Rabbi Swiped Right On Tinder — And Found His Bashert
Image by The Knot/Avital Zipper and Andrew Scheer
We’re kvelling over this New York Times Vows story about Rabbi Andrew Scheer, Jewish chaplain for the Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System and the New York City Department of Correction, stumbling upon his bride, Avital Zipper — on Tinder, no less.
Scheer had seen Zipper’s picture pop up on Tinder. He looked her up on Facebook, but then when he returned to Tinder to swipe right, she was gone. So he messaged her on Facebook, explaining the slightly awkward 21st-century mishap, and asked her out for a drink.
“The girls I was meeting were lovely, but they were expecting a doctor or lawyer,” he told the Times. “Being a rabbi really impeded my dating life.”
Zipper found his occupation interesting. “He didn’t look like the rabbis I grew up with,” she said. “When he told me what he did, it was unexpected, but it didn’t freak me out. He’s not that random banker or millennial worker who’s doing his own thing.”
The rest is history.
The two were married September 10 at Cedarhurst’s Temple Beth El.
Mazel u’brocha, rabbi and rebbetzin.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
