They Have Lifetimes to Share

It is, as Jacqueline Shelton says, a classic case of “doing well by doing good.”

This morning, Nancy Sokoler and Neal Steiner, who met as volunteers for the Access young adult program, Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, will be married at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino. This evening, Eileen Sandberg and Jeremy Sunderland--who also met as Access volunteers--will be married at the Calabasas Inn.

At the federation, romance is not only in the air, it’s epidemic.

Beth Comsky and Uzzi Raanan will marry Sept. 6 at the California Club. On Sept. 7, at Temple Emanuel in San Francisco, Shelton will marry Craig Miller. Yes, they all met as Access volunteers.

Pure chance? Not really, these couples agree. If you’re open to meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, what better place to look than among those who share your values and beliefs?

“I didn’t go there with that purpose,” Miller says, but “it was in the back of my mind. It was the best byproduct. If you’re out there getting involved, that’s where you’re going to meet someone great.”

In this couple’s case, fate also intervened. It was May 1995, and Miller was subbing for a friend who’d been scheduled as an Access speaker. Shelton thought he was “incredibly handsome” and--not solely in her role as co-chairwoman of programs--thanked him for helping out.

There’s a touch of good-natured “he said, she said” as Miller, 28, an attorney with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in West L.A., and Shelton, 33, clearance administrator for the Walt Disney Co., tell what happened thereafter.

They do agree that they met for the second time a week later at a Shabbat dinner at Valley Beth Shalom. Shelton asked Miller to join her in an Israeli dance. A reluctant dancer, Miller figured anyone who could get him out on the floor “must have a real power over me.” After the dance, he recalls, “Jackie left to talk to another gentleman.”

True, she says, but she had a plan. “I liked Craig, but I didn’t feel forward enough to say, ‘Let’s go out,’ ” so she mentioned that people often went out as a group for coffee after these events.

He took the hint and suggested instead latte a deux at the Urth Caffe on Melrose. He saw Shelton home, promising to call.

“Promptly at 10:30 the next morning, I called,” he says. “It was 10:45,” she says. They made a date for dinner two days later at the Authentic Cafe on Beverly Boulevard. He brought her flowers.

Soon, both knew this was something special. “I had so much fun with him, and I enjoyed being with him as a friend,” Shelton says. “That was different from the other guys I was dating.” She found Miller funny, smart, thoughtful, sensitive--and a great listener.

Says Miller: “I loved her passion for everything she does.” Her outgoing nature appealed to him, as did “her commitments to her family and her friends and her sensitivity.”

They shopped flea markets, shared Sunday brunches, studied Jewish history--and continued their work with Access, which Shelton now chairs.

On Dec. 25, 1996, when volunteers traditionally observe Tikkun L.A., a day of community outreach in lieu of celebrating Christmas, Miller and Shelton worked at an East L.A. men’s shelter. They’d planned dinner later at her West Hollywood apartment.

Miller had gone to a paint-your-own ceramics place and decorated two plates with images of Shelton’s favorite things. Taking food from one, she saw the words, “Will you marry me?” That night, at the beach, he gave her an antique engagement ring. (She later made a plate for him. It says, “Yes.”)

Shelton and Miller come to their commitment to Judaism from different places. He grew up in a Conservative Westside family with parents who “set the example” for involvement in the Jewish community.

She grew up in San Francisco, the daughter of German-born Reform Jews. Her mother had been a kindertransport child sent to safety in England during World War II; her father had gone underground and escaped from Germany in 1938.

Under the Nazis, “they couldn’t practice Judaism,” says Shelton, one reason doing so is “very precious” to her.

*

Neal Steiner and Nancy Sokoler met at an Access retreat in January 1996. He was intrigued by her style, creativity and optimism. “I thought I’d like to go out with her--not knowing it would lead to this.”

Through fate and faith, their paths kept crossing--while planting trees in Encino for Access, at a Shabbat dinner, at an Israeli independence day celebration.

