Our Story
Reyna Schaechter
Bride
Isaac Bleaman
Groom
How We Met
We met at the Yidish-vokh ('Yiddish Week'), an annual retreat for Yiddish speakers, in August 2012. Reyna had been attending the retreat with her family every year since she was a baby. Isaac was attending for the first time. One evening, Reyna and Isaac both found themselves sitting on the veranda, where a group of young Yiddish speakers were gathered after the main camp building had been locked up for the night. Somebody (we think one of Reyna's cousins) asked Isaac when his birthday was. He replied February 13. Reyna overheard this: "My birthday is February 13, too!" We stayed up all night talking, in Yiddish, and kept in touch virtually during the year that Isaac was at Oxford. We reconnected in New York after Isaac was accepted to study linguistics at NYU. Things got romantic at the following Yidish-vokh, and so we began to date long distance — Reyna at Yale, Isaac at NYU. After Reyna graduated in 2017, we moved into a studio apartment in Brooklyn.
The Proposal
On May 4, 2018, we went out to dinner at a restaurant called Contra on the Lower East Side, ostensibly to celebrate Isaac's having submitted a full draft of his dissertation to his professors. Right after the first course was served, Isaac reached into his bag and pulled out a folder. Reyna was quite confused as to why Isaac had brought office supplies to dinner. He handed her the folder, and inside it she found the dedication to his dissertation. "A gift for my soulmate, Reyna. Nu...?" "Nu?" ('well?') was how Reyna's grandfather Mordkhe proposed to her grandmother, Charne. Reyna said "nu nu," and Isaac presented her with a beautiful engagement ring that he had inherited from his grandmother Shirley.
