Alef: The NEXT Conversation
Dating Jewish Men
This post originally appeared on Alef on February 10, 2010.
Emily and Sarah are twenty-something Jewish women living in New York City. In spite of the odds, their love of Judaism has not translated into a love of Jewish men.
…
Growing up, did your families impose expectations that you should marry Jewish?
Sarah: I think my parents always wanted me to marry a good person. The focus was never on the person’s religion. My father was Catholic when he married my mom (he later converted to Judaism), so it would have been hypocritical for them to pressure me into a Jewish marriage.
Emily: My mom wasn’t Jewish when she met my dad, so my parents were in sort of an opposite situation. She converted before they were married and my brothers and I were raised secularly so there was no discussion at all of religion playing a part in who I decided to be with.
Have your respective family situations affected your dating histories?
Sarah: I haven’t been in a serious relationship with any Jewish guys. In college, I dated a tall, skinny redhead from the suburbs of Milwaukee – definitely not Jewish. Later on, I dated another tall, skinny redhead (I guess I have a “type”) from rural Minnesota – also not Jewish. I thought we might end up staying together for a long time, and he was fine with the fact that I wanted to have a Jewish family. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always wondered if I could raise a Jewish family if my partner wasn’t Jewish. But since my mom did, I thought I could too.
I did date two Jewish guys casually in between relationships, but it never got serious.
Now, I’m single…
What’s your number?
Sarah: …
Just kidding…[smiles; scratches chin; looks away] Right…So Emily, what about you?
Emily: I’ve only been in two serious relationships in my life. I suppose I know what I don’t want when I see it and tend to shut it down as soon as I know it wont work.
My two brief experiences with Jewish men, incidentally, both ended badly. One of them dumped me after a couple weeks of casual dating to immediately begin pursuing my roommate, the other led me to believe he wanted an emotional relationship when all he wanted was a physical one.
My first serious boyfriend was Albanian, Eastern Orthodox, and knew very little about Judaism. Even though the relationship lasted almost two years, we always knew that the difference in religion was going to have a detrimental effect on us. He was happy to celebrate Chanukah and Passover with me, but his ideological issues with some aspects of Judaism gave him cause to debate me on several occasions.
My second real relationship is only just beginning, and although he has one Jewish grandparent, he too was raised with little knowledge of the religion.
Does his Jewish ancestry make you feel any different about him?
Emily: I think what’s more important to me is that he isn’t tied to a religious philosophy that I fundamentally disagree with.
How, if at all, do you want Judaism to play a role in your current relationship?
Emily: I hope that he understands and appreciates it as a part of who I am. We already share the same set of values, regardless of our religious upbringings, so that’s not an issue. I want him to be willing to celebrate with me when I am moved to celebrate.
Sarah: If I fall in love and marry someone who isn’t Jewish, this is how I would want it to be too.
Sarah, so why do you think you’ve mostly dated non-Jewish guys?
Sarah: I really don’t know why I’ve dated mostly non-Jews–they just happen to have been people I’ve been drawn to. As I get older, I’m starting to think it’s more important for me to intentionally date Jewish guys, since I want to marry a Jewish man eventually.
This is a challenging situation. It feels wrong not to date someone I like just because he isn’t Jewish. But I’m also at the age when, any day, I could meet the person I eventually end up marrying.
Have you ever put yourself in a situation where you could be intentionally meeting or dating a Jewish guy?
Sarah: I’m cringing at this question, because the answer is “no.” Outside of work, few of my friends are Jewish, so I’m rarely in a situation where I meet Jewish guys.
I don’t really want to join a synagogue. I’m not interested in meat-market mixers. Should I join J-Date? That doesn’t sound all that appealing either…I think I’ve been hoping that I’ll randomly meet a Jewish guy someday. I live in New York City, so there’s a good chance it could happen.
So who do you want to end up with?
Sarah: I want to marry someone Jewish, have a Jewish household and Jewish children. I’m not at all religious, but I love being Jewish. It would seem tragic to me for my children to not be a part of such a rich tradition.
Emily, what about you? Who do you want to end up with and why?
