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. If you don’t have the looks or the sex pheromones to reel in a catch then it’s an uphill swim… and I’m no salmon.
A couple of 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.” That she may be better off finding a man who cares for her and leaving the Jewish guys to make their own way, whether that be finding a girl more compatible with their absurdities or the likes of a london escort for something more short-term.
Now, this observation of Jewish men 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. Ask the guys. Ask Phillip Roth. They’ll tell you that all the Jewish women out there are not only obnoxious, arrogant, creepy, and weird, but also that they have mustaches.
Now we know why the Jews are just a fraction of a percent of the world’s population. With such major incompatibility built into our genes, it’s a wonder we’ve survived at all.
And this is the reason why Jewish parents have, through the course of evolution, been programmed to browbeat their progeny to marry other Jews. Obviously, if Jewish men and women were naturally attracted to each other, this would not be necessary. No, the race survives only because of the nagging gene.
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).”
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.
Uncle Haim, I wanted to let you know that all of my friends think you are “cool” and thoroughly enjoyed this post.
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.
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!
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…
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
Jewish dating has been working for millenia despite these articles. haha
Lloyd: *fakachta* = Yiddish for “ass-backwards” or *f—-d up*. Xpressive indeed!