At age thirty, I've had four real boyfriends:
Che Guevara, Jesus, G.I. Joe and, most recently, an anorexic-looking Troll
doll with diminutive facial features and hair that stood straight up regardless
of whether he'd been shaken.
"Is he Jewish?" asked my eighty-nine-year-old grandmother when
Troll Boy and I started dating.
"His last name is Lord," I said.
"That's a holy name, isn't it?" she said, optimistically. He drove a Mercedes. She needed this one to be Jewish.
"Okay," I said, before hanging up.
I was raised to expect this line of questioning. When the answer was visually obvious, as it was with Che (actually an Argentinean who looked a little like the revolutionary, sans facial hair), the question came in a different form: "What's your name again?" When I was dating Jesus (my blonde-haired, blue-eyed college boyfriend, who my great Uncle swore looked like an unkempt Christ), it came in the form of a sigh, followed by a statement: "I'd sure hate to have to disinherit you for not marrying a Jew."
"Huh?" I said.
"What do you want to have for dinner when you come to visit?" she replied.
Who says old people don't get craftier with age?
Lucky for Grandma, G.I. Joe came and went before she had time to
inquire about his faith or lack thereof. And, lucky for me, for the past few
years, my siblings have provided her with a temporary distraction. First,
my older sister married a Goldberg. Then, just when Grandma's attention had redirected itself back to my disappointing
(a.k.a. Gentile) marriage prospects, my twin sister secured herself a Greenberg.
Now that her wedding plans are under way, the phone is once again ringing:
"Hi, Grandma."
"So . . . do you have any special friends?"
No, just a fuck buddy who lives three thousand miles away, but don't worry, the sex is amazing. "No, Grandma."
"Well, the Katz's grandson just got married to the nicest Jewish girl."
He's a creepy close-talker, and I'm pretty sure he's gay. "That's nice."
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll find someone soon."
Much to the dismay of my parents and grandparents, all
of whom are practicing Jews, the remaining singleton in the family has
an aversion to Jewish men. I
My
kind of faith was not going to dictate whom I chose to date.
have yet to seriously date — or, for that matter, sleep with — a
Rosenstein, Bernstein, Cohen, Horowitz or Leibowitz. No small feat when you
live in New York city and your last name is Levy.
My friend Katy, an Episcopalian living in New York, can't understand this. She's exclusively dated Jewish men for the past three years. ("It wasn't something I planned," she explained. "It's just at the men I was meeting happened to be Jewish.") My friend Meredith, also an Episcopalian, married a Jew. And my friend Molly, a Catholic, is not only engaged to one but plans to raise their children as Jewish. "Gabe is proud to be Jewish — in a way that I've never been proud to be Christian," she told me. "I can't wait to share that with my kids."
My inability to date Jewish men, while not something I'm proud of, is not without its reasons. There is the puerile
desire to rebel against my family's expectations, which seem as antiquated as
arranged marriage. Love is love is love is my way of thinking: if I'm lucky enough to one day find it, I'm not going to throw it away just because the guy doesn't have a mezuzah on his door. As I have reminded my parents constantly,
just because
a
Jew
marries
a
Jew
doesn't
mean there
any guarantees: their own marriage dissolved
after nearly twenty-five years, and my childhood synagogue "lost" two rabbis
to marital infidelity (theirs, not their spouses').
"It's not just about being Jewish," my father once explained
to me. "It's about finding someone with a similar background."
This comment has always eluded me. I grew up in Austin, Texas, before the internet boom, before Michael
Dell moved to town with all of his money, some of which built the
city's first Jewish day school. When I was growing up, "Texas
Jew" still seemed like an oxymoron. I went to a private Episcopal high school, where I attended daily church services and memorized the "Our Father"
prayer in Spanish.
Finding someone with a similar background was never going to be easy. And if the boys at my conservative synagogue were any indication of what was out there, I didn't want to. At age twelve, fleshy Howard had acquired a nasty smoking habit and a wardrobe that consisted solely of oversized
death-metal tees. Nate had the
personality of a piece of marble, unlike Leon, a hyperactive, pencil-skinny kid
with a Jew-fro and A.D.D.
