I have been following with amusement and bemusement the courtship ritual of Hebrewzzi in the comments to Mia Rut’s post To Date a Jew. But not with wistfulness. It’s been a quarter century since I had to play the dating game and thank God for that. I was never good at it (or at any other game) and it was stacked against me.
A couple grafs below in this post I am going to blow Ms. Rut’s cover. I know who she really is and what game she’s up to. But first let me say a few words about the issue at hand.
Ms. Rut, nearly-converted, wonders whether she should date only Jews. And, new to the Jewish dating scene, she discovers something that Jewish girls have always known: all the Jewish guys out there are “obnoxious or arrogant or creepy and weird or too young or too old or gay or otherwise in some other way wildly incompatible.”
Now, this is an incontrovertible fact based on the experiences of many generations of Jewish women (well, a few, the ones postdating the generations in which Jewish women were married off by their parents in their early teens).
A curious fact that Ms. Rut does not mention is that Jewish men have accumulated, over many generations (or at least those since the ones in which their parents married them off in their early teens), a similar data set….
Read the rest on Jewcy
10 responses so far ↓
1 aliyah06 // Dec 8, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Shhhhhhhh…..It has nothing to do with being Jewish.
I came of age in the VietNam War/Feminist era….and it was the perfect storm of women’s strident feminism coupled with men’s Peter Pan immaturity and refusal-to-commit nihilism.
I dated anyone I liked. I just made it clear that if/when I married, my kids would be raised as Jews. That said, I have to tell you that there are a lot of wierd, creepy, neurotic, controlling, demanding, egocentric, unattractive men out there of all persuasions. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
I imagine men of my generation have similar complaints about women of that time….somehow, we manage to find each other. My husband and I are coming up on 20 years together (and I still drive him nuts).
But — if you want a Jewish family, its much easier if both parents are Jewish. And it’s easier on the kids–no sense of divided loyalties if one child prefer’s dad’s religion to mom’s or vice versa (happened to a friend of mine: Protestant father, Jewish mother, she was “allowed to choose”–she chose Judaism, married a Jewish guy, has great Jewish kids—and her father’s side of the family refuses to speak to her).
I suspect Ms. Rut is looking in all the wrong places….besides, I am extremely suspicious of any statement that starts with “All (insert group) are creepy, weird, crazy, ugly, (insert negative characteristics here).”
2 Sara // Dec 8, 2008 at 9:02 pm
C’mon, Haim, you neglected to mention the real strategy that you and I both used to avoid the Jewish partner pitfall. We married “exotic” partners – Israelis.
3 A Reply To Rut: Why Jewish Dating Doesn’t Work | Find Lover // Dec 8, 2008 at 10:02 pm
[...] Go here to read the rest: A Reply To Rut: Why Jewish Dating Doesn’t Work [...]
4 Bethany // Dec 8, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Uncle Haim, I wanted to let you know that all of my friends think you are “cool” and thoroughly enjoyed this post.
5 Lloyd // Dec 9, 2008 at 5:05 am
Nice blog Haim but really, you are telling us that you don’t have one friend in Israel that is searching for the courage to try and get his wife to try on a Catholic school-girl outfit? “just this once?”
Point is: opposites attract but you make it sound like all your Jewish buddies are too busy working or davening and are objects of (can’t say “affection”) a feminine master plan that they are completely unaware of. Give me a break!
Those girls you dated were the mothers of the girls I dated! (sorry to say that in so many ways). But nerds always get the last laugh! Nerds today, boss tomorrow! Or in our case, nerds yesterday, boss today. Life is good especially with a good, kind, beautiful wife. There is a good reason you sing an ode to your wife every Shabbes – rare indeed is a good wife.
6 Nancy Watzman // Dec 9, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I always made it a point to ignore your dating advice. And I can speak from experience in saying–you Jews married to Jews don’t know what you’re missing!
7 Yam Erez // Dec 10, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Aliyah has the right idea: Simply make it known early on that your kids will be raised Jewish. I sense that Mia Rut is asking our (JsBB) permission to date non-Jews. While I sympathize with her frustration, it seems kinda *fakachta* to bother converting, then end up married to a non-Jew.
Lastly, forgive my ignorance (I’ve been married nearly 23 years), but besides charging forty bucks to join, when did JDate become thumbs-down? I know a bunch of folks who met their spouses there…
8 Lloyd // Dec 10, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Yam: please explain what “fakachta” is. Google was no help. Guess I still retain some nerd qualities from my youth; I still enjoy an expensive word. Thanks.
-Lloyd
9 Jewish Matchmaker // Dec 23, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Jewish dating has been working for millenia despite these articles. haha
10 Yam Erez // Dec 28, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Lloyd: *fakachta* = Yiddish for “ass-backwards” or *f—-d up*. Xpressive indeed!
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