PHILADELPHIA — Perhaps it was preordained that David Frankel would become a mortgage banker.

His memories of his first home as a child in Toronto are hazy, but he knew enough back then to recall it now as “semidetached,” as if “semiattached” might compromise the appraisal or affect the perception of a buyer.

When he was 5 years old, his parents followed the sun to Scottsdale, Ariz., where both worked selling real estate. There, the family lived in a fully detached house with a pool. He sometimes stapled and stamped marketing fliers for his mother.

But his path to the industry was neither straight nor narrow. In the summers, he left for Jewish sleepaway camp, an experience that helped lead him to rabbinical school in Jerusalem, Los Angeles and New York — places where his alma mater, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, had campuses. He graduated, and while the career didn’t stick, many of the texts and values did. As best as he can tell, he is the only ordained rabbi who spends his days helping people get the right home loan.

In his earlier years, as with many aspiring rabbis, Mr. Frankel’s call to further study was inspired in part by a special camp experience. His was at a place now known as Camp Daisy and Harry Stein, in Prescott, Ariz. “It’s Judaism as celebration, and it’s a remarkable thing,” he said. “The song sessions are magic. You can just sing for no reason.”