Aug. 9 was Tu B’Av, the Jewish day of love and rebirth, so enjoy this Jewish love story set in the nation’s capital, featuring bagel sandwiches, GatherDC and a unique Shabbat tradition.
On the rainy Wednesday that they met, Jordan and Daniel Friedman had both been on the fence about attending a GatherDC happy hour event that night.
“I called my mom and I was like, ‘It’s been a long day at work; I’m going to be late anyway. I really don’t want to go,’” Daniel said. “And she said, ‘Go, you never know who you’re going to meet.’”
Jordan’s mom said the same thing when Jordan called her, and that’s how Jordan and Daniel found themselves at the Madhatter in Dupont Circle.
Daniel talked to “a bunch of different people” at the event, including Rabbi Aaron Potek of Sixth & I, who introduced him to Jordan.
With so many of the attendees being fresh out of college — GatherDC aims to connect young Jewish adults — the then 26-year-old Jordan was glad to meet someone closer to her age; Daniel was 25.
The two talked for the next 45 minutes.
“The conversation flowed like I had known him for years,” Jordan said.
“It was easy to talk to her. She held up her side of the conversation; she wasn’t too weird,” Daniel laughed. “We just had so much in common.”
“We didn’t know anything about each other, but … you could tell we had shared values, whether it’s politeness or talking about our families because family is really important to both of us,” Jordan added. “Dan has a brother; I have a sister. We’re both very close with our siblings and our parents.”
The two seemed to hit it off, so Daniel, growing hungry, asked Jordan to dinner. She declined, as she was attending the event with a friend. Daniel tried three more times.
“She declined every time until my stomach won over, and that’s when the conversation ended and I had to go get some food because it was late,” he said.
The two exchanged numbers and she texted him that night after encouragement from her mom.
“I think all I said was, ‘Great to meet you tonight,’” Jordan said. “Then, I have never had a guy respond as fast as Dan responded.”
Daniel replied, “‘So great to meet you. Would love to have dinner with you next week.’”
“I think what was great about Dan was he did not play any games,” Jordan said. “He just kept it real. … We set up dinner and the rest is history.”
The two returned to Dupont Circle for their first date at Sette Osteria, where Jordan and Daniel split a salad and pizza pie.
“We talked a little about work, what we wanted to be and do,” Daniel said, adding that he was seeking a partner with ambition who valued family, fitness and health.
They were also connected by a common love for food.
“Especially in the beginning, every single date we went on involved food,” Jordan said. “We live to love food. But [dating Daniel] just felt natural and normal and right and easy.”
Before the end of that first date, Daniel had asked Jordan about a second date.
A later trip to New York solidified their relationship. Waiting to board a bus back to D.C. — what would be a four-hour ride — they were ravenous but wanted to secure seats next to each other. Jordan held their spot in the bus line, while Daniel bought bagel sandwiches from across the street.
“He ran back in time and we made it to the bus,” Jordan recalled. “That was a pivotal point for both of us. Logistically, we work well together.”
Jordan and Daniel eventually moved in together in D.C., where they hosted and attended Shabbat dinners with OneTable: “Dan and I love talking to people [and] bringing people together.”
The two, who were engaged three years later and married by Potek in 2020, reflected on that happy hour event in 2016 that brought them together.
“At the time, I lived in Bethesda and Dan lived in Capitol Hill, so Dupont was kind of a halfway point,” Jordan said. “We would never have crossed paths if it hadn’t been for this Gather[DC] event because we work in very different industries.”
Jordan works in customer strategy for an insurance company and Daniel is an engineer at a software company.
“We [didn’t] live near each other; we didn’t have any other connections,” she said.
They had both tried to find love on dating apps prior to meeting without much luck.
“[I had] a lot of first dates and I was just thinking, ‘OK, I need to go to a place physically where there are people that are going to be there that I would want to meet rather than trying to find them in the digital world,’” Daniel said.
Similarly, Jordan had tried “all the dating apps” to try to meet a potential partner.
“In college, my sorority superlative was ‘most likely to find the most eligible Jewish bachelor,’” she said. “I always wanted to find that perfect match.”
Neither of them had been too involved with GatherDC; Jordan had been to one event before, and Daniel’s first had been that night.
“I never in a million years thought that I would meet my future husband in person because that was just not how the world worked anymore,” Jordan said.
The two now live together in northern Virginia and have a son who is nearly 2 years old. Potek conducted their son’s baby naming ceremony; Jordan and Daniel hope that the rabbi will one day officiate his bar mitzvah.
The small, happy family continues to live Jewishly, whether by eating chips and homemade guacamole on Shabbat — a pandemic-era tradition for Jordan and Daniel — or getting involved with the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia — Jordan recently began a new role as a J Family ambassador to connect young Jewish families.
When the two drive through D.C., they point out the restaurants where they’ve had dates and, of course, the Madhatter, where their story began.
“Driving through the city is kind of like a walk down memory lane,” Daniel said.
