Godsend: How Itamar Met Cathy

by Leah Hakimian
Special to the Jewish Week

"Omigod," says Cathy. She recalls how she sent a text message to the wrong person." "Omigod," she adds.

That was how she met her future husband, Itamar. The seeming mistake meant their relationship was meant to be. Cathy believes in the power of prayer, but not in sitting around and waiting for things to happen.

She likes to make things happen - her way. In the spring of 2007, she and some friends were at a restaurant/bar in New York where they were noticed by a group of Israeli guys. They mingled. At the end of the evening, one of the guys asked for Cathy's number. She declined. "I don't know what happened to me," she says. "I liked the guy, but suddenly I got really shy."

She knew that he and his friends liked to hang out at that particular lounge on Tuesday nights. So, the next Tuesday night, Cathy and her friends returned. He wasn't there. And they went back again. No luck. The Elusive One had disappeared.

Cathy did text message friends, who knew Israeli guys who were living in Queens and were in the real estate business.

Several days later, Cathy got a call. "Hi, I'm Itamar," said a stranger. But not, she could tell, the Elusive One.

"Yet there definitely was a connection between me and Itamar in our first telephone conversation," she recalls. "He just sounded really nice. We began talking on the phone several times a day, and spoke for several weeks. He was very comforting on the phone and very patient."

But there were problems. "First, he wouldn't tell me how he got my phone number. And, second, I was in my 30's and some years older than him. I told him that I was looking to get married. He told me that he too was looking to get married."

"No problem here," said Itamar. And then he explained how he got her phone number. She had sent a text message by mistake to an Israeli she had spoken to once and that guy alerted his friend, Itamar.

Cathy and Itamar had a first date in May, 2007. "We discovered that we had many of the same interests. We both loved movies, the beach, and hanging out with friends," she says.

Itamar wasn't the Elusive One. But could he be The One?

After dating about six weeks, Cathy decided to bring Itamar home to meet her parents. "This was a first for me," says Cathy. "Never before had I brought a guy home to meet my parents." Her family is part of the Mashadi community of Great Neck, New York, a community of about 1,000 families whose roots are in Mashad, Iran.

Mashadi women bring home fiancés. They do not bring home boyfriends. Mashadi women marry guys who are older than them. Parents pray that their Mashadi daughters will marry in their 20s and - best of all - marry within the community. Ooops. She was challenging tradition.

Itamar grew up in northern Israel, on Kibbutz Amir. It taught him to value community. And the Mashadi community maintains strong links. He felt comfortable with them. He had worked with them in the jewelry business when he arrived in the U.S. in 2003.

"My parents were very comfortable with Itamar, says Cathy. He was Jewish; he was Israeli; and he was open to tradition. He loved having Friday night dinners at my parents' home."

On December 24, 2007, Itamar Alpert proposed to Cathy Hakimian in front of all her friends. In her words: "Everything has timing. I had always wanted to get married. I was just waiting for the right person - someone who shared my interests and someone I loved. Itamar was the guy I wanted."

Is she setting a trend for the single women in the Mashadi community? Cathy considers and replies, "I'm not saying that mine is the only way; but it is one way." If you want to get married, she advises: "Put yourself out there, and it's OK to look outside the circle."

A researcher, Alan Helmreich, wrote in 1999 that among the Mashadis, dating outside the community was still the exception. In 2008 it is estimated that about 25 percent of the marriages are with non-Mashadis.

In the hit musical, "Fiddler on the Roof," the father, Tevye, gives his blessing to his oldest daughter, Tzeitl, even though she broke tradition and found her own match. Tevye has a harder time with his next daughter, Hodel, who didn't even ask for his permission to marry her radical beau. Still, Tevye accepts that times are changing and gives his permission and blessing to the engagement.

Cathy Hakimian stepped outside the inner circle but married Jewish. She received her family's blessings.

Cathy and Itamar were wed on August 14, 2008. Mazal tov!

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization