JDaters Anonymous

In honor of Israeli Independence Day, I’ve written a singles column that runs the gamut. I didn’t think I was going to be able to relate Jack Bauer to Hebrew, but I did it. An excerpt:

My father recently sent me an e-mail consisting only of a list of numbers. I called him to discuss and asked, “So, do I have to enter these numbers every 108 minutes or the hatch blows up?” While that question is made up of English words that everyone should theoretically understand, it really only makes sense to those who watch “Lost.”

There’s something about a secret language, whether it’s a literal language or an insider’s slang full of references to popular culture or shared experience that creates an instant bond. Audiences for slangy, relentlessly contemporary films like “Juno” and TV shows like “Lost,” “24” and “Heroes” go from observers to loyal adherents; they form a community because they have a shared passion for the characters and because they speak the unique language of that special (albeit imaginary) universe. They’ll talk about “saving the cheerleader to save the world,” or a roadblock that must mean Jack Bauer is setting up a perimeter and asking someone to holster his weapon.

“Star Trek” fans might have started it all in those pre-Internet days, seeking out understanding and community on the convention circuit as they donned Spock ears and kvetched about the trouble with Tribbles. A common language is a vital component to the creation of any community, whether it’s an assembly of thousands or a society of two.

Shared language creates an intimacy, even among people who have never met before. They feel chemistry in these moments of cultural confluence. When a couple is really getting along, experiences and speech patterns often sync up until both members develop a kind of special language — from the “aww, you’re my schmoopie” exchanged nauseatingly in front of single friends, to callbacks to prior experiences or the familiarity they’ve established.

My longest linguistic love affair to date is with the State of Israel. Israel, now 60 (or older, depending on how you’re counting), is the December to my May, and we communicate in Hebrew, of course. My educational background gave me a head start. Because my vocabulary came from Hebrew literature classes and from the classical texts we studied, my language developed as vital background toward understanding Israel: the equivalent of Googling Israel Hebraically to learn everything I could before we met, and establishing an instant history. (Not that anyone would ever do that for a potential romantic partner.)

Read the rest of “Language of Love,” here.

That’s right. JDA is four years old today.

Which means it’s time for a retrospective…

2004
The first post
A desperate plea no one listened to

2005
Pondering technology, not for the last time

2006
The power of paying, or “the issue that won’t go away”
On being a woman among men

2007
The “Single Semite of the Month” category, by now all-but-abandoned
A resolution

2008
A week in Jewish singles stories

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Here’s to more productive discussion and good times.

In the next few weeks, hopefully there will be some changes here at JDatersAnonymous. Details on that to come, but meantime, for a general update about what’s going on for me professionally, check out this blog post on MyUrbanKvetch.

Wishing you–or at least those of you who are celebrating–a happy Passover.

Generally speaking, I hate generalizations. I try not to use them, although they are every singles columnist’s folly: “men do this,” and “women like that,” even if we preface them with “generally,” we do no one a service with collective assumptions. Statements like “women aren’t funny” make me cringe, almost as much as all the exasperated grunts of “I officially hate men!” do.

This is why, especially absent of verifiable data (whatever that means), I hate it when people make generalizations, and not surprisingly, I hate it the most when Jewish men do it about Jewish women. For every guy I find who says “I love Jewish women, I don’t know what those guys are talking about,” there seems to be four who can rattle off a list of reasons why Jewish women are not worth the effort: “superficial,” “snobby,” “after a man who’s rolling in the Benyamins.” Some of these men are also the ones who whine about being rejected for their height or hairlines, and who turn around and reject women for their body type. Are there some women (Jewish and non-) who are superficial and only judge by appearances and wallet size? Of course. But I’m not ready to generalize that out to apply to an entire population of single women, just like I’m not willing to call all Jewish men wimpy, nerdy and boring.

I also hate trying to defend every Jewish woman to people who are never going to believe me no matter how persuasive I am. And if I ever find myself fitting into one of the stereotypes in my dating or writing life, even for a minute, I make the conscious choice to pull myself out of it. I don’t want to be judged by a generalization of a perception, but I also want to be myself.

And I really don’t like it when friends make “neutral observations” that are in in no way neutral and–as much as they are meant as compliments–sound in fact like insults. Like, “East Coast Jewish women are too difficult, too challenging, too spoiled and difficult to please….it’s no wonder Jewish men choose different women to date. I’m not saying that about you, specifically, just generally.” Nice. Usually, it’s followed up with some sort of “some of my best friends are Jewish women” comment that says “hey, I’m not the bad guy here–I’d like to see Jewish women get married as much as the next guy, but it just ain’t gonna happen if they continue to be the way they are.” And yes, that last part (italics) is a direct quote from a friend of a friend.

It seems to me–generally–that such generalizations and stereotypings are only permitted because most of the time, they’re uttered by Jews about other Jews. Coming from other people, this kind of talk is either called racism or anti-Semitism, or Woody Allen-style self-hating neurosis, or misogyny. Or something.

Italics Guy asked a friend of mine to find out the answer to the following question. “Why do you think so many American Jewish women over 30 are still (disproportionately, as compared to other women their age) single, and can’t find someone to marry”?

Obviously, I’ve been writing columns about this for years. What’s your take?

There’s compelling evidence to suggest that 2008 is the Year of the Matchmaker. There seems to be a coalescence of various iterations of matchmaking happening, which I chronicled in “2008: Year of the Matchmaker?” last week’s article in the NY Jewish Week.

An excerpt:

2008 was about a week old when the influx of matchmaker-related services started hurling themselves like Anna Karenina on the tracks of my singles-columnist life. “Are you a matchmaker?” a reader from Israel queries. “Have you ever used a matchmaker?” asks a friend in Arizona. A matchmaker emails, not about a match, but to insist that I remove a benign blog announcement about one of her events. She is attempting to cleanse the internet of all mentions of her that aren’t glowing testimonials. The e-mails are constant — from SawYouAtSinai and JRetromatch; from individual matchmakers; from articles in newspapers, from blog posts, and of course, from my Facebook friends. Is 2008 the Year of the Matchmaker?

Year of the Matchmaker?” one friend snarked. “Is that like the Year of the Rat?” (Um, sometimes.) As the year continues, so does the trend. A newspaper requests a comment about matchmaking. A magazine pegs me to do an in-depth story about matchmaking, for virtually no money. (No thank you.) I get an e-mail about the “Make-a-Shidduch Foundation” name, which is only a “Shidduch” away from the “Wish” that another organization grants to kids with cancer.

And then there are the stories: Friend 1’s matchmaker told her she isn’t attractive enough for that yenta’s clientele. Friend 2 tells me of her matchmaker’s assessment: that — even though her salary is at least triple mine — she is unmatchable because she doesn’t have a college degree. Friend 3 notes that her matchmaker has matched her with men incapable of basic conversation, “not appropriate for her on any level.”

I know it works for some people, and God bless them. But I admit my bias: I don’t love matchmakers. I had a very lovely matchmaker on Saw You at Sinai, but no successful matches resulted. An offline matchmaker with a religious clientele first expressed horror at my “single, never-married” status (“What? Not divorced? Not widowed?”), and tried to match me with secular men opposed to Shabbat and kashrut, because in her book, that’s what Conservadoxy was. One religious blogger I know reported that her friend had uploaded a new photo to her online matchmaker, and received a note back from the shadchan with the word “EW” in the subject line and a body text that included “berating and ridiculing remarks regarding this woman’s picture.”

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this. I protected your identities, but am happy to identify you (with a link if you’d like…) with your permission…Read more here.

In this article in the Forward, West Hollywood resident David Seidman writes about the commonly held–and commonly expressed–belief that there are “no good Jewish men (or women) out there.” In the piece, he reviews some of the major tropes and cliches of Jewish single life that any dater (or reader of any singles column) will be familiar with:

I’m short. I don’t make a lot of money. At 49, I’m too old for much of the Planet of the Jewish Single Women. And — this will be a shock, coming from a Jew — I’m neurotic and insecure. Is it unfair or sexist to say that these traits seem to cool the desires of most women? Maybe. Nevertheless, the fact still stands: I am bad.

Now, at this point in the confession, you might expect the next sentences to be, “But I’m a really nice guy if you get to know me,” or “Don’t I deserve love like everyone else?” But comments like those are a way of saying, “Treat me like I’m good” — and I told you, I’ve quit arguing that case.

I don’t expect to talk women into changing their desires and standards. Women are what they are.

So are men. I’ve run into too many Y chromosomes who gripe just as much that there are no good Jewish women. Ask these guys about the one they met on JDate, or Friday Night Live, or your friend’s wedding, and they’ll tell you why she’s too much like their mother, or the girls they went to Hebrew school with, or that she’s not young enough, or that her body isn’t perfect enough.

