A Foxman’s bashert and a chance subway meeting

“Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, a Cuban-American who grew up in Orlando, Fla., didn’t know the Yiddish term for soul mate (bashert) when he bumped into Ariel Foxman on the uptown A train in March 2012. But it’s clear now that that one subway trip was an express to destiny.” — The New York Times, Dec. 28, 2015.

In The New York Times’ Vows column Sunday, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, kvells about the recent wedding of his son, Ariel, to Cardet-Hernandez.

“Their marriage brings together things that were less easy to understand even 10 years ago,” the elder Foxman, who is retiring next year after more than a quarter century at the ADL’s helm, said in the Times’ profile of the same-sex couple. “Now it’s just so normal, comfortable and loving.”

In his toast at the wedding, Foxman “thanked the grooms for the opportunity to be sensitive, and he thanked Mr. Cardet-Hernandez for converting, reminding him that the Jewish people had lost so many in the past. He also requested grandchildren,” according to the Times.

Ariel Foxman, 40, is an editor at InStyle magazine.

Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, 29, who studied with a rabbi for several months before he converted to Judaism, is the principal of the Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters.