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Signs Aligned

Huppah Dreams

by
Marc Tracy
June 27, 2011
Liz Stone and Jud Nirenberg.(Facebook)
Liz Stone and Jud Nirenberg.(Facebook)

Each Monday, we choose the most interestingly Jewish announcement from that Sunday’s New York Times Weddings/Celebrations section. This week, it’s that of Elizabeth Stone and Jud Nirenberg, whose story begins, as many in these pages do, with JDate, but quickly gets less typical. Stone is deaf, but noted on her profile only that she speaks American Sign Language (in fact she also works at Gallaudet, in Washington, D.C., the country’s foremost university for deaf and hard of hearing students). Nirenberg distinguished himself by asking her if she was a fan of Oliver Sacks’s book Seeing Voices. The courtship hit a bump shen she suggested they move from emailing to direct-messaging and he lost interest; she revealed that she was deaf and therefore that direct-messaging was actually a substantial step. By their third date, he was in sign classes and had quit JDate.

Meanwhile, her mother is a former president of San Diego’s Jewish Family Service, and he is the author of a novel about Samson (yes, that Samson). Mazel tov to the happy couple!

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.