This is like the beginning of a summary of what’s wrong with Jewish single life. In particular, he calls out the cliches and generalizations as damaging to singles, which I clearly agree with. I’m almost tempted to call for a ban on the phrase “there are no good men out there.” And then after the article ends, some commenter comes along and makes the following statement:

Let’s face facts…there are only two types of Jewish woman. Before marriage…and after marriage. Before marriage…everything is fine. After marriage…fuhgeddabout it. They “settle”…because they believe they can change us. And when they can’t…you guys know the rest. Thank G-d for shixahs.

The voice of one, speaking for the many, perpetuating the very stereotypes and cliches that the author rails against in the article. I’m not going to parse the one comment with Talmudic detail–talking about the generalizations about the types of Jewish women, the invocation of the “s” word and the other “s” word, etc–but I wish that the “other bad men” had written in with similar confessions, praising the author for his call to eradicate the cliches of Jewish dating. But instead, we get this comment, which despite the efforts of the author, gets us all thinking about what kind of men (or women) are really out there.

You can still Party Like a Rock Star to benefit American Friends of Magen David Adom tonight at Marquee for the celebratory cover price of only $48! Register here, or show up at the door and mention my name…

Let’s share drinks and hors d’oeuvre in honor of a Middle Eastern democracy that will soon play host for several months to various bloggers and creative Jewish innovators…

The pre-eminent pay service for finding religious Jewish dating prospects is up for sale. According to a press release:

Frumster.com, the largest Jewish Dating-for-Marriage service in the world, has just announced that the company is for sale. Frumster recently reached its 1000th Matched milestone and has grown steadily since its inception in 2001. In the past 5 years under the management of Dr. Ben Rabizadeh, CEO, the monthly match rate has increased to 5 weddings each week – a new record established during the first 3 months of 2008.

The company will be available for sale over the next three months; information on Frumster can be obtained by contacting interim CEO Richard Hecker at rich@frumster.com.

Anyone who’s involved in today’s tech age and is conversant in the zeitgeist of social media surely already realizes that Facebook has changed almost everything about the way people–most of them younger, but with a growing older population–relate to each other. (See “Status Symbol,” here.) Joining the program late (because if you get to a trend after the Jewish Week does, let’s face it, you’re late) is CNN, which has suddenly discovered that relationships are different in the age of Facebook.

Matt Pestinger, 18, started his group, “Your relationship doesn’t count unless it’s posted on Facebook,” as a commentary on today’s world, he said in an e-mail. “I decided to start this group to point out what our world has come to and it cracks me up,” the University of Oklahoma freshman said. His group has 468 members. “People love the group,” he said. “One thing everyone says is, ‘That’s hilarious and true.’”

A very apt social commentary. This is what it takes these days. But I’d take it further. Nothing is real until it’s on Facebook. That’s why this year’s April Fool’s Joke worked…but that’s another discussion.

Samantha Majka wants to let people know a little more about her relationship. Majka, 18, is a sophomore at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. She created the online group “Facebook relationship status options are insufficient.” The group, which has nearly 2,000 members, boasts ideas for Facebook to add to its lists of options for relationships. Some of the ideas are “Has [insert name] wrapped around his/her finger,” “Is seeing […] but sssh don’t tell” and “Is trying to figure out a way to break up with […]”

Whoa. Can you imagine logging into Facebook and perusing your status feed, only to find that your boyfriend, Josh (or something), is “trying to figure out a way to break up with [insert your name here]”? But that other one–”is seeing [….] but sssh don’t tell”–in addition to really needing a comma and perhaps one less s and one more h, is completely pointless. I mean, the nature of Facebook is to broadcast, to shout to everyone, even people you don’t know that well (or at all), “look what I’m doing!!” Adding “shh, it’s a secret” doesn’t keep it a secret. It’s already out there and people are not that disciplined.

So if you think you’re in a relationship, think again. There are all levels of declaration of intent and promises of permanence when it comes to defining yourself in relation to other people; so be wary of what you share with whom. And if you don’t know where you are, check your status.

A new (hopefully regular) feature here at JDA, in which we look at dating- and relationship-related videos and discuss them in an open (hopefully constructive) manner.

To kick off the series, here’s Mr. Lonely–a perfectly nice-looking Jewish guy wearing a sign that proclaims his desperation for a date, “TONIGHT!” Discussion topics after the jump.

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