Emily: One thing you said [Sarah] really resonated with me: I’m not at all religious, but I love being Jewish. I once found myself excitedly describing Shabbat to my current boyfriend as if I were a five-year-old on Christmas morning. At the same time, and after lots of consideration, I’ve decided that I don’t need to be married to a Jewish person to live the kind of Jewish life that I want for myself.
Being the product of a mixed marriage myself, I know that it can be difficult to impart some of the traditions on your children when both parents are not Jewish, but I also found that, being in that situation, I was able to find and choose Judaism for myself.
Sarah: I liked what you said about how having parents from different backgrounds led you to “find and choose Judaism for yourself.” I wonder if the same thing happened to me as a result of growing up in a mixed household. They say that children of intermarriage generally aren’t raised with a strong sense of Jewish identity, but you and I seem to be exceptions to that rule.
Emily: If only there were a formula!
Photo by CarbonNYC, licensed under Creative Commons. Heart photo by easyrab, also licensed under Creative Commons.
The Officianator
by Ruvym Gilman
When Tom suggested we grab a drink so that he could “ask me something,” the first thing that came to mind was that he had a legal question. Before I even got my law degree in 2006, people had been asking me for legal advice and prepping me for an anticipated onslaught of litigation.
“Ah, a lawyer,” one of my parents’ friends said when he heard that I was in law school. “So that means you can bail me out if I ever get in trouble, eh?” he asked as he jabbed me mischievously with his elbow.
“Yeah,” I wanted to say, “that’s why I’m bothering with this whole law gig – so I can help keep you out of prison when you get caught for your involvement in the black market beluga trade.”
Tom was already at the bar when I got there, playing with his new iPad and sipping a beer. I got myself a drink and we sat there for a few minutes bantering about the day.
“This thing really isn’t all that great,” he told me, gesturing to the iPad.
“So what is it you wanted to ask me?” I cut to the chase, prepping myself for a landlord-tenant dispute.
“Well,” he began, “I talked it over with Kaira and we were wondering if you’d be willing to marry us?”
“Marry you?”
“Yeah, like run the wedding ceremony, that whole deal.”
“Me?” I fumbled, trying to make sense of the request. “Sure,” I said eventually. “I’d be honored.”
Because, really, what else can you say if someone asks you to officiate their wedding?
I met Tom a few years earlier during a Passover seder. I was there by way of invitation from a girl I met at a Starbucks while studying for the Bar exam. Tom was there, along with his sister, by way of invitation from another lady friend.
For sure I thought that this guy, with his wavy hair, trimmed beard, square glasses, and prominent nose, was Jewish.
“Italian,” he said, “but I grew up on Long Island, so its kind of the same thing.”
We stayed in touch for a while after the seder, but as tends to happen in NYC when you’re young and have a million things pulling you in different directions, we lost touch. We were friends on Facebook, if that means anything, but we didn’t actually cross paths until a couple of years later when I spotted Tom on the subway with Kaira. The two of them had just gotten engaged.
By some weird twist of fate that had thrown us together for Passover, then reconnected us on a late-night F-train journey, and even decided to place us in nearby apartments, I was now officiating this guy’s wedding.
At the same time, I couldn’t help but be concerned – for Tom’s sake, for Kaira’s sake – that they were making a mistake. Sure, as neighbors we’d gotten much closer, but of all the people they had to choose from, I couldn’t imagine being the best person for the job.
“You speak good,” Tom reassured me. “And you’re a lawyer. Makes it feel more official.”
“It should be official. You’re getting married.”
“I know, that’s why I said it.”
“What about the religion thing?”
“What about it? We want the wedding to be nondenominational, so it doesn’t matter.”
“But I’m Jewish.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.”
“So I can throw in some Jewish philosophizing then? Spice things up a little?”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
I prepped for the wedding for several weeks, exchanging drafts of what I planned to say with Kaira, who took the lead in communicating with me about what sort of ceremony they wanted.
When the wedding was still months away, it didn’t feel real, it was just some nondescript day in the distant future. But as it got closer I started to panic, it was like “this is really happening!” You would have thought I was the one getting married.
All I could think about during the night preceding the wedding and on the afternoon of the wedding day was the ways in which I might mess up. I’ve been to weddings where the person officiating is so awful that he starts getting death stares from the parents’ of the bride and groom during the ceremony. Then, after the botched affair is finally over, you turn to the person sitting next to you and, wide-eyed, whisper, “what the hell was that?” Sure, the couple is married even if the ceremony sucks, and hopefully they’ll go on to have many blissful years together, but no one ever forgets how terribly it all went down.