Four months later, Steiner asked Sokoler out to dinner at Vito’s in Ocean Park. “There was that normal dating nervousness, but I thought, ‘Something’s clicking,’ ” Steiner recalls.

By the fourth date, Sokoler says, “I think we both knew this was something different.” Six months later, after a Saturday dinner date at Chez Helene in Beverly Hills, Steiner gave Sokoler a tin of Hershey’s Kisses. Inside was a diamond ring.

“Jewelry and chocolates,” she says, “two of my favorite things.” She said yes.

Both have reaped multiple rewards from Access, which is for Jewish singles and couples between 25 and 40 and offers a spectrum of programs from the educational and spiritual to the social, as well as community outreach activities. Says Steiner: “It’s not just to find somebody. You’re involved in the community.” And, Sokoler says, “We got to know one another in a less threatening setting. It wasn’t this meat market sort of thing.”

Steiner had never been into the bar scene--”I’m not good with pickup lines”--and abhorred Jewish singles dances with men lined up on one side, women on the other.

Steiner, 36, who’s in product analysis and development for Heritage Indemnity Group, and Sokoler, 34, public issues manager for the American Cancer Society-L.A., are “growing and learning together” as they build a spiritual life on foundations they value.

She grew up in a Conservative family in the San Fernando Valley, he in a Reform family on the Westside. The rabbis who bar mitzvahed him and bat mitzvahed her will co-officiate at their wedding today.

Says Sokoler: “It was important for me to find someone who wanted to have a Jewish home.” Steiner’s epiphany came on a trip to Israel in 1992: “I realized this is my heritage.” He decided it was time to “start acting Jewish.” That included dating Jewish women exclusively.

Sokoler believes too many Jews today grow up without love for the traditions and, while they may go to Hebrew school, view even that as something to be endured. “It’s been made so unfun,” agrees Steiner, separated from, rather than integrated into, daily life.

They have been taking adult education classes--as well as ballroom dance--at the University of Judaism. They cook together and may someday keep kosher. And, Sokoler says, “He’s actually a man who likes browsing and shopping.” “Browsing, yes. Shopping, no,” he retorts.

Their devotion is palpable. “He is supportive, thoughtful, always putting me first,” she says. He’s sure he’s “met the most wonderful person in the world.”

*

Beth Comsky, 33, an architect with Gensler & Associates in Santa Monica, and Uzzi Raanan, 31, an attorney with Manning, Marder & Wolf, met two and a half years ago when she was chairing Access and he was on a steering committee. She’d been “hearing about this Uzzi. He’d gotten a reputation for being a nice guy, funny guy.”

Four months later--at an Access meeting--they saw each other again. She thought, “Cute guy, nice smile. I was just curious.” When his group adjourned next door, he left his keys and she took them to him, teasing, “How much are you going to increase your [federation] donation if I give you these?”

Their paths would cross again and again at federation events. One of the staff asked Raanan if he was dating anyone and suggested oh, so subtly, “Have you thought about Beth?” He got the idea that he “wouldn’t be rebuffed.”

In September 1995, he took Comsky to dinner at Chianti. “He came to my door with a pink rose,” she recalls. “It was a really nice evening, really nice conversation.” There followed six or seven dates in the next two weeks.

In time, things seemed to be pointing to marriage. But, Comsky says, “great proposal opportunities” came and went. The following August, as they were para-sailing off Martha’s Vineyard, she said, “Now that you have me up here. . . .” He deadpanned, “Isn’t that a great view!” He “wasn’t ready. I didn’t have the ring.”

But the heart of a romantic beats in this lawyer’s chest. He considered, and rejected, parachuting down with the ring. Then, last November, on a trip to Yosemite, he took Comsky to Bridal Veil Falls. He said, “I always wondered what the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with would be like. Now I know.” She said yes--and he took the ring from his backpack.

