Esther Kustanowitz

Well, most of you already know about My Secret Yeshiva Prom. (Which, I guess, means it ain’t a secret no more.) But although the event itself was a little underground, I’m pretty sure that everyone’s date was Jewish.

But according to this article in the Jewish Week, a Westchester area Solomon Schechter school (Conservative) announced that students would only be allowed to bring dates who were Jewish:

While the school saw the directive as a way to stave off interfaith dating, Bertrand [a student whose father was Catholic when her parents married] and other students at the Hartsdale school said it encouraged creating a “self-imposed ghetto” that could generate resentment and even stoke the flames of anti-Semitism. “It was intended to promote Jewish continuity, but instead it insults non-Jews, it insults Solomon Schechter students, and it doesn’t reflect well on the school,” Bertrand said of the Jewish-only prom policy, which remains in place today. Worse, she said, the decree might inadvertently prove racist. “Most people can pass as Jewish,” said Bertrand, now 18, noting that school officials would be hard pressed to determine at the door who was Jewish. “If the school was going to investigate students they suspected brought non-Jewish dates, the only red flag would be if someone was another race.”

And I was worried about bringing someone Conservative to my underground yeshiva prom…

Renatt Brodsky, a fellow freelancer, is working on an upcoming Glamour story titled, “Hate at first sight” – It’s about women and how they ended up falling for “that jerk!.”

She writes:

I need quotes from women in their TWENTIES about their personal experiences with a guy who did something so unbelievable that they just can’t believe they wanted to see him again and give him another chance. Like… insulted her, called her fat, vomited on her, tripped her, accidentally set her hair on fire… you get the picture.

Here are some good examples:

“I thought RD’s accent sounded just like Forest Gump when I first met him at a work event,
and he was everything I swore I would never date–he was a hunter, drove a pickup truck, and liked chicken-fried steak. Still, I thought he was cute and a few days later we were emailing and talking on the phone. Because I didn’t write him off, I found out that he was witty and smart. And even though my gastronomical parents are horrified, six years later, I actually like
chicken-fried steak.” – Marcy John, 26, Dallas, Texas

“I met this guy on vacation in Cabo San Lucas. He was acting like a total frat boy–talking really
loud and telling jokes that weren’t funny. Then he bought me a beer and spilled it on me! After the trip, we reconnected again back home in San Francisco over email (he was on an email list of people I met on the trip), and a few days later I reluctantly invited him to dinner with some friends. Everyone thought he was so great and said I was crazy if I didn’t go on a date with him. It turned out, though, that away from the beer and the bar, he was charming and down to
earth. Forget Mexico, he turned out to be the great treasure of San Francisco.”
-Michelle Marlin 29, San Francisco, California

If you have a great anecdote about a jerk you lusted after again and again–please email me the
following information by Wednesday, June 8 2005, 9 a.m.
1. first and last name
2. age
3. city, state
4. email
5. number
6. your quote.

Please email her with any questions, and tell her you found out about it from Esther, from JDatersAnonymous…

…to disappointment:

1) Cry. It’s all right to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you. OK, so it doesn’t. But it still beats holding it in for years and having it surface during an NBC re-airing of Titanic.

2) Phone a friend. Important to have someone there to counter the self-deprecation and negativity that you’ll undoubtedly hurl at yourself. Also important to make sure that you’re not alone when you…

3) Find glass, add ice, pour Jack Daniels into glass. Consider adding Diet Coke, but you only have caffeinated and you don’t want your elixir to keep you up all night.

4) Turn off all instant messengers and screen your phonecalls. Make outgoing calls to female friends only; male friends who are married are okay to call too. But do not call or otherwise communicate with single male “friends.” You don’t want to drink-and-dial (or imbibe-and-IM) when you’re in this state of mind. This way, madness lies.

5) Go to bed earlyish, and realize that you haven’t been to sleep before midnight in months. Resolve to get more sleep in the future, even as you know you’re swearing oaths to yourself that you’ll never keep. As you fall asleep, listen to music that contains a soothing rhythm, soaring passion, and a subtle melancholy.

6) Wake to find yourself in possession of two empty boxes of tissues, two puffy eyes and one big headache, which you decide to address by the name of Mr. Daniels. Promise yourself that yesterday’s frustration will fuel today’s workout, and load up the MP3 player with blisteringly popalicious Top 40 tunes mixed with old school heavy metal.

7) Go through the motions, even as you realize that there’s still lots to work out, and that only time, if anything, will remove the splinters of pain and disappointment from the soft undersides of your feet. You know that every step will hurt until it doesn’t. Buy insoles. Cover nascent blisters with band-aids. But do everything in your power to keep walking.

In case anyone was concerned for Seth Menachem, who proposed to his girlfriend in a Singles column, he’s written another column in which he reveals that she accepted the proposal.

Mazal tov to the happy couple.