→ Meet Shani Greenfield

As a teacher, camp director, make-up artist, shaitel macher, and now an artist as well, Shani’s been making a difference for years. 20 years ago, when she saw a need for affordable shaitels, she jumped in and created a shaitel shadchan gemach: she collects used shaitels, washes, sets, and repairs them when necessary, and matches them up with women who need a new shaitel but can’t afford to buy one. Now she’s known as Shani the Shaitel GeMacher.

How it started

I grew up in Brooklyn, went to Prospect Park high school, and then taught in kiruv elementary schools. After my husband and I married, we lived in the Lower East Side for a few years, and then moved to the Old City of Jerusalem where we joined the Aish HaTorah family. Then we moved to Musrara, a really cool — and eclectic — neighborhood next to the walls of the Old City between Sha’ar Yaffo and Sha’ar Shechem. That’s where I started the gemach.

Thrill of the Shidduch

When I was living in Musrara, I did wedding makeup for a kallah whose mother wasn’t frum.

The kallah asked her mother to cover her hair at the wedding, but the mother couldn’t find an affordable shaitel. She shopped around a bit, but they are very expensive and she couldn’t imagine how the raw pieces would look once they were cut — so she just didn’t get one.

She saw my shaitel and loved it — so I ended up lending her my shaitel for the wedding.

After the wedding, she wanted to keep it. After figuring out what I’d wear instead, I told her she could keep it if she commits to wearing it for candle lighting on Friday nights. Today this woman is completely shomer Shabbos.

After this story, I realized that women in our community really need affordable shaitels and surely people have wigs they don’t wear anymore and are ready to give them away. Being a people person and a  shaitel macher, I realized that I could be the one to match them up.

Since the beginning of the gemach.

I’ve seen so many incidents of hashgachah when it comes to matching up women and shaitels, it’s happened a few times that a woman gave away a shaitel she thought nobody would want — and then the very next day, another woman came in, and asked for exactly that one. Once, a kallah who came to us said that she found out about our service while she was flying to Israel. She hadn’t yet found anything nice enough and affordable and loved the wig of the lady sitting next to her and asked her where she got it — the woman gave her our contact info. The kallah called me from the airport and found a perfect preowned wig here.

It’s the thrill of making that shidduch that keeps me in business.

How it’s going

I make the gemach work for me.

Appointments are in my home in Ramat Eshkol, from Sunday to Wednesday, mornings and nights, when my kids are in school or in bed, and I’m not preparing for Shabbos. I also run periodic sales in which I display the entire inventory nicely spread out in a large venue.

Still, people knock on my door at odd hours to try their luck, and I try to help them if I can. Shaitel emergencies are real. Lost luggage, left on a bus, burnt by her shabbos candles.

Before any client sees a wig, we wash it and set it beautifully, ready to wear. That way, when they’re looking at the piece, they’re not seeing something their neighbor gave away. They smell and look great. People are always surprised that they smell so good, and I tell them, “Well, that’s because they’ve been cleaned and prepared for you.”

The women feel respected and welcomed, like when they go shopping. I try to greet each person who comes in with a warm. smile, and give them the help they need to show them that I care. Women of all backgrounds and types come to the gemach, and it’s wonderful to witness their interactions. 

Women often give advice and compliment each other while they’re here. An older woman who had been recently misgayer was visibly uncomfortable around a group of women who were used to wearing wigs and knew the lingo. As she tried on several pieces, everyone told her how amazing she looked — we saw her gain confidence with the experience. Later, someone sent me a picture of this woman wearing the wig to her wedding. I knew she was glowing in the piece because of the positive encouragement she got here.

Sometimes, women come in wearing pants. They’re still on their journey to what we think of as standard tznius, and they are ready to try covering their hair. It’s a real kiddush Hashem to see the women here focus on the willingness to commit to the mitzvah of kisui rosh and try to make the new wig-wearers feel comfortable.

A kallah who came to us said that she found out about our service while she was flying to Israel. She loved the wig of the lady sitting next to her and asked her where she got it — the woman gave her our contact info.  The kallah found a perfect preowned wig here.

Plans for the future

People have asked me many times: do you want to expand? Are you going to stop? And I always say that to me, the clear path is that just as I’ve been a conduit for so many people to do chessed with each other, and I’d always like to facilitate that more. The way I’d expand is if we’d have more shaitel donations we could help more people.

The second-hand shaitel market is growing, and I’d like to stay a part of it.

I wouldn’t expand by opening a fancy storefront because I like the personal feeling we have with the gemach now. Women like to talk to their shaitel machers, and in this homey setting, they share personal stories and we forge relationships. When we meet in the street, we hug. They message me updates on their lives. If I was dressed up in a storefront, I don’t think we’d connect as strongly — many women who come for a shaitel are now on my daily Tehillim list. I love that this gemach takes down walls between people of different frumkeit levels. In this cozy setting, we’re all one family, and we can easily feel that we love each other.

I still want to help more people. Unfortunately, I often turn down women because I don’t have enough inventory. How many women have shaitels sitting on their shelves doing nothing? Sometimes the sentimental value is strong, so they have a hard time donating them.

Gemach fees

I realized from experience that if women don’t pay something for the shaitels, they take things they don’t need. I want them to feel good about themselves, like they went to a shop and are able to buy what they wanted. Plus, we have people collecting, shipping, and then washing, setting, dying, and cutting the wigs so they look respectable. Many are happy to do it pro bono, but sometimes it won’t get done if they aren’t reimbursed. Also, we have expenses like supplies, advertising, promoting, shipping — those don’t get covered by volunteer work.

There are also many people I manage to convince not to pay, the ones who seem like they really can’t afford it, and cancer patients. They’re suffering enough, and this is one thing they should never have to worry about.

