Something to Kvell About

May 6, 2022 JTA

Pammy Brenner and David Frisch recently got engaged at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research in the Center for Jewish History in New York. (Courtesy photo via JTA)

By Julia Gergely

David Frisch had the perfect plan to propose to his girlfriend, Pammy Brenner, while the two were recently in New York visiting her family. He would get down on one knee in the reading room of the Center for Jewish History, where Brenner had been a research fellow at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research from 2018 to 2020.

Frisch, 24, just needed to get her to go along with it.

Though she’d spent many hours in the center’s Lillian Goldman Reading Room, getting Brenner, 24, to the library wasn’t as easy as Frisch expected. He enlisted the help of one of Brenner’s favorite undergraduate professors at Barnard College, Agi Legutko, who teaches Yiddish literature.

Legutko was going to lure Brenner to YIVO’s archives under the guise that new materials had been discovered from Shomer (the pen name of Nahum Meïr Schaikewitz), the obscure Yiddish writer and bitter rival of Sholem Aleichem whom Brenner had been researching.

But Brenner already suspected she would be getting engaged that day, so she kept asking the professor to reschedule. She didn’t want to miss the date she and Frisch had planned at Washington Square Park.

“I was sending my professor emails saying, ‘I’m 99% sure I’m on my way to get engaged. Can we please meet up literally any other day?’” she said. “And she was forwarding them to David, saying, ‘Things are not going to plan.’”

Eventually, Brenner’s sister just put her in an Uber. When Brenner realized she was headed for the Center for Jewish History — where the YIVO archives are housed — instead of Washington Square Park, Brenner figured Frisch was re-arranging the plan.

When she arrived, Brenner was told that there was a book waiting for her. “At first, I thought it was the manuscript that I had come there for, but it was actually a scrapbook of the whole history of our [one-year] relationship,” she said.

And there was Frisch, waiting in the reading room with an engagement ring, along with their families. He convinced the Center for Jewish History to open for the day so they could get engaged.

Frisch’s proposal also had a Yiddish flair. “I could not do the whole thing in Yiddish,” he said, “but I learned a couple words I needed to say.” One of Brenner’s goals in her research is to introduce Yiddish culture and language to more people, so Frisch wanted to acknowledge that in his proposal.

“Yiddish is something that’s been both so important for Jewish history and also within my own family. I care about Yiddish.”

That’s exactly why Frisch decided to propose at YIVO. “I’m not originally from New York, but it’s really important to us that we get engaged in a place that has so many friends and family, and a place that would be meaningful for Pammy,” he said.

Brenner grew up on the Upper West Side and graduated from Maayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, an Orthodox school in New Jersey, before studying in Israel and at Barnard. Frisch, who is from Pittsburgh, graduated in 2020 from Duke University.

The couple met last year while pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Oxford in England. Brenner completed a master’s degree in Yiddish studies there earlier this year, then stayed in Oxford while Frisch completed the last semester of his own master’s degree in political theory.

The two hope to make their way back to New York when Frisch completes his studies. He plans to pursue a law degree, while Brenner intends to apply for doctoral programs in Yiddish.

Jonathan Brent, YIVO’s CEO and executive director, said he was “delighted” by the news that Brenner got engaged in the building.

“David’s proposal at YIVO shows that YIVO is not just a place for researching the past but a vibrant institution for the next generation, a place for connecting, for discovery and for new life,” Brent said. “Mazal tov!”

This article, provided the JTA global Jewish news source, originally appeared in The New York Jewish Week.