Remember Boyz II Men? I do, and I also remember dancing to "End of the Road" at a middle school dance, which is making me feel really old. Anyway, one of their members, Shawn Stockman, has been outed on a gossip site as being a bigamist. Well, not a real bigamist - he's only legally married to one woman, but he was "spiritually married" to another woman for nine years. Apparently it's cool because Shawn is an Israelite and they believe in polygamy. Wait, what?

For those of you playing along at home, the Israelites - or as they're better known, the Black Hebrews - believe themselves to be direct descendants of, well, the actual Israelites. Many Israelites do not identify as being mainstream Jews and consider themselves "true" members of the faith. Therefore, you're not likely to see them fighting over whitefish salad next week after services. Everybody's favorite "recovering" crackhead Whitney Houston reportedly claimed to be a Black Hebrew during a trip to Dimona, Israel in 2003.

Apparently, Shawn's lifestyle looked pretty appealing to fellow bandmate Wanye "The One Who Dated Brandy" Morris, who has reportedly converted to Judaism recently. Welcome to the party, guys! 

 It finally makes sense. After months of traveling in the East with an Israeli and being witness to the very low social boundaries Israelis have with one another, it finally makes sense.

No matter where they are or whether they know each other, Israelis greet one another as old friends and break into full conversation within minutes about whatever is relevant. If we happened to be in Vietnam, the conversation would be about which guest house was the best and least expensive. If we were in Australia, perhaps advice would be dispensed about which caravan park had the nicest kitchen or which company offered the best dives. As an American in these dialogues, I smiled, tried to understand the conversation, and then usually zoned out. I was always aware, though, that Israelis claim ownership to something English speakers and people from most other languages do not; because Hebrew is spoken by so few in the world, when you happen upon a Hebrew speaker outside of Israel, brotherhood is immediate and unquestioning.

On a particularly hot day in November in Cairns (northeastern Australia), Oded and I decided to check out the public lagoon in the center of the city. Upon arriving in Cairns, we couldn't help but notice the lagoon, a large swimming pool type arrangement adjacent to the shore. It was open to the public and free, a perfect way for two poor travelers to waste the day. We made our way from the sandy concrete to the center of the lagoon, only waist deep in water. We swam, relaxed, floated, and inevitably heard Hebrew. Oded swam closer and with nothing more than an, "Alan, ma koreh?" we had a new friend and were cooking dinner and drinking beers in Uzi's guest house hours later. We spent a few days with Uzi and his friends before moving on north and west. More than a month later, we walked into a backpacker in Sydney, and there sat Uzi. The reunion was that of old friends, replete with hugs, kisses and stories of where we had all been the last weeks. If Oded and Uzi were replaced in this scenario with two Americans, say Mark and Greg, this meeting would look very different or not at all. They would most likely never approach each other, and for good reasons. First, most Americans never take a trip like this and therefore would never even be in this situation. Next, English is not a rare commodity and does not serve to connect its speakers. Most importantly and the reason for this examination, is why Americans, and I venture most other nationalities, do not create the same connections as Israelis. 

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I am completely fortunate that my whole life my parents encouraged me to marry for love. Not money, not religion, not security, just love. As a product of a middle class Jewish household, it is mildly surprising that I received little to no pressure to marry for love AND Judaism. There may have been a small ongoing threat that if I married a Jew, I would inherit my great-grandmothers candlesticks (heavy, silver, carried on her person from Poland) and if I didn't marry a Jew, I would be hit over the head with them. That threat was not often repeated over the years, especially after I fell in love with an amazing Jewish man - a man whom I found without the aid of JDate, blind dates, speed dates or any other system other than pure good fortune. So when the seemingly impossible happened, both families were ecstatic, and mine breathed a sigh of relief that the candlesticks would not have to be used as a weapon. But before the happily ever after could begin, the wedding needed to be planned. And by wedding, I mean weddings. See, this most amazing man is not just Jewish, but Israeli. Enter the main character in this story: conflict. Not conflict between my husband and me or our families, but between our cultures. Jewish translates in many ways from state to state and even across oceans but when it comes to wedding planning, Jewish is a whole other story. Thus begins the saga of wedding number one.

The American wedding was a celebration of values, tradition, love and, of course, an open bar. With my fiancé across an ocean somewhere due north of Tel Aviv, the initial planning was left to me...and my mother. There were many things easily pinned down: save the date cards (designed using a Mac and sent electronically); the venue (a platinum LEED certified non-profit/art space); the music (DJ, no line dances, minimal slow songs); the food (locally raised, vegetarian grub); the wedding party (none - less muss, less fuss); the rabbi (friend of mine from LA, woman, awesome). But somewhere between harpists and broken glass lay the rub.

Not only do Israelis plan weddings in roughly three days, they have much less to worry about: no flights (usually), no hotels, and no welcome bags or information sheets for the weekend-long festivities because Israel is a "celebrate and sleep in your own bed" kind of country. I also excluded all the pre-wedding American Jewish cultural uniqueness from registries and wedding showers to bachelorette parties and something blue. Try explaining over Skype to your mother-in-law-to-be that it's considered normal to sign up for things you want people to buy you and then kill trees in order to thank the people who buy you said things. The whole process of wedding planning is full of long standing traditions and rules that sometimes offer wisdom and logic and other times offer complication in multiple shades of taffeta. Fortunately, we successfully navigated this process in just four short months.

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I am not sure I believe in the institution of marriage. I think most people go into it for religious or romantic reasons, not fathoming in the slightest that it is in actuality a business partnership. Additionally, I believe that marriage changes a relationship. Sometimes for the better, but often a sense of ownership is instilled. Men feel emasculated. Women feel entitled. The whole dynamic shifts. And on top of all of that it is an institution that creates a false sense of security. Marriage is no guarantee your partner won't leave you. It just means it's going to be a longer and more costly break-up.

So, with that vision of marriage in my mind, why would I want to get married? Societal and cultural brainwashing. Since I was a little girl I've dreamed of the white dress, the veil, the flowers and cake. And as a grown woman what do I really want? The ring. My whole life, my society and culture have been telling me that one day I'd grow up to be that princess in the white dress, that if my man really loved me he'd give me a big shiny diamond.

All understanding of societal and cultural brainwashing fully considered, when it comes to marriage, I want that ring. I want that party. I want to get married. Not because I want the institution, but because I stand no chance after 29 years of societal and cultural brainwashing of not wanting those things.

So, I try to navigate my way through a world of falsehoods that are created by others. And I think about what I really want. OK, I really want the ring. I do. Why? Because it means someone wants to marry me! I'm not quite as concerned with actually getting married as I am with knowing that someone wants to marry me. So I'm willing to start with the ring and navigate from there. I'm alright with the idea of a perpetual engagement. I'll have the ring, people will see it sparkle and know that someone has asked me to marry him. That, in and of itself, might be enough for me.

And if it's not? Well then, I have a plethora of alternatives available to me. I could actually get married (mostly for the tax benefits) but enter into a rock-solid prenup that is essentially a means to a hassle-free divorce. A prenup that enables both of us to walk away from the marriage without having to give each other anything, a prenup that treats our divorce like any other non-marital break-up.

There's also the option of a commitment ceremony. A handfasting. Jumping the broom. An outdoor barefoot party under the chuppah, overseen by a lesbian rabbi, with no legal ramifications attached.

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I was raised in a small town in Connecticut and while I was surrounded by many Jews, I didn't know any Orthodox Jews. I learned how they live in dribs and drabs, with a bunch of rumors thrown in. Like the one about Orthodox men and women having intercourse through a hole in a bed sheet. I was horrified. Of course the laws of Judaism are in favor of good, healthy sex between husbands and wives, so, barring some weird linen fetish, forcing a sheet into the picture would be pretty counter to the cause.

I remember in my twenties hearing that Orthodox men and women could only "do it" at certain times of the month. I did a little research and found that Talmudic law says separation should be maintained between a man and wife for twelve days per month (five of those days being her period if she's an Ashkenazi Jews, four if she is a Sephardic Jew). Then she immerses herself in the mikvah, a bath designed for ritual immersion, on the evening of the final day. At that point, the couple can go to town. I was bothered by the idea of a woman being considered "impure" (in a state known as niddah) during those twelve days, and having so much time spelled out for her when she couldn't have sex. How sad, how patriarchal.

Now at age 40, married with a four-year-old daughter, I see things differently. I know it sometimes feels like a herculean effort to get sex on the calendar without a deliberate plan and focus. Not because I am no longer interested in it or because my attraction to my husband has waned. I, like millions of other married couples, am just bone tired at the end of the long day that involves working, day care pick-up, making family dinner, spending quality time with our daughter and getting her to bed. My husband and I often want to just sit on the couch holding hands and watching Lost until we climb into bed and pass out. The idea of physically maneuvering our bodies into intriguing configurations can seem daunting.

So I get how Orthodox women might enjoy the rule of having no sex for patches of time each month. I also understand that there is nothing that makes us crave sex more than not being able to have it. This followed by a quiet night of preparation where one escapes into a soothing pool of water without ringing phones and crying kids sounds positively sensual.

In Rachel's Daughers: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women, the author Debra Renee Kaufman interviewed ba'alot teshuva, women who gave up their secular lives and turned to Orthodox Judaism, asking them about family, feminism and gender. When it came to talking about the enforced separation and mikvah, here were some of the responses:

"Over the years it is building a cycle for me; it's a rhythm that is related to me and my body alone."

"It is even more than the anticipation of making love but the whole secret sharing of it with other women, the friend I may meet at the mikvah or the friend who might take care of the baby when I go, that make it all more, I don't know, sort of sexy."

"Most men don't know how to talk things out but since approximately one-half of my year is spent in niddah, I found that were are forced to talk about things more and that he has learned to show his love in ways more important than physical contact."

Makes sense to me: Increased communication, adding in an exotic ritual, finding ways to build intimacy beyond physical sex, and tossing in an element of taboo are just plain hot. And yes, I do realize that for these women and their husbands it is also the meaningfulness of in following the traditions of Jewish law and feeling connected to their ancestors and religion. That's just not the angle I happen to connect with.

I think too about what happens when a woman just isn't in the mood on mikvah night and the pressure is on. (It should be noted that women are not legally bound to have sex on this night or any other.) The women of Mayim Rabin-a website in which women comment on laws of purity in a blog format-address this issue. They suggest talking to your husband in advance about not wanting sex if possible (as in before the 12^th night, when he may be "sexually frustrated.") They also suggest "working out a [sexual] compromise so you can both enjoy the night."

I guess all of us are left to figure out how to make sure there is regular physical intimacy going on even when we're tired, played-out and feeling entirely unsexy. It is hard to switch into "lustful" after cleaning spaghetti sauce from the counter and explaining to a child that there are not frogs under her bed. Switching gears requires finding quiet space, mentally and physically. For this I have turned to my own form of the mikvah, easing myself into a hot bubble bath surrounded by candles. It's a good start. Maybe there's something to be said also for not feeling guilty on the nights when we don't have sex and reserving more time to thinking about it on the nights before we do.