“Don’t screw this up!” someone jovially tells me and slaps me on the back while I’m at the bar with a glass of wine, going over my notes. They have, of course, been dampened thanks to an unexpected rain shower. I force a smile and proceed to down the wine.
The wedding takes place in a small restaurant in Brooklyn that’s closed to the public for the night. The room where the ceremony is supposed to go down is at the far end of the restaurant in what looks like a greenhouse. It’s narrow and warm and as the procession begins I feel the sweat forming between my shoulder blades and gliding down to my lower back. The wedding party begins to line up on either side of the room, just as I realize that I don’t know where to stand. I find myself awkwardly positioned in front of the bride and groom just as the music dies and everyone is straining to see them holding hands somewhere behind me.
Kaira forcefully repositions me so I don’t look like a moron, and without thinking about it for too long, I just start speaking. I know there are words coming out of my mouth but I don’t know what they are, I’m just hoping they make sense. When I see people nodding and following along, I realize that I’m doing OK. I get through my introduction and proceed to the story of how Kaira and Tom met. I become more aware of what I’m actually saying and make sure to pace myself, to not mumble through the words as I sometimes do when I get excited about expressing an idea. I have a moment of complete mental clarity where I make a note to maintain eye contact with the entire room.
The ceremony goes mostly as planned. When I get to the end I ask everyone to, as a group, help me pronounce the couple as husband and wife.
“So on the count of three,” I say, “let’s do this together – ‘We pronounce you husband and wife.’ Ready?” I pause. “1…2…3.”
The crowd shouts a collective “yeah!” and start clapping. Kaira and Tom kiss, my date, standing at the back of the room, laughs, because she knows how stressed I was about how to end the ceremony. I shrug.
The wedding turns out to be one of the best I’d ever been to. There’s great food, an open bar, and a dance play list that Kaira put together. After all is said and done, I feel incredibly honored to have played such a central role. And then there is the most important piece of all – Tom and Kaira are married! That concept is still totally wild to me. Sometimes it feels like my friends and I are all still just kids, but meanwhile we’re starting to get married and have kids of our own. I imagine some point in the future when Tom and Kaira have a family, and then I wonder if we’d still be in touch then, if we’d have an opportunity to share more of life’s big moments.
As I sit at my table and ponder, a girl points at me and yells “you’re the officianator!”
“Come with me if you want to get married,” I say in my best Arnold voice, except no one laughs. I like to think it’s because the music was too loud.
Photo by sonictk, licensed under Creative Commons.
The Best Relationship
by Briana Goldman
Valentine’s Day has never been so exciting! I am in the best relationship. My drinks are bought, my doors are opened, and I always have company on a Friday night. I never feel jealous or insecure and I definitely am not worried about being cheated on. My relationship is ideal and I wish everyone could have what I have. The silly thing is, everyone can. It’s not difficult and you don’t have to go to a bar to find that special someone.
All you have to do is stop reading this, get up, walk over to the closest mirror, and take a deep look. Now smile and wave. My relationship is with myself. I have never felt more loved. I am a practicing “self-lover.” I love myself when I make a hearty breakfast, buy myself flowers, and cuddle up on the couch with a glass of wine. I love myself when I give myself a spa day, when I have a long luxurious brunch, or when I go dancing. I constantly think of me. I think of me at the gym, in line at the grocery store, when I see a funny postcard or hear a good joke.
It’s bashert! Bashert is a Yiddish word which means destiny. The Torah states that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Since the word “neighbor” is often translated to mean “spouse” or “significant other,” I have firmly decided that before I love another, I am going to follow the latter part of this commandment to the best of my abilities. I recommend you do the same. It feels amazing to love so freely and unabashedly while carrying out G-d’s work at the same time.
The Interfaith Question
When we posted “Dating Jewish Men” yesterday, we didn’t realize how much conversation it would spark. It appears that how we decide who to spend our lives with is a really hot topic. So, we want to bring the men into the conversation too and hear what you all have to say.
