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Jewcy Book Club

Welcome Authors
Brian Frazer
&
Mike Edison
who are posting all week.
Coming up:
  • 10/13:
    Rabbi Levi Brackman and Sam Jaffe
  • 10/20:
    Jonathan Garfinkel
  • 10/20:
    Rabbi Robert Levine
  • 10/27:
    Danit Brown
  • 10/27:
    Joshua Henkin
  • 11/03:
    Craig Glazer
  • 11/10:
    Max Gross
  • 11/17:
    Seth Greenland

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DAILY SHVITZ
JDater of the Week: The good, the bad, and the non-Jewish
Is this column mean?
TAGS:

Ugh. It took me exactly two weeks of searching for JDaters of the Week before I had an ethical crisis. Who am I to rain down judgment upon the good people of JDate just because they call themselves things like "Portnoy4U" and adamantly refuse to proofread? If someone dug up my long-retired Nerve profile and mocked it on the Internet, I’d be pretty devastated. (And it’s SO mockable – I’m pretty sure I actually compared myself to Natalie Portman in Garden State. In public. In order to impress boys.)

The feedback I’ve gotten about the column didn’t help much. Readers like it, but my friends and family all seemed ambivalent at best. This weekend a rabbi I know told me he thought it was un-Jewish. “Like lashon hara?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “A lot worse.”

The truth is that the column doesn’t have to be cruel. As it happens, the whole time I was scouring the site last week, my mock JDate profile (you need one to check out the goods) was getting IM’d by a totally cute, totally interesting, totally un-douchey-seeming Manhattan boy. I kept ignoring him, caught up in my quest to find the most ridiculous profiles on the site, but maybe I should have just featured him. Maybe one of you would have sent him a message, and a lovely shidduch would have been made.

So this week, I’m taking a new approach, mitigating the negativity a bit with a three-pronged format. I’m picking one profile that’s good, one profile that, um, needs work, and one profile that represents the most fascinating tribe on JDate—the non-Jews.

The JDate matrix: Welcome to the desert of the realThe JDate matrix: Welcome to the desert of the realThe good: He’s a twin! He has five little sisters! He says his family life has giving him “Mideast-peace-summit -level negotiating skills and Barack Obama-esque motivational speaking” abilities! You will seriously never be able to have a fight with this guy—no matter how hard you try.

The bad: “Sometimes I feel that I am Neo” is a totally understandable sentiment. We all get a little Keanu sometimes. But it’s generally a good idea to save that kind of revelation for the second date.

The non-Jewish: He recently shattered his knee in a motorcycle crash and quotes Courtney Love on his profile. He says he majored in keg stands and freely admits that he looks like a serial killer in his photo. And I bet that every time a Jewish organization releases a study about the perils of intermarriage, his profile gets another thousand hits.

Previously:
The Guy Who Volunteered
Jerry Seinfeld Meets James Bond



Izzy Grinspan is Jewcy's ex-managing editor. Her work has been published in Salon, The Believer, and The Village Voice.


More...

Anonymous


hmmm

I'm trying to understand your ethical dilemma, but frankly the profiles you made fun of previously were asking for it.

People should know that when they post stuff online, it always has the potential to be front page news (or quoted on jewcy.com)





Roi Ben-Yehuda


What about the girls?

Hey Izzy, what about the girls?





Izzy Grinspan


next time!

I know, I'm totally neglecting the girls.  Next week I'll try to even things out a bit...



JEFF


Don't stop now

I dunno... I don't think this new approach works.  I thought your first attempt was hilarious and well-needed.  Since when is it Lamed-Hay to point out bad grammar, egotistical swagger and widely recognized bad taste?  Aside from taste which is rather subjective, neither of those are particularly Jewish values, and I think it's fair to in the very least point them out on a "Jewish" website.  We would be kidding ourselves to suggest that we haven't all looked at those profiles, and cringed or laughed.  It's with love, and I think the JDater or the week should be seen as an honor. Keep up the profile trolling...

 

self-promotion and braggery.  Tho





Gilanah Shoshanah


Feel free to pick on the girls' profiles...

...because mine is so hidden! But at least I can still log on to check out your nominees. Maybe I'll even forward a couple to you that I find reprehensible. Ooo, that might be a bad precedent to set. Hmm.





nussbash


Like "coffee dates" are a good thing?

JDate - and all of online dating - deserves all the ripping you can
humorously dish out. People put themselves out there in the most
superficial of ways and then don't expect to be superficially judged?
Maybe they've never been on a "coffee date." (I haven't!) I am out
there with the organic approach and I have been supporting my local
congregations to create singles networks so people can actually - gasp
- meet in situations that are not auditions, and maybe make
friendships? Your spotlight on JDate is something I could continue to
look forward to every week. Don't blow it!





Simpleliquid


American Idol

I watch American Idol. At least the second half of the season when the talented contestants have already been chosen. The first half of the show profiles the people who audition for the show and they can roughly be broken down into three categories: Talented people who are trying to make the cut; people who do something absurd or ridiculous in order to get on to TV; and people who are picked by the producers so that they can be mocked and ridiculed on a national stage. The last category is modern television at its worst. It is cruel and malicious and caters to the basest of human emotion. In magnitude, last week's article was nowhere near as bad as American idol. Jewcy's stage is much smaller than Fox's. However, in spirit and intent, it was similar.

 

 





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