THE MATCHUP: The Anger, And Allure, Of Jewish Guys

by Abigail Pickus
Special To The Jewish Week

We are sitting by the whirlpool at my friend’s fancy health club. With a fluffy, white towel strategically wrapped around my “Jewish” thighs, I dangle my feet in the steamy water and I listen to my 20-something companion tell me why he would never date a Jewish woman.

Actually, what he tells me is that his Jewish “friends” would never date Jewish women. That his current girlfriend is Asian and the one before that was a WASP are just funny coincidences.
His litany against the fair daughters of Israel goes something like this.
Jewish women remind Jewish men of their mothers. They’re smothering. They’re demanding. They’re materialistic. Their families are too pushy and invasive and just plain, well, loud. In short:

they’re too Jewish. (And probably also too short.)
Beyond that, isn’t it a good thing to shake up the gene pool to prevent all of those Jewish conditions, like nearsightedness and genetic diseases?

At first I listen politely. After all, he’s entitled to his romantic preferences. Plus, his father, who is snoring quietly on a lounge chair nearby, is the friend who treated me to the club in the first place.
But the more I listen — and then argue, being a pushy, opinionated Jewess, after all — the more I realize how personal is this conversation. Because were this young man 10 years older — putting him in his mid-30s, which is age appropriate for me — there’s no doubt he would be my ideal match. A thousand watts of smarts, he is liberal and cultured with a dry sense of humor and a strong work ethic. And despite his ambivalence towards his own people, he is what Grammy Hall would call a “real Jew.” In fact, I could swear that I have seen this exact same serious, bespectacled face, slightly stooped shoulders and lanky physique staring back at me from a group photo of the Warsaw Yiddish Writers Club, circa 1923.
There’s one difference, though, between those writers and poets who lived on the cusp of the Holocaust and my young companion — and it’s not that the former liked Jewish women more than the latter. It’s just that in the 21st century, Jews are no longer confined to dating — or marrying — Jewish.
This is not news. Acculturation and assimilation have been kind to American Jews. So kind that over 40 percent of Jews intermarry.

But what worries me more than intermarriage, which I don’t believe is necessarily a problem for the Jewish people, is the alarming anger and hatred that fuels much of it. Because if a non-Jew were to spew the same diatribes against Jewish women as my Jewish friend, wouldn’t he be called an anti-Semite?
So when such hatred is uttered by a Jew is it any less offensive?

And even though I try hard to ignore it, my young friend is hardly alone. There are many Jewish men — and women, too — who feel no great love towards their Jewish counterparts.
So what’s a Jewess who actually likes Jewish men to do?

Because as I inch closer to 40, and as I grow more frustrated with the bad behavior of so many Jewish men in the dating world, I am beginning to wonder why I limit myself. My children will always be Jewish so maybe I should stop JDating and start Match.com-ing?

My Jewish girlfriends, all married to Jews themselves, tell me to cross over to the dark side.
“What have the Jews done for you?” asked my friend, R.

She’s heard, one to many times, my stories of how men only want to e-mail through JDate but never meet. Or how they will set up a date and then cancel at the last minute. Or how they actually meet me but then treat me with barely concealed hostility. One guy wouldn’t even look me in the eye after our date, so worried was he that I was going to ask him to marry me. My hand, which I had extended for a thank-you goodbye, hovered in the air and then dropped down by my side.

“They’re not mensches!” said another friend, who blames Jewish mothers. “They make their sons believe they’re the center of the world!” (Never mind that she, herself, is the mother of two boys.)
But I’m not ready to give up.
I love being Jewish.
And I would love to find a match who is not just Jewish and proud — but who wants to be with a Jewish woman. Someone who says to himself, “I would love to find someone as fabulous as my mother!”
Even better if he happens to be nearsighted and lanky with some fire in his soul.
Extra credit for a fondness for tweed caps.

If anyone knows such a fellow, send him my way. n

Abigail Pickus is a freelance writer living in Chicago.