Esther Kustanowitz

This, you gotta see. Of course, Match.com is responsible for the list, so consider the source…

1. Love trumps money. Apparently, women are less materialistic than ever!! Go us!

2. Seniors click with online dating. As anyone who’s seen my “Members who have viewed your photo” folder can attest.

3. Farewell Sex and the City. Or, as Carrie said: “The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”

4. Ladies first. Women are “more comfortable than ever at making the first move” in online dating. Um, that’s because if we don’t make the effort, we never hear from the boys.

5. Politics and dating. People began dating along party lines. Not that it helped.

6. The same-sex marriage debate ignites across the country. (This item has not increased romance in my own life, I’m just saying.)

7. War in Iraq. Huh? War is romantic? Um, no. But Match.com includes it anyway, noting the increase in internet activity to stay in touch with loved ones…

8. Online dating goes mainstream. 30 to 40 million people log on to internet dating sites each month. Although this is supposed to make me feel better, I find the numbers a little frustrating. That’s a pretty good pool, and I seem to have forgotten my swimsuit.

9. HJNTIY. According to the list, this “empowers women to set the bar higher in a relationship or move on…” But I think it gives non-committal men with poor communications skills another excuse. I guess I’ll found out for sure, now that I’ve got the book from someone extremely generous.

10. Single dads are sexy. So saith the Match. According to them, “Seventy-four percent of the single women on Match.com indicated that they are open to dating someone with children. ” Their proof? Kevin Hill. Still, good news for certain aforementioned generous people.

What? No entry for “Esther D. Kustanowitz founds JDaters Anonymous” or “Jewish Week Singles Column Breaks Subscription Records”? I was robbed, I tell ya…

Last weekend, Chayyei Sarah (J.A.’s single soul sister in Jerusalem) went to a singles weekend in Tiberias, Israel. It was an experience like no other, in which Our Heroine suffered untold singles-related slings and arrows, ducking social ineptitude and poorly-planned program elements like machine-gun fire. She survived—as heroines often do—heroically, living to blog (and blog and blog) another day (and another day and another day).

As she relived the weekend for her readers, she understood that she needed support, and has asked for it:

The Shabbaton was . . . emotionally a lot . . . and while writing about it is helping me to “process,” the interaction with other people out there helps a lot too. Even if you don’t think you have something profound to say, please say something, even if it’s just “nice post” or “this gave me something to think about” or “you have a typo.” Writing about the Shabbaton is dredging up a lot of the feelings of isolation, and your feedback helps me to not feel like I’m blogging in a vacuum.

As she reflected on the “Lost Weekend” (my title, not hers) she recalled the incidents in the order that they transpired. But because of the way blogs work, the newest posts are first, leading to disjointed reading.

Her enterprising editor friend is pleased to present for your reading this chronological account of CS’s weekend, chapter by renamed chapter. Click to the link below each chapter title and make sure to share your comments with her, as well as with me.

Feel her pain, for it is also ours.

Chapter One: In which Our Heroine senses a mild disturbance in the Force

Chapter Two: In which Our Heroine measures up the competition

Chapter Three: In which Our Heroine discovers which Harry Potter character she would be

Chapter Four: In which Our Heroine’s Friend has her chanukkiyah (Chanukah menorah) highjacked

Chapter Five: In which Our Heroine resents an announcement

Chapter Six: In which Our Heroine begins to feel depressed and tired

Chapter Seven: In which dinner is served and people are rude

Chapter Eight: In which Our Heroine has had enough and is still trapped for Shabbat

Aside: In which Our Heroine bravely explores the subject of physical appearance and the subjectivity of attraction

Chapter Eight: In which Our Heroine breathes again, which is a good thing, because she’s already named the previous chapter “Chapter 8”

Chapter Nine: In which Our Heroine is flattered and confused by a man’s attention

Chapter Ten: In which our Heroine meets Voldemort—oops, I mean Hairbun

Chapter Eleven: In which Our Heroine does not declare bankruptcy and instead meets a Smug Unmarried American

Chapter Twelve: In which Our Heroine does battle with a donut interloper

Chapter Thirteen: In which Our Heroine gets stuck in a conversational loop

Chapter Fourteen: In which Our Heroine stabs it with her steely knives, but she just can’t kill the beast

