This is probably the most bizarre engagement story you’ll ever hear, but if you’ve read the rest of my blog you know by now that bizarre unprecedented things are bound to occur whenever I’m part of the picture. Since my husband says the same thing about himself, the story becomes a typical part of two people with weird - not good or bad, just plain weird- luck.
The story starts with my visit to Israel. That in itself was a weird story. There was really no reason why I came to Israel, it was just basically on a whim. My brother had just built on a room to his house and every day for about a month would try to convince me to come. My response was always the same “No.” I had just finished a temporary job and had a few job options open and so my brother’s line of logic was: The longer you stay in LA the harder it will be for you to leave, but if you come now there’s nothing holding you back, so now’s the perfect time to come. Finally after a few weeks one day out of the blue I decided I was going to visit Israel. My brother explained to me that there was a job opening in his city which was looking for people who fit my exact profile - when that didn’t work he tried to persuade me by telling me that one more reason why I should come- which now made it a 51% chance that I should go to Israel was that he also knew of a boy in Israel through his brother-in-law which sounded like a good fit for me. He explained to me that the boy was not going to fly all the way to LA for a shidduch which like any other shidduch is a 50/50 chance.
Reason number one why I came to Israel was for the job. ( I’ll also confess that I knew I would probably be getting married soon- even in a year or two- there was no way my family would allow me to be single for too long- and so I wanted to at least live on my own for awhile before I was married. I had never gone to seminary, sleep away camp, or lived in a dorm before the age of 21. ) Reason number twenty two was because of the boy. But God has his own plan and everything is hashgacha because the job fell through and I ended up getting engaged.
On our first date my husband was talking about how in Israel a boy who worked was almost considered off the derech- he said this towards the end of our date- and I told him that I had wrote about it and I wanted him to see it. The comment from anonymous on my post Microcosm of a Macrocosm is from my husband. On our way out of the hotel lobby I found an internet business spot for 50 shekel an hour and my husband read parts of my blog.
One interesting bit about my husband is that he customizes company blogs. I asked him if he also customizes personal blogs and his response was- this is before he knew that I had a pesonal blog- “Who reads personal blogs? Maybe just a few of your friends.” Even though I was deeply offended I didn’t say anything. He has a blog where he writes about computers and created free software and he gets an average of 700 people who visit his blog every day. When I later on told him that one of the reasons why I wanted to marry him was because 700 people read his blog every day he was not very impressed. “Ouch, ouch, that means I’m in big trouble.” I had to explain to him that all girls like famous people, and anyone who gets 700 people reading their blog every day is a famous person.
On our second date I mentioned something about my parents and I asked him about his parents and with a look of deep confusion on his face, asked me, “Do you know anything about me?” His parents had been separated for a year and were in the process of a divorce. This is another part of hashgacha pratis- had I known about this my perception of my husband before I would even start going out with him would probably be very different. Before I even went out with my husband my brother asked me a few times if I wanted to know about him. My response was always the same “no” because my line of logic was: What’s the point of checking and checking into someone if after one date you can see that they’re not for you. I also learnt that his mother was Moroccan and so like me he was half Sephardic. I had previously thought that he was completely ashkenaz.
On our third date we had gone to the zoo near Giloh and I told my husband there was something I must show him on the internet. “I hope I’m not becoming the internet girl,” I said. My husband refused to go to an internet cafe “since only retarded crazy yeshiva boys go there” and so we settled on a hotel lobby instead- this time it was only 16 shekel an hour. I logged into my e-mail account and I showed my husband a picture of himself on a cruise he had taken a few months back- he has a beard because of sefirah and a fake Versaccee hat in the picture. When my husband saw the picture he was very confused for a few minutes. First he thought maybe he had posted that picture of himself online- but he knew he hadn’t, then he though that maybe I was looking at his e-mail, but he saw that it was my e-mail address.