How we market

My husband is my biggest promoter. He’s my role model for always giving and doing more. He manages our logistics, books, receipts, and website. I just tell him when it’s time to advertise for collections or a sale, and he figures out how to get the word out. Once the ads are created, I’ll also share them with my friends on WhatsApp.

How we get the wigs

It’s all about networking: we have wonderful friends and family all over the world who help with collections. We get the wigs to Israel through a combination of chessed and paying for people’s overweight luggage.

Choosing a wig

I always tell my clients to come with a friend. Because I’m biased — I  know what I think looks good to me. But your friend will do a much better job helping you because she knows what you like and what you think looks best on you.

How I stay grounded on busy days

I wake up early every morning and daven. I love walking when it’s a bit chilly outside, the sun’s starting to come up, and I’m alone to clear my mind. Sometimes a friend will offer to come along on my daily walk, and I’ll tell her, “I love spending time with you, but this is time I need by myself.”

I need to take time to start off my day and connect with Hashem, and then I can keep focused through my day on how to serve Him better with all the tools I have.

Also, I take 20-minute power naps. Literally in the middle of the day, when my brain is getting fuzzy.

Here’s what my day looks like

I’m pretty much a stay-at-home mom, which took up most of my day until recently. Now that my youngest is in gan every day, I have more time for everything else, but I still give a lot of one-on-one time to my kids. I help them all get out of the house in the morning and make sure to have a healthy snack prepared for them when they get home. I want my kids to constantly be reminded how much they’re loved. My husband laughs that I prepare several gourmet suppers every evening because each kid has the things they will or won’t eat. I also like to wait up till my older boys get home from yeshivah so I can give them some time too.

Before the kids wake up, while they’re in school, and after the little ones are in bed, I have time to work on everything else. Shaitel appointments are only while they’re in school or after the little ones are asleep.

The only shaitel work I do is shaitel GeMaching. I don’t usually do regular wash/sets or cuts other than the gemach wigs. Some days I’ll have five or more women coming in, and some days there are no appointments or they don’t show up, so I end up with time to paint or do whatever else I want.

If you look around my apartment during the week, you’ll see wig boxes piled up high, paints or canvases in a corner, and sometimes bags for my neighbor’s clothing gemach in another. Sometimes the wigs are spread out on the table and a few women are trying on and walking around looking in the different mirrors. Sometimes the canvases are up on the easels and there’s paint all around.

We live in an average size Jerusalem apt, smaller than our Lower East Side apartment. When friends from the USA walk in, they stop in shock for a moment and say, “How do you fit everything you do into this room?”

For Shabbos, we put everything away and put a huge wooden board on the table. We usually have 10 or 15 people sitting around it. In Jerusalem, your home somehow expands for everything you need —and there’s still room for the kids to play.

I also work for a clothing gemach with my good friend and neighbor Chumy. We pick up donations, sort through them, give some out to neighbors that requested specific things, and then deliver the organized clothing to a store-like clothing gemach.

A lot of my friends also juggle a ton of things at once and are able to fit a colossal amount of different things into their day— I think it’s classic for a Jewish woman.

I do makeup only on the occasion that I’m hired for a simchah or a friend or neighbor asks me to do theirs. I really love making people pretty, and I love being around people all day.

I always reserve Thursday and Friday for getting ready for Shabbos. I love to host large Shabbos meals, and many people in my area don’t host big families so if we want to get together, it’s by us. I love being creative in the kitchen. It’s also an art. I’m not the type that uses measuring cups, I love to experiment. My husband always says I should be printing cookbooks and selling my food.

In my other life

Aside from my main focus of raising a family, I paint Judaic art. I’ve always been the kind of person who needs time alone to think about growth. During corona lockdowns, I didn’t have alone time anymore because the whole family was locked at home in our apartment, so I began to paint canvas (instead of faces) to give myself alone-time.

The painting is a real creative expression; Rav Noach Weinberg says it’s one of the highest levels of pleasure anyone can get in this world.

I need a clear head to paint and focus. I don’t hear anything going on when I’m painting. I can’t answer the phone, I can’t have a conversation with you. It’s my whole brain, fully on. If you want to see my paintings, you can check them out at www.ShaniGreenfield.com .

If I were a shaitel, I would be…

A wild mess of dark blonde curls. Tzniyus, but loose and a bit untamed.

My kids’ hair is like that — way too many curls to be contained by their little bodies — and my personality can’t be contained either.

When I was younger they always told me to tie my hair back and keep it under control, which I did, but it never helped. In the same way, I realized you can’t contain someone who uses their creative abilities to help other people; you can’t fit me into a box.

My teachers taught me that sometimes limiting is the right healthy approach, but sometimes it’s better not to limit your dreams.

Before anyone ever heard of a place to donate and receive used wigs, many tried to convince me a shaitel gemach would never work. They tried to hold back my creative ideas, as I did to my hair, but just like my hair kept popping out, I realized they couldn’t hold me back from being more creative with how I help others.

I don’t judge anybody because I literally can’t. I’m such a combination of different types — my home, my affiliations, the way I dress — simple and neat, I wear things that don’t stand out — I try to make sure there’s nothing fancy and nothing about me to intimidate people. People walk in and say they’re so embarrassed they can’t afford a shaitel, and I tell them, “Don’t worry, I can’t afford one either.”

Baruch Hashem, it worked out, and many others have copied the shaitel gemach idea. I get calls from other cities, and they ask me how they can make a similar gemach.

Want to help my cause?

Visit www.WigGemach.com to find a drop-off location near you or contact us to arrange a pickup, and of course, contact us to schedule an appointment for a wig.