How We Met
It began on a dock by a river.
The life of a Jewish single man looking for a Jewish single woman is not always easy.
Back in the mid 2000s, my dating life was pretty aimless—a series of half-hearted online profiles and less-than-exciting first dates.
But in the fall of 2008, my luck was about to change.
One of my favorite parts of the Jewish new year is a little service called Tashlich. People far smarter than myself—including my amazing rabbi cousin Jordie Gerson whose substack you should already be reading—can tell you more about why this ritual is important in the Jewish calendar. At my hometown synagogue, after Rosh Hashanah services everyone goes down to a specific dock at Prescott Park with a bag of stale bread and casts their sins into the Piscataqua River. Then the rabbi leads a short little service. It's a wonderful tradition, particularly when it’s just past noon on a beautiful New England autumn afternoon and the smells of neighborhood restaurants are making their presence known.
On this particular day, at the end of the service the rabbi said “now turn to someone you don't know and introduce yourself.” I turned and saw this spunky brunette in purple-tinted glasses. She quickly introduced the woman next to her as her sister (for a split second I thought that I had just fallen for one half of an adorable lesbian couple). I quickly introduced the woman next to me as my sister (we were also adorable, though not a couple).
Needless to say, things took off and worked out with that spunky brunette with purple-tinted glasses. I touch on this day briefly in the book on 10/18/21. If you don’t yet have a copy (and why wouldn’t you?), we can fix that. And if you want to give your loved one something extra special this year, your copy will have a unique poem in the inscription written just for them.
♥️
Adam