I remember taking great pride, even as a young girl, in thinking creatively and being a nonconformist. And now that I’m “grown up,” well, how many Torah-observant women do you know who are passionate about writing, avid racquetball players, lifelong collectors of seashells and gemstones, and also enjoy composing music, painting abstracts, and a good game of football? Not many, perhaps, but I can assure you that there are other out-of-the-box, eclectic individuals like myself in our greater Torah community, whose interests and professions are not your humdrum standard. I had the pleasure of speaking to a few of them.
A Man for All Seasons
Simeon Botwinick, a 2011 Yeshiva University graduate, double-majored in English and history and minored in studio art. The Riverdale, New York, native now teaches eighth grade English in downtown Baltimore under the auspices of Teach for America, a prestigious two-year program that prides itself on fueling an educational revolution in low income communities. Simeon is one of only two Torah-observant teachers in the Baltimore program.
At the same time, Simeon is pursuing a master’s degree in education at Johns Hopkins University. Simeon also enjoys acting, as is evident from a You Tube spoof he starred in while at college, “YU Boys Will Be Stern Girls.” As of this writing, the video has gotten 102,679 hits!
Simeon has always enjoyed taking active community and leadership roles. While he was in high school, he accompanied a group from his school that traveled to Germany for two weeks, in conjunction with the organization Bridge of Understanding. During his post-high school year in Israel, he coordinated a group of volunteers from his yeshiva to staff a local Pina Chama (free soup kitchen for soldiers) several hours a week.
In college, Simeon was editor of the YU newspaper, The Commentator, played on the YU Maccabees volleyball team, and worked in the Writing Center, which offered free writing help to the YU community, and occasionally branched out to local public schools. As a junior, Simeon traveled to El Salvador with the Center for the Jewish Future (CJF), in conjunction with the American Jewish World Service (AJWS).
Simeon also created and facilitated Jewish programming for annual Jewish identity retreats in Winnipeg (where he traveled four times) and Moscow (where he traveled once). These retreats primarily service the non-Orthodox population. As part of YU’s Torah Tours program, he has spent chagim in Phoenix, Charleston, Calgary, and Cincinnati, facilitating varied Jewish programming, including giving shiurim. Simeon has also worked at Camp Stone for the past four years, twice as a division head. And to top it off, he has vacationed with friends in Italy and Greece on a college-student budget.
“I guess I don’t really think of myself as being so unusual,” says Simeon, “since I’ve done all these things with friends. Anything can work if you’re with the right people.”
Flying High
Until you get to know Naava Lightman, of Lawrence, you might think she is a run-of-the-mill, mild-mannered math teacher. Although she is atypical even professionally, as one of the very few frum girls in New York who is a fully certified licensed math teacher, it is her passion for trapezing that really defines her uniqueness!
Naava’s love of flying (without an airplane!) can be traced to her kindergarten days, when she was obsessed with Peter Pan. “My parents made me a Peter Pan costume which I wore to school every day that year, literally,” recalls Naava. “I still get a thrill when I think about Peter Pan soaring through the air.
“As a kid, I was a dare-devil on jungle gyms; I was also into gymnastics. So I grabbed the opportunity to go trapezing, one Chol Hamoed Pesach, when my very good friend Talia invited me to go with her and her family. I was thrilled, because it gave me that sense of freedom, of soaring through the air and hanging upside down from the bar and swinging. I felt like a little kid again. At first, I was a bit scared to jump off the platform: What if the bar broke? What if I fell? But then I did it and felt it’s no big deal. I was totally involved in the moment, as though nothing else existed. I have gone trapezing since with my family and am trying to find someone to go with me again.”
Naava loves what she teaches, especially making her students unafraid of math and showing them how it’s relevant across the board in their lives. She also loves being physically active and goes biking, hiking, boating, and skiing. “I’m open to new adventures, including rock climbing,” says Naava. “And while I’m not your typical girl, I’m still girly and love fashion accessories, shoes, and make up.
“Being out-of-the-box makes me different from the average frum girl,” continues Naava. “It hasn’t always been easy, especially when school administrations tend to like ‘cookie-cutter’ girls. However, I take great pride that I am frum, have middos tovos, and that I daven and work on my relationship with Hashem. Hashem made me this way, and I have embraced it.”
A Lousy Business
Each year head lice infect 6 to 12 million American children, ages 3 to 11, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Francos, of Silver Spring, are doing their small part (no pun intended!) to rid us of these culprits. They are professional nitpickers.
“I started as a volunteer in my children’s Jewish preschools, elementary schools, and summer day camp programs,” says Karen Franco, who was always artsy and creative as a child, and remembers that she knew very early on that she had a particularly good eye for detail. “I originally started screening the children for head lice infestation so that I could prevent my children from getting head lice. Over the years, I was approached by other parents and programs to help with screening groups and nitpicking individuals. I eventually started to charge for my services, and through word of mouth, I developed a client list.
“In November 2007, I was approached by a freelance reporter who had heard of my services,” continues Karen. “The article she wrote was published in the health section of The Washington Post. The exposure was so widespread that I was suddenly in great demand all over the region. I then decided to quit my part-time teaching job at The Torah School of Greater Washington so I could work in the head lice business full time. For the next three years, I averaged two house calls a day, Sunday through Thursday. In June 2008, I rented an office in Kensington, Maryland, and began to see clients there. I would average four or five appointments a day in peak season. In August 2008, my husband, Allan, joined me in the business, and in December 2011 we moved to a larger office in the same building, where we have the ability to do shampoo treatments as well as the manual nit and lice removal services.”
