“Why the pandemic is causing spikes in breakups and divorces,” reads the ominous BBC headline. “Why COVID-19 will inevitably lead to breakups,” proclaims a gloomy Rolling Stone website headline. “How to break up during a pandemic,” instructs Cosmopolitan magazine.
While an Internet search combining the words “corona” and “breakup” yields more than nine million results (due to time constraints, I was unable to check them all), the restrictions caused by the pandemic – social distancing, lockdowns and significantly reduced air travel – have not generated a wholesale breakdown in relationships. In fact, in some cases, the pandemic itself and its restrictions have improved existing relationships and caused new ones to flower.
“Although we have been married for 32 years and business partners for 15,” says Esther Nathanson of Jerusalem, “my husband and I definitely found a new rhythm for our relationship during COVID.”
Esther, 59, and her husband, Mordechai, 60, operated a successful homecare franchise in North America and made aliyah from Toronto in 2017.
After they moved to Israel, Esther began volunteering for various organizations and attended ulpan. Mordechai became the COO of an agricultural company in the Netherlands and flew to Holland every second week for business.
“It really was a separating experience for us,” she recalls. “He couldn’t completely connect to the land and was constantly in another place. I was trying to absorb this new experience, but it was not with him, because he was on another track.
“When corona hit and the traveling stopped, suddenly he was now in Israel. He finally made his own personal aliyah, and together the two of us had an opportunity to do this together.”
“It’s hard to be together in such a big change in your life when you’re not on the same path,” explains Esther. “Corona brought us to the same place. We had something common that brought us together to realize that I had certain aspects of aliyah I couldn’t share with him because he wasn’t there. I only saw him for one week on and one week off. It was a really disconnected situation, which I think many people are in.”
Mordechai stopped traveling in March 2020 and, like most executives, has been conducting business via Zoom, working with partners in Canada and the Netherlands.
His extended stay in Israel “gave us time to begin to think about what aliyah meant here and what our life in Israel was, because now we are together,” says Esther. “It’s been beautiful to watch him connect. I could share with him what being here was all about. I didn’t want to make aliyah by myself. I made aliyah to be with my husband.”
Mordechai and Esther moved from the center of Jerusalem to the Baka neighborhood in April and conducted the Seder together, alone, meaningfully.
“If he were still traveling, he wouldn’t have been a part of it and what Passover is like in Israel,” says Esther. “He would have been here for the Seder, but he wouldn’t have been here emotionally.”
Now that Mordechai spends all his time in Israel, the couple sets times for dates in their home, where they practice speaking Hebrew, discuss their children and plan various events. Esther adds that she and Mordechai have progressed a great deal in their Hebrew-language abilities.
“We were not reaching our potential as a couple. Corona took the interruption out, and here we are together – no one is pulling us apart.
“We found what we had in common, how to help the other one be better and be the best we could be – and we could apply what we learned on our path – becoming more rounded, happy people on our path in Judaism in acts of kindness. The puzzle of our lives was scattered, and we put it together.”
TOVA AND Yisrael Sterns of Givat Ze’ev joined their lives together in August 2020, in a small, corona-style wedding with 70 people in attendance.
Tova, 28, and Yisrael, 30, met via the SawYouAtSinai website, which promotes itself as “combining the power of technology, the accessibility of the Internet and the personal touch of a Jewish matchmaker to make matches that meet your unique personality and needs.”
Yisrael had been a member of the website for five years and says he had received between five and seven dating suggestions per week. Tova had also found dating partners through the site.
On March 4, 2020, Tova and Yisrael went out for the first time. They continued with two more dates, then lockdown hit. From then on, the couple ceased face-to-face meetings and dated on the phone and Zoom for the next several weeks.
Yisrael says that virtual dating helped their relationship.
“I always had felt very ‘professional’ on dates,” he recounts. “I was socially comfortable in a certain sense, but I wasn’t able to relax. Dating was hard.”
Initially, Yisrael felt the same way in his encounters with Tova. Virtual dating with Tova by phone made things much easier for him.
“It was really helpful,” he says, “that we ended up going out on the phone for four or five weeks. Speaking on the phone, you are more comfortable. We developed more [ease with each other], and by the time we met again in real life, I had reached that plateau.”
Despite the simplicity of phone dating, Yisrael still felt a bit awkward and pressured when speaking via phone or on Zoom. He then came up with the idea of talking on the phone while playing a game.
“We downloaded a pool game and played against each other. That was a game-changer,” he enthuses. “It was unbelievable, to stay on the phone for a half-hour and not talk much about anything, while we were both involved in the same thing [the game]. It took away the awkwardness. You don’t need to say something at every moment, because you are involved in the game.”
Yisrael and Tova got married on August 7 and have spent most of the year in close quarters, as they both work from home.
Yisrael says the pandemic accelerated their process of acclimation to each other.
“Getting used to living with someone is an adjustment,” he notes. “We had an acceleration of that. We were forced to do much more work [on the relationship]; and being around each other all the time, we had to figure things out quickly.”
Yisrael and Tova seem to have overcome their initial issues and are comfortable with each other. As Tova says, “It’s been over a year now, so we are pretty good,” she laughs.
