My name is Isaac. Please, call me Zooky.

A Brooklyn boy from a Beirut family

I was born in Brooklyn in 1972, after my parents came to the United States from Beirut, Lebanon. I grew up in an Arabic-speaking, traditional Orthodox Jewish home, in a community built on respect and tradition. Family was everything.

For many years I chased achievement. I worked hard, I built, I provided, and I carried old pain I didn't know how to put down. From the outside, things looked fine. On the inside, I felt empty.

Then a divine interruption became my divine intervention.

From achievement to fulfillment

I was married, with two children and a third on the way, when my wife urged me to join friends on a spiritual trip to Israel. There I met Rabbi Yitzhak, who told me how few resources there were for young men at risk. In 2007, together, we started Beit Hashem, a home that gives young men spiritual guidance, education, and a safe place to build meaningful lives.

That is where my coaching began. I traveled to Israel several times a year to coach those young men, but really, I was coaching myself. Pouring into them poured back into me. Piece by piece, I picked up the parts of myself I had lost along the way.

Nine words in Rabbi Ackerman's office

I was 37 years old, sitting beside my wife in Rabbi Ackerman's office. I believed I was a good husband. I worked hard and I provided. Everything I did was for her and our family.

Then she said nine words I will never forget.

"Even when you are here, you are not here."

I broke down. Afterward I sat in the car and couldn't turn the key. About a week later, I asked her to forgive me. I told her I hadn't realized how lonely and hurt she had been, and I cried. She told me she loved me and wanted our marriage to work.

We were both telling the truth. I was giving everything I had. She was feeling alone. Neither of us had ever been shown how a husband and a wife were made, or what each of us truly needed. Learning that design changed our marriage, and it became the work of my life.

I was never broken. I had simply never been given the map.

"Vulnerability is our strength. It's in what we are brave enough to reveal that we can heal."

Vulnerability is what gives us the power to connect, to love without conditions, and to hear what our soul is calling us toward.