H eadlines
Modified Simchas Continue in COVID Era
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
NOT EVERYONE LOOKS
into their backyard and sees the
spot where they’ll be married.

And perhaps fewer still see an
empty synagogue as the setting
for the day that they became a
Jewish adult in the eyes of the
community. In the midst of a pandemic,
some Jews across Philadelphia
are finding that a simcha venue
might just be wherever you
happen to stand. Others, though
they may squint, still can’t
quite see the site of their future
memories, and have chosen to
postpone their milestones for a
few months, if not indefinitely.

Choosing any trail is a difficult
call for those who have been
forced to do so.

“We made the best of it,”
said Mia Blitstein, whose son,
Judah, elected to postpone his
planned May bar mitzvah until
2021. “There’s no other option
at this point.”
The Blitstein family belongs
to Congregation
Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, where
Judah has readied himself for
a lifetime of Torah reading
since fifth grade. As the big
day approached, so did the
virus; invitations to the May
bar mitzvah went out on March
16 with a note attached to let
potential attendees know that
the Blitstein family was indeed
aware that a burgeoning global
pandemic might necessitate a
postponement. Judah and his parents
assessed their options. He
could keep his date, keep his
parshah that he’d worked
hard to learn and deliver the
goods via Zoom; he could
lose both, but potentially have
an in-person celebration if
he postponed until the fall;
he could keep the parshah,
but read it in 2021, to give
himself an even better chance
to have his friends and family
around him.

4 OCTOBER 15, 2020
Mikki Rosenberg and his wife Hannah celebrate their wedding a bit
differently from how they planned.
Photo by Rabbi Yaakov Hoffman
Judah chose Door No. 3. A
new DJ was contracted, and the
food is taken care of, but with a
vaccine still more concept than
reality, his mother isn’t holding
her breath.

“I have really put it on the
back burner,” Blitstein said,
“because we have no idea what
it’s going to look like.”
Down the road in Dresher,
Debbie Dall got the date for her
son Zach’s bar mitzvah three
years ago: May 9, 2020.

“When COVID started
happening in March, I figured
by May, we would be OK,” Dall
said. “Little did I know.”
Her family has been a part
of Temple Sinai for genera-
tions, and Dall was determined
to find a way for her son to join
the community of Jewish adults
within its walls. Adaptations
were necessary; a list of 110
of Zach’s friends who were to
be invited to his bar mitzvah
was whittled to four, Zach had
to learn a new parshah for the
new August date and the 40
total attendees that did make
it to the synagogue signed
waivers, wore masks and were
spread out among 400 seats in
the sanctuary.

Afterward, some who had
attended the service and others
who had not were welcomed
to the Dall backyard with
Zach-branded masks, hand
sanitizer and food trucks. It
wasn’t the original plan, but
in the end, Zach became a bar
mitzvah. “He didn’t want to tell his
children that that’s how he
got bar mitzvah’ed, through a
computer,” Dall said.

On the other side of the
river, Shari Morelli and her
daughter, Sadie, are preparing
for an Oct. 24 bat mitzvah,
right in their Wynnewood
backyard, to be led by Main
Line Reform Temple Senior
Rabbi David Straus. Over the
summer, Morelli and Sadie
decided that a small ceremony,
attended by family and their
closest friends, would be prefer-
able to waiting a year. Now,
they’ll have small, distanced
tables of masked friends and
family celebrating with them,
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jamie Sweet and Andrew Africk were married on Sept. 13.

Photo by Caitlin Scott Photography
while their cantor Zooms in.

“I feel like you just don’t know
what tomorrow is gonna bring,”
Morelli said. “And I really felt
like we should embrace it now
and just take what we’re given.”
Two stops down the Paoli/
Thorndale Line in Merion
Station, Jamie Sweet, an infec-
tion control nurse at Einstein
Medical Center in Philadelphia,
spent the summer trying to
figure out how she might safely
marry her fiance. May 24, the
original date, had come and
gone, and though they were
fortunate that their vendors were
accommodating, there was still
the problem of getting married.

Get married, they did. With
personalized masks to mark the
Sept. 13 occasion, a small group
of family and friends gathered for
a ceremony, cake, drinks, a quick
first dance and a catered dinner
for an even smaller group.

“There were a lot of tough
discussions with our parents,”
Sweet said. “In the end, every-
body was happy with the
decision we made.”
Mikki Rosenberg was
similarly content with his
experience. He proposed to
his now-wife Hannah on
Thanksgiving 2019, and plans
were made for June.

“My in-laws are amazing,
and I’m pretty sure she likes my
parents,” he joked. All was going
smoothly — until it wasn’t.

The grand plan was to have
the wedding in Baltimore,
halfway-ish between his family
in Philadelphia and her family
in Rockville, Maryland. The
grand plan was grandly dashed
and, in the end, Rosenberg
found himself married a few
months later than he thought,
danced around his father-in-
law’s study by his brothers.

“From the moment it
started, it was awesome. It was
honestly the best one I could
have had,” Rosenberg said. “It
was just so nice and so pleasant,
and everyone was there was
so appreciative of being there.

And we were careful, but also
just had a lot of fun.” l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM