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Friday January 25, 2008

When Eyal met Beth

by stacey palevsky
staff writer

This week, j. introduces a new Celebrations feature: Unions. Using the Four Questions and the Victorian wedding prescription of “something old/something new …” as a point of departure, Unions takes a look at the various weddings, commitment ceremonies, civil unions or other festivities held to mark the bringing together of two Bay Area Jews.

Our first couple are Berkeley residents Eyal and Beth Zilberman.

Eyal and Beth Zilberman met in an African politics class at U.C. Davis. Throughout the semester, they talked before and after class. But it wasn’t until the last day of class that Beth reached over Eyal’s desk, grabbed his notebook and wrote down her phone number.

Then, “on the way out of class Eyal asked if I needed a ride home,” she recalled. “Though I had seen my roommate Lisa outside, who had been waiting to give me a ride, I rudely blew her off to get a ride home from Eyal. She says she doesn’t hold it against me.”

The pair could have met more than a decade earlier, when they both were students at Tehiyah Jewish Day School in El Cerrito. But because Eyal was a few years older (he is 27 and she is 23), their paths didn’t cross until college.

They were married Sept. 30, 2007 at Fogarty Winery in Woodside. We asked the bride to share a bit about her wedding.

Something old: “Eyal’s and my wedding was very, very Reform. We loved the tradition of breaking the glass, but I thought it was unfair that the guy got to have all of the fun so I too broke a glass. Eyal’s glass had his grandfather’s handkerchief wrapped around it and my glass was wrapped in one of my grandmother’s blouses. Both his grandfather and my grandmother passed away many years ago.”

Something new: “Something that we did new for the wedding was take dance classes. Our wedding was in September so we figured that ‘September’ by Earth, Wind and Fire was appropriate. We took cha-cha classes which is something neither of us had done and now we want to start taking salsa classes.”

Something borrowed: “My shoes got lost amid the craziness of preparing to walk down the aisle. So I went down the aisle barefoot (which was fine because it was on grass). As I mentioned earlier I was going to break a glass as well, so when it came time to do that, I gave my mom the ‘Oh crap’ look, to which she responded by giving me her shoe, hence, something borrowed.”

Something Jew(ish): “Rabbi Tsipi Gabai, the rabbi who taught us both at Tehiyah and performed Eyal’s bar mitzvah, married us.”

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