How did I get the picture? My mother was in shul in LA and she saw a rosh kollel and his son who had come together for fundraising. She asked the boy if he by chance knew my husband- she said his name - and his shocking response was: “I have his picture.” He opened up his laptop and showed my mother a picture of my husband who he had gone on a cruise with right after Pesach touring Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. My husband had found a deal for $150 for 4 boys and so he had to look for 3 other boys who had a petur- an army exemption so that they could go with him. He went with a friend, his friend’s brother, and his the brother’s friend. The brother’s friend was the boy who my mother met. This is something only my mother would do- she took him to CVS pharmacy where they printed out the picture, and then my little sister sent me a cell phone picture e-mail of the hard copy. It was the first time one of my mother’s daughters were dating when she was so far away and was so uninvolved and so she felt this was God’s sign to her that she was still with me. ( In case you haven’t guessed by now from reading the rest of my blog, in my family a girl never ever flies to the boy, it’s always the other way around. A boy is supposed to seduce a girl, a girl is not supposed to chase after a boy.)
Coincidentally, my husband had just been told the day before for the third time that the boy my mother had met was in Benei Brak. The boy for some reason didn’t want anyone to know he was in LA and so he told one of his friends to spread the word to everyone that he was in Benei Brak. When my husband asked which yeshiva he was in, he was told that right now it was impossible to have any access to this boy because he now learning very seriously and he wouldn’t even answer his cell phone.
An interesting tidbit about the Versaccee hat. The boy my mother spoke to had received a ride in my husband’s father’s new BMW which was a business expense. In Israel there is 100% tax on every car and so anyone who drives a new car is a multi-millionaire. The boy told my mother that my husband’s father is not a millionaire, he’s a billionaire. My husband explained to me that that is typical with Israelis who don’t know any better. It’s funny how once we have an image of a person almost everything they do will fit that image. In the picture you can clearly see that the hat doesn’t fit him properly, it’s a bit small- he wore it as a favor to his friend who wanted to wear something else that day, and who bought the hat which was fake for a few shekels. But my sister happily exclaimed to me: “He was wearing a Versaccee hat. Do you know how expensive Versacce is? It’s the most expensive store in all of Israel.” My husband told me that if every person who thought his father was rich would give his father $1 he really would be a multi-millionaire.
My husband also ended up posting pictures for me on my blog, something I didn’t do before hand. The kosher cell phone picture and the Brachfeld pictures are all due to him. The kosher cell phone image is actually an image which he tweaked and customized for one of his top secret sites- basically a site where he pretends that he’s the va’ad harabanim in charge of all the va’ad harabanims.
I will confess here and say that a few days after the third date I was crying and crying and I couldn’t stop. I had no idea why I was crying and so I called up my sister-in-law and she told me that it was completely normal and I shouldn’t get worried. She told me that it usually happens after you’re engaged, but it’s a good sign and it’s something that many girls go through, just no one talks about it. The overwhelming hashgacha on every date was just too much for me to handle.
There were two criteria I was looking for in my mate aside from the obvious good middos etc.- not things you will find in every boy. One, that he earned money, and two, that he would let me do whatever I wanted. Since my husband likes to say things like “I could live on the moon” (as long as there’s internet access there because he’s self employed and can work from anywhere in the world) and regarding a wedding, “Just give me ten guys on a beach” I though he suited me quite well. When I told him that I really hoped that he didn’t mind that I write my whole life story on my blog he explained to me that he really didn’t care. He thought it was really funny that I took my blog so seriously.