 

 

This piece appears courtesy of Jewcy's partnership with 614, magazine of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.

 

I ask daddy what he thinks about my youngest sister, Rachael, getting married.  "Well," daddy begins (he always begins with a thoughtful and drawn out "Well"), "she's different from the rest of you, and I tell you the truth, I really never knew if she would get married so I decided a long time ago to put it in God's lap."

My initial reaction is to be tickled by this mental image of my 33-year-old sister sitting patiently in God's lap until God decided, "Hmm, I think I'll hook Rachael up."  But then, looking at daddy's serious expression, I find that I admire his ability as a parent to be willing to accept that, while he would move heaven and earth for his children, there are things that are beyond him.  I admire, too, his unshakable belief in an approachable God who, with all of the other things to contend with in this world, is willing to personally care for each individual.  

As a baby, Rachael was in my 14-year-old lap many nights.  My mother was 42 when she was born (what business she had having sex at that age was beyond me!) and she'd had a C-section, so for the first several months I often got up in the middle of the night to give Rachael a bottle.  I'd sit in the rocker and sing her lullabies and feed her.  Sometimes, when I was particularly tired, I would just put her in bed with me, stick the bottle in her mouth and prop it up with a pillow and close my eyes.  A few times, I woke up to a loud thump.  Rachael had fallen on the floor.  She didn't cry much, as I recall, and was a happy baby and child.  I have other fond memories of placing a one-year-old Rachael in the folds of sheets hanging on the clothesline and, along with my sisters Sarah, Mary and Liz, we would wave the sheets and bounce her high in the air.  We still think she liked it, despite falling out a few times. 

When Rachael was eight years old, she was the only one left at home.  The rest of us were in college, married, or living on our own.  So she grew up somewhat as an only child, with my parents hovering about anxiously, literally jumping up and running to her when she sneezed.  You'd think they hadn't already had ten children. 

But she was different than the rest of us, in many ways, at the very least because my parents thought so, and if others believe that you are special and amazing, then you believe it, too, because why would your parents lie?  There was no way that Rachael would accept being with some guy who didn't think, too, that she was the bees' knees.  Thus, she sat in God's lap.    

I tell Rachael about my conversation with daddy, and ask her how it felt to be sitting in God's lap.  She quips, "'Let Go and Let God,' you know?" 

I haven't heard that phrase for a while, but I admit that I like it.  "Letting go and letting God" is the antithesis of the intellectual Jewish world that I mostly inhabit.  God might be an important component of one's life, but few Jewish mothers or fathers that I know would leave their daughter's marriage up to God.   

Rachael continues, "Daddy would always say, ‘You don't know how much I worry about you,' and I would say, ‘You don't have to worry,' and then he would say, ‘Oh, I pray for you every day.'"

"But if he was really letting go and letting God, why did he have to pray for you?  Shouldn't he have been doing one or the other?" I ask, ever-logical.

"He was covering his bases," she says.  "Maybe," she goes off on another tack, "God didn't want to let go?  At some point, God has to let go, too.  I needed a ‘Get-out-of-God's-lap-free' card." 

"You got it," I say.  "Anyway, you haven't told me how it felt to be sitting in God's lap."

She laughs and says it was cozy most of the time, but that she'd never viewed God as being an old white man with a beard.   Though both Rachael and I grew up in the same church, I will admit that for most of my life, that's how I saw God.  Even today, I'm not uncomfortable with imagining God as having human features - Jews tend to be, I know, probably because a human looking God is too close to the Christian iconography of Jesus as a baby in the bosom of his family or as a man on the cross - but there are a number of Biblical passages that refer to God's breasts and God's loins and God's face and hands and arms.  Oh, Biblical apologists can say "metaphorical" all they want, but I would bet the Biblical writers meant those descriptions to be literal. 

"So how did you view God?" I ask Rachael.

"When I was 6 years old, and in one of the church programs, we were asked to draw a picture of God and the image that came to mind was of a rainbow colored gumdrop," she says.  "Maybe we all have little pieces of a rainbow colored gumdrop in us!" 

She is being purposely silly - but not. 

In much the same way that my parents' image of Rachael shaped her perception of herself as being special and different, her view of God is indicative of who she was, and it also became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  For Rachael, God is an all-embracing, accepting of differences, sweet and bright-colored, cheerful, happy God.  It reminds me of the old adage: God created man in His image and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor. 

When my parents said they'd chosen the name "Rachel" for my sister, I suggested spelling it with an "a" in it (I don't know why - it looked cool).  My parents agreed, and thus we have Rachael.  Of the 19 famous Rachaels mentioned on Wikipedia, 13 are in the music/acting world, 5 are in sports, and Rachael Ray is a cook/television personality.  Maybe there's something to be said for self-fulfilling prophecies, because my sister has been in the music/acting world her whole life.  I guess I'll take credit for that.  It might make up for dropping her on the floor. 

Rachael's fiancée, Adam, is well-named for her.  The first human being created, and created in God's image, God had to find someone very special for Adam - not just anyone would do.  Adam had to hang out in God's lap for a while, too, until Eve was designed, just for him. 

All of us siblings are happy that she's found her beschert, her intended.  My sister Liz thinks that we might be too "long in the tooth" to be in a wedding party, but you know, if my mother could have a baby at 42, then I can be a bridesmaid when Rachael gets married.

What does it mean to religiously attend church, temple or synagogue, live in a community where G-d’s laws are first and foremost, and then deliberately go on the internet in order to break one of the most sacred of commandments: Thou shall not commit adultery? It is no surprise that the internet has become an electronic meeting place for married men and women looking to have affairs; it may come as a shock, however, to learn that the web is also the hub for a growing number of ultra religious married people looking to start extramarital affairs with people who share their faith.

On sites like Craigslist and AshleyMadison.com (which carries the motto “Life is short. Have an affair.”) people who self-proclaim as “religious” can be found seeking out others of their faith tradition to be unfaithful with. In the past, philandering religious men went to strip clubs and so-called “kosher” brothels to retreat from their wives in secret. But there appears to be a trend of religious men and women seeking out affairs online; and one man has founded a website tailored specifically to his community’s needs.

“Every day I would see ads on Craigslist from the “frum” [religious Jewish] community. My wife and I started talking to them and realized there was a big need for this,” said Jerry (who does not wish to disclose his last name for safety), founder of Shaindy.com. Shaindy.com is tailored mainly to the religious and Jewish seeking extramarital affairs. Though the site is only two months old, Shaindy.com — with the tag line, “Jews Can Have Fun Too” — already has 2,500 members paying $99 annually for the right to log on and seek out other married people interested in having an affair.

“People always like to think that we are holier than thou,” Jerry said, who himself is a member of the Orthodox community. “Our community has the same needs as any other community — dating, drugs, cheating or whatever, and it’s silly to think we are ‘different.’”

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When the Shaindy.com epidemic broke out, The Jew Spot had to get in on it. Lucky for us, founder of Shaindy not only gave us an interview, but VIP access. Little did we know we’d find ourselves in a website equipped with a dating expert, a pro-cheating column, 13 new messages from men who all want to chat with me, and oh yeah, pornography. Did I mention most of the members on here are “Religious,” i.e. Orthodox or Chassidic?

But before you jump to conclusions, Jerry (the founder’s pseudonym for safety purposes) said he was simply addressing a need - and the numbers prove it. Only a two month site and there are nearly 2,000 members, 12 of which signed up while we were chatting. All he had to do was go on Craigslist to see the religious Jewish community putting personals up for affairs to understand there is a market for this. And it doesn’t hurt that his wife is all about it, too.

So what happens on this site and why has it become so popular in the religious community? Read our interview with Jerry here.

Thanks for taking the interview. Can you tell us who Shaindy.com is made for?

Well Shaindy is basically for married people who want an affair or just a listening ear from other people "to vent" or "distress." The idea was there is NO such venue in the Jewish community.

Every day I would see on Craigslist ads from the "frum" community. We [wife and I] started talking to them and realized there was a big need for it.

We have all kind of people in here – Chassidic, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform. It’s fair to say it’s for Jewish people.

What surprises me is that especially for the Orthodox community, they are very tight knit. There must be a fear in meeting someone who they already know.. or know their rabbi? How is that addressed?

Over here you can chat with someone for a while before you open up and you make sure you chat with someone who has the same beliefs as you have.

Why do you feel that people who are looking to have an affair want someone with the same beliefs, especially same religious beliefs for those more religious on the site?

When people have the same issues and problems it is much more comfortable to connect with those kind of people. It’s more of a challenge to get a girl or guy from your background. They will UNDERSTAND you way more because they are in the same situation.

Obviously there is a need for it. I am checking the stats on my site as we speak and there are over 3000 chat/messages between members on a daily basis.

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The last time my husband and I had sex after we separated, I wore a Chai pendant necklace and he had on a Saint-somebody necklace.

We were doing it missionary-style and his Saint was dangling next to my Chai. I didn’t want to point out the ridiculousness of our new necklaces, and the fact that we NEVER wore these when we were married. The fact that I am a Jew and he a Christian became painfully obvious.

“We’re both wearing our necklaces,” he said. “Yep," I responded, trying not to think about it. I was trying to just get off and not pay attention to possibly why we didn't work. I didn’t ask him what the Saint stood for. I didn’t want to know. He knew what the Chai was because I talked about it a lot while making my Jewish calendar. But he never talked about Saints. He talked about Christmas but he didn’t believe in God, and yet somehow I drove him to need a Saint? I guess I can’t complain, I also needed something holy after our separation.

One of the last questions our couples therapist asked was, “Did you have a problem with her being Jewish?” To be honest, I don’t think that was our essential problem, but it was a major difference. It wasn’t a God thing. It was a family and cultural thing. When we were happy our religious beliefs were never the issue. We were both reform in our religious ideas and politically very liberal, but when things got bad, I had " the loud Jewish family,” and his family was “white trash.” Yes, not healthy.

If someone pinned me down and forced me to tell them what I thought about his family Christmas, I would blurt out "I fucking hated it!" But I wouldn’t admit that in public. I hated going to West Virginia during Hanukkah and pretending it didn’t matter. I hated buying $500 worth of presents and opening them on Christmas Day. I hated Christmas cookies and Christmas decorations, and I hated being away from my family’s Chinese food and movie night. I wanted to be the Jewish girlfriend and Jewish wife who was “cool” with the holiday that made everyone happy and giving. But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t admit it.

I dreaded that trip to West Virginia. We always got into a big fight before. It wasn’t Christmas per se, as I actually have never dated a Jewish man, but it was his Christmas. It was the fact that I felt excluded from the fun cause I was Jewish.

Do I think it would be easier if I married someone Jewish? Yes, possibly.

Will I? I don’t know. I’m dating both Jews and non-Jews and I like them all. As a Reform Jew, I walk a line in modern society. I am religiously defined, but I also am an assimilated liberal American. I fear losing someone I really love because he’s not Jewish, but when I’m really honest, I can say that I want my children to be Jewish, and that there is a indescribable cultural understanding when I meet a Jewish man.

I’m curious what will happen. I’ll let you know. I have date tomorrow with a Jewish man.

At the age of twenty-six or so, having noticed that he was obviously not a particle more grown-up or less reckless than he had been at thirteen, he had been greatly relieved to come across a newspaper article by some fashionable psychologist saying that adolescence among human males could be a drawn-out process, lasting in some respects and cases until the age of twenty-five or even thirty. This assurance had given him intermittent hope and comfort of a sort until about ten years later, when it had come back to him in a moment of what had been, even for him, an outstanding act of goatish irresponsibility. Thereafter, he had clung to the consolation that there was nothing he could do about it.

— Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils

Just how popular is Kay Hymowitz’s City Journal essay, “Love in the Time of Darwinism,” which decries the phenomenon of marriage-avoiding man-children? So popular that it was sent to me by no fewer than three different friends today (all males) and it’s been featured on two different traffic engines this week: Arts & Letters Daily and Real Clear Politics.

Her brief is actually a mild apology for a previous essay in which she reprehended the jaded and loveless men of my generation for, as she puts it here, “whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes” instead of humming Cole Porter tunes and throwing their jackets over puddles in the street for their intendeds. Courtship is dead, and mankind may well be facing extinction given how many men refuse to grow up, get hitched, and start procreating. What happened to Cary Grant? He turned into Seth Rogen.

As far as forays into contemporary masculine psychology go, Hymowitz’s essay wasn’t terribly original. Laura Schlesinger caterwauls about the same subject on her weekly radio program (there’s nothing that a little wifely put-out can’t fix), and Caitlin Flanagan has earned a reputation hovering somewhere between Cassandra and Queen Bee for writing about these domestic complications in much more elegant form in the Atlantic and the New Yorker. But what was original was just how much of a backlash Hymowitz herself incited –all of it from the boys. Her inbox overfloweth with righteous invective styling itself as the “Menaissance,” which sure sounds as ridiculous as “Iron John” did in the ’90s, but recommends an altogether healthier program than banging bongo drums naked in the woods. The Menaissance mantra seems to be, “We’re mad as hell, and we’d rather be masturbating”:

Here’s Jeff from Middleburg, Florida: “I am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman . . . who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it’s time to act accordingly.” Jeff, meet another of my respondents, Alex: “Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a ‘grown-up life’ but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.” Care for one more? This is from Dean in California: “Men are finally waking up to the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery.” You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like “AmericanWomenSuck,” “NoMarriage,” “MGTOW” (Men Going Their Own Way), and “Eternal Bachelor” (”Give modern women the husband they deserve. None”).

Web bookmarks no doubt to be shortly followed by “BabyComeBack.com,” “BCWH” (Bros Coexisting With Hos), and “Yes, Dear.” Because who do we think we’re fooling, really? Not Kay Hymowitz, who concludes by acknowledging what most “studies” have found: all Angry Young Men eventually quit the struggle and settle for the safe institution of marriage over the fantasy of zero responsibility (even if it is only in baseball). But it’s her anatomy of why we’re so down on girls to begin with that, whether by accident or design, makes her an enabler for our staying down on them. Namely, it’s all the woman’s fault.

“The dating and mating scene is in chaos,” writes Hymowitz. “SYMs [Single young males] of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional.”

She says she wants to be treated as an equal, yet she doesn’t want you to earn less than she does. She adores gallantry and chivalry except when it’s seen as misogynist condescension: dare you hold a door open in the wrong setting, and that’s not all you’ll be left holding. She wants sensitivity and good grooming and garrulousness, but too much of that — and she’ll never come right out and say when it’s too much, you’ll only find out during the breakup — and you risk looking emasculated rather than “metrosexual.” When she’s out on the town, is it a one-night stand she’s after or is she aiming to “close a deal”? You’ll never know because as often as you go to bed with a whore and wake up with a virgin, the plot develops the other way about, too. (Don’t blame Betty Friedan. Even Byron warned against “the amphibious sort of harlot, / Couleur de rose, who’s neither white nor scarlet.”)

All this poorly wired sexual circuitry has prompted a return to Darwinian brute instinct. To succeed with women, the SYM has had to rediscover his inner asshole. It’s a good thing he developed opposable thumbs; he’ll need them for all the finger-guns he’ll be firing.

It’s a fun sociobiological thesis, but by Hymowitz’s own admission, it only accounts for a “significant minority” of men in their twenties, erstwhile celibate losers one day futzing with Playstation, the next consulting Pick-Up manuals and self-brutalization techniques for landing Perfect 10s. Even if they’re successful — and most men are not — sport fucking is still a form of permanent adolescence, and all that those malcontents who emailed Hymowitz are doing is trading one dodge of adulthood for another.

There’s no doubt that fewer SYMs are interested in tying in the knot. In her first “Where Have All the Ward Cleavers Gone?” plaint, Hymowitz provided the declining stats: “[I]n 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old and 85 percent of 30-year-old white men were married; in 2000, only 33 percent and 58 percent were, respectively.”

But the real question, in an age that cops to an over 50% divorce rate, isn’t “Why aren’t more men getting married under 30?” It’s Why are any?

Not long ago, I participated in a three-way (calm down) dialogue for Jewcy with a male friend who’d just gotten married and had a child, and a female friend who’d recently been divorced (she’s since gotten remarried, but don’t let that spoil the example). The question before the house was: “Is Marriage the New Dating?” My concern, as expressed in the introductory letter and based wholly on anecdotal evidence, was that my generation had not in fact learned from boomer dysfunction that rushing into long-term commitment too soon was as fated for disappointment as the credulous Maxim subscriber. The woman in the exchange, the witty novelist Elisa Albert, had the best alarmist take on the whole sordid mess, having recently extricated herself from one:

The guy in question (my former “husband,” strangely enough) seemed a great match for me. We had the same books, the same taste in music, the same politics, the same lifestyle. We wanted the same things. “Done!” I thought. “Ha! I’m so not ever gonna have to go on J-Date or pay my own bills or plan my own life by myself! Sweet!”

Our relationship was a disaster. The marriage lasted about eight months, if I’m generous with our timeline. The term starter marriage (married less than five years with no kids, and divorced under 35) became popular in 2002 with sociologist Pamela Paul’s book, The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony. (Incidentally, I was perusing the Sunday Times wedding announcements a few months back — yeah, what of it? — and noticed Ms. Paul had gotten married again! Mazel tov! Hope never dies!)

Hymowitz should be careful what she wishes for. At least she should concede that Mr. Darcy, beau ideal of women for centuries who longed for a mythic form of civilized disagreement, was the invention of an author whose view of courtship and matrimony uncovered, in Mr. Auden’s celebrated words, “the economic basis of society.” This is a judgment that has been given a brilliant updating by Laura Kipnis, a third wave feminist whose signals, so to speak, could not be clearer. Here she is in her bestselling polemic Against Love:

When monogamy becomes labor, when desire is organized contractually, with accounts kept and fidelity extracted like labor from employees, with marriage a domestic factory policed by means of rigid shop-floor discipline designed to keep the wives and husbands and domestic partners of the world choke-chained to the status quo machinery — is this really what we mean by a “good relationship”?

I would also add that Hymowitz’s sample pool of arrested development cases is “Darwinian” only in the sense that with a growing population that sees lengthier fertility years, and increased rates of infant survival, more men can afford to go matchless longer and rationalize why they’re doing so. They’re also, whether they confess it or not in their bilious fits of letter-writing, choosier in whom they’d like to partner with, as evidenced by this hilarious fake news segment from The Onion: “Attractive Girls Union Refuses to Enter Into Talks With Mike Greenman.”

As for those Y-chromosomes who would follow the Hymowitz prescription for premature wedlock; to quote an awful film about an imminent global warming apocalypse, save as many as you can.

Ah, there's nothing like a delicious amalgam of celebrity gossip and religious fervor. Tweak the details of the story to make the celebrities beautiful wealthy socialites who inherited their good fortune from their famous parents and make the religion Judaism and you find yourself with a story ripe for feature in the New York Observer, the Manhattan-centric publication that proclaims, "Everything is about style for New Yorkers, from what they wear to where they eat to how they entertain." Fittingly, The Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, who has entered the tabloid spotlight with his recent engagement to Ivanka Trump and subsequent insistence that she convert to Judaism before the nuptials are to take place.

Kushner and Trump are both the recipients of vast inheritance of real estate fortunes and have each landed in the public consciousness due to their affluent lifestyles: Kushner became the owner of The Observer while still in grad school in 2006, while Trump spends her days working as Vice President of Real Estate Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization. Both pretty standard-issue jobs for 26-year-olds, right?

With the overbearing coverage that accompanies any wedding of the glitterati comes word that Kushner had asked Trump to convert before they wed and that she was going through with it. Unlike Christianity and Islam, the other members of God's Big Three, Judaism does not generally lend itself to proselytizing. However, the 1981 book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, states about intermarriage:

If the non-Jewish spouse truly shares the same values as the Jewish spouse, then the non-Jew is welcome to convert to Judaism, and if the non-Jew does not share the same values, then the couple should not be marrying in the first place.

Partially due to Judaism's lack of any sort of central dogmatic governing body, reliable statistics on conversion are hard to come by, but spousal conversion is not uncommon. Other famous converts-upon-marriage include Tom Arnold, Connie Chung, Kate Capshaw, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and recently, Sacha Baron Cohen's fiancee, Isla Fisher.

Looking Good: but not good enough for M.B.C.The mother of Borat star and creator Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t happy. What has put Mama Baron Cohen (let’s just call her M.B.C.) over the top is that fact that her son and his (whisper) non-Jewish fiancé seem to have no intention of getting married anytime soon. Having postponed their wedding not once, but twice, giving Isla more time to complete conversion classes, M.B.C. has been left waiting for a much promised wedding. You see, Sacha may not be ready to get married, but M.B.C. is.

It's safe to say that hell hath no fury like a pissed off Jewish Mother, and to add insult to injury, Mama Baron Cohen isn’t just mad, she’s…how do I say this…disappointed. Disappointment is the Achilles heal of all Jewish children, who would arguably prefer listening to Paris Hilton’s debut album from beginning to end than having to hear their mother utter the word “disappointed” in reference to them.

For a Jewish Mother, a wedding is the Senior Prom, the mother of all parties. It’s her opportunity to shine. For anyone who has been a bride or a groom at a Jewish wedding, you know that while you may be getting married, your Mother is getting recognition. It’s her day to show the world that she was such a good mom someone else actually finds her child desirable enough to take him or her off Mom’s hands. And while M.B.C. has the brass ring for aging Jewish Mothers--a grandchild--she hasn’t gotten the Crown Jewel of motherhood: a wedding.

While most Jewish parents would be thrilled to have a child like Sacha, whose religion is so important to him that he’s willing to wait to get married until he and his bride are of the same faith, M.B.C. is a reminder that when a pregnant woman says she just wants her child to be happy and healthy, she’s lying. Mothers want the trifecta: Happy, Healthy, and Married. Sacha Baron Cohen created the top grossing movie of last year, is often referred to as a genius, and even boasts a degree from Cambridge where he graduated Summa Cum Everything, and yet his mother is still disappointed because he’s not married.