Advice on Lice, the Francos’ business, leaves Karen little time to take pottery classes, as she once did. Her time is almost exclusively devoted to her business and her clients. She also speaks as a consultant to groups of concerned parents about the condition of head lice and what they can and should do to protect their families.
“I very much enjoy my ‘crazy’ occupation,” admits Karen. “My husband has also grown to really love the work. Everyone we help is very grateful. Everyone we see socially finds it fascinating and funny when we talk about what we do. I am personally very proud and protective of the business I have built and the reputation I have earned.”
Is the rest of the family out-of-the-box? “Not really,” says Karen. “My father is a retired nephrologist who has become a computer genius. My son-in-law works in his family’s business as a baker. My own children are a car mechanic, two economics majors who are employed in area investment companies, and my youngest is an undecided college major who has proven to be a nitpicking prodigy, so she will be working for us part time in the future.”
With Strings Attached
Ellen Paul, also of Silver Spring, is a violin maker. Starting with four chunks of wood, she cuts and carves away all of the waste until the pieces of a violin emerge. She then assembles the pieces, varnishes the instrument, and strings it up. She also re-hairs and repairs bows.
Ellen’s primary hobby is knitting. She also embroiders, beads, quilts, crochets, and tats – just about anything with a needle. She has a nice collection of orchids growing in the house and a large rose garden that “the deer enjoy immensely.” She also cooks and bakes foods outside the Eastern European tradition.
When I asked Ellen if she takes pride in being different or if she ever wishes that she were more like everyone else, she answered: “I am myself; other people explore their own talents and skills. G-d gave us all different abilities. I do what I am good at. Do I wish I were more like other people? No, but it would have been interesting to have had more patience for higher math.”
Ellen doesn’t think of her family as being particularly out-of-the-box: “We just explore and try things that interest us. My husband is a biomedical engineer and a physician; for a hobby he brews beer. Our parents were a huge influence on us and on our children, as well,” continues Ellen. “My mom is very cultured and very artistic; she is an artist and an art teacher. My dad had a huge garden, did stained glass work and leather work, and was a photographer with his own dark room. My husband Scott’s mom did a lot of needlepoint until her vision failed. Scott’s father was an amazing woodworker. The kids are true to their nature, nurture, and genetic predisposition. They have all pursued careers in art or science (or both). They all have hobbies that reflect what the adults around them are ‘into.’
“I grew up in the ’60s,” says Ellen. “Weren’t we all a little ‘out there’ then? Actually, it was a fun time period to grow up in, because if you did happen to have a talent for hand crafts it was ‘cool,’ not weird. Now with technology so overwhelmingly pervasive, there is also a resurgence of interest in art and hand crafts, as people try to balance their lives with some work that has a tangible end product.
Ellen recalls being aware of art from a very early age. “I have no recollection of ever not knowing about famous painters; I have always drawn and painted, and I started knitting when I was six. Shortly after that, my dad taught me how to use a hammer. I helped build a lot of tree houses and ‘forts’ in the woods behind our house. My folks encouraged all four of their children to explore all our skills, in addition to the more standard expectation that we would all, of course, excel academically! What made me outside the box was being a Bais Yaakov girl. I graduated in 19…. Never mind.”
A “Modest” Proposal
If I could cast a vote for the most creative, out-of-the-box marriage proposal, it would be for the one “Shlomo” of Flatbush gave to “Chavi,” a Baltimorean. As Chavi put it, “He planned everything down to the tee,” which included enlisting the help of many of their friends who were in on Shlomo’s romantic plan.
After dating for four months, Shlomo never told Chavi that his plan to visit his sister in Israel was scrapped. Instead, he called Chavi’s close friend in Highland Park, and asked her to host his kallah-to-be the evening of their supposed last dinner date before he flew to Israel. After dinner, they said goodbye and Chavi’s friend met her in New York to travel back to New Jersey. When they got there, her friend insisted that they watch a video clip of a mutual friend’s wedding.
To Chavi’s surprise, it was not a clip of the wedding but one created by Shlomo, who had just texted her saying that he was boarding the plane. At the end of the clip, there was a picture of a letter with her name on it, waiting on her friend’s porch. Chavi went outside to retrieve it, as the clip instructed. “By then, I was crying, because I knew he wasn’t in Israel,” she says. “It was a really nice letter, and at the end it said that my chariot would arrive in one minute. A stretch limousine soon appeared, and my friend and I both got in. It was full of roses and rose petals, a box of Godiva chocolates, a huge stuffed gorilla, and a video camcorder (he knew that I wanted one). Shlomo even downloaded funny films to entertain us during the two- to three-hour ride from New Jersey back to New York.
“We had the greatest time. The driver first stopped at Touro College (where he picked me up for our first date), and then at ToysRUs, and The Chocolate Factory and Starbucks in Times Square, where we had gone on dates while walking around the city. Wherever I went, clues – and more gifts – were handed to me, by one friend or another. The last stop was a lake in Brooklyn, where Shlomo finally appeared. At this point, my friend had left. Shlomo then proposed. It was exciting!
“Shortly after I accepted Shlomo’s proposal, he said, ‘Hurry up! About 40 people are waiting for us at my house, since 9 o’clock, for a lechaim. This took longer than I thought it would. It’s already 1 a.m.!’ He and I then took the limo back to his house, where everyone greeted us with a mazal tov.”
When I asked Chavi if she realized that Shlomo was so out-of-the-box, she replied, “We’re both pretty crazy; we’re both pretty out-of-the-box. He’s like this all the time. He goes all out and does everything possible – he’s just amazing!”