On our fifth date when it was around 1:00 in the morning by us, I called up my mother to speak with my husband. Her typical words to my husband were “Nu, matai neshmah besurot tovot?” - Nu, when are we going to hear the good news? She was in a really good mood because she had just gone to visit the Pittsburger Rebbe and so in addition she told him a few dvar torahs until thirty minutes later when his battery went dead. (My husband felt really bad about the battery going dead but my mother later explained that it was hashgacha pratis because she had a daughter’s graduation to go to in a few minutes and she would have probably completely lost track of time, had she continued speaking.) She wanted an answer to her question and so although my husband did not plan on proposing so fast he ended up being a good little boy and listening to my mother. He later explained to me that he was a little bit pressured into doing something he wanted to do. He mentioned that we should have the lechayim at my brother’s house and we would have the vort later on. “This is so unromantic, you have to propose,” I complained. My husband is not a very emotional person and so this proved to be extremely difficult for him, but I wouldn’t let him off the hook. It took him another hour and a half, until 2:30 am where he finally just stoppped his car after driving to nowhere for a long time, and proposed. He said, “Will you marry me?” and I answered, “Sure I would, baby.” My husband is four months younger than me- and so this gives me an excuse to call him baby- which is totally odd because I also explained this to him- anyone whose read my blog knows that I’m totally not into the younger guys. At least my husband looks like he’s 25, though. He’s 6′4″, not at all lanky, and has a close shaven beard.
I totally stick to my previous post Love Conquers All because my husband also smokes about a pack a day, loves to drink Guiness bear in huge quantities for absolutely no reason- he is a big believer in the concept of “drinking responsibly” and likes to sleep all day and work all night. My father and brother explained to me that switching night and day hours is completely normal for computer geeks. I go to bed no later than 10 pm and my husband’s bed time when he’s on a good schedule is about 2 am. When his hour’s are off it’s 6:00 am and 12:00 pm is wake-up time.
The morning after the proposal word had already leaked out before it was supposed to, and he was getting mazel tov calls all morning. My husband called me up and said that his father wanted to meet with me, and that we would meet in a restaraunt in Tel Aviv. (I had already met his mother at the beginning of the fifth date.)
Here’s the climax of the story where everything changes and starts going deep down hilll. It’s the way every English teacher explains a fictional strory. Everything builds up in a beautiful way to the climax, then things take a turn and then in the end the plot is resolved.
My husband’s father ordered food for us which only me and him ate. My husband hadn’t slept all night, nor could he eat, not to mention that the ten calls he kept on getting every minute weren’t really helping to settle his nerves either. While I was sitting down and eating I get a call from my cousin, and my husband gets a call from his mother that there is a vort in a hall in Jerusalem that night at 7:00. She wanted the hall for the next day but it wasn’t available so she was having a vort in about 4 hours in Jerusalem- it was 2:30 by us in the restaraunt. I got a few frantic calls from my cousin exclaiming, “Are you on your way to Jerusalem?” Thank God for her, she always takes care of me, and she wanted to make sure- because she probably knew that with me on my own it probably wouldn’t happen- that I was prepared with a new dress to fit the occasion and my hair done. ( I actually had a vort dress in LA which I wanted my mother to bring for me, but the quick succession of events didn’t allow that to happen.)
My husband was driving me to Jerusalem and making ten calls a minute to his friends with messages like, “there’s a vort tonight, and I promise I’m going to kill you if you don’t come.” After calling four fifths of his contact list a rabbi in his yeshiva called him stating- the rosh yeshiva [of my husband’s yeshiva] is not coming to the vort, he is very upset, and he doesn’t allow any of the boys to come. I was supposed to speak with the rabbanit- the rosh yeshiva’s wife- before hand because every boy in the yeshiva’s future wife had to do this. We had tried calling her a few times the day before but she wouldn’t answer. Then events had kind of gotten out of hand and there was really nothing we could do, because we were already engaged. The rosh yeshiva thought that 5 dates was way way too fast for an engagement and that we needed at least another week to get to know each other.Even if he did have a point, in my opinion it was not the way of dealing with the situation- once everyone already knows that you’re engaged. But my husband was very close to his rosh yeshiva, he said that he almost saved his life (it’s one of the only yeshivas in Israel where boys are encouraged to work.) That in addition to the fact that the rosh yeshiva had a lot of power over the boys and could threaten with no problem to kick out any boy from his yeshiva who came to the vort, left me in an unarguable situation.
My husband had to again make a few frantic calls to spread the word that “there won’t be a vort tonight because there’s something technical with the hall and we can’t have the hall that night.”
