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
JEWISH EXPONENT
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T orah P ortion
Find Meaning in Passover’s Final Days
BY RABBI SHAWN ZEVIT
Pesach T H E PE S AC H S E DE R
remains the most observed
Jewish festival home gathering
to this day.

Whether you observe one
or two sedarim, the begin-
ning of Pesach comes in with
its millennia of observed and
ever-evolving rituals, retelling
of our story, reflection on what
is means to be ever-leaving and
arriving, to be enslaved and at
the same time grateful for and
vigilant about our freedoms, to
be strangers and simultaneously
at home.

The end of Pesach often
gets overlooked or becomes a
countdown to the “finishing
the matzah collections on
the shelf.”
Howe ve r, t h e r e a r e
meaningful spiritual practices
that can help bring the values
and experiences of the seder
into the week and weeks that
follow. The seventh night of Passover
in some Jewish mystical and
Chasidic circles, using the
math of the ancient rabbis,
became a time to re-enact the
Crossing the Sea. This led to
an early Chasidic custom of
holding a “mirror seder” on
the last day of Pesach. There
was an early Chasidic custom
of the rebbe giving over Pesach
wisdom, of gathering around
the table or in a circle and
everyone rotating one chair to
share their Passover wisdom
from the “rebbe’s chair.”
I experienced this through
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-
Shalomi’s updated egalitarian
practice of this ritual, and then
later thanks to Philadelphia’s
own Simcha Raphael and
Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael,
who developed a narrative and
song-filled “Seventh Night
Seder.” As Raphael writes in the
introduction to the Seventh
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Night Seder Haggadah: “In
looking at Torah and Midrash,
through the lens of mythic
understanding, it is possible to
discover in the ancient stories
a model, a paradigm, for seeing
the deeper patterns of spiri-
tual evolution unfold in our
own lives. The idea of mythic
re-enactment of an ancient tale
is fully consonant with what
we learn at the Passover seder:
hayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu
who yatzah mi-Mitzraim — “it
is incumbent upon each person
to see one’s self as if they
themselves had left Egypt.”
This notion suggests that each
time we retell the story of
the Exodus, and (hence) the
subsequent Crossing of the
Red Sea, we are invited to find
personal, contemporary spiri-
tual connection and meaning
for our own lives.”
Today, either during or
around Pesach, holding an
additional seder for inter-
faith and social justice causes
has emerged with their own
haggadot, such as the HIAS
Immigration Seder and R.

Arthur Waskow and Rabbi
Phyllis Berman’s
newly released “Liberating Your
Seder” compendium, which
includes an article I wrote on
the seventh-night seder we
held when the pandemic first
relegated us to our own narrow
places and across a digital sea
of reeds.

Over the years, we have
seen the emergence of feminist
seders, LGBTQI seders, Jewish
Labor Council seder, multifaith
justice seders and many more.

After the seder(s), we move
into the remainder of Pesach
and the weeks beyond and
the opportunity to integrate
and embody in our lives, the
experience, meaning and
values of this festival period
and the exodus itself.

According to the Torah, we
are directed to count the days
from Passover to Shavuot. This
period of 49 days is known
as the Counting of the Omer.

An omer is a unit of measure
for grain.

On the second day of
Passover, in the days of the
Temple, an omer of barley was
cut down and brought to the
Temple as an offering. This
grain offering was referred to
as the omer. Every night, from
the second night of Passover
to the night before Shavuot,
we recite a blessing and state
the count of the omer in both
weeks and days.

The counting is intended to
remind us of the link between
Passover, which commemo-
rates the Exodus, and Shavuot,
which came to commemorate
the giving of the Torah. It
reminds us that the redemp-
tion from slavery was not
complete until we received the
Torah (a later interpretation of
the meaning of Shavuot).

Over these seven weeks,
daily reflection, work on one’s
middot (characteristics) and
potential inner and relational
growth from this work on
self was one way to pray for
and invite the possibility of
affecting one’s life and poten-
tial — nurturing and growing
the fruit of our souls. These
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
April 2
April 9
traits are not just designed to
be “out there” in the esoteric
world, but to be integrated
and expressed in our everyday
actions and relationships.

The ongoing nature of
the global pandemic, the
continuum of difficulty or ease
in getting vaccinations, and the
challenges and possibilities of
our gradual and safe reopening
and regathering in person in
Jewish settings is shedding a
light on the lessons we have
learned and how we have or
have not grown as human
beings and as a great commu-
nity in the difficult year we
have been through.

The reality is we are all
slaves to something — to work,
or a relationship, to fear, or
food, to a lack of discipline,
or too much discipline, to
resources and even the privi-
leges many of us have benefited
from in American society at
others’ exclusion and expense.

The word Mitzrayim (“Egypt”
in Hebrew) means limitations
and boundaries and represents
all forms of constraints that
inhibit our true free expression.

Our people’s redemption
from Egypt teaches us how to
achieve inner freedom in our
7:08 p.m.

7:15 p.m.

lives. Enslavement is a habit
that needs to be broken and
transformed over an extended
period. I pray for all of us that as we
conclude the week of Pesach
and move toward the first fruits
and revelations of Shavuot, we
find the faith and courage to
walk into the unknown ahead
of us and work not to return
to the way things were, rather
forge together the “olam hesed
yibaneh”— the compassionate,
just and equitable world to
come. l
Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit is the
rabbi at Mishkan Shalom in
Philadelphia, co-founder/director
of the Davennen Leader’s Training
Institute, associate director of the
ALEPH Hashpa’ah program and co-
chair of the clergy caucus of POWER
Interfaith PA. The Board of Rabbis
of Greater Philadelphia is proud to
provide diverse perspectives on
Torah commentary for the Jewish
Exponent. The opinions expressed
in this column are the author’s own
and do not reflect the view of the
Board of Rabbis.

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