THE ABOVE examples illustrate how the pandemic has brought some people closer together, but sometimes the very distance it causes has also engendered romantic feelings.
Laura Ben-David, 52, a marketing and digital media specialist, photographer and author, lives in Tekoa in Gush Etzion. Her boyfriend, Ray Barishansky, deputy secretary of health in Pennsylvania, lives in the American city of Harrisburg.
Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll, a mutual friend of Barishansky and Ben-David, thought the pair could be a great match and told them so several years ago.
“Neither of us did a thing about it at the time,” says Ben-David.
When Laura’s father died of COVID in the summer of 2020, just a few months after Ray’s father had died of the same illness, Ray reached out to Laura via Facebook Messenger.
“With the ice broken,” continues Laura, “we began speaking occasionally via Facebook Messenger. Our conversations grew more frequent and deeper, and by October we were messaging daily and starting to add phone calls and FaceTime. And yet, we had never met in real life. Because of COVID, we could not even entertain the idea of travel for months.”
In April, Laura flew to the US, and she and Ray met for the first time at the airport when he picked her up.
“That first date lasted 11 hours and started two weeks of what we dubbed ‘concentrated craziness,’” remembers Laura. “Since then, Ray has been to Israel twice (his sister lives here, so he was able to come as a first-degree relative), and I went back another time this summer.”
Laura says that COVID is still creating challenges for their relationship, far beyond those of a regular long-distance relationship. “I was going to go visit him for Rosh Hashanah, but I can’t, because of the quarantine afterward. But we’re counting down to October when I do plan to go to the States to see him, quarantine or not.”
Yet another example of absence making the heart grow fonder during COVID is the case of Maariv journalist Josh Aronson, 34, a native of Manchester who has been living in Jerusalem for the past 16 years. Josh calls himself an “Israeli success story” as the first Israeli journalist on the autistic spectrum.
Several years ago, while visiting family in England, Josh’s ex-girlfriend asked him to speak with Esther Ullmann, who wanted to work in the world of communications. Josh talked with her, then began to correspond with her.
Esther has Bardet-Biedl syndrome, a genetic condition that impacts multiple body systems, which can include retinal degeneration, obesity, reduced kidney function and polydactyly (extra digits of the hands or feet), among many other features.
“Just before corona,” Josh says, “we decided that we would go out together.”
Recalling the moment when he determined his intentions toward Esther, he says, “I flew to the UK for her birthday on February 8, and as we were going into the taxi, after I opened the door for her and she went in the other side, I saw that she was leaning over to open the door for me. I said, ‘This is the kind of girl I want to be with.’”
After Josh returned to Israel and the pandemic broke out, they remained in contact. Due to her sight limitations, they could only speak by phone.
“This made it more difficult and made the heart ache more,” shares Josh.
In September 2020, Josh flew back to England, went into quarantine and, after coming out, proposed to Esther. Since then, he has visited England several times. The wedding is scheduled for October 5 in the UK.
After their marriage, Josh and Esther will move to Israel.
“I know I will be with the girl that is everything to me,” affirms Josh.
While the outcome might have been the same without the pandemic, Josh says the pandemic accelerated his proposal. “I might not have proposed that early. Being apart made me realize how much she means to me and how much we can do together. Definitely, corona had some part in realizing that she is the one for me.”
“I HAD given up on dating,” says Rachel Levy, 38. “Many people who move to Israel are looking for the partner that they hadn’t found in the place where they came from.”
Levy joined OkCupid, a US-based, internationally operating online dating site – “I joined because it was free,” she quips – and met Gili Levy.
She giggles and says, “Gili said he spoke English. I realized early on that he didn’t speak English, but my Hebrew was good, so it was fine.”
Rachel, who moved to Israel from Long Island in 2018, first went out with Gili on January 4, 2020, and the two hit it off immediately.
On February 27, Rachel and Gili flew to Austria, returning to Israel on March 2. Gili was not feeling well, and Rachel stayed with him in his small apartment, where they isolated for fear that he had COVID.
Gili, it turned out, had a common virus, and recovered after a month, but Rachel remained with him in his apartment and never returned to her apartment.
“There was no point in going home,” she says. “The world was upside down. What was I going home for?”
Rachel remained in Gili’s apartment for Passover, celebrating the holiday with Gili’s Israeli parents.
They knew they were going to get married, and while Gili had wanted a November wedding, they realized there was no point in waiting. They married in early July, with 73 people in attendance.
Rachel and Gili are expecting their first child in September.
Would Rachel and Gili have married in a corona-free world? She answers in the affirmative but says that living in a tiny studio apartment with Gili in March and April proved that their relationship was solid. “We knew that if we could survive a handful of weeks stuck in a studio apartment, we were okay. We didn’t fight or argue, and we are both easygoing. Even in our little space, he was never possessive.”
Rachel sees divine intervention in her meeting Gili, and says that the previous September she had written herself a note in which she said that she would marry in July 2020. She told her friends, “I am getting married in July. I don’t know to whom, but I am getting married then.”
“You can’t make this up,” she says.
Corona, dating, relationships and marriage don’t always go together. But for five couples, at least, corona has made all the difference in creating, cementing and preserving their relationships.