While making his phone calls on speaker and talking downwards so that he wouldn’t be seen- talking on a cell phone and driving is illegal in Israel- he got pulled over by a lady cop. She handed him a hefty fine, just to make things a little bit sweeter. And to make the day even sweeter, he had already gotten a parking ticket because he mistakenly parked in a permit only zone when he couldn’t find parking anywhere else for the restaraunt in Tel Aviv.
The rosh yeshiva had a few concerns, like maybe I was too religious for the boy (he had heard as people always will hear things, that I came from a family of pure tzaddikim.) and that it was done under pressure, and it was done too fast, just basic excuses. (The ironic part was that before I went out with my husband I thought that maybe he was too religious for me.)
At this point my husband’s father entered the picture and decided that once the rosh yeshiva has concerns he also has his own concerns. I can now totally understand him. If my kid came home after five dates and said that he was engagd, I would probably also have a heart attack. My husban’s father came to my brother’s house where my mother called and my sister-in-law related how the phone conversation went. It was basically two people who came from different worlds. It was basically a clash between “nu, matai neshma besurot tovot?” and how it’s kedusha etc. and you’re supposed to get married with a different mindset of how marriage is an extremely serious decision which should not be taken lightly and we needed at least one more month- yes, a month- to get to know each other better. He was also very concerned that his son was pressured into getting married so fast by my family. He explained that he already met me, he thought I was a really nice girl and he was not at all against the shidduch, but he just felt we should get to know each other better before jumping into anything.
When my husband was driving me to Jerusalem- at this point we thought it was just a week delay- his mother asked if he could bring me to her house and meet his sibilings. Later that night, instead of driving me home his mother asked if I could sleep over because she had a guest room and I agreed. The next morning I called the rabbanit and to introduce myself I said “ani hakalah shel *******.” and she hung up the phone on me. I called again and I said “ani mihureset li******“- I’m engaged to ***** and her response was “******od lo mihuras.” Her response meant “[my husband] is not engaged yet.” I think that if I would have told her that I slept over his house that night, she would have had a heart attack. When I called up my husband to complain about this he explained to me what my exact status was: “You’re engaged according to everyone except according to the rosh yeshiva and my father.”
My husband called me up the night when I was sleeping over his house and told me that it was the weirdest day of his life. He was getting text messages all night with people asking about the vort.
Another interesting fact which shows a similarity between me and my husband was that I called him up the that morning for the rabbanit’s number and he told me that there was a pen inside the desk which I could use to write down the number. I opened the drawer and I found three pieces of paper with my name on the front and a whole bunch of pretty standard generic phrases and lots of phone numbers. I told my husband what I had found and his response was - “Oh, my mother gave that to me, I didn’t read it, I just stuffed it in the drawer.”
I met the rabbanit three days later- she wasn’t feeling well before then- and after speaking with her for about an hour she told me not to worry, that in a few days I would be engaged. The first half hour of the conversation I praised my husband to the heavens. I said that he was very smart- that 700 people read his blog every day- even she was impressed- and that he was very generous. I also at one point meant to say that he was considerate but instead I said that he was sensitive (I had to speak to her in Hebrew the entire time.) “No, he’s not sensitive, he’s not an emotional person,” she corrected me (despite the fact that my husband is one of the most sensitive people I know). She warned me a few times, “you know, he’s not so chareidi.” I assured her that I knew he was a drunkard, a batlan, and an am ha’aretz but I wanted to marry him anyways. She wanted to know how exactly religious was the background that I came from and so as an example she asked me if my father says divrei torah on shabbos. “No, my mother does.” That left her in a little bit of a confused state.
