Weddings
Continued from Page 21
mother-in-law asked Boroff is she could set Berkowitz up with one
of her three sons.

They ended up setting her up with her son, Arthur.

“In those days, we all did a lot of blind dating,” Berkowitz
said. “He didn’t call for six months, and we went on our first date
in January.”
The two grew up in the Har Zion Temple community, though
they didn’t know each other. The whole synagogue knew about
their relationship while they were dating and, when Boroff and
Berkowitz’s mother-in-law passed each other in the community,
they would just shrug their shoulders. The two were dating, but
there was no commitment.

After about two years, Berkowitz told Arthur that she didn’t
want to just keep dating. She wanted to get married or break up.

He told her he would make a decision in January, on the anniver-
sary of when they first started going out.

The day of their anniversary, Berkowitz, who worked as a
teacher, received a dozen red roses at school. The flowers came
with a note that had a simple message: Lisa, yes, Arthur.

Later that day, he bought her a skirt, as she wanted to pick out
her own ring.

They got married that October at Har Zion.

Their wedding was the largest of the three, with about 350 in
attendance. The assemblage was so large they had to get creative
with the bar, going with one that had a circular shape, so that a lot
of people could get to it at one time. Rabbi Gerald I. Wolpe, Har
Zion’s popular rabbi at the time, officiated.

“I do remember what this child of mine said after the wedding,”
Boroff said. “She said, ‘It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted.”’
“I wanted to get married,” Berkowitz added. “So I was just hap-
py to have a party. I was just happy to be getting married.”
In what might be a family tradition, Berkowitz also played a
role in her daughter’s matchmaking as well, but with a 21st cen-
tury twist. While Fridberg was a graduate student in St. Louis,
Berkowitz encouraged her to try JDate.

That’s how Fridberg met her husband Jonathan. He was only the
second person she met through the dating site. After graduation,
the two moved to Chicago, then to the Philadelphia area a year ago.

Fridberg knew he was going to propose — they had gone ring shop-
ping together — but she didn’t know when. After about two years of
dating and during a weekend away together, he popped the question.

They were engaged for about a year and a half. Though they were
living in Chicago then, they wanted to get married in Philadelphia,
closer to where both of their families lived. Berkowitz ended up
doing much of the planning with the help of a wedding planner.

She hadn’t used a planner for her own wedding, but was glad to
have the help for planning her daughter’s.

They chose the Phoenixville Foundry as their venue, and a
Reconstructionist rabbi officiated.

“We knew we didn’t want to get married in a synagogue,”
Fridberg said. “We wanted to get married in the place where the
party would be kind of rustic-themed.”
Fridberg and her husband wanted the wedding to feel like it
was just the two of them there. They also wanted the wedding to
just be fun, with lots of dancing.

“A wedding is a happy occasion, a joyous occasion,” Fridberg
said. “We don’t want to stress about little things.” ❤
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Families Plan
B’nai Mitzvahs
in Israel
From left: Sara Jennings, Levon, Elijah, Harper and
Robert Ames
PHOTO PROVIDED
SELAH MAYA ZIGHELBOIM | JE STAFF
F rom her side of the mechitza at the Kotel, Shaindy Lindenberg
was able to get a good view of her son reading from the Torah.

In late July, her son Ilan had his Bar Mitzvah in Israel. They
had about 60 guests, mostly family and some friends. Their ceremony
took place early in the morning at the Kotel, then was followed by a
special breakfast and a Shabbat event the next day. The family spent
about a week in Israel in all, taking in the sights and history.

Planning a Bar or Bat Mitzvah in Israel can come with difficulties
planning one locally might not have. There’s the added need and cost
of flights to a foreign country, the challenge of finding housing and
picking venues, caterers and other vendors from abroad.

But Lindenberg felt the experience was worth it.

“Everything really just fell into place,” she said. “I am so happy,
and my husband and I are so thrilled that it all worked out, that
we were able to do the event in Israel. No regrets. We’ve been tell-
ing everyone how great it was. There’s always little things here and
there, but overall, when you look at the whole picture, that was the
perfect event. I wouldn’t have changed anything.”
One element that can ease planning a Bar or Bat Mitzvah in
Israel is having on-the-ground help. Lindenberg had family in
Israel who could help with logistics. Isabelle Tahar Miller, whose
son Uriel had his Bar Mitzvah in Israel in August, and Robert
Ames, whose son Elijah also had his Bar Mitzvah in August, had
help in Israel as well.

“It’s much more significant to do it in Israel,” Miller said. “Also,
because we have a lot of family in Israel, we don’t have much
people here in the United States that could have been attending.

These are the main reasons [we decided to have the Bar Mitzvah in
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