All around the world, Jewish Mothers are united not by their religion but by disappointment when they can’t marry their children off fast enough. You might have just found a solution to bring peace to the Middle East and chances are your Mom is still going to say, “But solving the world’s problems leaves you no time to date.” If you’re over 30 and still single, your Mom is probably lighting Yizkor candles every year, marking the death of hope that she’ll ever attend your wedding.

And so, Sacha Baron Cohen, I salute you. If you’re a disappointment to your Mom, with your fancy degree, successful career, happy relationship, and healthy baby, then what does that say for everyone else? If you can’t make your Mom happy, then perhaps none of us can, and so we can all stop trying. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. We can all rest assured that we can go to medical school, get elected to the Senate, rescue a child who has fallen into a well, and our Moms will still say, “Hero, shmero. When are you going to get married?”

Prenuptial Agreement: think of it as a time saving gestureRabbinic Courts in Israel are looking at a new possible solution for the problem of Agunot, or women whose husbands won’t grant them a divorce. The controversial fix-it: A prenup.

It’s funny that this should garner any controversy at all, since an integral part of a Jewish marriage, a ketubah, is already one big step towards a prenup. A ketubah is basically an insurance statement for a woman, making sure she won’t be left penniless if her hubby runs off or drops dead. If we’re already talking about unpleasant stuff like abandonment and death at the wedding, what’s a little financial negotiation?

A Jerusalem Post article summarizes some of the anti-prenup feeling in the Orthodox world:

The use of prenuptial agreements to facilitate the divorce process is a controversial issue among Rabbinic Court judges. Some rabbis oppose the use of most prenuptials, claiming the agreements make it too easy for one side to end a marriage. They are concerned that making divorce too easy will endanger the Jewish family institution.

They also argue that the use made in prenuptials of monetary incentives to encourage a recalcitrant partner to acquiesce to divorce is really a form of coercion prohibited by Jewish law.

Bullshit and bullshit, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not the only one. Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Dahan, administrative head of the Rabbinic Courts, is on board for prenups, and so is Marc Stern, who wrote an article called ‘A Legal Guide to the Prenuptial Agreement for Couples about to Be Married’ published in a book called The Prenuptial Agreement - Halakhic and Pastoral Considerations by Rabbi Basil Herring and Rabbi Kenneth Auman.

Prenups aren’t romantic or fun, but neither is being stuck in a marriage you can’t get out of. Let’s save everyone some grief and legal fees down the line.

Addendum: Check out this post on the Hatam Soferet blog about a woman scribe writing her own get.  Simultaneously sad and empowering. (Hat tip, Jewess).

Muslim women: in search of believersNothing highlights the difference between the Muslim and Jewish attitudes about marriage better than this article in the Washington Post. There are some new resources in the Muslim community devoted to helping new couples get to know each other before and after they’ve married, and the expected matchmaking services. That stuff is nothing new to Jews. But I was fascinated to hear that Muslims share the problem of way more single women than men in their community, and the reason is that Muslims are allowed to intermarry as long as the spouse is “a believer.”

Interfaith marriage is a huge topic with wide cultural ramifications. Because Islamic tradition, not law, holds that a Muslim man can intermarry but not a woman, a substantial gender gap in the dating pool has opened as children and grandchildren of immigrants have grown up.

The Koran says for Muslims to marry "believers," the meaning of which has long been the source of great debate but has been widely interpreted to include Christians and Jews. Although the Koran does not address the gender issue directly, tradition has held that women are more easily subjugated, and therefore a Muslim woman in an interfaith marriage could be forced by a Christian or Jew to live and raise her children outside of Islam, while a Muslim man in an interfaith relationship would be able to control the household's faith.

 

Of course, intermarriage in Islam doesn’t have the pall of death that it has been given in Judaism because there are a billion Muslims in the world, and no one’s worried that they’re dying out. Still, it’s fascinating that in both communities it’s the men that are marrying out, and the women who are mostly staying in. 

Clearly both the Muslim and Jewish communities are waking up to the realities of dating challenges, but I wonder if it’s too little too late. What’s going to happen to the hordes of single women left at the end of the dating game? Something tells me they won’t be running to the synagogue or mosque for comfort.

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Okay, Ben, I am now writing to you once again with my physical address present, because I am going to explain to you about the Birkin bag, which is nothing like the Birkenstock sandal. This website has some pretty nice pictures of Birkins, which are named for Jane, and you can also refer to the Wikipedia entry for further information. And then you can feel free to order one from wherever you like and send it to my residence, as is written out below, should you feel inclined to do so. I shan't complain, and indeed will be quite grateful, and will even feel it necessary to pay you tribute, to compose haikus and do ceremonial dances in your honor--in fact to show you gratitude however you see fit.

Actually, I guess I'm not going to explain anything about the Birkin bag, just let you know that it would be nice to have one. I'd prefer the Hermes orange color, but I'm not fussy.

But enough about that. Glad to hear you don't cheat on your wife. Or at least not that you're going to admit to me and everyone else. That's wise. Of course, if there's anything you want to put out there, this might be the way to do it.

So you're working on a movie, and you're doing something more with television. You're busy! What's the TV show?

Worse than Kabul: Yuppie-hipster BrooklynI myself am not so busy. I finished law school in January, although I am still working on my thesis, which is about intellectual property and the Constitution and the invention of Hollywood and the commercial nature of American creativity and how much it sucks to move and how bicycles improved courtship possibilities in 1818. It's about other things too, it's pretty much about whatever is on my mind as I'm working on it, because Yale Law School encourages its students to think expansively. Pat Robertson, for instance, is a graduate of this institution, and he makes diet drinks.

There are many graduates of Yale Law School we're more proud to cop to, but Pat Robertson is a funny one.

So I've been living in New Haven for the last few years, but once I finish studying for the bar I'm moving back to NYC. Where do you live? Please don't say Brooklyn! Everyone lives there at this point. It's become so impossibly hip that my motto is now Kabul before Cobble Hill.

Do you wear Birkenstocks?

Have you already ordered me a Birkin bag?

Do you think anyone reading this will?

Next: Telling your life story in six words

Life lessons: Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me Not long ago, Ben Karlin quit his job as producer of The Colbert Report to edit a book of confessional essays about breaking up, Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me. Karlin began his career at The Onion and worked at The Daily Show before helping to launch Colbert. He was used to occupying a position behind the scenes, riffing on current events and the world around him. But confessional writing reverses those polarities. Suddenly his job was to direct the jokes inward—to wring comedy out of his own life, and encourage a bunch of other writers to do the same.

Elizabeth Wurtzel knows a thing or two about confessional writing. Her 1995 memoir, Prozac Nation, took an almost masochistically candid look at her experiences with depression. It made her a household name, equally beloved and reviled. She published several more books and then, inspired by the chaos that immediately followed 9/11, applied to law school at Yale, where she’s currently finishing up her thesis.

We thought Wurtzel probably needed a distraction, so we sent her a copy of Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me and set her up in an e-mail conversation with Karlin, who now heads a production company called Superego. To say it got confessional quickly is the understatement of the year. If you’ve ever wondered what Elizabeth Wurtzel’s dog looks like, read on.

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Why superego? Why not id?

From: Ben Karlin
To: Elizabeth Wurtzel

Well, the id comes up with the better ideas but is pretty shitty at getting things done.

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Getting things done is so overrated! For every brilliant idea, there are a million shitty executions. Have you been to the movies lately?

Sorry...this is not what we're supposed to be talking about at all! I think we're meant to talk about dating, another nice concept that often fails when acted upon. But I guess that's not news.

How are you? And while I'm asking questions, the author blurb on your book says you live with your family, which would seem to suggest that you have a family to live with. Correct?

We are family: A 1979 Pittsburgh Pirate From: Ben Karlin
To: Elizabeth Wurtzel

First of all, has any one pointed out how odd it is to have a physical address as part of your electronic signature? Is that like saying, “In case this whole revolutionary form of communication that is changing the face of humanity as I type this doesn’t work out, drop me a note”?

Anyway, I do, in fact, live with my family, if wife and child constitute family. I guess that does, though I tend to think of family in more pluralistic terms – like multiple children or at the very least the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates.

I am winding down all my book stuff, which has mostly been fun and fine, and am back to working on content to put on the TV.

This is like an internet first date. All awkward stops and starts and I am already convinced it is going terribly. Like me! Why won’t you like me!

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Yes, it is odd to have one's physical address attached to an email. They tell you to do that, though. Don't know why. I guess if you're a girl there's always the secret hope that someone might send flowers or something even better, like diamonds. Or a Birkin bag. Or a really good vacuum cleaner. Or, in my case, I could use a new sofa.

Gossip girl: You never know when a third party might be listening I could go on.

But enough small talk.

Let's start our second date.

And truly, since you are married and I'm not, it's more like an affair. Right?

Do you do that? Have emotional affairs? That seems to be the new thing--to not bother with the whole mess of physical intimacy but just get deeply intellectually or otherwise entangled with a person you're not married to or going out with as a way to relieve the tedium of foreverness. Not that marriage is necessarily tedious. Of course, I'm sure yours isn't...

Forgive me for being so forward. I just don't know anything about the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. I know a fair amount about the 1986 Mets. And the Red Sox of that same year. Who could forget the Bill Buckner fumble? Probably not Bill Buckner. My guess is that he still occasionally wakes up screaming over that snafu.

Anyway...

As much as you want me to like you, I want you to like me too--after all I'm Jewish, with all that implies. But I must admit, I have a few vicious tendencies. Like it occurred to me that this is the perfect forum for gossip, because we're having a conversation that's sort of being overheard, so I could say something mean about someone who irritates me and pretend to have forgotten that I was speaking to anyone besides you. Which would be a vicious thing to do, but only sort of.

Girls are so tricky...

Next: Married people have three kinds of affairs. One can't be forgiven.

Not So Fast, You Two: You've still got some hoops to jump through Here at Jewcy, Izzy has been keeping us in tune with all the gruesome details of wedding planning, from how to not look like a total square in front of your Indie-rock loving hipster guests and how to pick up a dress that gives you a Jewish amount of cleavage.

However, it wasn’t until this article was released by the New York Times that we realized an additional check box must be added to every Israeli’s wedding to do list: prove that you and your spouse-to-be are both Jewish. Okay, so it’s a little unusual, but totally doable, right? As it turns out, not so much – especially if your mother is American.

In his essay “How to Prove You’re a Jew?” reporter Gershom Gorenberg documents one woman’s struggle to get married in Israel, her country of origin. Even though the woman, a thirty-something named Sharon, was raised on a kibbutz, has a Jewish mother, and has “Jewish” printed on her birth certificate, it was not enough to satisfy the demands of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Before any wedding was to take place, the rabbinate wanted some proof that Sharon’s (Jewish) mother was actually Jewish.

