Admittedly, a hospital fund-raiser isn’t your average venue for a singles mixer. And Toby Adelman readily confesses that she’s no professional matchmaker.
But the idea of pairing two worthy — albeit completely unrelated — causes was just too tempting for the newly appointed board member of Mount Zion hospital auxiliary.
Tapped to drum-up a crowd for the auxiliary’s Nov. 16 “Rx: Laughter 2002” benefit show, Adelman got creative. She decided to invite about 100 of her single friends to mingle and shmooze in the lobby after the event at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco.
“I just invited all my friends to bring their friends for a good cause,” says the 44-year-old Adelman. She encouraged her friends to “come, enjoy the show and stay afterwards.”
And if any sparks fly during the evening, all the better. “I think it’s always nicer to meet someone through a friend, when you have a natural connection,” she says.
While matchmaking is no career calling, Adelman is developing something of a track record when it comes to staging big gatherings for unmarrieds.
Ten years ago, Adelman threw a sushi party for 100 people to prove to her single Jewish girlfriends that there were plenty of marriageable Jewish men in San Francisco. Called an “I told you so” party, the February 1992 gathering led to seven follow-up dates and one marriage.
“I like introducing couples,” she admits.
At the time, she had a definite surplus of eligible men in her life: She’d been contacted by 49 of them after placing her first-ever personal ad in the Jewish Bulletin.
“I was overwhelmed by the response,” said Adelman, who wound up dating 48 men over the next couple of months. “They were all so wonderful,” she says Adelman, rattling off the doctors, lawyers and other interesting men she met.
“I still have the letters from the men,” says Adelman, who described herself, accurately, as a “Jewish potato farmer’s daughter” in the ad. “It was on a dare from my sister,” said the Maine-reared Adelman, who was so touched by the heartfelt responses that “I felt compelled to meet them all.”
Well, almost all. She opted to forgo a date with the 49th man because he “told me he was into S-and-M and I was too intimidated to meet him.”
Though none of her dates led to any long-term relationships, Adelman was so impressed by the steady stream of men she met that she decided to introduce her Jewish girlfriends to them en masse.
“It was a wonderful chapter in my singles history,” said Adelman, who made aliyah in Israel in 1994, married an Israeli the following year and became a mom. She returned to the Bay Area in 1997 with her daughter, who is now 6, and has since gotten divorced.
Now living in San Rafael, Adelman is a nurse supervisor at the S.F.-based Institute on Aging.
In August, she became a member of the Mount Zion auxiliary, which led to her involvement in the Nov. 16 event. The show, featuring comedians Rene Hicks, Will Durst and other Bay Area talent, will benefit the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. Jointly sponsored by the auxiliaries of Mount Zion and UCSF Medical Center, the event also honors Dr. John Kerner, former chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Mount Zion.
UCSF spokeswoman Eve Harris applauded Adelman’s tack for attracting a crowd. “There’s always been the opportunity for overlap for doing good,” she said. “I think that’s very clever of her.”
Says Adelman: “I like introducing couples. I have introduced four couples who got married, including my sister.
“Even if one couple comes from it, it’s a mitzvah.”
Adelman already is planning another mixer linked to a “Dinner a la Heart” fund-raiser in February for the aging institute. She hopes to encourage people to take out elders along with, once again, matching singles.
Her multi-task approach is “a way of giving back to the community,” she says. “I think people of my generation are interested in meeting over something that’s important to them.”