Group therapy in a blog.
“Frumster’s Extreme Makeover?”
Didja hear? Frumster’s going beyond the frum in its name:
“Unaffiliated.†“Secular.†“Synagogue=Never.†With many JDate members describing themselves with this level of observance, daters who wanted to create a Jewish future with their bashert were for a long time simply out of online dating luck. So when Frumster barreled its way onto the scene four years ago, it aimed to fill in the observance gap for frustrated online daters and create a pool of religious singles  essentially, putting the “Jewish†back in Jewish online dating. […] this month, Frumster announced a milestone: In four years, 500 members had met and married; by the Dec. 15 gala event celebrating the 250 couples, the number of matched members had grown to 520. Over 55 percent of those relationships had been initiated by women (or were so remembered in the “exit interviews†that Frumster conducts when members match). Sixty percent of the matches were between people older than 31. In addition to these encouraging statistics, the milestone has spurred a media push: while continuing to serve its Orthodox population, Frumster is responding to the call of the non-frum, extending memberships to all “marriage-minded†Jewish singles, and tweaking the membership process accordingly.
The rest of my new Jewish Week singles column is available here.
Frumster is a pretty successful outfit. So you have alot of jealousy and envy about them, the why-didn’t-I-do-that syndrome.
I have met quite a few couples who met there, they are still married.
Personally, I would probably look at other ways to meet singles. I would be wary of the wierdos and the pessimistic people we are seeing.
I like the JCruise idea and wish Estherke much mazal on that.
Jealousy? A site called frumster, whose terms of service were always “must keep shabbos and kosher” now has brushed these requirements to the wayside. Plain and simple, this site is all about money – which isn’t a bad thing – unless of course as is the case here, the site tries to play it off like it isn’t.
Mitzvahs, it’s about Mitzvahs. (that’s how they usually justify anything that’s all about Money)
It should be free to the secular, non-affiliated, never go to temple crowd to make up for the “term of service” that they are pushing by the wayside in the name of mon…mitzvahs.
You are both being silly. A business has to grow. Obviously the frum market is not enough for them to meet their expanding costs.
Expenses usually go up for all of us, same even more so for a business (employees expect raises and improvements in benefits).
I guess you could say that they should be virtuous and lose their source of income. To make this claim, you would need more info on their background, not that it matters much. It would be interesting to know who owns this, who works there, etc… but w/ out this info, you can’t make deductions.
The more interesting issue, is are frum people pulling away from this type of meeting mechanism.
I signed up. But you still can’t search for people who identify themselves as “Conservative.” Also, I had no idea how to describe my family – are they “religious”? “Traditional”? They’re Conservative, much like I am. Whatever. And the only people who’ve written me so far are Orthodox guys from NYC. So I haven’t given Frumster any money yet. My hopes are not terribly high.
It sounds like, they are caught between a rock and a hard place.
They do want to attract more people, but they don’t want to offend the Orthodox, or some of them. So they err on the side of caution.
Personally I think many people meet while they are travelling.
I for example have met many women when I was single during travels, that I later dated.
The flight can be very interesting.
You have a situation where boredom becomes hot. So this helps one to pass the time in conversation.
I would reccomend people to travel to Israel at every opportunity.
On my last trip for example, I was seated next to a lovely young American woman who was living in Jerusalem. Had I not been married, I am certain that we could have remained in contact. This happened to me several times in the past.
There is something about the excitement of travel, especially to Israel, that brings me to a heightened sense of joy and affability.