Couple discovers a second generation of blessings

June 11, 2023, in Lakewood, N.J.

Facing a Vagelos Molecular Life Sciences orientation with food she couldn’t eat, Eliana realized she knew another student who kept kosher — a friend of friends she’d first met more than a year ago in Jerusalem. She found Yitzy’s phone number in the University of Pennsylvania Class of 2024 Orthodox student group chat.

“I was wondering if you were going to the MLS breakfast thing?” Eliana typed. “I thought maybe you would want to go to the event with me, and we can ditch before the food starts?”

Yitzy remembered her. They were both taking a year between high school and college to study Judaism in Israel when they saw each other board the same city bus, headed to a meetup of Orthodox Jews affiliated with Penn. They had chatted briefly at that gathering and now, after a freshman year of remote study due to the pandemic, they were both on campus.

Eliana and Yitzy attended the orientation together, left together, then walked and talked the whole way across campus to the dormitory where they lived on the same floor — she with some of his friends, and he with some of hers.

“There was a little bit of, ‘Oh! This girl is interesting,’ ” Yitzy said.

Home in Bala Cynwyd for family dinner that night, Yitzy mentioned his new friend, Eliana Suldan.

Her last name caught Deanna and Jonathan Tanner’s attention. “Is her father’s name Zalman,” Yitzy’s mother asked before doing the math that showed her it was likely her son’s new friend was the daughter of their long-lost friend from college.

His parents then shared a story about Zalman and their wedding — one that felt too awkward to share with Eliana.

Hanging out with their friends and studying together, Eliana and Yitzy’s friendship deepened. When she learned his parents were Penn alums, she said her father was, too. “I wonder if they know each other? I’ll ask my dad,” said Eliana. “You should do that,” Yitzy encouraged her.

That’s when Eliana learned that echoes of her father’s friendship with the Tanners had rippled throughout her life. A chicken recipe. The best way to remove crumbs from a tablecloth. And Zalman’s practicing of the seven blessings on the way to every Orthodox wedding they attend — something Eliana had always found strange.

At Jonathan and Deanna’s 1988 wedding, a rabbi friend was set to say the fifth of the seven blessings, but when the time came, he was not there.

From beneath their huppah, “We made a game-time call that Zalman was the man for the job,” Deanna said.

“I wasn’t paying attention that closely,” Zalman confesses. “My roommate elbowed me — ‘They’re calling your name!’ So I went up and I did it,” he said. Beautifully, said Deanna.

“That’s the reason I always try to be prepared,” Zalman texted his daughter. “I’ve never been asked to do it on the fly again, but you never know.”

Eliana couldn’t miss the shared values and everything else that she and Yitzy had in common — he even knew the words to some of her favorite Taylor Swift songs. He was so kind — when Yitzy finished his part of a makeup organic chemistry lab well ahead of her, he waited and washed all of her glassware.

In November 2021, the yeshiva where Yitzy had studied and the seminary where Eliana had studied in Israel held a joint gala in New Jersey. The day before, Eliana confessed to her friend, Stacy: “Yitzy is so interesting. I wonder if we could be more than friends?”

Yitzy admired Eliana for the same reasons. “I thought she was a very special person,” he said. So special that he wanted to set her up with someone else.

At the gala, he introduced Eliana to one of his closest friends, but someone else swooped in to talk to her.

A few days later, Yitzy and Stacy shared a veiled conversation in the dining hall.

“There’s this girl I might want to set up with one of my friends, but I’m not sure of the path,” Yitzy began.

“I’m not sure if it’s going to work out between that girl and your friend,” said Stacy. “I think that girl is interested in another guy.”

“Who?” asked Yitzy.

“You,” Stacy said.

The revelation made Yitzy question everything. Eliana was so wonderful. They were such good friends — maybe they would make a great couple? It was worth the risk, he decided.

Another friend who had overheard Yitzy’s conversation with Stacy told Eliana about the setup plan, leaving her to wonder if she was squarely in the friend zone. There was only one way to find out.

Eliana and Yitzy both love the Israeli sitcom Shababnikim. She invited him to watch with her in the lounge on their floor. “We were really just talking most of the time,” Eliana said. “It would take us three hours to get through one episode,” said Yitzy. They both knew what was happening and so did their friends — who always seemed to be walking past the lounge.

After a few giddy but undefined weeks, Yitzy sent Eliana a text: “I need to talk to you about something important.”

They met for a walk around campus. “I just need to get this out now,” Yitzy said. “Do you want to go on a date with me? I don’t want to catch you off guard or …”

“Yes,” Eliana interrupted. Their first date, in late January 2022, was at a used bookstore near campus. From then on, Eliana, a biology major from Teaneck, N.J., and Yitzy, a physics major, were always together.

First to the new couple’s embarrassment, and then to their delight, Deanna, Jonathan, and Zalman began exchanging emails. Their rekindled friendship now includes Eliana’s mother, Dora, too.

The couple decided to spend winter break visiting members of both families in Israel, where they hope to live one day. Yitzy suggested a couple’s outing and the bus that Eliana should take to meet him.

She was very surprised when Yitzy boarded from the bus stop where they first saw each other. They left that bus together, and a stranger handed Eliana a puzzle box and the first of a series of clues that led to places that played a role in their relationship: the apartment where the meetup had happened, where they had a heart-shaped pizza for lunch. A bookstore. A hotel lobby. And finally a museum rooftop, decorated with flowers, photos from their relationship, and a table with a pitcher of lemonade. At each spot, Eliana got a letter, and I-L-O-V-E-U opened the box.

“Turn around,” said the note inside. She did, and there was Yitzy, on one knee and offering a ring.

“I love Yitzy’s thoughtfulness — he’s very sweet, very kind, very nurturing. He always cares that other people are doing OK,” Eliana said. “He makes me laugh all of the time, and that’s just amazing. And he thinks very deeply about everything.”

“I love her smile, and I love her integrity,” said Yitzy. “Eliana is always very honest, she always does the right thing. She is very intelligent and she knows so much about so many things! She is also really kind. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and I love seeing her interact with them. She’s sweet, kind, smart, beautiful, and she laughs at my jokes.”

Eliana, now 22, and Yitzy, 23, will start their senior year at Penn as newlyweds.

They married June 11 in a traditional Orthodox ceremony at N’eemas Hachaim Hall in Lakewood, N.J., where a reception for 375 people featuring hours and hours of Jewish pop music was also held. The couple barely ate, but they danced and danced.

A friend made their ketubah from an image of an Italian one from the 17th century. Eliana’s brother served as MC. And her father, Zalman, read the fifth of the seven blessings — the same one he had unexpectedly read at the wedding of Yitzy’s parents 35 years earlier.