The problem? The Israeli Chief Rabbinate expected Sharon to produce her mother’s birth and marriage certificates as evidence for her membership to the tribe. But since Sharon’s mom was born in America, where nationalities are not printed on birth certificates and people can be married by a court official rather than a rabbi, Sharon and her hubby were left royally screwed. They were told no ketubah, no dice.

So Close, Yet So Far: All that stands between these two is a ketubah

Lucky for Sharon, a few phone calls led her to Seth Farber, the Veronica Mars of Israeli marriage. Seth, rabbi and founder of Itim, the Jewish Life Information Center, an organization dedicated to making Judaism as accessible to all Jews as possible, worked his magic on Sharon’s case and came through in the clutch, digging up (literally) an acceptable link to Orthodox Judaism for Sharon’s mother.

But the article definitely raises questions, and eyebrows. Between the old-world mentality of the Israeli rabbinate, growing rifts within the Orthodox movement, and increased skepticism as a cause of people falsely claiming to be Jewish, it seems that without a change in policy, it will be impossible for many Jewish couples to be married in the holy land. As Arnold M. Eisen, chancellor of Jewish Theological Seminary points out, this situation is especially discouraging for young American Jews, who will not be able to ever develop a passion for Israel when, if they ever decide to live there, will be treated with discriminatory and insulting policy.

So save your ketubahs and start lobbying. The future of your children may depend on it.

No Babies: until I'm good and ready. And any rabbi who disagrees can stick it where the sun don't shineThere has been a lot of talk recently about women in the Jewish community feeling bullied into having kids. Here at Jewcy Izzy noted that a lot of the desperation and frustration that comes out of JDate is a result of communal expectations that good Jewish girls will have lots of kids to help populate Israel and stick it to Hitler. Much as I love Israel and hate Hitler, those are not good enough reasons for me to want to bear children. If I have kids, it should be because I feel able and ready to take care of someone else, provide for them, and love them unconditionally. And anyway, it’s not like women make babies all on our own—there are men involved, and it’s ridiculous that they don’t seem to be getting the same pressure as women.

Some of the best analysis of the push towards baby-making in observant Jewish communities is over at JSpot, where Hannah Farber has a post titled “I’m Going to Count to Three, and Then All Rabbis Need To Get Out Of My Uterus.” She writes:

I say: if the rabbis are so committed to making this a communal issue, the rabbis should raise the children. In fact, given their comfortable salaries and high communal status, they have no excuse: they should be adopting and converting children by the dozen. Given the impressive recent developments in medicine that prolong human life, I wouldn’t excuse any rabbi under sixty from performing this mitzvah. Wouldn’t that make a fine statement of commitment to the Jewish future?

And even when men are included in the directives for having kids, I’m still offended when a bunch of rabbis want to tell me how many times I have to grow a person and then push that person out of my vagina.  Did you know the Conservative Movement’s law committee (the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards) recently published a position paper that says any couple capable of raising more than two children, should do so, and Conservative rabbis should all be pushing this on their congregants? The extra children should be called “Mitzvah children” because they’ll ensure a Jewish community well into the future.

Rabbi Jason Miller notes on his blog that he’s heard Rabbi Elliot Dorff tell young people they should get married and start having kids in their early twenties, and they should have more than two kids. (I’ve heard Dorff say we should have a minimum of four kids, so I guess he was being a softy when he spoke to Jason’s class.) All of this when day schools are rising well above $15,000 a year for tuition, not to mention the inevitable college costs, and all of the other expenses of being an observant Jew. And what about those of who hadn’t found our soulmates in our early twenties? In the past year I’ve dated an obnoxious Israeli guy, an incredibly self-righteous administrative assistant at a Jewish political organization, a boring hedge fund manager, and a med student who didn’t have time for me. Should I have just picked one to marry so as not to waste any valuable time on my biological clock? Something tells me that would not have been a good plan.

I love babies, and I bet I’ll have one someday. But if my rabbi mentioned to me that it was high time I got hitched and knocked up, I’m pretty sure I’d stop going to shul.

Everyone loves JDating: But not everyone finds love there Is JDate a feminist issue? The Jewish quarterly journal Lilith certainly thinks so -- their winter issue devotes over eight pages to a package looking at the negative effects of Internet dating on Jewish women.

Trying and failing to find love online, writes Susan Shnur, makes women (especially those in their thirties and older) “feel isolated and at fault.” Male-female ratios are roughly equal on dating sites, but women don’t get nearly as many responses as men. When they do find likely candidates, those guys often turn out to be self-centered, married, or both. And online dating promotes a shopping mentality, wherein it’s easy to click past the pretty-good profiles in search of more perfect acquisitions.

I buy all of these facts, but I’m not sure it helps to blame JDate for the unhappiness of unmarried Jewish women. Love was unfair long before the rise of Internet dating, and while sites like JDate definitely encourage non-empathetic behavior, I don’t believe that breaks down by gender. (Shnur inadvertently backs me up on this -- all of her quotes about dating-as-shopping come from women.)

To me, it seems like that sense of isolation and personal failure felt by older single Jewish women might be less about the beastliness of the Internet and more about our culture’s unhealthy emphasis on making babies. Mainstream American culture is baby-crazy to begin with, but the amount of pressure on Jewish women is drastically increased because we’re not just supposed to be fulfilling our womanly destinies – we’re supposed to be ensuring the survival of our race.

No one ever says it outright, but if intermarriage is 'finishing what Hitler started' (as the trolls like to point out in our comments section) because it produces insufficiently Jewish children, then what about those Jewish women who don’t produce any children at all? Are they, like, Goebbels's little helpers? And isn't that adding insult to injury -- taking women who already feel rejected due to their unsuccessful JDate profiles, and then telling them nothing they accomplish in life matters if they don't have kids? If that's the case, maybe we Jewish feminists should be less worried about the fact that online dating is an impersonal experience, and more worried about how even in this enlightened age -- a time when egalitarianism is utterly the norm in some strains of Judaism, e.g. the female-rabbi–dominated Reform movement -- we’re still haranguing women to work those wombs.

No time to read The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Sunday New York Times, Harpers, The Nation, The New Republic, and New York Magazine during your morning commute? Don’t worry – "How To Sound Smart This Week" will provide the Cliff's Notes.

Pre-bris, he was a baby Schwarzenegger: Everyone's favorite wimpDoes counting superdelegates put you to sleep? This week, the big-idea magazines are all obsessing over the presidential campaign, but it won’t be that hard to change the subject while still sounding respectably erudite. Just bring up one of the following eye-opening essays.

In The New York Times Magazine, Annie Murphy Paul looks at the distinct possibility that fetuses can feel pain. This has major implications for the abortion debate, so you shouldn’t be at a loss for discussion questions, but there’s also a Jewish angle. Scientists think that people who are exposed to pain as babies might grow up to be more pain-sensitive:

Anna Taddio, a pain specialist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, noticed more than a decade ago that the male infants she treated seemed more sensitive to pain than their female counterparts. This discrepancy, she reasoned, could be due to sex hormones, to anatomical differences — or to a painful event experienced by many boys: circumcision. In a study of 87 baby boys, Taddio found that those who had been circumcised soon after birth reacted more strongly and cried for longer than uncircumcised boys when they received a vaccination shot four to six months later.

Is it possible that one of the central tenets of Judaism causes male wimpiness? Does that explain, like, all of American Jewish pop culture? Dazzle your audience with this possibility, and they’ll forget about Obama’s performance in Maine instantly.

Meanwhile, in The Atlantic, Lori Gottleib takes advantage of the Valentine’s Day season to propose a deeply romantic idea: If you’re a woman over the age of 35 and you’re still single, maybe you should lower your standards. “Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics,” Gottleib advises – otherwise, you’ll never be able to organize a stable family life.

Mention this article in the vicinity of anyone male or female, married or single, and you're bound to provoke a strong reaction. It makes everyone involved look terrible: women are either demanding, men either shallow or, if it’s possible that their wives married them out of desperation, pitiable. Also, halitosis is so much worse than bad taste – isn’t it? Actually, that’s another direction you can take the conversation: Would you rather marry someone with perpetual coffee breath, or a collection of Cosby sweaters?

Last week: Super Tuesday

There was a time when a Fat Old Jew (FOJ) like Harvey Weinstein marrying a Skinny Young Gentile (SYG) like Georgina Chapman would have caused a perfect storm of cultural anxieties around sex, power, and religion. Today, it's just another small gossip item.

The nuptials of the conniving, overeating, materialistic Hollywood mogul – the flesh-and-blood quintessence of the kind of crudely drawn stereotypical Jewish male who equates acceptance into the broader American culture with the acquisition of a hot shiksa – passed without so much of a media peep. More interestingly, the Jewish chattering class (a wild generalization referring to my friends) barely found it worthy of cocktail prattle.

Beatles Wrong: Money Buys Love: Beauty and the beast Such a high-profile FOJ triumph would once have tweaked all sorts of anxieties. Some Jews would have worried what it meant for the future of the people; others would have been scared at what gentiles thought about it. Jewish and non-Jewish feminists alike would have been horrified at the way a prominent man was so shamelessly using power and wealth to win such a “yummy mummy,” to use a phrase wielded by Maureen Dowd.

Chattering away about this curiosity with my friends, editors at Jewcy, and others, I realized that none of them interpreted the union as a suppressed lust for inclusion, but instead that less psycho-dramatic, nonsectarian lust…for a hot piece of ass.

 

What’s interesting is how that particular lust is no longer the sole province of the male beast. The enfranchisement of males at the expense of females (particularly Jewish males and Jewish females) is coming to an end. Firmly ensconced in the middle and upper classes, our generation of Jewish women find power, and its application (sexual, or otherwise), far less problematic than their predecessors.

Hot Piece of Ass: She loves this gentleman for his mind

Unlike the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -- who came of age in the late 1960s in male-dominated universities and workplaces, and has become known for bemoaning a perceived return to 1950s courtship rituals -- our generation of women are achieving unlike any other. They’re used to female-dominated universities, and, soon, workplaces too. And with that equality, they’re becoming a bit beastly themselves.

Edith Wharton's single woman's ambivalence toward marriage has given way to fearless casual sex (with only a smidgen of ambivalence about getting herpes). Women are marrying later. They’re marrying twice, sometimes three times. And like Harvey, their second and third marriages are occurring from a place of greater social stability and financial prosperity.

That particular place – successful women of an advanced age reveling in their single-dom – has been fertile fodder for pop culture, with TV and film glorifying its wonderful lusty freedoms. There’s Sex and the City, The L Word, Cashmere Mafia, The Real Housewives of Orange Country, and on and on.

Get the Get: If at first you don't succeed... Being a “pig” no longer has a gender, or for that matter an age. It’s hard to condemn Weinstein for being shallow after watching A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila, in which 16 men and 16 women competing for the right to “love” Tequila, who is known mainly for having 2 million “friends” listed on MySpace.

Tila first entertains the men, interviewing some of them and making out with others. Then she does the same with the women. That’s the show. It might not have the novelistic complexity of The Wire, but it does prove you can be young, female, and utterly unaccomplished and still get a place at the trough.

