JDaters Anonymous

I recently came back from a conference where I unintentionally ruffled a few intermarried feathers when I read a piece about why I’ve decided to only date Jews.

How are we supposed to approach the concept of intermarriage? Can we even discuss it without someone getting offended? And if I choose to limit myself to dating only Jews, will people who make a different choice ever understand that my choice isn’t necessarily a condemnation of their marital decisions? And does anyone understand my reference to this piece’s Kafkaesque title?

For the answers to these and other questions, or more accurately, more questions, check out “The Intermarriage Artist,” my newest Jewish Week column.

People who follow this blog or my column and reactions to both already know that I have an issue with people who are too picky (even though there are others who think that I myself, as representative of all Upper West Side singles, am too picky, which is another conversation).

But I wanted to share this letter that went to the Jewish Press from a lonely, 37-year-old religious single woman who wants to get married, but found herself dating a man she describes as “a nerd” to whom she “can’t relate romantically.”

There’s more to it that that. Reading it will reveal some of the problems that many of us have noticed about the (let’s call it “moderately observant”) Jewish singles world: shadchanim (matchmakers) who operate through what they’d consider “tough love” but which hurts singles tremendously by criticizing personal appearance; men who date but are reluctant to commit; a posse of friends that becomes family and may in fact hinder progress toward finding a partner; the power problem when a woman’s profession makes a man feel threatened; the challenge of looking at a person in totality as opposed to just on a superficial level; the specter of a previous relationship tainting future romantic expectations; a ticking biological clock; an acknowledgment of one’s own flaws and perhaps a hesitation to accept the flaws of others; whether religious shidduchim operate on a different level than those that aren’t Orthodox; communal pressure both in the US and in Israel to have children to increase Jewish demographics, etc…enough to fuel years of singles columns in multiple newspapers.

This letter, however, is not the only such letter that column has received. In fact, it was written in response to a similar letter, also printed by the Jewish Press and written by a 36 year old woman who was faced with a choice: marry someone you don’t love but have children or stay single and childless forever. (Because those are apparently the only two choices.)

Read the rest of this entry »

The Jewish “establishment,” and let’s include in that term rabbis, synagogues, Jewish institutions and local and national Jewish leaders as well as academics, has been involved in what feels like a verbal full-court press lately, urging Jewish singles to marry each other. But what they haven’t provided yet is a financial incentive, in acknowledgment of the high cost of Jewish dating. Well, until now.

As USA Today reports, Rabbi Donald Weber, rabbi of a Marlboro, NJ Reform congregation, has put his money where his matches are, or rather, where he hopes they will be:

Six weeks ago, in his Yom Kippur sermon at Temple Rodeph Torah, Weber offered to personally pay for six-month memberships to JDate, the popular Jewish online dating service, for any singles in the congregation who asked. JDate charges $149 for a six-month membership, and so far, nine people have taken the rabbi up on his offer. He and his wife, Shira Stern, initially pledged $1,000 but just donated a second $1,000 as more people came forward.

Apart from my initial reaction (“$149??”) over the skyrocketing price of JDate membership, I was extremely impressed by this gesture, which indicates a commitment to the prospect of encouraging Jewish marriage that other Jewish leaders have not yet offered. Sure, occasionally Michael Steinhardt offers to pay for someone’s honeymoon if they meet at an event he’s involved with, but that rewards the outcome instead of constituting an investment in the process.

“We need you to look at Jewish people when you’re dating,” Weber said on Yom Kippur. “There aren’t a lot of us around. … You’re going to have to look in specific places. Number one? JDate. No joke. Half the weddings I’m doing now are people that met on JDate.”
Weber, rabbi at Rodeph Torah for 24 years, told the single Jews in the pews that the survival of American Judaism in its current form depends on their decisions. “Do we believe that it’s important enough that it must go on, that we make a difference in the world? That if there are no Jews in the world that the world will be poorer than it is now? If we believe that, then we’re going to need to do some things about it,” he said.

Also interesting was the fact that Weber’s synagogue is Reform, a denomination within which many intermarried couples have found a home. Having just spoken at the PLP ThinkTank at a session about intermarriage, I know first-hand what a touchy subject this can be; even the encouragement to intra-marry can be perceived as a condemnation of those who didn’t. Saying–as I did at the PLP session–”I want to marry a Jew,” can be heard in a different context than the intended one.

Still, for those who believe it is important for them to marry other Jews, this kind of incentive program is extremely encouraging. Rabbis aren’t major investors in Jewish causes financially because they can’t afford to be. But this small commitment of funds can make a difference to the singles in his community, and should be a lesson to people who produce studies that attempt to scare us into dating co-religionists instead of encouraging us within a positive framework.

The Harvard Crimson reported that a recent Hillel event about sexuality, titled “Jewbilation” and featuring a Jeopardy! style quiz show on facts related to Judaism and sexuality, brought only two more bodies in attendance than a minyan would have.

The trivia game addressed a variety of Jewish idiosyncrasies, from famous Jewish director Woody Allen’s views on sex­ to the need to immerse oneself in the mikvah, a purifying bath, after touching a lizard. “That’s not a euphemism—actually a lizard,” [Harvard Hillel's Conservative Minyan's rabbinic advisor Ethan] Linden said. Game-show questions were divided into three categories: “Distance Learning,” “Different Strokes for Different Folks,” and “I ‘Know’ You, Biblical relations.”

What does this lack of interest mean? Are Jews at Harvard too busy studying or did the subject of Jewish approaches to sex strip the subject of any interest? And which one of these is “worse for the Jews”? And does it matter, now that the birth rate among Israeli Jewish women is rising?