Is it important to you to end up with someone who is Jewish? If that’s the case, is it imperative to only date Jewish people along the way?
Photo by victoriapeckham, licensed under Creative Commons.
The Journey, On Tape
by Daliya Karnofksy
When asked to write a follow-up to my monologue, I decided to give it a view, since I hadn’t seen it in a while. Of the two versions I found, one was of the very first time I did the monologue. I was freshly-married and waving my ring around joyously as I told my story and realized I was funny, and worthy of being loved.
The second version was about a year and a half later. I was a lot thinner from stress, no ring anywhere, and carrying the cool distance of someone who had loved and lost.
My performance was much more engaging in the first one, if a bit sloppy. How open I was! How free and excited. I was falling in love with myself as a solo performer for the first time in much the same way I had fallen in love with my soldier. No holds barred, juicing for laughs and bathing in the attention. Shocked by the positive response.
In the second video, my performance is tighter. I obviously know what I’m doing; I have carefully choreographed my movements and know when to hold for the laughs. I expect the love, and yet feel I don’t deserve it.
At this point in time I was ending a long-term relationship that began shortly after the end of my marriage. It was round two of love for me, and I was losing again. So while I was more polished, I struggled for the joy and was far less engaging. I just didn’t want to get too close to the story I was telling. My mouth was moving but my heart stayed where it belonged.
In both of these relationships I was the one who technically ended it, but that didn’t make it any easier, because each time I felt like a failure. Yes, I married too young, and we were not right for each other. He didn’t want me to be an actress, and I had to follow my dream. But why couldn’t I just hold it together? There was no point in asking why I had gotten married. I don’t regret what I did. I needed to know if we belonged together.
At one point during our marriage, I remember my husband turning to me as we walked down our street on a summer night, and telling me were “zeevoog,” a Hebrew word that means soulmates. At that moment it felt as if we were. Sometimes I still think we may be, but we found each other in the wrong place and the wrong time, and “zeevoog” just wasn’t enough. I considered staying with him until it was the right place and time. When I’m thirty-five, I thought, I’ll really appreciate the security. But in that moment I knew that if I just waited to be happy for the next eleven years until I was thirty-five, all it would turn into was a bunch of resentment and whatever “zeevoog” we had would be long gone.
So we split, and I dove headlong into another relationship, to seal up my wounds and convince myself I was capable of doing it. Since my husband had been my first love, I just needed to know I hadn’t blown my one and only chance. Everyone told me not to jump into anything, just like everyone told me not to get married. Try as I might to keep some distance and re-establish my independence, it was so much easier to feel loved and needed and become half of a couple again. I know it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Or that’s what I’m told, though I haven’t quite figured it out for myself yet.
Of course, after about a year of that, my heart revolted again, saying it wasn’t ready, and really, where was my independence? I kept putting my own dreams aside and blaming it on the person I was with. It was his fault I wasn’t writing, his fault I didn’t make it to yoga in the morning or develop better eating habits. I grew angry and resentful all over again, when I had promised not to. I was kicking and screaming to get out, and it was no secret to him. I treated him badly and he put up with it, and was not surprised when I ended it.
Only I was surprised at how bad it felt this time. I had my freedom again; wasn’t I happy? No one was holding me back, keeping me from what I truly wanted. Then why did I feel so alone, and scared, and so much like a failure? I am coming closer to the realization that the people I choose to be with have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I achieve my dreams. Every decision I make is entirely my own. They are there to support and love me, and that is why I am there for them. They are not there to force me to do what I love or make sure my needs are being met. Only I can do that.
I recently performed my monologue after some time away, now two and a half years after the first time, and I imagine if it had been filmed, I would have again seen a different performance. The cool distance was gone but the self-confidence remained, as I was willing to admit this time that I loved him and I was sad when the marriage ended. And yes, I felt like a failure. The first step is admitting these feelings, and choosing to learn from them instead of wallowing in them. I loved the best way that I could, and then realized that would never be enough if I didn’t take the time to love myself by tending to my own needs. The pursuit of my dreams doesn’t end because someone is lying next to me tempting me to sleep in; I just have to kiss them on the forehead and jump out of bed, ready to greet the day on my own.
Photo by eivindw, licensed under Creative Commons.
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