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Lenny Dykstra reveals his new life as an amateur Torah scholar

A rabbi and Lenny Dykstra walk into an East Side wine shop . . .

In fact, it happens nearly every Wednesday afternoon, as the bad-boy former Met attends Torah study in the basement of Ambassador Wines shop, where Rabbi Shmuel Metzger leads a group over red wine and kosher pizza.

“I’m on a spiritual journey,” Dykstra, 55, who was raised Christian in Southern California, told The Post. “I’m trying to find if God exists. I want to deal with people who are smarter than me.”

It’s the latest curveball from the retired slugger, whose post-playing career has been a roller coaster of high-flying wealth, criminal scandal, bankruptcy and a 2016 memoir in which he dished on steroid use and sharing ­cocaine with Robert De Niro (claims the actor called “bulls–t”).





But, oy vey, this new turn might be the least predictable yet.

A few weeks ago, Dykstra invited The Post to tag along to Metzger’s discussion on Joseph — the slave who became a leader — from the Book of Genesis. It’s a story of triumph over circumstance to which the retired athlete can relate. Mostly, he pointed out, because Joseph was in prison.

In 2013, Dykstra served just over six months of a three-year sentence for grand theft auto and fraud. (While incarcerated, he claims, he was beaten by guards who knocked out his teeth. “My first meal was a steak, medium rare,” he said of his new choppers, which he got in November.)

Throughout the class, he scribbled notes — musings on the size of Joseph’s manhood as well as how he wasn’t hindered by defeat. Dykstra also wrote down a quote from the book “MoneyBall,” in which fellow former Met Billy Beane said that Dykstra “had no concept of failure.”





But after one of the study’s six attendees finished a soliloquy on Joseph’s isolation, Dykstra looked up from his paper.

“You lost me, lady.”

Still, no one balked. Not even when he suggested Joseph likely pleasured himself a lot in jail.

“We enjoy his company and he’s a great guy. A lot of fun. We can handle his [unsavory] language,” said Metzger of Dykstra, who has no plans to convert to Judaism.

Adam Taxin — a three-time “Jeopardy” champ and Philadelphia-based attorney who helps ghost-write Dykstra’s Twitter account — said the ex-Met’s classroom input is refreshing: “Most people are on their best behavior around the rabbi. Lenny comes at it from a very raw angle.”

In fact, it was the rabbi who first reached out to Dykstra after seeing a video he had posted on Twitter, explaining the story of Adam and Eve.





“I said, ‘This guy gets it,’ ” recalled Metzger.

The 42-year-old rabbi was a kid in Brooklyn when Dykstra and his fellow Amazin’s won the 1986 World Series. “Even on Shabbat, when we weren’t supposed to listen, the police officer would clue us in on the score,” Metzger recalled. “We always knew what was going on.”

Now, after class, he and the former big-leaguer often head to the Chabad at Beekman Sutton synagogue and talk baseball, and Dykstra has been to Shabbat dinner at Metzger’s Sutton Place home with the rabbi’s wife and six kids.

Sometimes, the chats with Dykstra, who takes the train in from Linden, NJ, can turn serious — such as when he questioned Metzger about the fate of late teammate Gary Carter, who died of brain cancer in 2012.





“He [was] the guy you want your kids to grow up to be like. Great husband, great father, never drank, never did drugs. He died first [of the ’86 Mets team]. What kind of God is that?” he asked.

Dykstra, divorced since 2009 and with three grown sons, has a lot on his mind and a lot on his plate. In June he was busted for alleged cocaine and meth possession and for making terroristic threats by menacing an Uber driver, the driver said. Dykstra said he was the victim and that the driver kidnapped him. He’s confident the charges will be tossed.

“It’s a joke. They misled the grand jury,” he said of prosecutors. “It will be resolved quickly.”

Dykstra told The Post of two business plans he’s working on: a betting service where retired players are the handicappers, and a secret idea for the ride-share industry that, he said, would give more power to drivers.

“I want to be the guy who is going to sue [Uber] for $100 million or make them $100 million,” he said.

After wrapping up his weekly religious study, Dykstra recorded a video for Twitter in which he gets some of the biblical names wrong, but he corrected himself in the caption. (“Whatvr! . . . I managed to keep it PG!”) It has since notched more than 20,000 views.

“If he is serious, I want to help him in the world,” said Metzger. “There’s a reason why everyone likes him. It’s good, kosher fun.”





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