Probably, a lot of people would claim that they were my mentor if I was famous enough to be worth claiming.  I had some great teachers, especially early on, and I had a bunch of wackos, too.

My-Father-Of-Blessed-Memory had to take up the slack when my first Hebrew teacher in a Yeshiva — now defunct — was a highly insecure (and probably gay) man who even got chalk all over himself.  As a teacher, he was neither condemning nor very helpful, knowing no way to teach except repetition, both oral and written.

One of the reasons that I had no real mentoring when quite young was that I really did not know exactly what I wanted to do with my curious life, aside from “something in the arts and sciences” which covered pretty much anything I liked, or didn’t. Read more on The Fortunate Few Have Mentors…