Chapter Fifteen: In which Our Heroine seeks a prayer before eating

Chapter Sixteen: in which Our Heroine depends upon the kindness of strangers

Chapter Seventeen: In which Our Heroine does some learning

Chapter Eighteen: In which Our Heroine walks in Tiberias and through history

Chapter Nineteen: In which lunch is served

Chapter Twenty: In which Our Heroine receives an intriguing offer

Chapter Twenty-One: In which Our Heroine wishes she knew more Sephardi customs

Chapter Twenty-Two: In which a Cohen atones and Our Heroine prays for a soulmate

Chapter Twenty-Two and a half: In which Our Plucky Heroine pitches her Azzam Azzam story and encounters journalistic snags but remains optimistic

Chapter Twenty-Two Again: In which Our Heroine loses count of the chapters again but summarizes her experience with a valuable lesson

Shabbaton Chronicles—Revolutions: In which Our Heroine reflects on her experience and makes some decisions

THE END [???]

And in today’s installment of “Who are these guys and where do they come from?”:

In addition to the phenomenon noted by H in which everyone wants to be her friend, and on the heels of Chayyei Sarah’s recap of the Singles Shabbaton from Hell (begin at this link and read up–she separates the posts by vignette), which is serialized over at least 13 parts, last I counted, we have this entry, from WritersBloc. She was ambushed with a blind date while at a party, and wackiness ensued (rendered in appalling green to indicate the single girl’s queasiness when on a date with the wrong guy):

The conversation veers to religion and my recent attempts at keeping kosher.
“I’m just doing it to see how easy or hard it is. I’d like to try,” I explain.
“Do you believe in God?”
“I do. Why?”
“Well, because I don’t.”
“Believe in God?”
“Right. You can’t prove to me that God exists. So since there’s no proof, I don’t believe in him.”
“But you can’t disprove that he exists either.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh.”
[beat]
“Prove to me that God exists!”
“What?”
“Prove. To. Me. God’s existence. You believe in him, so prove to me he exists.”
“You can’t prove faith,” I try “You just can’t. Faith is rooted deep inside. Your whole body just knows. It’s not about rational justifications. Faith is not rational.”
“Well, I’m a very rational person so everything needs proof for me. For example, I just read two books by this Dutchman who proves that life was planted on Earth by aliens.”
“Aliens? And he proves it?”
“He does. After you read his two books, there will be no doubt in your mind that aliens planted life here.”
”I see.”
”You should check those books out.”
”I should.”

And there is more. But I’ll leave it to you to discover. And I leave you with this personal account:

Esther’s conversation with Blind Date Guy number 3,048, circa 1994:
BDG: So what did you study in school?
EDK: English.
BDG: So, now you speak English.
EDK: Um, yeah. But I also studied literature–fiction and poetry. I’m a writer.
BDG: Oh. I always thought poetry was stupid.
EDK: Well it’s not.
BDG: Well, I don’t understand it, and I’m smart. I am a lawyer after all.
EDK: I guess some people just don’t get it.

That’s an understatement.

E-Dating Bubble Springs a Leak

From Sunday’s New York Times:

While most women interviewed complained that too many men just “window shop” online and are unwilling to consider any but the prettiest faces, Zev Guttman, 28, a mortgage banker in Monsey, N.Y., said it was men who are at a disadvantage online: it is still typically the man who has to make the first move, and it is still the woman who gets to pick and choose.

As a result, he said, he either had to lie — about, say, the fact that he is divorced — or face an empty mailbox every day. “If I write that I’m divorced, I don’t have a chance of hooking up,” he said. “If I write that I’m single, they’re not interested because they think I lied to them” once they discover the truth.
“I’m just going to go back to matchmaking, or friends,” he said.

JDaters Anonymous readers, weigh in:

Would you rule out dating someone who is divorced?

If you dated someone who said that s/he had never been married and then revealed that s/he was divorced, would you break up with him/her because s/he lied?

Do you think men are more superficial than women (i.e., likely to reject a woman based solely on her looks)?