Maybe I’m just a cynic. Maybe Harvey swoons over the way Georgina thinks. Maybe Georgina just loves portly men with prominent noses, liberal attitudes, and discerning taste in films. Maybe it’s not “love” Tila is looking for but love. Or maybe, when it comes to relationships and sex these days -- casual, matrimonial, queer, straight, and everything in between -- we’re all allowed to be pigs.

It’s always easier to argue that we should limit someone’s choices than to argue that we should let someone decide for themself, simply because we all know tons of people making incredibly bad choices every day. The rise of leggings alone could stand as an example of why people should not be allowed to do so much as dress themselves without consulting a panel of experts. But making decisions is a part of being an adult, and the more we blanket our lives with across-the-board restrictions the less responsible we become.
Shomer Negiah Panties: the last reserve
As a result of it being easier to tell people not to do something than to tell them to do it carefully, it’s really hard to talk about not being shomer negiah without sounding like you’re just trying to come up with an excuse to have sex. I know because I’ve had this conversation about five hundred times in the last five years, and though I’m confident that being shomer negiah would not be the right decision for me, my reasons don’t sounds as sexy as the shomer negiah advocates’. But I’m okay with that, because my reasons, though perhaps lacking in sex appeal, are legit. Allow me to explain...

The first reason to question the whole shomer negiah movement is the lack of halacha backing it up. 'Shomer negiah' (a term that occurs nowhere in rabbinic literature) is a technical prohibition against lustful touch (Rambam & Shach on Shulchan Aruch) between a guy and a girl who is considered ritually impure as a result of menstruation, or with a guy and any other forbidden relation. That’s it. Contemporary teachers and overreachers have been teaching that shomer negiah is actually a prohibition against touching someone of the opposite sex at all, but as far as I know, there’s absolutely no halachic basis for that. Presumably, if I got myself to a mikvah, there would be no halachic problem with me kissing my date.

Now, that’s good enough of a reason for me, but not for almost anyone who has read The Magic Touch or I Kissed Dating Goodbye, so let’s look at some more ideological concerns.
Hammer Says: Can't touch this!
One of the things that appalls me about a lot of the shomer negiah rhetoric is that it belittles how important the physical aspect of a marriage can be. Example: I recently went on a couple of dates with a really great guy. He was nice, cute, smart, funny and generally excellent marriage material. But there were no sparks. And neither of us wanted to be in a relationship that was purely cerebral. I want my husband to be nice, cute, smart, funny, and also incredibly sexy. He has to have some quality that makes me anxious to spend every night in his bed for the rest of my life. That’s not a minor thing, and though I might have an okay sense of whether a guy has that without running my fingers through his hair at some point, I’d really rather check before I sign up forever and ever amen.

Sometimes what I hear from people pushing shomer negiah sounds like a fancy way of advocating delayed gratification. Essentially, if you wait until you get married then it will be so so amazing when you finally do get to touch/sleep with that person. But the obvious problem with that is that it might not be that great. I mean, the holding hands part might be awesome, but as soon as you have a slimy tongue in your mouth for the first time and you don’t know what to do with it, I imagine the charm is somewhat less potent. And yes, of course you’ll learn and adjust to what you and your partner want, but the beginning is unlikely to be all violins swelling in the background and fireworks sparkling over the bed. So the delayed gratification argument is, as far as I can tell, ridiculous.

But the real reason I touch the men I date is because I’m an adult, and I deserve to have a physical relationship with whoever it is I’m in a relationship with. I really don’t believe that kissing someone has a detrimental effect on that relationship if we’re not married, nor do I think that having kissed someone else will mean that whatever relationship I have with my future husband is somehow less special.

Sex is a different issue. Being shomer negiah today doesn’t mean being a virgin, it means not touching anyone of the opposite sex, which is a much bigger thing than just waiting to get laid until you get married.

I have a lot of respect for people who decide to wait for sex until marriage, but at the end of the day I’m a lot more concerned that my husband and I share views on how to raise the kids, or how we’re going to observe Shabbat than that we’re both virgins on our wedding night.

Sex is a serious thing, and anyone who tells you otherwise is kidding himself (or herself). But it’s not the only serious thing, and I worry about the amount of emphasis that being shomer negiah puts on sexuality. I’m all for encouraging people to be really careful about the decisions they make in relationships, but being a virgin when you get married doesn’t trump everything else. If you marry the wrong person, it’s still the wrong person no matter how little experience you have in the sack.
Here I Am: not being shomer negiah. Scandal!

Which brings me back to my original point. Being shomer negiah treats the symptoms, not the problem. Preaching a hands off/all-virginity-all-the-time policy isn’t the way to make sure that people think before they jump into bed with someone. And it doesn’t teach anyone to be particularly good at recognizing good and bad relationships when they see them.

 

It’s important to guard your touch, and the touch of those in your life. But that’s not the only thing that goes into a successful relationship, and claiming anything to the contrary is dishonest.

You know what makes me a little nauseous? This article from the Columbia Spectator:

Students Balance Homework, Husbands
By Laura Schreiber

Grades Aren't That Important: it's all about the dress

In October 2003, first-year Miriam Casper, BC ’07, hit it off with a guy she met at a friend’s party on the roof of Woodbridge Hall. A year later, she married him and moved to Queens. After 18 months, she gave birth to her son Benjamin.

One week later, she graduated magna cum laude.

Most students at Barnard and Columbia College will spend their undergraduate years exploring varying levels of relationships and intimacy. But for a number of orthodox Jewish students, tying the knot while in college is the norm.

“I always hoped by the time I graduated college, I would be married, be engaged, or be dating someone I knew I wanted to marry,” said Molly Elkins, BC ’08, who married last month and moved to Washington Heights with her husband.

For Yael Hall, BC ’10, who is preparing for her January wedding, marriage came sooner than expected. “I was the last person anyone would think would be getting married,” Hall said. “I got really rude responses from friends who knew me like that, saying, ‘Wow, I really didn’t think you’d be one of the first ones to go.’”

While living in Cathedral Gardens may seem like a trek, married students commute from as far as New Jersey. According to Hillel Rabbi David Almog, marriage presents a disruption of a student’s college experience.

“In college ... friends really do become your family,” Almog said. “There’s a severe rupture that happens, when somebody gets married, of that bond.”

Rachel Fischer, BC ’08, who married last year, agreed that one of the hardest parts of matrimony was giving up campus connections.

“I definitely miss ... that environment where you’re always with people doing the same things,” said Fischer, who lives in New Jersey. “Everyone has midterms, everyone has finals, everyone’s in library.”

Elkins said she accepted that marriage meant giving up certain aspects of her old social life, including spending less time with her friends.

Marriage was a possibility she kept in the back of her mind from the beginning of college, though it did not dictate her plans.

“On some level it focuses you,” said Michelle Friedman, BC ’74 and a psychiatrist who counsels observant Jewish women. “If you’re a pre-med person you know what courses you take. If you want to get married, you focus on that. Finding a spouse is like finding a job.”

For Fischer, who is currently applying to law school, her time at Barnard was often a tough balancing act between family obligations and career aspirations.

“There’s always the constant temptation of ‘forget school, who cares? I’m married. ... What would be the difference?’” Fischer said. “But I can’t give up that aspect of my life. I couldn’t give up those goals.”

Yet some students feel no qualms prioritizing family life over college. “Marriage is much better than education and academics,” Elkins said. “I wasn’t going to push off my wedding six months to do a little bit better in all my classes. I live life and go to school, but I don’t let it conflict with celebrations or anything like that. That’s the wrong perspective for school.”

Friedman said it could be tricky for college women to balance the more traditional values of the orthodox community with contemporary careers, noting that going back and forth between traditional gender roles and modern college life is sometimes confusing.

Full story

Because I know one of the people quoted in the article I’m not going to go into what parts in particular test my gag reflex, but as a rule, this whole thing is grotesque.

It’s cute that the spectator assumes that all the girls who get married in college will continue to come to classes and be enrolled. I bet there are a reasonable number who pretty much drop out after their wedding and/or the birth of their first child. And hey, I think it’s fine if that’s what these women want to do. I mean, they’re not my priorities, but they’re certainly valid ones.

What makes me crazy, though, is the idea that these guys are concerned about women who want to have careers. What is scary about that? Does extra money for vacation really intimidate people that much? Or savings to pay for day school? Or a nicer apartment? I don’t actually think Orthodox men are as shallow as this article makes them out to be, but man, this really makes me want to smack something.

If you fall in love with someone, and they fall in love with you, and you happen to be 19, or 20, or 21, I don’t have any problem with you getting married. But when girls are rushing through school to get to marriage, or are dropping careers that they’ve spent years training for because the community is pushing people to get married young, we have seriously fucked up our priorities somewhere. Not cool, people. Not. Cool.

It's all too easy to fall into the trap of demonising our enemies, so as a corrective, spare a thought this afternoon for Osama bin Laden, whose son Omar is getting divorced from his English wife after just two months of connubial bliss.

Jane Felix-Browne, 51, from Moulton, near Northwich, married Omar Osama Bin Laden, 27, in July, after romance blossomed during a holiday in Egypt.

At the time the ex-parish councillor said she married him for love and did not care about his family's background. But she said there were now "two very very serious issues that have threatened our lives and our liberty".

"We have had to get divorced because of threats from two major sources in Saudi Arabia," she said. "I know from who the threats have come but I'm not prepared to say.

"The threats are not from the general public, not from the government."

After five - count 'em, five - previous marriages, Jane obviously thought that this relationship, with the young scrap metal dealer whom she met whilst horseriding near the Great Pyramid, would be different. Alas, having the world's most wanted man as your father-in-law has not been easy, even if the relationship between bin Ladens I and II is somewhat strained. Sources tell me that Osama didn't even front up for the wedding bash. 

More disturbing, though, is the possibility that the couple face death threats as a result of their union. It's unclear why - Felix-Browne was married to another Saudi man at the age of 16, takes the Muslim name Zaina Mohammed, and appears to all intents and purposes to be a Muslim - but either way, it's clearly a miserable situation. After all, their marriage is based on such strong foundations:

"We have an awful lot in common," she said. "We love the deserts. We are both pretty religious."

Kinda like the Jews and the Arabs.

"It is against Islam to be forced into any divorce and as far as I am concerned this divorce will never stand up in a Sharia court. [...] The threats have put an end to my marriage but we will re-marry."

All very strange. Anyway, here's hoping, Jane, that your seventh marriage is happier than your sixth. Osama isn't getting younger, and that vast underground complex of caves must get awfully lonely sometimes without the sound of grandchildren playing in the dust.

As Borat Would Say: "Very Nice. How Much?"There have been quite a few recent posts here about issues regarding ketubot. In April, the lovely Laurel posted about problems of aesthetics and wound up discovering some pretty awesome options. Earlier this month, titillating Tamar took it a tad further with a conversation about the actual language in a traditional ketubah, and how the document mainly functions as an outdated legal and financial contract. A commenter on that post noted the "lack of a woman's voice in the traditional ketubah."

