Remembering Rebbetzin Sharon Shenker

My whole life, I’ve dealt with obsessive compulsive disorder. When I was a child, it meant obsessing about being late to school, falling asleep at night, checking to see if the oven was off or if the door was locked… the list went on and on. I conquered it with the help of a children’s therapist, and it subsided as I got older.

But when I had my first daughter in 2019, I began obsessing about her health. I’d check on her 10 times a night to see that she was still breathing. I was scared to death I’d back out of my driveway and a car would hit us. I’d say, “God forbid” after every other sentence if I said something negative. I couldn’t take it. I was suffering.

I was determined to get help, and I wanted to see a therapist who was an Orthodox Jewish woman like myself. It was important to me. She would understand what I was going through.

Scrolling through Psychology Today, I saw an OCD therapist with a kind face. Her name was Sharon Shenker, and she was also a rebbetzin at Aish. When I called her for an initial consultation during Pesach of 2021, we talked what was happening, and we agreed to meet once a week. I was going to do something called cognitive-behavior therapy, which was more intense than talk therapy but also found to be highly effective.

Sharon, who was always cheerful and had a smile on her face, had me doing all sorts of things I hadn’t done in traditional therapy, like jumping off a table and acting out a scene from a horror movie I’d been scared of. She would act out scenarios with me and wasn’t afraid to be silly if it meant making me feel better. In just a few months, I started to heal, and my OCD was going away.

During our last meeting, we talked about how I was afraid of being on rooftops because I always thought I was going to have the compulsion to jump off one of them. I wasn’t suicidal and I knew I’d never do it, but I still avoided heights because of this.

“Kylie, I want you to go to a rooftop tomorrow,” she said. “Then, stand on the edge. Now, don’t stand so close that you could fall off, but go as near as you can. Then, text me to tell me what it felt like.”

I said, “Sure,” but I had absolutely no intention of doing that. Yeah, right.

But then the next day, my friend invited me to have lunch with her… on her rooftop. When my friend got up from our lunch to take a phone call, I went as near as I could to the edge. I heard Sharon’s voice in my head: “You’re not going to jump off,” she had told me.

For the first time in my life, I felt fine being near the edge. I sent a picture to Sharon.

“I’m here!” I said. “I didn’t intend to do this today, but it worked out that way.”

“How do you feel?” she asked me.

“You know what? I feel fine now. I don’t feel like jumping off.”

“Good. Now go and do this five more times,” she texted me.

I did, and I got over that compulsion.

But that was the last time I was going to hear from Sharon.

A short time after that, I found out that she was sick. So many people were praying for her in our community – including myself. I said her name every night when I did the Shema so that she would have a speedy recovery. I said her name at every candle lighting on Shabbat and inserted her name during the Mi Sheberach at synagogue. I thought about how tough it must have been not only on Sharon, but also on her husband, a rabbi, their five children and the entire community she had touched.

On Monday, January 23, I found out that Sharon had passed away. This is a tragedy I can’t wrap my mind around. No one can. There are no words, no way to explain it. The world lost a beautiful soul this week.

Watching the messages about Sharon pour in on Facebook and WhatsApp, I can see how much of an impact she had on our community here in Pico-Robertson and beyond. In one of her videos she made for Aish, she talks about the power of a smile.

“Smile at the people you love… Smile at mirrors, greet everyone cheerfully,” she said. “Be able to be a giver. Give to everyone else in your life.”

She ends the video with, “Sending smiles and love from Los Angeles.”

Sharon’s whole life was about loving, whether it was through being committed to her husband, raising her family or creating videos to make someone else’s day that much brighter.

Now, her community is sending love to her family during this difficult time. Please consider giving to The Shenker Family Fund (thechesedfund.com/westsidekollel/shenker) to give back and show them our support.

Baruch dayan ha’emet Sharon Shenker. May the neshama have an aliyah.