This week’s Simcha Section (a.k.a. The New York Times Wedding Section) kept things simple in Jewy Jewland, sticking to what we know best: doctors, lawyers and financiers. There were, however, the occasional curveballs we assume were thrown into the mix to keep things interesting and to avoid Times’ readers thinking we are walking right into common Jewish stereotypes.
Let’s start with what we know and love, the doctors and the lawyers. Two physical therapists from my alma mater, Rebecca Talmud and Rory Spiegel, wed this past weekend in Westhampton, NY after meeting during their doctoral study. As usual, it’s these doctors parents that punctuated the announcement of their nuptials with elements of quirky and classic interest. The bride’s mother “is the director of the religious school (Really?! So is mine!) at Temple Beth Israel in Port Washington, N.Y.” and the groom’s father, “a sound editor, is an owner of 701 Sound in New York and was a winner of an Emmy in 2008 for his work on an episode of “The War,” by Ken Burns.
Like a true-blue JAP, I can never get a fair enough share of my Jewish medical and legal minds, so I was especially pleased when I came across some Ivy-league ones. I was, however, slightly giggly when it came to what I am sure was a lovely venue in person, “Beth Ilyssa Schwartz and Ramin Afshar Mohajer were married Saturday evening at the Please Touch Museum at Memorial Hall in Philadelphia.” If you didn’t at least smile while reading the words “Please Touch Museum,” I am questioning your judgment.
While I loved me some Jew(c)y professionals, I was even more excited to meet the less typically employed couples who celebrated their Jeweddings this past weekend. For example, when I read that Chelsea Mendelsohn of Roslyn, NY married Marc Miller, “a photographer and the style director at the Greenwich, Conn., franchise of Venture Photography, a British portrait specialist,” it felt like the first night of Hannukah. Reading that the groom’s mother works as a senior buyer for Restaurant Depot only had me thinking about whether she could score us at the Jewcy HQ a discount on an industrial sized box of strawberries or Chilean sea bass – must be the Jewess in me.
Finally, the couple who most tickled my fancy popped up in the news that’s fit to print – theater geeks! A fan of all things Broadway, Harry Potter and entertainment myself (keep your judgments at the door), I fell in love with Dina Kirschenbaum and her WASPy sounding beau, Mark Thomas. While I spent the first few minutes of getting to know them thinking about how lucky Mark was to be walking around with a name as secular as Matt Lauer’s, I was immediately drawn back into the couple’s darling proposal story. When the couple starred in a graduate school production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Mark used their curtain call as an opportunity to ask for her hand in front of a live audience – and in full Shakespearean costume.
Wishing all of our Jewcy couples a hearty Mazal!