Community

Mazel Toy!

And Blue

Julie Citrin and -
Jonathan Finkelstein:
Hail to the victors.

An unknowing odyssey leads back to Ann Arbor.

CART WALDMAN
Special to the Jewish News

ulie Citrin and Jonathan
Finkelstein's experiences can
be described as two ships
passing in the night.
For six years, they traveled the
same route across the country. But it
wasn't until they both came back to
Michigan that their ships finally
docked.
As Finkelstein left the University
of Michigan in 1992 with his under-
graduate degree, Citrin arrived on
campus. "We just missed each
other," says Citrin, 25, who grew up
in Farmington Hills.
When she went on to earn her
master's degree from Boston
University in speech and language
pathology, he was attending the
University of Maryland for his .mas-
ter's degree in sociology. Ironically,
that summer they were just a few
subway stops apart. She was in

j

Washington, D.C., for a summer
internship at the Walter Reed
Medical Center.
"We often wonder if we were in the
same place at the same time," says the
30-year-old'Finkelstein, who grew up
in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Done with his program,
Finkelstein moved back to Ann
Arbor as a researcher at the Institute
for Social Research at U-M. Citrin,
who also completed her program,
came back to Farmington Hills and
began working in her field for the
Madison Heights School District.
Anxious for their children to con-
nect with someone Jewish, both
Jonathan's mother, Carol Finkelstein
of University Heights, Ohio, and
Julie's mother, Janis Holtzman, now of
Walled Lake, urged their children to
search out a mate in cyberspace.
According to both mothers, the dating
prospects in the real world were slim.
So with his mother's advice,
Finkelstein signed on to America

Online. With his screen name
Wolverine, he posted a listing on the
singles board, which read something
like this: "Looking for Jewish profes-
sional girl. Non-smoker and a U of
M fan." Citrin remembers the ad
catching her attention in August
1998. She admits she looked at it
every couple of weeks, yet it wasn't
until four months later that she
finally answered him. "I just trusted
my instincts when answering his
ad," says Citrin, who had never
before met someone through an
online personal ad.
"It wasn't until five minutes
before our first date that I thought,
`Perhaps he could be crazy or some-
thing."' Finkelstein had no appre-
hension: "The only other time I did
something like this was when I went
on a date with a girl I met through a
Jewish singles chat room."
Citrin saw a good omen 45 min-
utes after their date. She went to her
computer to e-mail a girlfriend, and

Finkelstein was online, ready to ask
her out again. "It was the quickest
ride ever back to Ann Arbor,"
Finkelstein laughs.
Late last spring, while vacationing
in Toronto, Finkelstein kneeled
down on a street corner and asked
Citrin to marry him. Shortly there-
after, Citrin moved to Ann Arbor
and found a job working for Saline
High School and Woodland
Meadows Elementary.
The devoted U-M fans will be
married March 18 at Temple Beth
Emeth in Ann Arbor, and the recep-
tion will be held in a ballroom at the
Michigan Union. To carry out the
U-M theme, the bridesmaids will
wear midnight blue and the flowers
will be white with a touch of maize.
The musical quartet will play the
"Victors" song in the recessional
after the ceremony.
By that point, Citrin and
Finkelstein say, "the party and cele-
bration will be ready to begin." El '

2/25
2000