I am from the UK, and Jeremy is a New Yorker. We met online six years ago (in fact, social media is increasingly serving as a fertile ground for international Jewish shidduchs). As I write, Jeremy is still awaiting his Spouse Visa to join me in the UK, but we’ll be – virtually – celebrating our first Rosh Hashanah as a married couple.
This is a second marriage for both Jeremy and I: we each have two children with our ex partners. Neither of our former spouses were Jewish: and perhaps it’s this rediscovery of a heimishe family life in middle age – 57 for me, and 55, for him – that is the most wonderful thing of all.
Jeremy is kind-hearted, handsome, funny and clever, and I’m sure I would have fallen in love with him regardless of his religious or cultural identity. But there’s no doubt his Jewishness adds the sweetness to the crunch of the new year apple. We “get” one another in ways my ex-husband and I never quite managed: that unique Jewish blend of humour and pain that runs through us like the pink writing on a stick of rock, forged through generations of persecution and flight. And how much sharper the pain and anxiety since that day in October 2023.
Mostly, however, it’s the humour that defines my relationship with Jeremy. We laugh a lot, even if the punchlines are old and I’m sure you could recite the joke by punchline alone: “Terrible food – and such small portions;” “I make a living”; and “is that all you people think about?” to name three. Jeremy told me these, as we drove around the abandoned Catskills resorts.
When I’m with Jeremy, I find myself recalling the East End Yiddish of my grandparents’ generation for the first time in decades. Jeremy had never heard the word “lobos” for example. I schlap around the A406 to pick him up at Heathrow while he defiantly schleps along the Van Wyck highway to collect me at JFK.
And while I’m a proud British citizen, I’ve loved my many visits to New York in the past five years. The coverage of the Columbia Palestine encampments was overblown and misleading in my view: New York is the most Jewish of cities. Frummers are everywhere, Israeli flags fly proudly and they generally outnumber that dismaying red, green and black, which is more than you can say for London. I even saw an IDF Superhero comic book poster displayed on a stall in Central Park.
While we are planning to set up married life in London for now, who knows what the future will hold? But for now, just to be together is enough.
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Marrying Miranda feels like coming home. There’s something about how Jews express affection for their family that’s a little more exuberant than others. Those of you who haven’t married outside the tribe don’t often realise that most cultures just shake hands and mumble quietly at their loved ones. But New York Jews had the “kissing post” at Ellis Island: it’s in our history.
Ellis Island, in New York harbour, served as the processing centre for the flood of immigrants who arrived between 1892 to 1954. Millions of Irish, Italians and Jews came through Ellis Island searching for safety, opportunity, and liberty. Inside the great hall facility is a simple wooden pillar, where Jewish immigrants would plotz (burst) with affection over their tatteleh (little boy) or mammeleh (little girl) or kallah (bride), reunited in the Free World at last. Outsiders didn’t understand how or why Jews arriving were so affectionate with their families, and so the “kissing post” was born.
While Miranda and I aren’t terribly religious, we are certainly shaped by our traditions, our families, and our habits. And that is why I am standing under a makeshift wooden chupah, in the middle of Central Park, thinking about the kissing post, about Jews being reunited from oceans apart, not just a literal ocean, but an ocean of time. Two immigrants, holding each other close, both with histories dating back to Jewish Latvia, and going back a few more hundred years, to Israel itself. Our marriage was a long time coming.
My first wife was Catholic by birth and habits, but atheist by belief system. She liked Jews and we often celebrated Jewish holidays, but it often felt, to me anyway, like she was doing me a favour. And in fact she was. Jewish holidays (Purim aside) just aren’t as much fun as Christian holidays with their toys and candy. “Oh hooray, chicken soup AGAIN!” But the joy isn’t really in the candy and toys, we realise as we grow up. The joy is in the family.
And while my marriage ceremony to Miranda wasn’t particularly Jewish, a week earlier we had gone to Judaica World in Crown Heights to purchase, well, some judaica. Before making it to Brooklyn’s top store for siddurim and tefillin, we got shanghaied into 770 for a tour.
770 Eastern Parkway is, of course, the international headquarters of the Lubavitcher movement of Chasidism, sometimes known as Chabad. Miranda had recently interviewed Chabad rabbi Bentzi Sudak for the JC. Seconds after she texted him to say where we were, we were led by a colleague into the world headquarters of the Chabad movement for an impromptu tour of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s former home and synagogue. (Who says we all know each other?) Our guide showed us the switchboard room where this particular branch of Orthodox Jews would keep in touch around the world. This was apt: long before Miranda and I were united over the internet and cellphone, some Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn were making sure other Jews could find each other electronically for spiritual growth and, we are certain, matrimony.
Back at Judaica World, the bearded man in tzitzit recommended a particular model of breaking glass. This model he suggested came with a convenient bag to contain the shards, and a box for presentation, superior to other breaking glasses. Of course we will need a ketubah, he explained, the Jewish ritual marriage contract. And so we ordered one.
Six weeks into our marriage, we don’t know if we will be leading more Jewish lives but what is past is prologue. For the past few years I’ve been the cook at her dad’s house in Essex for Pesach – and I look forward to this continuing. I’m happy and proud to say that our participation in Jewish holidays and an early gift for her new flat was a chanukiah shaped like a banana – a banorah, if you will. Has our belief system changed? Not really. We’re still relatively sceptical that universal destiny is shaped by any intelligence, but we plan on living our lives together, shaped by the thousands of years of Jewish tradition.
Miranda and Jeremy celebrated their marriage with the help of weddingpackagesnyc.com who specialise in arranging New York weddings for couples from the UK
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