When most of us picture an EMT, the figure in our imagination is young and male. But that mental image may need some tweaking; hundreds of EMTs today are sporting sheitels, and some of them are bubbies. How did this growing trend begin, and what’s it like to be a frum and female EMT?
Ten-year-old Penina T. was dressed and ready for Shabbos hanging around the bungalow while her mother fiddled with the knobs on the decrepit country stove preparing to set up her Shabbos hot plate. The burner refused to light so she turned up the gas and held the match to the burner again. Suddenly in a big whoosh a ball of fire jumped out at her singeing her arms and face.
“It was terrifying!” Penina says. Her round blue eyes are wide at the memory. “There we were ten minutes before Shabbos and my mother had just gotten this huge burn. Right away somebody called my Aunt Miriam who’d just completed her EMT training and she ran over and just took charge right away. She treated the burn created instant calm and everything fell into place just in time to light Shabbos candles.”
Penina never forgot it. “I was so impressed!” she says. “I thought ‘My Aunt Miriam can do anything!’ That entire summer whenever anybody had an emergency they called Aunt Miriam from a bad fall off a bike to getting a hand stuck under the sharp lid of a tuna can.”
Aunt Miriam was such an inspiration that twenty years later Penina herself became a certified emergency medical technician or EMT. But Penina’s not alone; in Brooklyn alone there are an estimated 300 frum female EMTs. Tonight five of them have gathered in Penina’s spare neat dining room in Kensington to share their experiences with those of us who haven’t had the opportunity or inclination to get involved in such heroic pursuits.
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