Both plan to stay involved in the federation, believing, “It’s really important to give back,” and they want to have a more Jewish home than those in which they were reared. “I always had Jewish identity,” Comsky says, “but we celebrated Christmas and Passover.”

Before she became involved in the federation in her late 20s, “whether the person I married was Jewish was never a consideration.”

“I feel strongly about the cultural aspects” of Judaism, Raanan says. He seeks relevance to today, rather than attempting “to re-create everything as it was done 3,000 years ago.”

When Comsky and Raanan volunteered at Access, did it occur to them they might find romance?

“Oh, absolutely,” she says. “Absolutely,” echoes Raanan, who was never into the stereotypical singles scene. “In a bar, you show up for an hour. It’s impossible, unless you have really amazing skills. And in a bar, you see each other for your looks.”

It was important, Comsky adds, that both were Access leaders. “I see plenty of people who keep coming to events--the one-off--and can’t understand why they haven’t met someone.”

*

For Eileen Sandberg, 31, an account manager for RPMC, a Calabasas-based entertainment promotions company, meeting Jeremy Sunderland, 33, an attorney for Warner Bros. television, was not love at first sight.

He first spotted her at a federation fund-raiser five years ago and thought, “I wonder what it would be like to go out with someone who looks like her? I thought she was so incredibly beautiful. She didn’t want anything to do with me. I was too clean-cut.”

“Cute,” she says, “but just not my type.”

Their paths crossed again at an Access orientation. He was among the speakers relating how they came to their true Jewish identities. He’d never sought out Jewish friends or connections, he said, and with his blond looks “could always choose what I was going to reveal about myself.” He told of gradually learning to value his Jewishness.

“As you get older and into the working world, there are things that bring you back,” he explains. “The Jewish community is a very good community” that helps its own and others.

As Sandberg listened to Sunderland speaking that night, she thought, “That’s why I was there, too.” She was hoping to find an extended Jewish family.

She asked to be assigned to his group. He was intrigued. Hadn’t she made it clear that she wasn’t attracted to him?

But soon she found herself falling for him. One day, he took her home after a group bike ride and, as they talked, she mentioned that she disliked Woody Allen films because he always winds up with the non-Jewish woman. Too bad, said Sunderland--he was going to ask her to see “Husbands and Wives.” When she said she’d love to, he knew, “She was saying yes to me.”

In less than three months, they’d decided to date one another exclusively.

Getting engaged took quite a bit longer. Says Sandberg: “I just wasn’t ready. It scared me a little. I think it hit me when I woke up and couldn’t imagine my life without my best friend . . . and then he made me wait.”

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day 1997. Sandberg anticipated in vain. But on Feb. 19, the couple went to their house in Encino to celebrate close of escrow. He bought champagne, dimmed the lights, lit candles and gave her the ring. He recalls, “I said, ‘Will you marry me?’ She said, ‘Yes, but could you say that again?’ ”

Their real estate agent had also left champagne. She’d met her husband through Access five years ago.

Like the other couples, Sandberg and Sunderland say their Access involvement nurtured their relationship and their commitment to a Jewish life. “When you’re there for the right reasons,” he says, “you relate on another, less superficial, level.”

Growing up, Sandberg says, being Jewish meant going to temple on High Holy Days. She was never bat mitzvahed--”It didn’t have any meaning to me.” She’d like to do that someday.

When she was a teen, her mother insisted she join a B’nai B’rith youth group. Says Sandberg: “Then I began to be proud of being Jewish.”

She and Sunderland hope their children will find joy in Jewish tradition. With so many young people today having no beliefs, he says, it’s not surprising that many Jews marry outside their faith. “If you don’t believe in anything and you meet a non-Jewish person who doesn’t believe in anything, you have that in common.”

The four couples not only found romance but, Comsky says, “We now have this set of friends we met as a couple.”

Both the Millers and the Steiners happen to have planned honeymoons in Italy. Says Sokoler: “We thought we might light candles and do a Shabbat dinner.”