Meanwhile all of my husband’s 200 aquaintances were suddenly his best friend and had to hear every detail of the story. My husband called me up the next morning after my meeting with the rabbanit and he told me that things had taken an interesting turn. The month was still on and no one understood why. It was basically Engagement Limbo Land. In fact someone even tried to understand where the rosh yeshiva was coming from, and all he heard were a hundred different reasons which with a little bit of provoking could easily be solved. My husband’s yeshiva had boys from all different backgrounds- some who met girls on their own and so it looked strange to him that a girl from LA with no parents in the picture was getting engaged to my husband. The person explained that it was a shidduch date, but he said that the decision to get married was made under pressure etc. My husband’s father was also very adamant about sticking to the month. My father’s take was to just let it go, because if it meant that a few people were more comfortable with waiting a month, a month was really nothing in the span of a married life time.
I think one of the biggest let-downs was to all my little sibilings because we had seriously talked about making a wedding in Israel and one of the main reasons was because of timing. It was summer time, and so it was planned that it might be worth flying in the whole family if they would also stay for a summer vacation. My married sisters needed an excuse to visit their in-laws, one of my brothers was seriously thinking about going to a yeshiva in Israel the next year, and so it all looked like it might work out. In addition, the expense of flying everyone in could be considered a wedding expense, since weddings in Israel are so much cheaper.
My husband took these events to mean that he must tell me everything about himself- in addition he’s a very ethical person and from an ethical perspective he thought that he must tell me everything. We ended up arguing for about 3 hours because through-out telling me his whole life story the only thing he proved to me was that he was an angel. He gave one example to me about how he lent his car to a rabbi in the yeshiva who needed to pick up his kids so he gave him his copy of the key and told the rabbi that he should call him before he took the car. He went outside at 10 pm and saw that his car wasn’t there. He also got a call from a self service gas company because the rabbi filled up the car and forgot to pay. He told me that he told the whole yeshiva that this rabbi was an idiot. Knowing my husband, he would probably lend the car again to the same rabbi. Another story he told me was about the internet room in their yeshiva where there was only a list of boys who were allowed to be inside because they worked there. The rosh yeshiva threatened to remove the internet access because other people “needed to check their e-mails” and were abusing the room. My husband came to the room at 2:00 am and saw a group of boys watching movies. He got upset because they were jeapordizing his business and so he locked them in the room for half an hour. I think most people would have locked them in the room the whole night. (Later on a friend installed a router which he hid in one of the dorm room’s closets and so he was able to have wifi in his room. He had previously had a lap top in his room with internet access but it was taken out and my husband decided he didn’t want to fight on a technical level- something he could easily do. In the end I guess he just decided that fighting on a technical level is way more convenient.)
My husband had interpreted the month of getting to know each other as a time to reveal all. I explained to him that I wasn’t really interested in his coming of age ceremony in chareidi Israel and why and how he decided to stop wearing a black hat etc. At one point I told him that I felt like I was talking to a gay guy who was telling me when he decided to come out of the closet.
The situation we were in was the worst possible, because we weren’t dating and we weren’t engaged, so instead of being all happy and preparing for a wedding and forgetting about all second thoughts, we had no idea what to do. According to some people it wasn’t that he wasn’t officially engaged, it was that he hadn’t made his decision yet. Word had already spread completely and so it just became a time of tension.
At this point I harbored a new belief about a special shidduch satan. I was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a special satan whose sole purpose was just to try to ruin shidduchim. I even gave my husband at least ten examples of other shidduchim which could have been broken all because of stupid reasons which the shidduch satan caused. I guess it was a sort of denial defense mechanism because my belief in the shidduch satan allowed me to remain very calm. My biggest complaint about the month wait was: “Why are you inviting the satan?” I might have also been trying to orient my husband to a girl who gravitates towards any whacky belief as long as it’s quote and quote substantiated by a “big rabbi.” My husband unlike me does not believe in any segulos or any signs from God. On the other hand my mother and I somehow see signs from God on a daily basis. ( One example of a cool sign which my sister in law related: She had a few break-proof plates which in the store the salesman had actually thrown down in a hard way onto the floor and they wouldn’t break. The week we were supposed to get engaged - this had never happened before and she had these plates for a few years- three of the plates suddenly broke. It was all because we didn’t do an engagement with the custom of breaking plates.)
