacles and goals.