As a woman, a writer, and a Jew, I am deeply affected by words and symbols. When I first heard that the wedding tradition of breaking a glass might have been meant to symbolize the anticipated breaking of the bride's hymen, I was more than a little distressed. Likewise, when I learned that the traditional Jewish wedding is a legal ceremony in which the man purchases the woman I found myself looking for more evolved alternatives that might still satisfy my taste for tradition. The incredibly inspired and creative Rabbi Jamie S. Korngold led me to a book by brilliant author and professor, Rachel Adler, titled Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics.

Engendering Judaism considers how women's full participation can transform Jewish law, prayer, sexuality, and marriage. Chapter 5, "B'rit Ahuvim: A Marriage Between Subjects," concerns itself entirely with the "unresolved tensions between woman as possession and woman as partner [that] are embedded in the classical liturgy upon which all modern Jewish wedding ceremonies draw." Adler calls the traditional legal language for Jewish marriage "fundamentally incompatible with egalitarian relationships," and demonstrates how we may "engender a truly covenantal marriage" with "a lovers' covenant, b'rit ahuvim."

These texts depict the marriage of a young virgin as a private commercial transaction in which rights over the woman are transferred from the father to the husband. This commercial origin is reflected in the relational terminology. The word for husband is ba'al, the general term for an owner, master, possessor of property, bearer of responsibility, or practitioner of a skill. No specialized relationship term exists for wife; she is simply isha, woman. The owner of a house is ba'al ha-bayit, the man responsible for an open pit is ba'al ha-bor, the owner of an ox is ba'al hashor, the owner of a slave is ba'al ha-eved, and the husband of a woman is ba'al isha. The sole signifier for marital relationship is the grammatical form of the construct (semikhut), which binds man and woman as subject and object of an implied preposition: ba'al isha, the master of a woman; eshet ish, the woman of a man.

Rabbinic espousal -- kiddushin -- bridges the girl's passage from her father's hands to her husband's. This transfer procedure is designed to prevent the anarchic and world-disordering expression of autonomous female sexuality that could occur during the dangerous hiatus between these two statuses of daughter and wife, when a girl might consider herself in her own independent domain.

In the Mishna, there is only one approved method for appropriating a wife: monetary acquisition.

At the same time, the rabbis etherealize the commercial transaction of biblical bride purchase into a symbolic act in which, at the ceremony at least, only a token sum of money changes hands. This sum, as little as a penny (peruta) according to the academy of Hillel, represents the biblical bride price, now transformed into a marriage settlement, written into the ketubbah document and paid not to the father but to the woman herself in the event of divorce or widowhood. It is as if the woman were purchased with an annuity due to mature at a future time. As for the token sum used for kiddushin, Ze'ev Falk explains, "the amount was then returned to the husband together with the other items of the wife's property, so that the 'purchase' had become a mere formality."

Adler says that "some apologists argue that marital acquisition is merely a figure of speech and bears no relation to its literal meaning." Of course, modern brides know that they're not actually being purchased, even if that is what the ancient text implies. Why, then, with this intellectual knowledge, can it prove to be so emotionally and spiritually troublesome? I decided to ask my friend, Dr. Jennifer Kaplan, a Jew, a woman, and a practicing psychologist.

"You wouldn’t sign a contract for a house with terms that you didn’t agree to. Seeing is believing. When we see what’s in the contract, it has an affect on us. There’s a part of us that’s offended, and there’s another part of us that says, “Yeah, it’s okay, it’s not literal.” But there’s still that part of you that signs your name to something you don’t subscribe to, and that doesn’t feel good."

Adler argues that women have good reason not to "feel good" about the ketubah, and the ritual of kiddushin. She explains that while "the purchase of the bride may have dwindled to a mere formality in the rabbinic transformation of marriage, her acquisition is no formality. The language of acquisition still accurately reflects a relationship in which the woman has been subsumed and possessed."

So, how do we reconcile our love of tradition with our desire for evolution? Adler has been kind enough to conceive of an alternative ceremony and contract, all the while working to ensure that as many elements as possible from the traditional ceremony were preserved. Here's a description and outline:

The b'rit ahuvim section that replaces the elements of kiddushin (the erusin blessing, declaration of acquisition, giving of the ring, and reading of the ketubbah) is both preceded and followed by traditional words and traditional melodies -- and, of course, the ceremony is performed under a huppah. The order of the service reflects this "frame" of traditional elements:

1. Mi adir 'al ha-kol (traditional invocation of blessing for the couple).
2. Officiant's speech (traditional). Following the invocation is a traditional time for the officiant to speak briefly, outlining and explaining the ceremony and its meaning and speaking personally about the couple. The officiant should take this opportunity to explain what a b'rit ahuvim is and to distinguish it from kiddushin.
3. Blessing over wine (analogous to the tradition, but distinct from it). In the kiddushin ceremony, this blessing would be followed by the erusin blessing, and only the couple would drink from the cup. Here, the officiant should explain that a blessing over a cup of wine is a way to begin a holy celebration. To distinguish this cup from the erusin cup, it may be passed to all those around the huppah.
4. Reading of the b'rit document in Hebrew and in English (analogous to the reading of the ketubbah but clearly distinguished from it by its contents).
5. Kinyan, acquisition of the partnership by placing symbols of pooled resources in the bag and lifting. This will be the most unfamiliar part of the ceremony, but it may also be powerful precisely because it is new. If the partners have put in distinctive personal objects and intend to talk about their significance for the partnership, they should do so before lifting the bag. Wedding rings can be placed in the bag at this time. The partners then lift the bag together and recite the blessing. They could then put on their rings.
6. The Sheva Berakhot, Seven Blessings (traditional).
7. Shattering the glass (traditional).
8. Yihud (traditional). Immediately after the ceremony, the partners go into a room to be alone together.

Adler's approach is deeply respectful and truly inspired. You can check out an example of a b'rit covenant in PDF form, courtesy of Rabbi Korngold, who chose a b'rit ahuvim for her own wedding.

B'rit or no B'rit, women ill at ease with the idea of being symbolically purchased can take this dilemma even further, turning it into an act of Tikkun Olam. The way I see it, we are the lucky ones. We get to question and debate the symbolic meanings of ancient rituals, then we get to choose what we want, dance the Horah and eat wedding cake. Our concerns are linguistic and theoretical. Not so for the thousands of women and children who are sold into slavery around the world each year. According to the Not For Sale Campaign, an estimated 27 million people around the globe are the victims of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Perhaps the best thing that those of us who are uncomfortable with the idea of being commodified can do, whether we choose a ketubah or b'rit or neither, is take that passion and emotion, and funnel it into working on behalf of those who truly have been sold.

A while back Laurel wrote a couple of pieces about ketubahs, and notably about how to find one that isn’t ugly. But what Laurel neglected to mention is that ketubahs are kind of a problem for some of us Jewcy Jews.
Would You Frame This: And hang it over your bed?
People seem to think that ketubot are marriage contracts, and that they contain some kind of written agreement to love and cherish each other until death do us part. But actually, ketubot aren’t so much marriage contracts as they are prenuptial agreements. The original Aramaic text goes something like this:

On the ___ day of the week, the ___ day of the month ___, in the year 57__ since the creation of the world as we reckon time here in ___ (city, state), the groom, ___ son of ___, said to the bride, ___ daughter of ___, "Be my wife according to the laws of Moses and Israel and I will cherish, honor, support and maintain you as is the custom of Jewish husbands who cherish, honor, support and maintain their wives faithfully. And I have given the settlement of __* silver zuzim that is due you according the dictates of the Torah* and [I will provide] your food, clothing and other needs and [I will] live with you according to universal custom." And the bride consented and became his wife. And the dowry that she brought, whether in silver, gold or jewelry, clothing, furniture or linens, is accepted by the groom for the amount of __* pure silver pieces. And the groom chose to add from his own pocket an additional sum of __* pure silver pieces for a total of __* pure silver pieces. And thus spoke the groom: "The responsibility of this contract, the dowry and the additional sum, I accept upon myself and upon my heirs after me to be guaranteed with the best of my property and possessions that I now own or may hereafter acquire. All my property, real and personal, shall be mortgaged to secure the payment of this contract, the dowry and the additional sum, during and after my lifetime, from today and forever." And the groom accepted the responsibility of this contract, the dowry and the additional sum, in accordance with the substance of all marriage contracts and additional sums provided for the daughters of Israel according to the dictates of our sages of blessed memory. This is not simply a forfeiture without consideration nor a mere form of contract. And we have observed the symbolic delivery carried out between groom and bride with regard to all the above in a manner that is legally valid and binding.

Basically the text says that if at any point the groom dies or wants to get divorced his wife gets the cash discussed here so she’s not destitute. It’s really more to obligate his kids to pay for her in case he dies and they don’t like her. And if you’re wondering how many pieces of silver (zuzim) it costs to get hitched, the deal is that each family kicks in a hundred pieces if the bride is a virgin (there’s no examination--if you’ve never been married it’s assumed) and less if the bride is divorced or widowed.

These numbers are fixed now, but it used to be that there were heavy negotiations leading up to the writing of the ketubah. In part this was a function of families trying to give a new couple some kind of nest egg, and in part it was simply a business deal. It’s only in the past couple of centuries that we’ve gotten nervous about assigning monetary value to people. Before then people weren’t shy about insisting that they were being lowballed in a ketubah. It was, after all, a legal agreement that could have very serious ramifications for a woman, so she wanted to make sure she was covered if her husband headed for the hills or bought the farm.

I’m probably not alone here in thinking that this particular agreement is somewhat devoid of romance, right? Certainly there’s nothing about eternal love going on in the original text. It’s an insurance agreement more than anything else, and while I think insurance is really important, I don’t generally hire an artist to render a watercolored interpretation of my All State claim.

For whatever reason people have decided to really embrace this particular claim, so you can find ketubahs of all shapes and sizes to go with every kind of marriage, from Sephardic, to Interfaith to Reconstructionist to Commitment ceremony. In a way I think it’s cool that people want to write their own texts and be engaged with this legal tradition but I also find it puzzling. Why is this particular tradition of signing a document at a wedding so important?

I think it’s because we understand how tenuous love and relationships can be, and there’s a part of us that wants something in writing. We want words on paper, something tangible, to be framed and put up on a wall, to be reminded of when things are tough.

It is sometimes helpful to see something that obligates you to another person, even if it’s mainly a financial obligation. I’m not sure I would hang a traditional ketubah over the bed I share with my husband, but I have some sense of why one would do so. And I do feel an attachment to the original text, if only because it’s what has been binding Jewish couples together, for better or for worse, for thousands of years.

If you think Jewish marriage customs are complicated and bizarre, check out this list of things you didn’t know about Musim marriages according to Shari’a law.

