Love is in the air with Tu B’Av right around the corner! Enjoy the romantic stories of how these D.C.-area Jewish couples met in honor of the Jewish Day of Love, celebrated this year on July 29.
‘Magic Whenever We Were Together’
Suzy and Dan Eckstein circled around one another all summer during their stints as camp counselors at the Bender JCC of Greater Washington.
The longtime North Potomac residents recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.
“I saw this girl interviewing [for the job] in the office, just through the door, and I thought, ‘Wow, she’s really cute,’” Dan recalled. “And then when we started working, I saw her running around with the teens, and [she] just had energy and enthusiasm that I really liked.”
The feeling was mutual.
“He was very cute,” Suzy said of Dan. “He had blond hair and blue eyes. You don’t see many Jewish guys with that.”
Her attraction to him went beyond looks. “It just seemed like every time we had an interaction, he was just really interesting to talk to,” she said.
Near the end of the summer in 1982, Dan asked if Suzy wanted to join a group of counselors on a trip to Atlantic City. Suzy declined; the trip coincided with her last day of work at her weekend job — a candy shop at White Flint Mall.
It wasn’t until Dan walked away that Suzy realized he had just asked her on a date. By the end of the summer, when Dan and Suzy still hadn’t gone out, their respective camp directors played the role of matchmaker, giving Suzy’s phone number to Dan’s supervisor.
“‘You should give her a call; she’s interested,’” Dan recalled his camp director telling him.
He did, they went on a movie date, attended an end-of-summer party with Suzy’s fellow camp counselors, and finished the date in Suzy’s Bethesda basement, where the two stayed up until 3 a.m. talking.
“It was deeper than [surface-level conversation],” Suzy said. “I remember [Dan] talking about some kind of Venn diagram of how things intersect.”
“I had taken a comparative religion class in college, and we were talking about how being religious and being a good person can overlap in weird different ways, and you don’t have to be completely religious to be a good person,” Dan said. “You could be religious and not be a good person.”
“I just loved having those deeper conversations,” Suzy said.
Dan didn’t know at the time that Suzy was hours away from returning to Connecticut for her senior year of college. But they adapted to a long-distance arrangement — Suzy at the University of Hartford and Dan at the University of Maryland, College Park.
“We wrote letters back and forth that whole year,” Suzy said, adding that she sent him chocolate chip cookies in the mail.
“I think we were both enamored,” said Dan, who liked her energy and smile.
“I was definitely enamored,” Suzy replied. “It took a little bit longer to maybe commit to that enamor. It was magic whenever we were together, that’s the way it felt.”
They went out at Thanksgiving that year. Neither Suzy nor Dan recall formally making their relationship official.
“It was basically just unspoken; we were both on the same page,” Dan said.
For Dan, who was immersed in the Jewish community at what is now Tikvat Israel Congregation, it was important that his partner be Jewish. For Suzy, who “didn’t have a very Jewish upbringing,” her prospective partner’s religion wasn’t top of mind.
“I felt very connected to Judaism, even though it wasn’t a big presence in our lives,” Suzy said, referring to her family.
In her household growing up, Passover Seders consisted of the Seder plate with the traditional foods, but no Seder. Suzy accompanied Dan to High Holidays services and weekly Shabbat dinners with his family.
“I liked the connection,” she said. “I felt like I missed out on some kind of connection, so it was really nice to have that connection. I learned the prayers.”
That gratitude carried on to the next generation — Suzy and Dan’s two sons.
“When my [older] son got bar mitzvahed, I remember thanking Dan’s dad — I guess both his parents — for doing [Shabbat] every Friday night, so I could feel more comfortable,” Suzy said.
Lacking a Conservative synagogue in the area, Suzy and Dan became founding members of Shaare Torah in Gaithersburg. The couple hosted fellow founding members in their North Potomac home for services and board meetings as their young kids ran around and played. The shul’s name was actually decided upon by the children.
“I think having the shared experiences that we went through — between decorating the house, raising the kids [and] also building the synagogue, helping start that up — has been something that’s made our connection even stronger and tighter, having all that history … together,” Dan said.
“I feel very fortunate,” Suzy said. “We have made a lot of very close friends that we’ve kept, and getting involved now with the 30th anniversary year has been really nice.”
The Ecksteins have two adult sons, two poodle mixes and two grandchildren, whom they see often.
“I’m very grateful for everything that we have and the friends we’ve made and the way our family has turned out,” Dan said. “[I] can’t imagine spending this 40 years with anybody else.”
‘The Second Time Around’
Sue Rudo had seen Sam Soffler around the gym at Leisure World of Maryland. Their one-on-one training sessions were 35 minutes apart on Wednesday mornings.
“The way I tell it is Cupid was there, shot her bow and arrow, … we started talking and something clicked,” said Rudo, 88, a resident of Leisure World in Silver Spring.
Soffler, 89, a fellow resident, can’t describe exactly what drew him toward Rudo: “I just had this feeling,” he said.
One Wednesday morning before his workout, Soffler mustered up the courage to ask her on a date. Rudo’s response? “Sure.”
Her answer teetered between a definite “yes” and a “no” because both had been widowed — Rudo was previously married for 61 years and Soffler 58. Rudo decided to get to know him better.
Their first date, at a Chinese restaurant in Olney, was the Halloween of 2023.
Rudo picked Soffler up at 11:30 that morning and she drove them to the nearby restaurant.
“We sat in the car and we talked and we listened,” Rudo recalled. “I asked him about his [late] wife, I asked about his family, he asked me, and I think it was 2 o’clock … when I said, ‘I think we should go in.’”
The two credit that first car conversation as the impetus for their relationship. They practice something Rudo calls “TLSL” — talk, listen, share, laugh.
“We still talk all the time and we go out to eat, and we see couples on their phones — they don’t talk to each other,” Rudo lamented. “We’re in our 80s and there’s a lot to talk about.”
She liked his easy disposition and ability to “make friends with everybody.” He appreciated her kind, caring nature.
Rudo mentioned to Soffler that she was Jewish. “I never realized just how important it would be that my partner would be Jewish,” Soffler said. “And the reason is because Judaism plays a fairly large part of my life.”
Soffler was raised in the Conservative movement and attends B’nai Shalom of Olney, and Rudo was raised Reform.
One of the highlights of their relationship was their April talent show performance at Temple Emanuel, where Rudo has belonged for nearly six decades. The pair took the bimah to offer a comedic retelling of how they first met and perform Frank Sinatra’s “The Second Time Around.”
Soffler spoke to the warm welcome he received from the Temple Emanuel community and the 100 fellow congregants Rudo introduced him to. The gym and the synagogue remain the two priorities in these octogenarians’ relationship.
These days, Rudo and Soffler frequent local theaters, work out at the fitness center with the same trainer, attend friends’ parties and, of course, go out to eat. They reflected on their unexpected relationship.
“Neither one of us was looking [for love], but there was a spark,” Rudo said.
Soffler has two words for fellow men who might be nervous to ask someone out: “Wh