Greg Newmark and Elena Aronson met three and a half years ago at “Second Saturday,” a monthly get-together for Jewish singles at The Cellar in San Francisco.
Elena, doing duty as a volunteer bartender, was talking to one of Greg’s friends. But as soon as Greg heard Elena was a U.C. Berkeley graduate student — like he was — he gently shoved his friend out of the way so he could talk to her.
“I thought he was obnoxious,” Elena joked, “and he thought we’d date. We were both right.
“We love telling people that we met in a bar,” she continued. “Because it is so completely out of character for both of us. We hardly go to bars.”
They later figured out their paths had crossed earlier, in the spring of 2000 — in Jerusalem.
“We lived in Israel at the same time and we figured out were even in the same room at the same time at least once, but we had never met,” Elena said.
The couple married Nov. 16, 2008, in Chicago, where Elena grew up. Elena, 31, and Greg, 34, now live in Berkeley.
Something old(school): Their “pre-game warm up,” traditionally known as a tisch and a kabbalat panim, was gender split, with the men drinking scotch and singing upstairs and the women greeting the bride and their mothers downstairs.
“It gave us an additional opportunity to bond with our friends and family,” Greg said. “The men danced me down to meet my beautiful bride.”
Something new: Their ketubah was hand made by Elena’s cousin. He lives in Israel and is a “bad-boy ba’al teshuva” who makes a motorcycle pilgrimage to Rebbe Nachman’s birthplace or grave in Ukraine each year. He is also a talented sofer (transcriber). “We loved that he made our ketubah with the same care he puts into writing torahs,” Greg said.
Something borrowed: Elena and Greg borrowed a small tablecloth that was embroidered by Greg’s great grandmother and used it to cover the little table under the chuppah where the kiddush cups rested. Greg’s parents used the same cloth at their wedding in the 1960s.
Something Jew(ish): Before the wedding, the bride and groom each immersed in a mikvah.
Greg wanted to do his dunk in Lake Michigan (they got married in downtown Chicago), but because November is cold (aside from the problem of skinny dipping at a very public lakefront), he went to the same facility Elena had used a few days before. His best man and another close friend were his mikvah attendants. Elena went with her sister, who was also her maid of honor.
“We both wanted to experience a physical sense of a changing life stage,” Greg said.