Identity, Mishegas, Sex & Gender

Why Date Jewish?

Why Date Jewish?I saw this link on the OU‘s website and was intrigued. So I followed it and found a free offer for Jewish high school students only. If you’re a Jewish high school student, you can sign up for this free copy of a book about why you should date Jewish. Those of us too old to qualify can see a free PDF brochure which gives a taste of the book. Here’s an excerpt:

Isn’t it racist for Jews to refuse to date non-Jews? Absolutely not. Non-smokers may refuse to date smokers, vegetarians may refuse to date carnivores, and political liberals may refuse to date conservatives. It’s not racist to only date people who share certain interests or beliefs. If a position on any issue is important to you, you might choose to only date (and potentially marry) like-minded people. That doesn’t mean that we don’t like other types of people, just that we want to raise a family with certain moral and ethical ideals.

A little reminiscent of Seinfeld and Elaine’s refusal to date men who are pro-life.
It seems to me that there’s a simple reason why to only date Jews. You never know when you’ll fall in love. Better not to put yourself in the tortuous position of having to choose religion over love or vice versa.
As an added bonus, the website also has a page on Why Jews Don’t Celebrate Valentine’s Day.

6 thoughts on “Why Date Jewish?

  1. “You never know when you’ll fall in love. ”
    hm. now that sounds like a simply reason why NOT to only date jews.

  2. The challenge here is that it presumes we can make “Jewish” the number one criteria for dating someone, and that all other aspects you might look for in a date — intelligence, looks, sense of humor, size of bank account if yer a gold digger like my freekin’ ex-wife (just kidding, honey) — will fall into place after you first know the person is Jewish.
    This will work if your entire universe is Jewish, and that’s an argument being laid out as we speak within the organized Jewish community: make your entire universe Jewish. If parents would only send their kids to day school, Jewish camps, Brandeis, birthright israel, and then to live in an apartment on the Upper West Side with a subscription to JDate, the odds of them intermarrying seem to drop considerably.
    The problem with that is two-fold. (1) It describes a tiny minority of the Jewish community, and (2) a percentage of them will STILL intermarry and know that the pamphleteers at OU (and elsewhere in the community) no longer want them around, even if they still want to be Jewish and raise Jewish kids.
    For those of us outside a completely Jewish universe, who perhaps have the “misfortune” (yeah right) of being born somewhere beautifully warm but “less Jewish” like San Diego or Hawaii, or who take jobs outside the traditionally Jewish sectors of law, medicine, diamond-cutting, or electronics goniffing (that’s a verb), we may — due to our unfortunate bio-chemistry — look at other aspects of the opposite sex before finding out their religious and/or ethnic background.
    For example, I happen to be an ass man. Any mention in the OU pamphlet about what to do when ASS is the first criteria on your list of attributes for dating?!

  3. Depends on your definition of “Who is a Jew.” And also on your definition of “Who’s got a hot ass.”

  4. I’m wondering if there shouldn’t be some sort of a statute of limitations on this. I’m not Jewish, but my husband is. Considering our wedding took place when he was 38, I think that it had got to the point where chances of him marrying anybody were slim.

  5. I actually didn’t mind the paragraph you quoted. What bothered me about the brochure was the paragraph in the middle titled “Who Are You?” which argued that, even if you’re not “religious,” you should still date Jewish because you’re interested in “preserving your culture,” having holidays in common, etc.
    This is basically the same argument used for ages to oppose interracial relationships. In my opinion, any reasons for “dating Jewish” that don’t involve religion/belief ARE racist or ethnocentric. As Judith Shulevitz pointed out on Slate.com, arguing against intermarriage is completely fine when Judaism is seen as a set of common beliefs, a shared outlook about God/the world/morality/etc. I assume most people do try to find partners with whom they share important values. Everything else is just superficial, including race and ethnicity.

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