June is almost over, but the Jewish wedding season is just getting started. I have a number of friends with weddings almost every weekend from now until Labor day. I only have to buy one blender this summer, but it seems like wedding talk is all over the place, so I thought I’d give some tips on what to expect at different kinds of weddings, and some customs to consider if you’re thinking of tying the knot sometime soon-ish. This is obviously not a comprehensive listing, just a few helpful tips. There are about a billion books about wedding planning, and even Jewish wedding planning (most notably The New Jewish Wedding by Anita Diamant of The Red Tent fame), so I’m just going to list some things those books might overlook.

Planning

If you’re not already aware of it, ask if there’s a gemach for wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, mother of the bride dresses, table linens, centerpieces…you get the picture. Gemachs are basically libraries of items available for rent or even for free if someone can’t otherwise afford something. We hear about tefillin gemachs, and wedding dress gemachs, but many large communities have gemachs for everything from sheitels to chuppas. These are available to you even if you’re not Orthodox, and they can help you save tons of money, though you should be aware that if you’re looking for a sleeveless wedding dress you won’t find it at a frum gemach

You probably want to check out Calm Kallahs. When it starts to gross you out, head over to Only Simchas and set up your engagement home page. Wait for all your friends from high school to post giggly messages. Gloat.
Rock Out: With Maxwell Street Klezmer
The Week Before

My favorite wedding custom is rarely practiced by my friends, but is no less cool in my eyes. Basically, the bride and groom are forbidden from seeing or speaking to each other for a full week before the wedding. I’ve never seen a source brought to support this, the reasons seems to be simply that they’ll miss each other so much it will make the wedding that much more exciting. Though logistically I imagine it’s a nightmare, what with rehearsal dinners being something of an impossibility, it strikes me as incredibly cool. A couple of friends of mine did this before their wedding, and every night they left each other voicemail messages…it’s pretty seriously cute.

At the Wedding

You probably want a little printed out guide/program to let everyone know what’s going on. I came across an amazing one for a couple I’ve never met, Jen and Seth. It’s really funny and informative in a clever fun way. Awesome excerpt:

Now we get into the ceremony itself - finally! The marriage ceremony, while solemnizing the holy joining of man and woman into a new Jewish household, is also a business deal. As such, it must conform to three rules: (1) don't touch the merchandise before you buy it; (2) don't pay for the merchandise before you see it; (3) NEVER PAY RETAIL.

 

Jewish weddings have two parts, kiddushin (betrothal) and nissuin (marriage). These parts were historically separated by a time period up to a year long. However, since Jewish history, particularly in Europe, was never very peaceful, it became risky to have too long a time between betrothal and marriage, since the groom might end up dead in a pogrom or something in the meantime. So now the two parts are done consecutively in one day.

You may not want to copy Jen and Seth (and you should probably get their permission if you do want to copy them) but try to put together something for Aunt Ida to fan herself with while the bride is circling the groom.

At many weddings while the Bride is waiting to be veiled the groom gives a tisch, or a little sermon, to his friends and family (traditionally only the men are invited, but I’ve been to a number of coed pre-chuppa tisches in my day). The talk is accompanied by many l’chaims, and it’s customary to interrupt him as much as possible, and to constantly be lightening the mood, because it’s supposed to be such a happy day for him. A good pre-chuppa tisch is key.

At most observant weddings the groom wears a kittel, that white robe that he’s supposed to wear on the high holidays, and I know of at least one wedding where the bride wore one over her dress while they were under the chuppa. It’s a little silly looking, but I’m all for it.

Part of most Jewish weddings is the reading of the ketubah. Since the text of the ketubah is in Aramaic some people think it’s boring (I have a weird obsession with Aramaic, so I dig it, but whatev) but I encourage you to do it, and to make sure you have a woman do the public reading. Why? Because a little while back Rabbi Hershel Schacter of Yeshiva University made the following statement about whether or not it’s okay for women to read the ketubah at a wedding:

Since the whole purpose of krias hekesuba is to introduce a pause between the brachos over the two cups of wine, the longer the pause - the better! (See Beikvei Hatzohn pg. 268.)So it is a correct observation that if one only studies Even Hoezer Hilchos Kiddushin and Hilchos Nisuin there's absolutely no mention whatsoever that anything is wrong with a woman reading the kesuba. Yes, a monkey could also read the kesuba!

Monkeys, women, talking parrots, a gorilla using Aramaic sign language—they’re all fine! If that wasn’t offensive enough, Rav Shachter goes on to say that even though it’s permissible for women to read the ketuba, they shouldn’t because it’s a public thing, and such a display would be immodest. Since I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who’s actually turned on by someone reading in Aramaic, I feel like I can go ahead and say Shachter is being ridiculous. I’m not attracted to girls, so we’re out of the woods. Anyway, I say have a chick with a miniskirt read your ketubah just to stick it to our monkey loving YU posek. Also, after the groom breaks the glass I am strongly in favor of tongue kissing under the chuppa.

Bring In Da Noise, Bring in Da Klezmer

We’ve already established that I have a crush on all things Sephardic, but at a Jewish wedding, there’s nothing like getting down to some seriously rockin’ klezmer music. I am slightly obsessed with the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band in Chicago, but I’m sure there’s an excellent klezmer band near you (even if you live in Denmark). Klezmershack has a nice listing of hundreds of bands that you can search by location, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding someone who’s handy with a clarinet. A lot of these bands have people they can bring in to do regular wedding songs (I’m looking to marry a man who will be totally cool with a wedding song that’s totally inappropriate. Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground, maybe? Just cause it would be hilarious), so don’t feel like you need to hire multiple bands to satisfy both Jewish and regular dancing requirements. But I really feel the klezmer part is not optional.

Mazel tov!

Go have awesome sex, already.

Getting a Get: Way EasierCindy Chupack strikes again! In yet another Modern Love column from the ever so Jew-ish "Sex And The City" brain trust, Chupack has treated us to an exploration of the Jewish divorce process, otherwise known as the get.

I’m in the midst of getting a get at the moment, myself. Which is a strange thing, I can attest, not least because of its singular linguistic weirdness: Where else in English do we have the chance to use an identical verb and noun in concert? Chewing a chew? (Starbursts leap to mind. Mmmmm, cherry.) Swallowing a swallow? (I’m a vegetarian; that’s gross.) Fucking a fuck? (We’ve all made mistakes.) Drinking a drink? (Yes, please.)

Here’s how it goes: Over the phone, I give the special get-giving Rabbi my Hebrew name, my ex-husband’s Hebrew name, our parents’ Hebrew names, and a few details about the when/where/why/how of the whole debacle that was our brief marriage. I send him our Ketubah, which, since it is egalitarian, includes the Lieberman Clause. The Lieberman Clause is key, ladies, for ensuring that you can’t ever be effectively held hostage in marriage by some rat-bastard extortionist. It means that the woman has equal right to exit a marriage; her husband can’t keep her imprisoned as an Agunah. (Literary types will recall with horror Nathan Englander’s sad, sad tale of a sad, sad -- and rather hairy -- Agunah in For The Relief of Unbearable Urges.) I write a five-hundred dollar check to the Rabbinical Court. Abra-cadabra: I am officially, Jewishly divorced. Which is a lot like being secularly, legally divorced, as far as I can tell. Which is to say: awesome.

They're Everywhere: Even, Probably, Commenting BelowChupack’s impetus for getting her get is re-marriage. Given that the ink has long since dried on my divorce (Chupack's too), my get-getting is little more than an appeasement of my mom, who’s fond of making passive-aggressive statements about the bastard status of my as-yet-unborn children. Because, oh yeah: if I proceed, sans get, to partner up with someone new and make some munchkins, said munchkins would, under Jewish law, be considered Mamzerim (Bastards). Which would, I guess, make it pretty apt to be like: “Come here and eat your Cheerios, you little bastards!”  I suppose I can always call them that regardless, though.

So all’s well that ends well. (But I lied: I made my mom write the check.)

Another Choice: Caplan's Rothko DesignsOkay, so I totally wimped out yesterday.  I think I was afraid to search for a “hip” kettubah because I feared that if I found one, and nobody else thought it was “hip,” I’d be branded as totally “unhip” forever.  But then a friend called me on my  bullshit, and so I spent a few hours last night hunting for the coolest Ketubah around. 

Guess what?  I actually found some things…. that don't look like synagogue windows.

These Ketubot by Jonathan Blum are really really different!  They’re essentially wooden frames, painted with YOUR likeness, and then the artist arranges for the parchment itself with a Sofer.  They have a kind of folk-art feel to them. I’ve never seen anything like ‘em!I Like: Blum's folk art frames

Another idea, as you hunt for the perfect Ketubah, is to sample a Jewish cultural tradition beyond your own.  It’s nice that we have Jewish art from all kinds of countries, a built in multi-culturalism from our diaspora.  I like this Persian design by Simcha Back.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a few examples of Stephanie Caplan’s Rothko  Ketubot.  She has some other interesting stuff too, but I think these are great!

 If you really have money to spend, think about getting something special.  For a pretty penny you can have one of these made for you by Elsa Wachs.  Hand-embroidered on vintage fabrics.  Wow!

 

These papercut Ketubot  (designs by Archie Granot) are amazing. And anyone who doesn’t think so should try cutting paper sometime.  I’m not certain the effect comes through fully online, but these are pretty complex works of art. 

And Then There's This: For kissy JewsIn Nishima Kaplan’s gallery of designs, I found a lot of different kinds of things beyond the stained glass window style.  Here’s   one that looks like Klimts,“The Kiss”.  And Michelle Rummel uses similar Klimt-y inspiration.  I suppose where weddings are concerned, Klimt is to painting what Yehuda Amichai’s is to poetry.  But there’s a reason things get to be trendy…

These Ketubot are very plain, but they have a clean feel to them (you could never accuse them of looking like stained glass from the seventies), and the sofer(et) behind them sounds very very neat (she invented Tefillin Barbie!).

And last, but not least…

The Talmud Ketubah: Kicks it old skoolThe Design Lab offers these Ketubot, by Gad Almaliah.  I don’t know if they’re hip, but they appeal to me.  Plainer and pretty traditional, some with embossed metal around the text.  This one looks like a page of Talmud, and it rocks.  I don’t know… I kind of feel like… if you’re going to hit some tradition, hit it hard.   

So, although I could have looked at these things all night, that’s the word on “hip” Ketubot (for now).  But if you ever are really hunting for something different, backchannel me, and I'll see what I can do to help you search.

One last note… in my quest for a cool Ketubah, I stumbled upon this site.  It’s a blog where some folks collaborated on a Ketubah.  And I wanted to add that I think this is awesome.   I don't love the design, but I do admire the idea. 

For what it’s worth, if I weren’t married yet, I think I might try making my own, or asking friends to collaborate on something…  Or maybe stealing Jonathan Blum's idea, and making a frame, and then putting a plain Ketubah in the frame.  Or asking an artist who doesn't usually make Ketubot to build a one-of-a-kind frame for me.

 

I think it’d be a neat thing to surprise my husband with.  He loves old maps, and music and as I’ve been writing this post, I keep imagining the Ketubah frame I could make out of  an old musty map and faded sheet music…