In November 2007 I received the following email from a friend who had recently moved away (the subject line read “Blind Date?”):

Hi Elisheva,

 How are you?  So nice to see you last month.   Question: are you interested in being fixed up? My good friend’s brother is a 40 year old architect in sf.  Cute, nice, great family.  What do you think?

 All the best,  serena

Soon after replying in the affirmative, I received the next email:

Elizheva,

Greetings, I am Karen’s brother who is friends with Serena, who I understand to be your friend as well, and it seems as though the two of them are trying their hands at match making so it seems like the only polite thing to do is for us to get together and test their match making skills.  Other than the fact that you know Serena the only other thing I know about you is that you are a member of the tribe, might be a teacher and that I don’t know how to pronounce your name.  But I suppose that what first dates are for.

What do you think dinner?  Drink after work?  Let me know what your schedule looks like or if you have a questionnaire you would like me to fill out first.

Bob

It made me laugh. There were a few grammatical errors which I overlooked. And even though he might be a super nerd, it was worth at least meeting this brother-of-a-friend-architect-single-guy-in-San-Francisco.

So I replied:

Hello Bob–

I’m very pro-dinner, generally speaking.  Usually on the late side. And company is always better than eating alone.

So, yes, I’ll take you up on the dinner offer.

No questionnaire for you to fill out (though it sounds like you’ve had some … uh… ‘experience’) I’m sure I could think of some deeply important questions to ask online, but probably the most relevant would be when and where?

I am indeed a member of the tribe– and often I say about myself that I’m the Jewish Yahoo, in that I’m pretty connected to the “Jewish” part of my identity.

We can discuss this more in person (or on line).

I continued the reply, sharing how I knew our mutual friend, joking about the questionnaire—even asking a question (if you could meet one person in history, who would it be and why?) and finished the post…

As for my name, it’s pronounced like this:  Ellie-Sheh-Vuh (and rhymes with “whatevah”)

I look forward to meeting you, Bob.

We can tilt our glasses to the matchmakers, whether they are on to something or not.

-E
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