My husband was confused to the point that when I asked him point blank “When you proposed and I answered, I meant it. You didn’t?” his response really shook me when he said “I don’t know.”
The following day my husband spoke to a rabbi he was close with who put everything in perspective for him- my husband hadn ‘t eaten or slept in a few days from all the confusion- and he explained to my husband that it was just too fast- it was a shock to all the people he was close with- and we had to get to know each other better. They couldn’t understand how he went out once a week with a girl for six weeks where it wasn’t good or bad and then the girl broke it after the sixth time- after a month and a half, and here after two weeks he was already engaged. I guess they just didn’t understand that there’s no need to wait when you know what you’re looking for and you know what’s right. I was surprised that they didn’t like surprises- the proposal and the engagement was a surprise for both of us. For me when someone gets engaged and it’s a total shock it’s way more exciting. I warned my husband later on that the only way he could make up what happend to me was by proposing again in a romantic way that would surprise me. The rabbi told him that what our relationship should be a boyfriend\ girlfriend sort of thing. I told my husband that I always wanted a boyfriend and so he said “now you have one with a hechsher.” He did warn me, though, that this was a religious boyfriend. When I complained that a religious boyfriend is not what I had in mind he basically said “tough luck.” The rabbi also told him to tell me that people in this world also do things, and that he didn’t believe in the satan.
My husband, his mother, and my mother had to deal with the situation because they were getting mazel tov phone calls. I taught my mother to say plain “thank you.” His mother had to call all her friends and neighbors the day of the vort and tell them “we’re waiting for the girl’s mother to fly in for the vort.” It didn’t help that all this happened right before the three weeks when my husband had about 8 weddings to go to in a 2 week span. He had to attend these weddings not only because he was good friends with most of the grooms, but also because my husband has the coveted task of driving brides and grooms home after their wedding in his mother’s car. I was the luckiest through it all, because in case you haven’t seen my Israeli Signs post, I was hiding throgh it all.
I had more than a few awkward situations. One was when a lady began hugging and kissing me and saying mazel tov and it took me at least three minutes until I finally realized and understood why. Other times people would asked my sister in law whether they should say mazel tov to me or not. Later on I did end up telling a few people that I was “half engaged.” My mother decided out of her own will during Engagement Limbo Land time that she wouldn’t call up my husband at all, even just to say good shabbos, because she didn’t want to do anything which could be interpreted as family pressure.
Just to put another freaky twist on everything- to fit this in with my How Do All Israelis Know Each Other? theme- I havc three married sibilings and all of their spouses are in some way connected to my husband.
My brother knew of my husband through his wife’s brother. His wife comes from a family where they don’t wear sheitels, only tichels, and they only eat aidah hacharaidis. They are an extremely exceptional family, though, in the sense that they really don’t just follow herd mentality and they do what they think is right. They are also exceptional in the way that the entire family- like my family, his wife also comes from a family clan where there’s not much of a difference between immediate and extended family- is completely open to other people. They do not force their chumras on anyone else. My brother’s brother in law knew of my husband from my husband’s previous yeshiva (he also borrowed my husband’s car on a few occasions) and thought that he might fit well with an American girl since he came from an American family. He knew my brother as a close American relative and so he just asked him if he knew any American girl, and my brother thought of his sister.
My sister who is next after my brother is married to a boy from Bayit Vegan. On our first date, my husband was talking about a boy from his yeshiva from Ponoviezh whose older brother had rescued him from there and put him in his yeshiva - where the older brother learned in kollel, my husband’s yeshiva also has a kollel- because the only thing he was doing all day was playing Devil’s Advocate and was going from side to side and fighting with all the politics just for the sake of fighting without even caring one way or another. On my blog when I write about watching a DVD with a boy from Ponoviezh I am referring to this boy. His older brother who learned in the kollel of my husband’s yeshiva was one of only two brothers who came with his wife to LA for my brother-in-law’s wedding. He assured my family during Engagement Limbo Land phase that my husband was the most normal boy. (When I told this to my husband he didn’t at all take it as a compliment. “Normal is borring.”)
