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Devora Weintraub
Photos by Eliza Whitney
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
A t 21 years old, Devora Weintraub has spent almost a quarter
of her life as an emergency medical technician.

The daughter of a physician father and science teacher
mother, the Bala Cynwyd native and University of Pennsylvania
student was indoctrinated with a love of medicine and learning at a
young age. Knowing she wanted to go to medical school early on,
Weintraub was not intimidated by the extra schooling that becoming
a doctor of medicine would require.

Instead, she was eager to get a jump
start. “I didn’t want to have to wait those
eight additional years to start practic-
ing medicine, so I realized that becom-
ing an EMT was a shortcut to get
started, to get my feet wet,” Weintraub
said. At 16, Weintraub became an EMT
at Narberth Ambulance, where she
has volunteered for nearly six years,
working at least a 12-hour shift per
week, balancing a full school course
load and involvement at the Orthodox
Community of Penn, where she serves
as chesed chair. She and her family
are members of Young Israel of the
Main Line.

Among the 50 other EMTs at
Narberth Ambulance, Weintraub is
one of the few women and the only
Orthodox Jew.

“For a lot of my coworkers, I’m the
first Orthodox Jew that they’ve ever
met in their life, and some of them, the
only one that they know,” Weintraub
said. According to Weintraub, EMT work
is a “boys’ club,” and the team took
time to adjust to Weintraub’s cultural
practices that she maintained as an
EMT: not volunteering on Shabbat and
wearing long skirts, even during her
shifts. Weintraub also keeps shomer
negiah, the halachic principle that
people of different sexes should not
touch each other before marriage.

Under shomer negiah, Weintraub
would not be allowed to touch male
patients or coworkers, making her job
nearly impossible to fulfill at times. To
navigate being an Orthodox Jew in
an intimate, secular environment, she
invokes another halachic principle.

“When I walk into work, everything
I do is in the name of pikuach nefesh
(saving a life), so really, that overrides
everything,” she said.

In the name of saving a life, Weintraub
will ignore shomer negiah, even if
a patient has a non-life-threatening
injury, such as a broken leg.

“It might not be an immediate life
threat, but down the line, if I don’t splint
it or somebody else doesn’t splint it, it
can lead to other issues,” she said.

In other, more serious situations,
drawing a line between pikuach
nefesh and shomer negiah is trickier.

Weintraub uses the example of a male
patient having an issue with a catheter.

In this instance, she would enlist the
help of a male coworker, not just to
preserve shomer negiah, but also the
dignity of the patient in need.

Weintraub has discussed her
religious and personal boundaries
with Jewish community leaders and
rabbis. At this stage in her life, she
decides to shake hands with men in
a professional setting or high-five a
male coworker after a particularly
difficult shift. The work, after all, is
emotionally and mentally draining, and
something as simple as a high-five can
be an important team-building and
morale-boosting action. She draws
the line at hugging, however, and her
coworkers respect her choice.

Working with the same team of
EMTs, Weintraub sees the other volun-
teers as a family of sorts. There’s a lot
of good rapport underneath some
crude jokes and an abundance of
curse words, she said. The team is
there to debrief with each other after
harrowing 911 calls.

Outside of her Narberth Hospital
team, Weintraub processes her work
with friends and Jewish community
members or tries to compartmentalize
her shifts when she’s finished. She’s
grateful she got started as an EMT
young — when she couldn’t overthink
the job or back down.

“It’s scary; it’s a lot of responsibility,”
she said. “I think I just sort of jumped
in the deep end, and if I hadn’t, I don’t
think that I’d be here now.”
But despite the difficulty of the job,
Weintraub is committed to continuing.

“I really enjoy the aspect of being
invited into people’s hardest days of
their life and trying to make it a little bit
better for them,” she said. ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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