‘I met the perfect Jewish man online. The only problem? He was married’

Last year, I ate cholent for the first time. I went to a Friday night shul service – after a gap of about 40 years, as well as a north London menorah lighting. When I’m a bit overwhelmed with work I’m farblunget; if someone sneezes, I’ll exclaim: sei gesint! During the pandemic, I even took an online Yiddish class.

Mostly, this is because of Nathan*, my Jewish boyfriend of five years – and, of this weekend, my fiancé.

For Nathan and I, who are both in our fifties and have young adult children, it’s second time around. And while we are Jewish, our former spouses were not, which adds extra naches to the whole thing. You could say that we have rediscovered the heimishe part of our lives together.

And while we are Jewish, our former spouses were not, which adds extra naches to the whole thing. You could say that we have rediscovered the heimishe part of our lives together

But there’s a further twist in the tale. When we first met, Nathan was still married.

Our story started in 2019, at the height of Jeremy Corbyn fever. As hinted above, I hadn’t paid much attention to Jewish culture for decades – and certainly not the politics. Even though I’d grown up in a Jewish home in north-east London, I last had a Jewish boyfriend at the age of 18, and that part of my “identity” hadn’t been that important to me.

But something about this rise in antisemitism – however much the lefties denied that was what it was – galvanised me. And so, one day, I went on X, (or Twitter as it will always be to those of us who love/hate it).

I wrote a naive comment, wondering how a Jewish person with centre-left principles could possibly consider voting Labour again. Then: bam! In came the trolls. I certainly wasn’t prepared for waves of lefty vitriol that came my way, with references to “war crimes Israel”. Who the heck had mentioned Israel?

But nor was I prepared for the heartwarming, flag-waving support from fellow Jews around the world.

One of these was a New Yorker called Nathan, who was pithy and funny in his responses. After the storm had died down, I wrote privately to several posters, including Nathan, to say thank you. Nathan wrote back and we started to send one another messages.

At the time, I was a couple of years into life post-divorce. My two daughters were at university.

My ex-husband had never been interested in my Jewish identity – in fact, towards the end of our increasingly bitter marriage, he had walked out of the room the one time I decided to light Chanukah candles for the children. “This is nothing to do with me,” he said.

Therefore, it was interesting and sweet to start talking about Jewish things again, even if it was with a stranger on the other side of the world.

Over the course of 24 hours, Nathan and I broadened out our discussions from British politics to the music and films we both liked. The conversation flew fast and funny: about my crush on Peter Falk’s Columbo, the mystery of why people like gefilte fish. Then he typed: “I have to leave you for a bit: I’m going out now to get bagels for my wife and son.”

Ah, I thought. This isn’t somewhere I want to go.

So I wrote: “You sound great: your wife and son are very lucky to have you.” We had a couple more funny exchanges, I shut down my computer for the night, and thought that was that. But the next morning, there he was again. I was fully aware we were now entering ambiguous territory. At this point, I could have made a clear choice. Not replied, blocked him, carried on with my day.

But I didn’t. Our conversation was so free-flowing and so much fun, I wanted it to continue. He was clever, funny, and had that Jewish chein.

A few days later, Nathan asked for my number. I hesitated about giving it to him (but not for that long), and he rang me immediately.

 Our conversation was so free-flowing and so much fun, I wanted it to continue. He was clever, funny, and had that Jewish chein

We started to have daily chats. Nathan’s wife was working away in another town at that time, and he was able to speak freely.

Did I feel guilty? That’s a tricky one. But I was the single party: did I have anything to feel guilty about?

Nathan told me about his marriage. He’d been with his wife since secondary school. Unlike my ex, she’d been very welcoming about his Judaism and had even discussed converting at one point. But over the past 15 years, the intimacy had started to slip from their marriage: he was feeling increasingly sad about that and missed that feeling. He and his wife had tried therapy – briefly – but it hadn’t really helped.

As the months passed, Nathan said he was going to come to London to meet me. I had mixed feelings about this. While we already felt like soulmates, I absolutely didn’t want to be the “other woman” in a real-life affair. Phone calls and messages didn’t count as infidelity quite as much, I thought. (Your mileage may vary.)

So I agreed he could come, and booked a hotel for him. The most likely outcome would be that that Nathan and I wouldn’t fancy one another – but then we could continue as friends.

Within two hours of Nathan’s arrival, we were having sex on the floor of my flat. When we managed to make it to bed, we barely left it for a week, talking and laughing and eating and drinking.

Within two hours of Nathan’s arrival, we were having sex on the floor of my flat. When we managed to make it to bed, we barely left it for a week, talking and laughing and eating and drinking

This week cemented what we’d realised earlier – that was “it” for us.

We declared we loved one another many times over and Nathan resolved to leave his wife. Yes, it was early in the proceedings and easily couldn’t have worked out, but I took a leap of faith and trusted him.

We made a plan. Nathan would stay with his wife until his son left home – he wanted to do things as kindly and gently as possible.

At times, the waiting was hard and I had to be really patient, especially when the pandemic threw an extra spanner in the works.

Fast-forward to today. Nathan was good to his word: he separated from his wife two years ago, and their divorce came through in the autumn last year.

Nathan told me that she was understandably initially upset, she knew deep down that something was irrevocably broken in their relationship.

In the intervening period, Nathan’s ex has moved on and taken a new job in a new city. She and Nathan are still good friends.

Nathan is a writer, which means his job is flexible: he spends several months of the year in London, and I also travel to New York.

Over the last year we have “upped” my Jewish quotient further: we’ve seen Fiddler on the Roof together, and an awful play about Anne Frank.

Nathan has strong Zionist allegiances and has shown me ways to speak to my left-leaning, half-Jewish student children about the Middle East. He and I have stuck “FCK HMS” stickers on Sally Rooney posters outside Tube stations and run away, giggling.

We are an established couple these days, but I don’t forget the way we got together. There’s no doubt I would have preferred Nathan to have been single when we met.

The reason we are writing this article anonymously is not because we are “ashamed”, but because we don’t want to upset or embarrass Nathan’s American family. But life is tricky when you hit your fifties – you meet people in all sorts of ways.

I also need to mention that our Jewish connection made it feel like we were coming home. Did this make his infidelity less “bad”? Maybe, to us, it did.

Nathan has given me so many gifts, including born-again Jewishness when I thought that part of me was gone for good. This time around, the marriage is far more important than the wedding party. But we both agree we’d love to celebrate our union in Jewish style – maybe under a chupah, this time. And, Nathan,​ I’m waiting for th​at kernucker on my finger. ​

*Nathan is a pseudonym

 

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When I first encountered Rachel*, my sheyne meidel, I was not looking for an affair or a lover or, God forbid, the woman with whom I would want to spend the rest of my life

When I first encountered Rachel*, my sheyne meidel (pretty woman), I was not looking for an affair or a lover or, God forbid, the woman with whom I would want to spend the rest of my life. I was settled into a marriage, and had an almost grown-up son with the woman I had met in secondary school. I had many female friends, online and in person, and when I had first begun corresponding with the love of my life, she hadn’t even known I was a male – I was masquerading as a sock on a popular social media platform.

This sock puppet was the alter ego under which I would let the angrier Zionist in me fly. So when the woman with whom I would fall in love made a perfectly innocent comment, and thousands of left-wing jerks descended on her, I defended her in the way I defend a lot of Jews online. But she noticed. And thanked me. And then we struck up an easy correspondence. Well, I say easy, but I had a very hard time stopping talking to her. She was the easiest person to talk to. Eventually, I cajoled her phone number from her, and she would be the companion I couldn’t live without.

