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

And charmingly, his response to the “questionnaire” began:

So if you weren’t free I would have to choose Albert Einstein as my dinner companion. . . .

Our first date “didn’t happen.” After spending an evening in a bar thinking I might be stood up, I left thinking that he’d better have a good apology or excuse.

In my version of the story, he stood me up. In his retelling, there was a miscommunication about the date and he believed it to be the following Sunday. On Monday I received a very sweet, very apologetic voice mail (and email), saying that if he hadn’t blown it, he would still like to get together.

An older friend, twice married, once told me that if one paid good attention in the first three dates, you could learn everything you needed to know about a person. I’ve tried to take that advice and to be objective in my dating, taking a person for how he presents himself and listening closely to what he says and how, rather than trying to figure out if he is the person whom I want him to be. It helps me to stay very present in conversations.

We met shortly after Hanukkah, and this was the beginning. While I don’t remember everything we talked about, I remember Bob talking about his family on our first date—his parents, his sister, his nieces and nephew. He told me about his parents moving from the house he grew up in, into a condo that he designed. He may have talked about Jewish Youth Group.  I was looking for someone who had good familial relations. I took this as a good sign.

Another jump in time:

On our way home from sharing Thanksgiving 2008 with his family, we decided to move in together. I remember seeing him soon after he’d told his parents the news.

“Were they excited?” I asked.

He hesitated. And started to say, “well… they are kind of traditional…”

“. . .and they’d be more excited if we were engaged,” I finished his unspoken report back. And I continued, somewhat self-righteously (I now realize) saying, “I don’t care much about getting married. That’s really not so important to me. I’m more interested in a good relationship. I think they’ll just have to accept that.”

And that was all we said to each other about a wedding. Or marriage.

However, we did move in together and we did muse about the future names and Jewish education of our unborn children; we did joked growing old together. We enjoyed cohabiting and had no intentions of breaking up.

So one Shabbat afternoon I came home from visiting with some friends, planning to change clothes so we could go to dinner and a movie. Bob was sitting on the couch doing something with his computer as I walked into the living/ dining room. “Hi” I said, as I whisked by, thinking I was on my way to the bathroom. I noticed an envelope on the table hand-addressed to me.

I picked it up and said aloud, “It’s a letter for me. From you!” Then I sat on the couch, next to my boyfriend, and began to read:

My dearest e,

This is a long overdue response to the beautiful letter you sent me months ago. Writing to you like this feels like some ancient ritual; familiar, seemingly simple, yet such a monumental act when actually carried out. I am basically writing to tell you that I love you. . . .

It made me cry. And laugh. I sat beside him on the couch, so filled with the sweetness of the letter.

. . . I think it is appropriate that our first date was at “Lucky Lounge.” I think back to how life changing that night was for me. I think about our San Francisco adventure in those early days and how we have relatively so little behind us and so much ahead. This of the adventures we will have!

So, Elizheva, queen of the desert, with all of that said saving so much more for a rainy day, the next time we are alone, make sure to ask me about your gift. I have something for you that I could not send with this letter.

Yours always – b

I looked at him, tears rolling down my cheeks, and asked, “you mean I get this letter and a gift?!” (I didn’t quite get what was about to happen.) He nodded. And then, in what seemed like a slow motion act, he reached into the lower pocket of his cargo pants & pulled out a white box. I remember observing and thinking, also in slow motion, “Bob is pulling out a little box from his pocket. Bob is opening the box. Wait… there’s a bag in there and it’s sparkling… is that a ring? Bob is handing a ring to me….”

He sat beside me on the couch, casually handing me a sparkly diamond ring and asked me to marry him. I was somewhat shocked. In fact, I was not quite sure what to say, so I asked, “Aren’t you supposed to get down on your knee to ask me that?” “Do you want me to?” “Yes,” I replied, realizing that I could say the word.

So he got on his knee, placed the ring on my finger, and repeated the question. I leaned over, gave him a big hug, and cried some more. He joined me on the couch and asked, “I think I know the answer, but do you have a word to go with it?”

In my mind, one voice was actually kvetching already with “I don’t want to go through all the hassle of planning a wedding….” And another voice said clearly, ”Elizheva, that is not the right answer. The answer is….”

“YES!” I said.

I was stunned. And delighted. And learned more about the ring (formerly his grandmother’s), and his plans, and the letter he’d mailed from his office three days earlier, wondering when it would arrive and who might be in our home when I saw it.

Now, seven months, 17-site-visits, a few excel spread sheets, a few shopping days, and a ring design later, we are happily engaged, planning our Northern California wedding for next summer. I really look forward to sharing the fun and foibles of planning our wedding with others!

