By Alix Wall
For the last of their three weddings, Elan Raffel, a Pikesville native, and his wife, Hallie Applebaum, set up a chuppah in Oaxaca, the southern Mexican city where they first confessed their love for each other.
Oaxaca is a vibrant hub of Mexican folk art and an incredible culinary scene. But Jewish life? Not so much.
Nonetheless, the couple chose to wed there in an egalitarian Jewish ceremony led by the groom’s older sister, Chicago resident Libby Smoler, on Feb 26. The wedding came just over three years after the pair met online from their parents’ houses early in the pandemic.
Applebaum’s parents weren’t terribly subtle about wading into her dating life after she moved home to Portland, Maine, in early 2020, the only one of their four children to do so. Her father showed her a video about dating apps, and her mother asked her for a demonstration.
Applebaum, 35, downloaded Hinge. The next thing she knew, her mom was hooked.
“She’s swiping and swiping, and saying, ‘This is fabulous,’” Applebaum recalled, adding with a laugh, “I told her, ‘You have to have some standards.’”
In Los Angeles, where Applebaum was living, she was heavaily focused first on her job as a producer of external communications for the educational technology division of the World Bank, as well as her all-consuming side project as founder of Future of Women, which hosts breakfast events around the world and hosts a podcast for women leaders.
But in her childhood home during the pandemic, she decided to dive into the dating world, drawing on her extensive experiences living and traveling abroad to experiment with what would generate the most promising results.
“I put my location as different places, like Mexico City or London, for the fun of it,” she said. “When we were so isolated, to have contact with people in these places was nice. But then I put myself in a more realistic location.”
That location was New York City, where she soon encountered Raffel, a tech industry attorney and 1999 graduate of Pikesville’s Krieger Schechter Day School.
Raffel and Applebaum matched and soon learned they had a lot in common. At the start of the pandemic, Raffel had also moved back in with his parents, Gary and Shuli — in his case, Pikesville.
Both Raffel and Applebaum attended Jewish day schools growing up. Both spent time living abroad — she in Guatemala, Ecuador and Great Britain while pursuing a master’s degree at the London School of Economics; he in his mother’s native Israel. Both also enjoyed fine food and off-the-beaten-path adventures.
After months of phone calls and probing conversations, Raffel and Applebaum finally decided to meet. He joined Applebaum for a camping trip in Maine’s Acadia National Park.
“We had an out,” Raffel said. “If either of us had a terrible experience, we could back out.”
Instead, they extended their time together after kicking it off with an unplanned first meeting for Raffel with Applebaum’s parents when she forgot a cooler of food at their house.
“We joke that our first date was two weeks long,” said Raffel.
Soon after, Applebaum met Raffel’s family for Rosh Hashanah dinner. Then, Raffel rented a home in Los Angeles after Applebaum returned there.
A few months later, with remote work becoming the norm, they began considering living and working elsewhere. They decided on Mexico, spending one month in the southeastern city of Merida and another month in Oaxaca.
With its vibrant food scene and colorful arts and culture, the couple fell in love with Oaxaca, and with each other.
They returned to Mexico in the summer of 2022 while their new condo in Santa Monica was undergoing renovations; it was there they became engaged. They now regularly host Shabbat dinners in their L.A. home through the nonprofit OneTable.
The first of their three wedding ceremonies took place last September when they were legally married at the L.A. County Courthouse.
The next wedding took place in Israel, where Shuli Raffel, who taught at Krieger Schechter for 32 years, had long hoped one of her three children would marry. Elan was her last hope, so the couple said yes to what they thought would be a small wedding there planned by Shuli.
But Shuli ’s plans grew larger and larger, until finally Applebaum’s parents and her London-based sister decided to come as well. Rabbi Shira Levine of Kibbutz Hanaton officiated a religious ceremony last October at Bistro de Carmel in Zichron Ya’akov, with 90 guests present.
Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, the couple held an Israeli-style brunch in Philadelphia attended by their grandmothers — Applebaum’s is 102 — who would not be traveling to Mexico. From there, they flew directly to Oaxaca for a menu tasting where, because Applebaum is a vegetarian, it fell on Raffel to try all the fish and meat options they might offer guests.
The couple returned to Oaxaca for the main affair, a multi-day event that included a day-long tour to a facility where mezcal, a Oaxacan spirit, is made, visits to craftspeople and two nights of dinners.
On Feb. 26, they enjoyed their third and final wedding in front of 72 guests at Cardenal Oaxaca, an events venue. Spicy pineapple mezcal cocktails kicked off the celebration, and a festive meal that won accolades even from foodie guests followed the ceremony.
“It was amazing,” said Baltimore native Ori Zohar, a guest who is also the co-founder of the Burlap & Barrel spice company in New York. “The wedding meal was a procession of Mexican and Oaxacan specialties with an international twist. Beets were grilled and paired with pumpkin seeds and pickled mustard seeds. Duck enchiladas came slathered in a black mole sauce and aged cheese. The main dishes were shared plates, so each guest got to try a little of everything before going back and polishing off the rest of their favorite.”
In one highlight of the day, the couple partook in a local custom where tall likenesses of themselves made out of paper maché were carried around while guests toasted the bride and groom. It was, Applebaum said, a perfect way to show off a beloved place to their friends and family.
“Our guests went from this beautiful ceremony that [Elan’s] sister put together,” she said, “to being immersed in this celebration in the streets.”
An Oakland, California-based freelance writer, Alix Wall wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish news source. Jmore staff contributed to this report.
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