I was born in Denton, Texas, but to understand my background, you have to know a little about my parents. My father was born in Satmar (Satu Mare), Romania. His parents survived Auschwitz. After the war, the family made it to Rome and eventually to Sydney, Australia, where my father grew up.
“I’m a direct descendant of the Maharal, and everyone in my family was frum until the Holocaust. My father’s generation was not, and therefore I didn’t grow up frum. Most of my generation has become frum again, including my two sisters.
“My mother’s family left Germany in 1932 and moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1943, around Rosh Hashanah, when the Nazis came for the Jews of Denmark, my mother’s parents and brother were among the more than 7,000 Jews who were evacuated to Sweden. My mother was born in Sweden, and the family eventually moved to Israel.
“My father, Robert Davidovici, is a classical violinist. His parents raised him to focus on education and success. In the late 1960s, he got a scholarship to study at New York’s Juilliard School, where he studied alongside Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman. He went on to win international violin competitions. While on tour, he met my mother, and they married and moved to Texas, where he became concertmaster of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He still performs around the world.
“My mother was an interior designer, but mostly, she raised us. I’m one of four children: my older brother, who passed away from cancer in 2013; a twin sister, who is married with a houseful of chasidish children; and a younger sister, who is married and has lived in Eretz Yisrael for the last 20 years.
“Our family wasn’t religious, but Judaism was there. We had Shabbos dinner every Friday night, and we were very active in our shul. We drove there every week, except when my grandparents visited from Australia. They were shomer Shabbos and kashrus, so we would walk to shul with them.
“I went to Selwyn School, a British Montessori boarding school in Denton that had students from around the world, and then high school in Fort Worth. I didn’t really stick out as ‘the Jewish kid’ because I wasn’t frum. I was very social, a chevrahman, and I was always busy: I played cello in the Fort Worth Youth Orchestra (practicing for about three hours a day), I played soccer, ran cross country, was on student council and was very involved in BBYO, a Conservative youth organization.
“I didn’t think of myself as entrepreneurial, but I started working when I was 11, in the kitchen at school and selling chocolate bars door to door. I worked at a restaurant throughout high school, and I put myself through college by working as a waiter.
“After graduating high school in May 1994, I drove around the country for six months, through about 40 states, visiting national parks and staying with friends at college for a while to get to know myself.
“In December, I was in Rochester, New York, and called my mother from a pay phone to tell her I was ready for college. I drove for two days to Austin and spent six hours at the University of Texas’s registrar’s desk. I applied, got in, applied for loans, got them and registered for classes, all while standing at what looked like a bank window.
“That first Shabbos, I was invited to the Hillel. There was a Reform minyan, a Conservative minyan and an Orthodox minyan. My friends went to the Orthodox minyan, so I did too. Most of us became frum in college because of Rabbi Yehoshua Sauer and the Austin Jewish Heritage Foundation he founded and ran. That’s where I saw the beauty of the Friday night seudah, with a frum family singing around the Shabbos table together. It had an amazing impact.
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