L ifestyle /C ulture
Philly Faces: Michal Furman
P H I LLY FACES
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
MICHAL FURMAN, 26, is
fairly certain that she is the
first Israeli-American officer in
Philadelphia Police Department
history. It’s a position that she
takes quite seriously.

“I love Philadelphia,” said
Furman, the daughter of promi-
nent refuseniks Marina and Lev
Furman. “It’s such a great city.

No better way to love a city than
to serve and protect its people.”
Furman, a Ra’anana-born
graduate of Temple University,
intended to enter the music
business, going so far as to take
classes at the online extension
school of the Berklee College
of Music.

“But in the back of my mind,”
she said, “I always kind of knew
that I wanted a job that was
physical and ever-changing.”
That’s how one might end
up, say, on a bicycle patrol in
Kensington, as Furman is now.

Furman spoke
about becoming a police officer during
the pandemic, anti-Semitism
and Kensington.

What was the single most
decisive factor in your
becoming a police officer?
Well, when I studied
music business, there was just
something that wasn’t fulfilling
about it to me. If I feel like
I’m not doing something that’s
helping someone, it kind of
feels like, ‘What’s the point?’
So I wanted to do something
where I knew I’m going out
there, and every day, I’m going
to be helping people. And that’s
when I decided that being a
police officer was the right thing
for me.

What’s been the most
surprising thing since you
joined the force?
I’m going to be honest: I
joined the academy in May,
when all the protests and
everything was going on. And
sometimes it kind of feels like
people don’t have your back.

But going to Kensington and
talking with the members of
the community, they really do
feel grateful to have you there.

And they’re just thankful that
you’re there and helping them.

What was it like to train to
become a police officer during
the pandemic?
It’s funny, because through-
out the whole academy, they kept
telling us, ‘This is new for us,
and we’re trying to figure out as
it goes.’ And it’s tricky because a
lot of the training — for example,
defensive tactics — you have no
choice but to be close to your
partner. And there’s only so
much social distancing that you
could do, but it’s training that
we need to have to be able to
graduate. So the academy was
extremely careful. Instead of
being in regular classrooms, they
put us downstairs in the gym
and in the auditorium, and they
had our chairs six feet apart. We
HAPPY PASSOVER
Alec, Steven, Danny, Bob, Jarett & Zack
The Rovner Family
18 APRIL 1, 2021
Michal Furman, here with her nephew Zev Stanger, is the daughter of two
prominent refuseniks, Lev and Marina Furman.
Courtesy of Michal Furman
wore masks at all times, unless anywhere to go. And I’m going
we were running or had PT.

to be honest, it’s pretty sad, but
you do what you can to help
In the couple months now that them and you just try to be
you’ve been an active-duty there for them. You have the
police officer, is there anything opioid epidemic in Kensington,
you’ve encountered that you but at its root, Kensington is
don’t think you would have still a community; there’s still
ever come across, if not have for families that live there. There’s
having become a police officer? still kids that live there. And
There’s definitely a lot that they have to see that every day
I’ve encountered that I don’t as well. And that definitely
think I would have seen. Just breaks my heart a little bit.

constantly, day-to-day, you’re
with people who are just How do you think about your
struggling, they’re out on the relationship to the police
streets. They don’t always have force as an Israeli-American?
It’s important as an Israeli-
American, and a Jew as well,
because when you see the people
who are there, serving and
protecting you, you want to see
yourself in them. For the Jewish
community in Philadelphia, it’s
important for them to see that
there’s someone that they can
relate to, and that they feel,
‘Oh, they understand how we
feel.’ Especially with the rise of
anti-Semitism that’s currently
going on, it’s extremely important
for there to be more Jewish police
officers. And so much of the
Jewish values that I’ve grown up
with are things that I instill in
my everyday life and in work, like
tikkun olam. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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