JDaters Anonymous

In the Birthright Israel NEXT show, Monologues, Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni bring their experiences to the stage in a collection of monologues, spoken word and hip-hop performances that explore personal Jewish identity inspired by their 10-day trip in Israel.

Produced by 2008 ROIer Lauren Eisenberg of Birthright Israel NEXT and directed by superstar of spoken word Vanessa Hidary, a.k.a. The Hebrew Mamita (HBO’s Def Poetry Jam), Monologues is an evening of solo performances exploring Jewish identity through the stories of 15 Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni in spoken word, monologues and rap. Watch the video for a glimpse of the show and scroll down for your chance to win tickets:

1) We are giving away one pair of tickets for Tuesday,
March 31, and another pair for Wednesday, April 1: to enter, please submit your full name, e-mail, preferred date, and why you
want the tickets to jdatersanonymous at gmail.com. Winner will be chosen at random from qualifying entries and notified via email on Sunday, March 29.

Special $5 tickets for JDaters readers here

$10 in advance

$15 at the door (if available)

And now, for something completely different…

If you’re tired of all the negative stereotyping of Jewish women as overinvolved, shrill, shrewish (“funny, she doesn’t look shrewish”), superficial harpies (and why wouldn’t you be?), here’s something a bit unusual. Friend of JDaters Anonymous Van Wallach has now published a treatise on the appeal of the Jewess, titled “Smart, Vulnerable, and Shtetl-Lovely: The Allure of Jewish Women.”

While the titular love Wallach describes was no doubt something that he had within him, he was inspired to write this piece after reading a Matchup column by Chicago-based freelancer Abigail Pickus (who once wrote for PresenTense) in the Jewish Week (where someone else used to write a column). The column shared her experiences on the receiving end of a litany of reasons why her Jewish male friend wouldn’t date Jewish women. Wallach didn’t just get angry – he got writing:

Why [...] did I turn to and stay with Jewish women? Something about them clicked with me on a deep level. I once described a woman as “smart, vulnerable, and shtetl-lovely.” That’s my highest praise for the appeal of the Jewish woman’s mind, heart, and body. They are all allure, and if they freshen their lipstick over a sushi dinner, I’ll follow them anywhere – and I have. A Jewish man who dismisses such women as a group is, in technical terms, meshuggenah.

I’ll just add that anyone who dismisses Jewish men or Jewish women as a group isn’t helping. Let’s acknowledge that there are trends, and there are exceptions. And most of us are really looking for someone who is – in some way, even if it’s a small way only perceptible to us – exceptional.

Check out the whole piece over at Blogcritics.

For anyone who feels like they’ve spent too much time obsessing over an ex…and who suspects that the wasted hours in question might have been equivalent to degrees in something else…experience the Hebrew Mamita, Vanessa Hidary, spoken word poet who’s appeared on Def Poetry Jam and the Nyuorican Cafe. People have been sending me these clips all week, so I guess the DVD must be out, but I’ve heard (at least the second of) the two pieces before. She’s outstanding, truly.

The first piece is about ex obsession and all the time we waste in contemplating past relationships. But stay tuned for piece #2, which is a great treatise on Jewish identity and whether people “look Jewish” or not.

It’s been a while since I posted here, I know. I’ve been running around presenting at conferences like a crazy person, or at least the type of crazy person who’s asked to speak at conferences. And a quarter of those presentations centered on our topic at hand: dating and relationships.

This past weekend, I spoke to a crowd of 200 people – most of them students in their early 20s – about the challenges of dating in the age of technology. The session was titled – somewhat obscurely – “JDaters Anonymous Live,” which led people to make their own assumptions about what the session would address. Some thought it was going to be speed dating, or me talking about my dating horror stories, or an opportunity for the participants to share their horror stories. And as a result, although I tried to keep the conversation to the topic at  hand – technology, and how it complicates our communication process even as it keeps communication more frequent and varied – people just wanted to vent.

They were angry. Angry about being rejected. Angry about being deceived. Angry about not being called back, or being passed over in favor of a friend. But one of the comments made by a twentysomething male really gave me pause. He stated that he knows, definitively and always, whether it’s going to work (he meant a date) within the first five minutes of meeting someone.  Shocked, I polled the room, and most of them agreed, not just about a date/potential romance, but about a potential friendship. When I suggested that perhaps it was because the people in the room were under 25, I almost had a mutiny on my hands. The room was fairly united. Five minutes. And they’d know.

Maybe I err on the side of believing that first impressions, while often fairly accurate, do also contain a margin of error – some of the people I met and instantly liked I’ve since fallen out of like with, and others, who were slow starters for one reason or another have emerged as some of my nearest and dearest. While I’m talking about friendships mostly, I find the same is true for me in dating…I think most people become more interesting as you spend time with them, and it’s not fair to judge someone from five minutes of interaction.

Here’s the part where all y’all weigh in and tell me what you think…