For their 25th wedding anniversary, Eli and Anthony Pugliese dreamed of a Jewish wedding ceremony in Jerusalem. There was at least one major obstacle: Getting friends and family there would be too pricey.
So Eli turned to a different family — her followers on the social media site Twitter. On Feb. 17, the couple, along with their son Evan, celebrated a quarter-century together with 40 guests, most of whom they were meeting for the first time.
A group of American and Israeli Jews who banded together on Twitter under the name “twitpacha” (Eli’s creation, a combination of Twitter and mishpacha, or family), who knew each other almost exclusively through interactions online, came to the Puglieses’ aid to help plan their “twedding” — from booking the venue to finding a dress and music for the reception.
“This [was] a total Internet endeavor,” said Eli.
The genesis of the Pittsburgh couple’s twedding occurred two years ago. Eli, a contracts manager, and Anthony, a teen-parent advocate, married after dating in college in a simple, civil ceremony. As Anthony was Catholic, there was no Jewish wedding option; the issue of conversion was long tabled. But after Anthony underwent a heart transplant in March 2009 because of a congenital heart defect, he finally felt ready to convert and became a Jew in April 2010.
While Anthony is still a relative novice on Facebook and Twitter, Eli is a master at navigating the social media landscape.
Twitter is a social network site on which people connect and send messages, or tweets, of up to 140 characters. Eli boasts of almost 1,100 followers, those who read her tweets. She’s tweeted more than 30,000 times, often mentioning her twitpacha — a network of about 500 Jews worldwide, she said.
But Eli didn’t expect her second wedding to grow into such a large affair. Initially, the couple courted Pittsburgh Rabbi Danny Schiff to conduct their small ceremony because he stood by the family during Anthony’s transplant and recovery. Schiff agreed — but only if the Puglieses created a full, vibrant Jewish wedding, complete with a ketubah, chuppah, witnesses and a celebratory dinner.
“I suddenly thought ‘Oh, my God.’ We’d thought this could be just a symbolic renewal,” said Eli. “But when Rabbi Schiff said, ‘I can’t wait to see you as a kallah,’ I realized I can’t just wear my [T-shirt] and a pair of sweats. I had to find a wedding dress.”
So Eli got to work, tweeting her followers for help to set up a wedding in just three months. And her twitpacha came through.
Rafi Goldmeier, an Australian who recently made aliyah, was a witness at the twedding, where he met the Puglieses for the first time. Goldmeier said the event showed that “even the Jewish community has globalized, in the sense of being a global village. Now, we are able to make a wedding on the other side of the world, in the Jewish homeland, in Jerusalem, with friends around.”
Chaviva Galatz, another twitpacha member, couldn’t attend — but she followed the live tweets written as the ceremony happened. A blogger and social media consultant, Galatz said, “Social media has created what I call a new community of Judaism. It allows cross-denominational involvement in all types of simchas.”
“So many people use Twitter because they’re so far apart,” Eli said. “In places where there’s just a little Jewish community, we can use Twitter to have a Jewish family.”
Eli Pugliese’s blog is www.eli4short.com.