[ RONIT YAEL FRIEDMAN. 44. CIS-FEMALE. SHE/HER] is here! They’ve lived in Silver Lake for [ 8 MONTHS] and are originally from [ JERUSALEM, ISRAEL ]. They are a [ART DEALER & AUCTIONEER ] and in their downtime love [ RUNNING OUTDOORS ] and [ CUDDLING WITH HER CAT ]. They look a lot like [ AYELET ZURER] and live [ON REDCLIFF ST].
BIOGRAPHY:
bullet point bio, I’ll make a better one hopefully asap :/ (tw: homophobia)
Ronit was born in Jerusalem to an Orthodox Jewish family so she grew up with a lot of traditions but also restrictions.
She’s the second youngest of five and all her older siblings had had their own little rebellions but somehow hers seemed to be the worst.
It obviously didn’t help matters when teenage Ronit figured out that she was very queer, very vain and very curious about faraway places.
Her parents tried their best with a mix of carrots and sticks to get her to toe the line, but Ronit just loved jeans and pop music and wanted to go to university.
There was never a total breakdown in her relationship with her family since her family always hoped Ronit would come around, so Ronit decided to go to university in Jerusalem.
She had always loved design and history and the question of how different cultures and religions influenced each other, so art history was an obvious choice.
She specialized in early Jewish art and after graduation worked as an assistant at a museum in Jerusalem. And while she liked having her own crappy car and her own crappy place, Ronit also wanted more.
At 26, she stumbled upon a job ad for a curator at the Jewish Museum in New York, and applied even though she was sure she’d never stand a chance, but ended up getting the job.
As soon as she set foot into the megacity, Ronit fell in love with it all. The night life, the people, the hustle and bustle. Very quickly, her job actually felt restrictive, but Ronit stuck it out and used the security it gave her to garner connections in the art world and pay for her MA degree.
At 32, Ronit took the plunge, quit her job and became a freelance art trader. While she never became wealthy, she lived for her job and loved it: The traveling, meeting new people and learning new things.
She basically worked around the clock and while she had a few short-lived relationships here and there, nothing ever really lasted. The closest she came was with a woman she had met through work who was actually cheating on her husband with Ronit; that was a sort of on-off thing.
Ronit did travel to Israel regularly during this time, pretty much only for work, and when she was in Jerusalem she did drop by to see her family, but they usually weren’t visits she derived much pleasure from: Changing pretty much her entire wardrobe, being wrong for covering her hair or not covering her hair and hundreds of other things were just ...draining to her.
A little over a year ago, Ronit’s father died. She ended up traveling “home” for the Jewish mourning period even though she loathed the prospect, but actually, surprisingly, didn’t resent people there as much as she would have expected to? And truth be told, she actually felt a sting of something unpleasant she would never tell you was jealousy over seeing people who don’t have to put the word “home” into quotation marks.
She was already feeling less than stellar about just returning to her old life, but then her lover called her and informed Ronit that she had picked her husband and that things were over. The combination of those things let Ronit know she needed a new start.
She had heard about Silverlake from a business acquaintance previously, and felt like the place would be perfect for her to relocate to. Small enough to become home, large enough to not be “home”. So before mourning had ended, Ronit packed up her things and moved.
She’s been in Silverlake for a little over half a year now. She established a business in the city where she primarily sells art by Jewish artists, but also anything else her clients show interest in because she’s still trying to find her footing. She also curates and locates art for wealthier clients, buys up art pieces and organizes auctions. In the new location, her business is just so breaking even, which admittedly frustrates Ronit a bit, but she’s also telling herself she’s still getting settled in.
RANDOM FACTS:
Ronit lives in a three-bedroom house on Redcliff Street with her Abyssinian Delilah..
Her hobbies include running, pilates, traveling, and curling up with her cat in one arm and a coffee table book in the other.
Speaking of coffee table books, she just .... really loves nice things. Call it hedonism, if you want to be cynical. Restaurant food eaten in the light of candles, a bathroom shelf of designer perfumes, a weekly manicure, pieces of art within a flat otherwise adhering to muted minimalism, a Tesla car and monthly botox. Some people might find that superficial. Ronit likes to tell herself she’s entitled to these things because she’s still making up for not having them in her earlier life.
Even though she has specialized in early Jewish art, Ronit’s passion probably lies most with fin-de-siècle Western art, particularly paintings. She just loves the atmosphere of large cities and is fascinated with the origins of their life in modernity.
She still speaks with a slight accent. Unless you’re an expert at accents, you probably can’t tell that it’s Hebrew, but it’s there.
She tends to be a rather quiet person and prefers to reflect before speaking, probably part of her efforts to make a good impression. She works hard and can show great determination, but she can also be superficial and still be tempted to be too focused on her idea of perfection.
WANTED CONNECTIONS: (thank you to anyone who is even still reading this :) Like I said, imma also be sending out some messages tonight but starting in a new group is scary :/ And I aim to make a connection page once I’ve had more time to set up my blog as well!
The person who got Ronit here: This is a super-open connection, gender, age etc. don’t matter, as long as the person does something to do with the arts. They would have met at some art event, probably in the US, at some point during the last few years. Whether they just shortly talked or became business acquaintances or friends or had an affair ... is completely up in the air. But the person was probably already living in Silverlake at that point, or had lived there previously. (Veda)
Business contacts: Can be clients who have bought from her or artists who have sold to her. Or maybe someone she met at an event for businesses in the city? (Shoshanna)
Workout partners: Ronit probably hasn’t been around for long enough to make super-close friends, but this is someone she has probably met through her pastimes of running and/or pilates at a local studio. (Jaden, Anya)
Flings or FWB: She’s never been one for picture-perfect relationships, but Ronit does love to get out and meet new people and hook up. This could have been a short-lived thing several months ago when Ronit was still new to town or an ongoing FWB-style thing. Gender doesn’t matter. (Marlon)
People from the local synagogue: Ronit got kinda out of touch with her religion for a while, but she’s rediscovering that part of herself and occasionally attending synagogue nowadays. Maybe someone she could have met there, or through the community?