One night I was having frozen yogurt with my friend, and he texted her from his family trip to Israel.  It was of a picture of a Doritos bag in Hebrew. I think I fell in lust right then– a man who appreciates all that is Israel!  At the time, I had just graduated from college and was interning at home before moving to Israel for a year.

Once Matt returned from his trip, my friend and I had a chance to hang out with him again, and once my friend went back to college, Matt and I had an opportunity to hang out alone. I had only three nights until I flew to Israel for the year,  but they were most definitely three of the most romantically exciting nights of my life.  We talked for hours on the beach every night.  We learned that we grew up going to the same synagogue, our parents have known each other for years, and our homes were within a mile of each other. But most importantly, our first kiss was the most electrically charged kiss  ever.  It probably helped that it was in the ocean under a full moon.   Matt and I had so much in common, it was just too good to be true.   I left for Israel the next morning, and Matt went back to Carnegie Mellon.  After three months and a couple of $500 phone bills, we decided a long distance relationship wasn’t ideal for either of us.

One year later, in September of 2006, we both ended up in New York City. Matt wasn’t ready to commit, and I was happy dating around.  I just couldn’t deal with seeing him occasionally while dating other people–the spark we had was too intense for a casual relationship.  In November, I told him it had to be all or nothing.  It took him exactly five days to realize he couldn’t live without me.  We’ve been together ever since.

The Proposal!

On February 23, 2009, my boss sent me in a car service to deliver books to an investor.  It seemed the car was headed uptown, and not to Jersey as planned.  I was being paid to sit there, so I sat.  The car stopped at Columbus Circle and the driver told me to get out. “Should I leave my books?” I asked.  “Sure,” he said.

Matt was standing there, at the site of our first date in New York, on bended knee.  He held out the ring and asked me to marry him! After making sure the ring was for me, I grabbed it and jumped for joy.  Then I told him I had to get back to work and meet an investor.  Luckily, my boss was in on the hoax, and instead we were flying home to our families in Boca (he packed for me–eek!) But first he wanted to have lunch in the Mandarin Oriental hotel nearby. When we got to the reaturant, all of our friend were there to celebrate with us.  It was the most wonderful day of my life.

]]> http://www.jewishweddingnetwork.com/thanks-for-the-ring-but-i-have-to-get-back-to-work/feed 5 http://www.jewishweddingnetwork.com/touchdown http://www.jewishweddingnetwork.com/touchdown#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:38:46 +0000 Bevin M. http://www.jewishweddingnetwork.com/?p=3682 C-A-N-E-S, CANES! My future hubby and I met at the University of Miami; in particular, at a football game at the legendary Orange Bowl (may she rest in peace). It was our freshman year in college and while the sparks between us were not immediately electrifying (not every relationship can begin in slow motion with wind whipped hair), we had two things in common: we had the same group of friends and we were huge Miami football fans.

My future hubby and I in college.

Two years and many unfulfilling relationships later, we began spending more time together thanks to a mutual friend.  After two months of being “just friends,” we finally expressed our interest and feelings for each other on a hammock looking up at the night sky. Ok, collective “Awww.” Yes, we were kind of romantic back in the day, but to be honest we are just a normal couple with two adorable cats (our kids for the time being), Gotham and Shadow.

Then an arbitrary day came in November 2007. We had tickets to a show in Downtown Miami and afterwards, while stuck in traffic, my future hubby asked if we could go to the infamous South Beach to see the Miami skyline. Of course, being a doctoral graduate student in clinical psychology, I wanted nothing more than to go home and get sleep before seeing eight clients the next day. Oh, and did I mention, it was pouring! Not the drizzle of Seattle (where my future hubby grew up) but the monsoons of South Florida! Luckily for me, he would not take no for answer and drove out to the beach.

Giving me a piggyback ride to the shore, he set me down. I turned and stared at the beautiful skyline of Miami when he grabbed my hand. I turned around to see he was on one knee, in the wet sand, in the rain, and asking me to marry him! My response was what any girl would say in this situation; “Is this for real? No seriously, is this for real?”  To which he replied, “You can say no if you want too, but, I didn’t prepare for that.” After realizing this was in fact, for real, I accepted with tears streaming down my face.  And the rest is history.

My amazing engagement ring!

After allowing the initial shock to set in for a couple of days, we began the long, two year process of planning our wedding, which is the ultimate feat! We are attempting to create a DIY Winter Wonderland on a December evening in Miami, Florida! Oy vey. While my fiancé is not Jewish, he is open to including most of the essential components of a Jewish wedding (much to my Jewish mother’s delight!). We are getting hitched under a chuppah that we are constructing ourselves (oy), having a ketabuh signing ceremony, and a mostly Jewish ceremony.  We want our guests who are not Jewish (my fiancé’s family and most of our friends) to learn about and share in the Jewish culture and traditions.  Our wedding date is also the first night of Hanukkah so are planning on including a menorah lighting ceremony during the reception! Maybe we should add some potato latkas and applesauce. Just a thought!

Rick and I last Thanksgiving.
Getting him to smile for the camera is on our wedding to-do list.

Rick and I first met back when we were in college, about nine years ago. We both debated for our respective universities and were competing against each other at a debate tournament. “Was there a spark then? Could you see the chemistry?” people often ask, hoping for an exciting story. There was, in fact, none of that. We debated, he and his partner won, and we went our separate ways.

Three years later, our paths crossed again when we both taught at a summer debate workshop for high school students at my alma matter. Another year passed before we started dating.

By then, the chemistry was obvious. He was funny. He was handsome. He was smart. He cooked. But he wasn’t Jewish. I’d always been one of just a handful of Jews in my class until college, though, so I was used to having to explain my customs and holidays.

A year after we started dating, he enrolled in a Ph.D. program some seven-plus hours from the apartment we shared in Brooklyn, and I followed him to Buffalo, New York. We knew we wanted the same things for our future, but decided to table the discussion on the whens and hows of the future until closer to the time he completed his Ph.D. program.

We re-kindled that discussion about a year ago after a three-year hiatus. Most of our conversations started with how we’d raise our children. Despite being raised Baptist, Rick didn’t identify with a religion and was perfectly happy to raise them Jewish. He liked the sermons he had heard when he went with me to services during the High Holidays. He liked the Jewish emphasis on tikkun olam, the concept of healing the world.

And in the spring, when I took Rick to his first Jewish—or, to be more precise, Jewish/Catholic—wedding, he liked the Jewish elements of that, too. That weekend and in the weeks that followed, I talked constantly about the wedding and my excitement for the couple, two friends I’d known even before they had begun dating seven years earlier. I had become a total cliché, yet I had no expectations for a proposal. Rick’s romantic in his own ways, but I couldn’t really see him proposing. In the back of my mind, I think I’d imagined that I would do the asking.

While eating sushi a few weeks later, we talked about the wedding and our own future. Somewhere in that moment, we decided that we, too, were ready to get married. “And we can have a Jewish wedding,” he said, knowing how important this was to me and to my family. The certainty in his voice was better than a proposal.

Most people would have immediately called their parents and friends to share news. But Rick insisted we couldn’t just tell our parents over the phone when we were going to see them in Texas just a couple of weeks later. And though I’m not good at keeping secrets, I came to see his point. After all, we’d made them wait five years. What were a few more weeks? In the interim, I started looking at rings and snuck peaks at dresses and flowers and possible venues, quietly bookmarking the ones I liked.

The ring this picky bride-to-be finally picked out after a five-week search that spanned two states and the Web.

At the end of May, we went to Texas to visit our respective families, first his in Dallas, then mine in Houston. After telling his family, I couldn’t wait any longer to share the news with mine. I called them the next morning, one-by-one. When we got to Houston two days later, the wedding planning began and we (finally!) found the perfect ring. Now, with three-and-a-half months to go until the big day, our lives seem to be governed, in part, by a growing series of check lists: Dress? Check. Rabbi? Check. Ketubah? Working on it.

Sometimes they’re big and sometimes they’re little, with a sprinkling of diamonds all around, or just the one important one in the center. Our Knight in Shining Armor brings it to us upon bended knee, after riding day and night across many lands on his white horse, storming castle walls and braving ogres and giants to serenade us with songs about how much he loves us.  He even swims across deeps moats–which is hard when you’re wearing all that armor! He sweeps us off our feet and we ride off into the sunset, happily ever after.

However, my now-fiancé doesn’t know how to ride a horse, and he certainly can’t swim despite having grown up in Florida. So I took the reigns of my own great steed, and like a true Type A personality, I ended up doing the popping and questioning myself.  Yes, I proposed to my boyfriend first. He was initially a little taken back and flustered, but he did say “Yes.”  There was no epic song or moat. There wasn’t even a ring. I just said “We’re going to get married!” and that was that.

Me and my fiancé Matthew.
I promise his arm isn’t freakishly long! I was just messing with the sleeve of his sweater.

Matthew and I met senior year in our high school photography class. I just wanted to be this kid’s friend, but the more we hung out at school, the more in like-like I found myself to be with him. So one day, in my best penmanship, I wrote him a note with many a comma splice and run on sentence telling him how I felt. I invited him over to my house to watch movies and I told him in true overbearing and I’m-the-boss fashion, “We’re going to go out.”

I’m lucky enough to have a great guy who’s willing to let me take the driver’s seat, and to let me be the main planner and do-er. I’m an ambitious kind of gal and I like to just do stuff. My fiancé Matthew is more passive and laid back. Whoever said “opposites attract” couldn’t have been more right. Some of my friends can’t even understand how we’re together–we’re just that different.

We’re at this point now, so I’d say that this type of dynamic has worked A-OK for us. Not only are we making a commitment to spend the rest of our lives together, but Matthew, who is not Jewish, is also making the commitment to convert and to join the Jewish people. Like any type of relationship, whether it be with a person here on earth or with G-d, you have to take it one step at a time.

Matthew and I are both full-time students who also work full-time, so life is coming at us fast. With the cost of school on the rise, we only have $3,000 to plan a wedding with nearly 100 guests, if not more than. 90% of our wedding is going to be DIY and handmade, and the other 10% is going to utilize local and independent artists and craftspeople. We have a little over a year to put together a wonderful and meaningful wedding that’s both eco-friendly and budget-friendly. Next October can’t come soon enough!

PS- Matthew did eventually propose to me– ring and all during a James Bond movie, but I think that was due mostly to societal influence and pressure from his family.

The rumors have been swirling for months that Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump was engaged to her Jewish boyfriend, NY Observer owner Jared Kushner.  Ivanka made the news official this morning when she announced her engagement on Twitter! Word has it that Trump has been going through the process of converting to Judaism and has been studying with Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  We wish the couple a hearty ‘Mazel Tov’ and can’t wait to hear more about the upcoming wedding!

After commenting back and forth a bit, Chanan and I discovered that we actually grew up close to each other in Milwaukee, and that both of us are Orthodox Jews who have Secular extended family. Commenting lead to e-mails and then to chat sessions, and after a month of on and off communication Chanan suggested we look into meeting through a proper shidduch. Shidduch dating is a system of dating in the orthodox community that works through an intermediary called a shadchan–in other words, a matchmaker. When a couple agrees to go out on a shidduch, it is with the intent to see whether they are compatible for marriage.

Most shidduch matches are suggested by mutual friends or family members, and before the couple agrees to go out both sides generally do extensive research on the other. Chanan and I weren’t exactly your standard shidduch match since we just “bumped” into each other in the blogosphere. I was initially apprehensive about taking such a big step to start dating for marriage, especially because of our unconventional situation.

Due to various factors, including having to wait for our Dor Yeshorim test results, it took almost three months for us to meet in person. We met a few times, then had an almost three month break until we met again. After five months of communicating and nine dates, Chanan asked me to marry him.

In keeping with Lubavitch tradition, we visited the Ohel–the resting place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (to request blessings and pray)  before formally announcing our engagement.  That night we had a L’Chaim–an engagement party, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. At the L’Chaim there were many different customs formalizing our engagement:

The Kinyan: where both Chanan and I lifted a gartel in the air
creating a legal obligation to go through with the marriage

Many people stayed late into the night. The men had a chassidic farbrengen while the women socialized. It was an exhausting yet amazing day! I heard the food was delicious :)

Me and my fiancé in college, circa 2005.

My freshman year of college was a whirlwind of emotions, homesickness, new friends, and plenty of fun.  In November of my Sophomore year, I was introduced to a tall, handsome boy at his fraternity house. He was easy to talk to and made me laugh.  He asked for my phone number and called later that night. We ended up spending more and more time together.  By the following summer, we were inseparable.  Our love for obscure movie lines, jam bands, poker and cereal made us feel like two puzzle pieces fitting together. We laughed and laughed for hours on end and craved each others attention for the next 3 years. After I graduated college, I made the decision to move back to Philadelphia though, and after a few months the distance relationship took its toll and we ended our relationship.  Ten months later, Josh realized this wasn’t our best choice.  He flew up to Philadelphia and reestablished what we both knew all along – that we were meant to be together. By September 2007, Josh was living in the city of brotherly love.