 When the woman with whom I would fall in love made a perfectly innocent comment, and thousands of left-wing jerks descended on her, I defended her in the way I defend a lot of Jews online

Unfortunately for all involved, at the time I was married to a kind and decent atheist who had been raised Catholic. Our marriage had been giving us diminishing returns over the years, but we genuinely liked each other. We didn’t have profound cultural disagreements. We had come from the same home town, and I was the product of a mixed marriage, myself – my mother was proudly Jewish if not very religious, and my father’s family was from a different but awfully similar Middle Eastern diaspora. And like I say, she was an atheist, so we didn’t exactly have arguments over dogma. I wasn’t sure there was a God, and she was certain there wasn’t – hardly cause for a divorce, much less a Thirty Years’ War. She was very tolerant of my Jewish practice, and she had even considered conversion herself.

But in talking to my sheyne meidel, I found someone who understood me on a gut level, in her kishkes. We became fast friends and I was very upfront about my being married and committed, but that didn’t stop us talking. We knew we would be friends. I had no idea what she looked like – we had only corresponded via direct messages for a while. When we spoke on the phone, we spoke for hours a day. We just intrinsically clicked in a way I’d never clicked with anyone in my life.

I flew to see her in England, a place I loved to visit regardless, to see if we clicked as well as we did on the phone. Well, we clicked. We couldn’t stop clicking. And no, I don’t mean that in any prurient sense: we talked endlessly, fought playfully, and began a dance whose music has yet to stop playing five years later. After a short period of shameful secrecy while my love and I cemented our relationship, I told my ex-wife I would like to end the marriage. Thanks to her generosity, and despite the pain, she remains a friend, but I had to move on with someone I admired, adored, and felt compatible with. I believe that one of the reasons we are so compatible is something that I never particularly cherished before: we are both Jews.

I flew to see her in England, a place I loved to visit regardless, to see if we clicked as well as we did on the phone. Well, we clicked. We couldn’t stop clicking

Do either of us believe in God? I don’t know. Not particularly. Maybe? Sort of? But we have an easy cultural communication that I don’t think we could have outside of the Jewish world. Romance differs when two Jews are involved in two principle ways: the unsaid and the said.

With respect to that that can or may go unspoken, I no longer need to explain my eye roll when someone explains about how they “stand foursquare against racism and Islamophobia” after an antisemitic vandalism incident. We are both rolling our eyes at the same time. We know how the other feels, almost exactly, and we can express it in the simplest of physicalities. I’m sure you notice too – when you see your uncle shrug, you know what he’s saying. Despite often being hyper-verbal, Jews don’t always have to talk to each other to be understood. It’s nice to share the same cultural dance.

 Despite often being hyper-verbal, Jews don’t always have to talk to each other to be understood. It’s nice to share the same cultural dance

And yet we do talk: long into the night. And when we disagree, it’s never acrimonious. I feel this is connected to Jewish traditions of discussion, debate, and disagreement. Disagreement doesn’t lead to angry stares any more. When we disagree, it’s often because we’re stating a different opinion than the one we held previously. They say “two Jews, three opinions” and I can’t tell you how many times we found ourselves on opposite sides of a debate to find ourselves switching sides within the hour. She has even said to me: “Just one hour ago I was arguing the opposite point to someone else.” We both know that disagreement is part of discussion, and we don’t take disagreement personally, but as an important part of discourse, not something that must lead to discord.

Another nice thing, we express our affection, openly and honestly. It is said there’s a “kissing post” at Ellis Island where Jewish family members greeted each other upon arriving on American shores from the Pale of Settlement. No other ethnicity showed the same kind of open affection for each other. I don’t know if Jews as a rule are more affectionate than other cultures, ethnicities, and religions, but in my limited experience, this has been the case.

So here I am, in love in my middle years with a Jewish woman for the first time in my life. It’s new, but it’s also 4,000 years old. It’s nice to come home.

*Rachel is a pseudonym