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…sometime over the next two days, I’ll probably post the next edition of Mars & Venus Go To Shul: the Jewish Singles and Dating Blogcarnival. Things are starting a little slow with this carnival, because I’ve been traveling so much. But if you’d like to submit to this edition, please let me know. And if you’d like to host the blogcarnival on your blog, please speak up, kids!

In the interim, here’s something you might appreciate…

We all say we’re looking for someone who speaks our language. But maybe that’s just a metaphor. Now we don’t have to limit ourselves. Or at least men don’t have to thusly limit themselves: A new service called CuteOnly.com introduces Russian women to men all over the world using an online, automated translation feature. Hooray.

(via Online Personals Watch)

A recent post by Chayyei Sarah, titled “No More Creepy Old Guys,” has inspired me to reopen the earlier discussion on older men/younger women. She notes that on one of the internet dating services she frequents (although I’m not sure she’d love my using that term), DosiDate, they’ve just instituted age limits to their member searches.

“Given how many men in their 50’s have “initiated contact” with me through the various dating websites on which I’m a member,” she says, “you can bet I went into my Dosidate account right away to set up an acceptable age range.” She says she was “extremely liberal,” in both directions, when setting the boundaries, but that her “policy has long been that if a man is closer to my father’s age than he is to mine, he’s just out of luck. My father was 24 when I was born. You do the math.”

She also makes some important distinctions, that there’s a difference between slightly older and creepy older men looking for trophy wives, that men and women should both be a little more open-minded in the dating process, but that both sides have to be realistic. Feel free to go over there and comment, or carry on the conversation here, as you’ve been doing, even while I was away.

I know that people feel very passionately about this issue, and that’s leading to some people being accusatory and judgmental, and others becoming defensive…let’s keep the discussion civil, and agree to disagree where we have to.

I maintain, as I said on CS’s site, that online dating, although good at expanding the circles, which is unquestionably the name of the game in Jewish dating, also offers us a chance to reject someone based on a different set of criteria than we might observe if our original encounter is face-to-face.

Picture it…thirtysomething you goes to a party. Friends introduce you to a man who has a friendly, open smile, a warm sense of humor and an engaging demeanor. As you talk, you determine an intellectual–and, what’s that?–a religious/spiritual compatibility. Then later, you find out that the person is in his late forties or early fifties. You may feel a momentary disappointment that the person doesn’t share your immediate frame of reference, but if there’s enough “else” there, you probably won’t care. Because it’s about connecting with a person. One friend of mine married a man in his fifties who already had five kids, one of them with a child…The couple had a baby about a year later, a few months after one of the other kids had a baby, rendering my friend a grandmother before she was even a mother.

There are, of course, exceptions. A friend of mine recently told me about a man who was in his late fifties who wanted to date her; she liked him, but she was concerned. If things worked out, he’d be in his sixties when their kids were born, seventies when they were in high school and college, and it was likely that my friend would at some point, end up bearing the lion’s share of the parenting, either through infirmity, or decreased energy due to aging, or G-d forbid, even because of an early widowhood.

True, no one can know what life has in store. Philanthropists become victims in fatal traffic accidents, and terrorism cuts off lives in their prime. Illness knows no good timing or age or circumstance. Those are things we cannot control. But is it any wonder that for women in their thirties, what they’re ideally looking for is to maximize their chances with a partner they can build a life with, and with whom they can grow old, together?

A radical idea? Eliminate the age range entirely, and have people respond solely to picture and profile content. Rumor has it people mostly respond to pictures anyway…

I’m off to cruise the Caribbean with Jewish singles. Why? To make sure that you guys have interesting material to keep you warm throughout the winter months. And because I need some relaxation that doesn’t involve hibernating in my apartment in flannel pajamas because it’s too cold to even let my feet touch the uncarpeted floor. (Want to read my Urban Kvetch post about going on the cruise? Don’t let me stop you.)

Internet access will be expensive and limited, so I can’t promise heavy posting. But I’m going to try to do some posts in advance so you’ll have what to talk about while I’m away.

Let’s start with a controversial topic:

Love…is it really “exciting and new”? Or is love comfort, stability, and calm?

And what is the craziest thing you’ve ever done for love (or for the possibility of love)?