“Love in the Time of Corona”
My daughter Nina was proposed to on bended knee by her beloved Amit in a beautiful field of fall flowers on Long Island on September 13, 2019. They had met in the iconic millennial way on JSwipe exactly a year before. In May 2018, Nina, a lone soldier serving in Israel as a new citizen, was on a short vacation in New York for her brother's wedding. She had turned on the app which was set to global, and matched with Amit whose app was set only to NYC. Amit was living on the upper west side and working in NYC. Coincidentally they shared a common close friend so Nina felt comfortable meeting him. Only problem was, she was leaving the next day back to Israel. They couldn’t meet but began an intense online conversation.
They met in person four months later while Amit visited his family for Sukkot in Israel, and it became clear this was serious. And so Nina returned home to New York after her army service and the requisite month-long Thailand adventure.
Fast forward to a September engagement in New York and planning began for a March 23, 2020 wedding in Israel.
Five hundred guests were invited from all over the world including the United States, South Africa, England, Holland, Canada, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Many responded that they would be coming from abroad to join the celebration.
Then, with the outbreak of coronavirus, some started to balk at the idea of traveling. This devolved day by day, hour by hour, with announcements made globally about travel restrictions. Until the week before the wedding, when it became clear that venues would close and gatherings were restricted to a hundred people. And then to only ten people.
How does a wedding recover when the guest list is downgraded from 350 to 10? Without the presence of elderly at-risk grandparents, the bride's siblings and closest family, and best friends?
Well, it can and it did!
Nina & Amit rose to the occasion deciding to proceed rather than delay. Plans were canceled and miraculously remade literally overnight with only the four parents, the groom's siblings, paternal grandmother, uncle, rabbi, photographer, and solo klezmer musician included in the minyan.
The ceremony was held - Mazal Tov!!! The bride immersed in the mikva, legal religious paperwork for the rabbinate was completed, a chuppah was acquired and our kippot from NY distributed with the original date imprinted. Although so many were missed, the wedding was intimate, meaningful and beautiful.
Although I have not yet made aliya, my daughter has been living my dream and we are proud and support her and Amit in every choice and venture. Their determination and desire have seen them through the dramatic wedding changes and may they continue from strength to strength. They have remained calm and positive and turned lemons into limonana!
May we all stay healthy and positive and get through all the challenges we will face successfully. Amen!
By: Miriam Bradman Abrahams