The next sister is married to a boy who was born in New York but raised in Meah Shearim and later on in Har Nof. His brother is Yossi Cabasso (name is fictitious) who just happens to be very good friends with the boy who my mother met in LA and showed her the picture of my husband.
We ended up having a blast during our boyfriend\girlfriend relationship and since my husband knows every nook and cranny in Israel. During our five dates we went race car driving (in my husbands 1984 Subaru) on a hidden mountain between Har Nof and Bayit Vegan, we went to tiny whole in the wall restaraunts all over Jerusalem, we went hiking in moshavs near Modi’in and we found our little romantic spot- a tiny little U-haul truck stand which sold lemonade and barekas right off the highway. There are four little plastic chairs over there to sit on and the entire ground is covered with olive pits from all the people who come there day after day and spit out their olive pits- the barekas comes with half a sliced egg and about 7 olives- onto the floor. Now, since everyone knew about us we weren’t really considered dating anymore and so I accompanied my husband all around town.
I must admit that having a boyfriend is a lot of fun. I was lucky enough to have a kosher badatz rabbi ordained boyfriend. My boyfriend took me on trips to every city in Israel. We went to Kasaria, Tel Aviv, Chaifa, and Eilat. My husband also told me that a few of his friends had decided that since he was always the one who had to go through being the first with unconventional practices, he was now going to be the model of a new type of chareidi relationship which didn’t exist before.
Just to make both me and my husband feel a little bit better, the people around us did their best. Every time my husband saw his rosh yeshiva he would give him faces and make sure to offer no encouragement just because- he even explained this- he wanted my husband to be 100% sure in his decision. My father warned me more than once during Engagement Limbo Land phase that I should make sure not to get too emotionally involved just in case things didn’t work out.
Before we were completely adjusted to the boyfriend\girlfriend relationship the beginning of Engagement Limbo Land phase proved to be a little bit of a sensitive time. Once I had just come out of the shower and I heard my cell phone ringing. The second time it rang I knew it was my husband and so I yelled to my brother to answer the phone and say that I’ll call him back in two or three minutes because I was in the shower. My brother answered the phone and said that I’ll call him back in two minutes and left out the part about the shower. I ended up calling my husband back ten minutes later and he said he was incredibly nervous during that time.
My final conclusion: If I survived Engagement Limbo Land with my husband, I could probably survive anything with him. And what’s my reaction to all the events? I firmly believe in the power of prayer, although I do admit I hardly ever pray. I believe it’s my mother’s and my cousin’s (the one whose always taking care of me, she said perek shira for 40 days with me in mind and on the 40th day she became engaged) prayers. My mother had just started going to a women’s group in someone’s house where they all said shacharis every day and answered amein- making sure to say at least 100 brachos every day. On the day of my first date was the day she began going to the 100 brachos group and throughout it all she was the only one there with perfect attendance.
Just one more reason why I married my husband- my husband does not think this is a substantial reason but it is definitely a perk: My husband is very close with the Zilbermans and the entire Zilberman community. He learnt there for awhile and the rabbi he is close with who called him first as the bearer with the rosh yeshiva’s news and later on (while he was on a 2 day vacation with only his wife in Teveriah) explained things and put things into perspective for my husband is a very close talmid of one of Rabbi Yosef Zilberman’s sons. This means that my husband wears techailes on his tzitzis. My husband told me that if I like it because it’s the right thing to do it can be a substantial reason, but if I like it because it’s cool that’s a very stupid reason. But I’ll be honest here and say that I like it because I think it’s super cool.
Post Script: I got married in Israel sukkos time and my entire immediate family flew in for the wedding. And last but not least, I want to leave every girl out there with a strong sense of hope- if a weirdo like me could find such a perfect amazing normal match, there’s an outstanding guy out there for everyone.
