They’ve Got A Nit To Pick

In what Harel calls the “busy season” for nits, her LiceBusters staff carefully plucks the bugs from a young client’s hair.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Every Rosh HaShanah, as Dalya Harel welcomes friends and relatives from abroad into her home from abroad, she eagerly awaits the arrival of some other New Year favorites — apples, honey and head lice..

“It’s a very busy season,” she said. “I had guests from Israel, and I cannot tell you what they brought me.”

But these guests couldn’t have chosen a better place for their High Holy Days visit. Harel, the maven behind Lice Busters NYC, runs a thriving delousing business through her home in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where she says she receives customers from all over the country.

The crowded nature of local camps and schools, both public and private, make New York a convenient city for lice spread, according to Harel, though she says that infestations are even more prevalent in Europe and Israel, where schools don’t check students. Harel first decided to start her company in 1995, shortly after the two oldest of her nine children came home from school with lice.

“They came home and I couldn’t go to sleep at night,” she said. “You can’t sleep at night if your kids have nits in their hair.”

Harel isn’t the only leader in Brooklyn’s lice-slaying business. Her colleagues — other Orthodox women — offer equally popular delousing services throughout the densely populated borough. Some of these women include Susan Sherman at LiceBGoners, Adie Horowitz of LiCenDers and Abigail Rosenfeld, the “Lice Lady of Brooklyn.” Others include Lice Be Gone in northern New Jersey and Licebeaters, with locations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Florida.

“There’s work for everybody,” Harel said.  Continue reading…