Chabad Congregation Helped Former Van Dweller Obtain a Nursing Degree

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – The smell and taste of lead was so bad at the gun shop where Ari Belkin worked that he decided to quit his job, recover from lead poisoning, and start a new life. He sold his car and his motorcycle and purchased a van in which he could live, instead of a more expensive apartment, while pursuing an associate of arts degree  en route to earning certification as a Registered Nurse.

He received a two-year-degree in math and science and was accepted to the nursing school program at Miracosta College in Oceanside. To bring in some income to augment his diminishing bank balance, the divorced Belkin took occasional jobs as a security guard. That was what he was doing when he and Debra Trestman, the rebbetzin of Beit Betzalel Chabad of North County Inland, renewed acquaintances. Their daughters had gone to preschool together.

When Trestman learned of the sacrifices Belkin was making to put himself through school, she and her husband Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Trestman—who is both a physician and a religious leader—put him in touch with the Da’ati Foundation of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The foundation’s founder, Rabbi Brandon Gaines, believes in extending a helping hand to those who are working hard to better their situations.

The Foundation agreed to pay part of Belkin’s rent for a room at the Chabad House of San Marcos while he continued his studies at nursing school, from which he now has recently graduated.  Assuming Belkin passes his California State Boards, the newly minted Registered Nurse will go to work in August as a nurse in the emergency room of a local hospital.

During the time he studied nursing, Belkin not only worked as a security guard at the Beit Betzalel Chabad of North County, he also regularly attended services and occasionally stayed in the Trestmans’ guest room so that he could observe Shabbos with them. He said that Dr. Trestman, a pulmonary specialist with the Palomar/ Pomerado Hospital Group, helped him study for his physiology course.

Belkin’s relationship with the Trestman family grew so close that Debra Trestman says she thinks of Belkin as a son.  The familial feeling extends to Belkin’s two daughters, Ahuva, 15, and Shoshi, 13.

“I am really proud of him,” Debra Trestman says about Belkin.  “He had really adverse conditions under which he was living, and a lot of odds stacked against him.  He really put the effort in, improved himself, and with God’s help and passing the nursing boards, which I am sure he will, he will soon be working at the hospital.”

Rabbi Trestman expressed appreciation that his small congregation, which meets at his home in the Rancho Bernardo neighborhood of San Diego, welcomed him to their fold and was able to “very quickly get him out of his van, and get a roof over his head, and provide him the ability to study nursing.”  When Belkin graduated from nursing school, members of the congregation honored him at a kiddush.

“They were very kind, and he (Rabbi Dr. Trestman) was there for me,” Belkin said.  He helped me out with cash from time to time, helped me study physiology, and was like a second father to me.”

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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com