was getting nervous. A hundred of her closest friends, fans and relatives were getting impatient. They were waiting for the rabbi to officiate at Marilyn’s nuptials with Steven Portnoff. "Is there a rabbi in the house?" Marilyn quipped. "Is anybody a rabbi?"
The caterer and his crew were crammed into a room the size of a walk-in closet. Marilyn had merged three adjacent luxury apartments on Manhattan’s West End Ave. to create an elegant art-enhanced home. But something was missing.
"Where’s the kitchen?" I asked.
"I don’t need a kitchen," Marilyn said. "I have an order-out room."
Suddenly there was a flurry of excitement as Rabbi Joseph Potasnik arrived to begin the ceremony that was to take place four days before Yom Kippur.
"How long will this take?" Marilyn asked.
"My sermons are exactly 18 minutes long," the rabbi said. "I always prepare on my way to the synagogue, and it takes 18 minutes to get there. Today I came from New Jersey."
As he offered the Kiddush cup of wine to the bride and groom, Marilyn sighed, "I need this."
In his sermon Rabbi Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said he went to law school where he learned that marriage is defined as the loss of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Marilyn, comedian/singer, and Steven, a retired lawyer, have been preparing for this day for two years, ever since they met on JDate. Thankfully, the sermon was not as long as the engagement.
Even though Marilyn has a new man in her life, she’s still very close to Mark Wilk, her 25-year-old son from a previous marriage. In fact they are collaborating on a musical called, Alyss, based on Alice in Wonderland, for which Mark wrote the book and lyrics and Marilyn composed the music.