Although we had been discussing marriage for a long time, we decided that owning a home was more important. We found a perfect 3 bedroom, 2 ½ bath townhouse in a suburb of Philadelphia, and the thought of engagement was pushed aside. On November 6th, 2008, we were ecstatic to make settlement on our brand new home.  With the whole process taking less then an hour, I felt inspired to go buy a refrigerator. Josh insisted we go see the new house, even if only for a few minutes.  He was extremely persistent and I finally agreed. We drove over to our brand new home and stood outside the front door smiling with anticipation. While I fumbled through my bag for the keys, Josh told me how much he loved me. I nodded and turned to find him on one knee.  I immediately broke into tears as he asked me to marry him (among several other beautiful statements, none of which I remember).  He pulled out the most beautiful ring and I screamed YES!! Josh picked me up and carried me into our new house. We celebrated with champagne and called everyone we knew. It was my ideal proposal.  Almost immediately the wedding plans began.

I joined JDate in 2003, just out of college. I lived with 2 non-Jewish roommates, had mostly non-Jewish friends, yet desperately wanted to meet my “bashert” who, ideally, would be Jewish. I did the whole “not paying but looking” thing for a good long time (okay, a year), then decided to pay for 2 months. A measly 2 months. In that 2 months, I met and “met” loads of guys who just were… well… eh. Most still lived at home with their parents, and I wanted nothing to do with that.

Literally the day that I cancelled my paid account, I got a message from this “AdamRo777″ guy. He looked really familiar. The subject of his message? “You look familiar.” He went to the same college that I did, at the same time that I did.  And at a school as small as Bradley University, I can tell you that the pool of Jews was really quite small. It turned out, after days (okay, weeks) of talking online and over the phone we discovered that we knew LOADS of people in common. We set a date to go out on December 17, 2004.

That night we went out to dinner, laughed, ate, talked about people neither of us had seen in years… and next thing we know, it’s two-and-a-half years later and we’ve made the decision to move in together!

Fast forward: July 2008.
On July 10, Adam sent me an email that said “Matt (a friend) and his girlfriend are joining us for sushi tomorrow night, so I got us a tea room.” I didn’t think anything of it. That day, Adam went to a Cubs game with work, and called on his way home to say that Matt had gotten way too drunk to come to dinner, but the restaurant was going to charge us $20 to cancel the tea room reservation, so why don’t we just use it? Still, I didn’t think anything of it.

When we got to the sushi place, we were led to the very last tea room, and it was already set with beautiful plates, chopsticks on tiny pink paper cranes, and water in wine glasses. I still thought nothing of it, and assumed that this was what they were doing in tea rooms now.

We had a great dinner (as always), but I noticed that Adam was very anxious and not himself. He blamed it on not eating enough during the day and having a few too many at the game. After dinner, the maitre ‘d came in with a HUGE platter of fruit and cheesecake and said that it was a thank-you to us for being such loyal customers for 3 years (Did I mention we go there every Friday?). There was a whole pineapple on the plate, and the pineapple had a handle on it. Adam opened it up, and my ring was inside!! He got down on one knee, and said “I love you, will you marry me?” I of course started crying and said “yes!” The host came back in with a huge bouquet of gladiolas for me, and the whole restaurant applauded when we left.

I came to find out that night that Adam had been in cahoots with my dad, a jeweler, for months. He had my dad help pick out a diamond, and together they designed and made my ring. My mom had known for months too! Adam later told me that when he had “gone to the bathroom” during dinner he was really going over details with the sushi chef, our waitress, and host.  I later realized that the waitress had come by our table a few too many times during dinner… and the sushi chef did smile really big when we walked in.

That’s us! (We were way overdressed – people were wearing jorts!)

The wedding was a total culture shock, but it must have inspired something. On the way home, as we pulled the car in front of of our newly rented house, my fiance pulled this out:

Taken a few minutes after he proposed… my favorite part is that my seatbelt was on the entire time. Safety first!

Afterward, we celebrated with my fiance’s family and some friends. The celebration included wine, matzo balls and my personal favorite, hard boiled eggs (I always call dibs on Elijah’s).

How did two Jews find each other in Louisiana? We were two out of a handful at our huge university and were both on the board of the newly formed Hillel – I was President, he was Secretary. The commentary he inserted into the minutes from our first board meeting was one of the funniest things I’ve ever read and I knew then that I was interested in him.

After a brief period of not seeing each other when Hurricane Katrina shut down our school for two weeks and we both went to our respective hometowns to help at shelters, I received a text message – “Will you go to Kol Nidre with me?”

Now here we are 3 years later, planning our wedding for late June. Stay tuned for updates including the frustrations of explaining a Jewish wedding to Cajuns – especially our vendors, who seem to think I am mistaken when I tell them our wedding is being held on a Sunday!