Alan, one of the only other males in my class, was the only
viable possibility. He was defiant toward our teachers (and Howard, Nate and
Leon) in the way alpha adolescents are defiant toward authority figures
and their weaker peers. His strong features and sinewy physique
qualified him as attractive in both the Jewish and gentile worlds. He was also kind, at least always to me, and had an intoxicating swagger that only would be enhanced by the red sports car he got for his sixteenth birthday, acceptance into an Ivy League university, admittance into the top (non-Jewish) fraternity, and, upon graduation, a coveted job at a large financial institution in New York City. Alan was genetically destined to become the dashing, wealthy "money guy" he is today. But even at age twelve, I knew I never wanted to marry a money guy (though, to be honest, I'm still not sure what exactly it is that "money guys" do except live in doorman buildings and pay for dinner with credit cards that don't get declined).
Still, once I was on the East Coast, guys like Nate, Howard, Leon and Alan seemed to be everywhere, along with legions of women vying for their affection. My first year at Barnard, I met
dozens of orthodox Jews who were pining exclusively for my Hebrew schoolmates'
doppelgangers. With their long denim skirts that doubled as chastity belts and
no-sex-before-marriage-crushes, they were as foreign to me as I was to them.
"Why do you only date Jewish men?" I once asked Naomi, a stunning orthodox redhead who lived across the hall.
"Because," she said, as if it were the most asinine question on the planet, and left it that.
Her answer, devoid even of dogma, stunned me. My kind of faith involved taking ownership of a particular history,
but it was not going to dictate whom I chose to date. Sophomore year strengthened
my resolve, and senior year sealed the deal. That year, I met
countless
Jewish guys who were socially savvy and fun to be around, but each one seemed
as unattractively predictable as the next: for their first three-and-a-half years in school, bong hits, beer
pong and gentile girlfriends were embraced as harmless-yet-essential experimentation.
Then, once the job interviews
Bob Marley and Kind Bud were the only gods I'd seen them worship.
began, their drug use and gentile lovers were
compartmentalized into memories of their "crazy youth," and they did what
their parents expected: stop fucking around, stop fucking shiksas and
start looking for "nice Jewish girls" to marry.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, whenever
a
wedding invitation from one of my Jewish guy friends arrived
in the mail, I envied him. What I didn't envy was the seemingly robotic way
in which every single one of them eventually adhered to their parents' prescription
for
life. I'd eaten bacon with these guys. Bob Marley and Kind Bud were the only gods I'd seen them worship. When they were logging on to JDate or exchanging
their High
Times subscription
for Heeb,
did they ever stop to ask themselves why?
In all fairness to my college buddies, it's not only their
lack of inquisitiveness that I resent, but also that of my non-Jewish friends
in New York who've tried to set me up with "a nice Jewish guy." Not once has
anyone tried to set me up with someone outside that category.
For years, I believed this was more about appearance than
any values.
I've
been
asked
by strangers in more than half a dozen countries — Argentina,
Spain, Thailand, East Williamsburg — if I was Jewish. And the question, which
always comes out of nowhere, reminds me that regardless of what or how I believe,
I look different from most people. I look like a religion.
On the few occasions that I've heard the words, "Really? But you don't look like
a Jew," they were offered as a compliment. How can facial features represent
the vagaries of something so private as one's faith? I don't want to date Jewish men simply because
we make the most visual sense together.
That said, seven years after moving to New York (a city that boasts more Jews per capita than any other in the U.S.), it's clear
that the social inclination to pair Jews with other
Jews isn't solely or even primarily about looks. First case
in point: the continued existence of professional matchmakers, or modern day yentas.
Take this passage from "What's Love Got to Do
With It?", this year's Valentine's Day cover story in The New
York Times Magazine:
Professional matchmakers match exteriors. They have a finely honed ability to
instantly classify people anthropologically, according to socioeconomic type,
and pair them off accordingly. Matchmakers believe that people should stop their
agonized search for soul mates. Half of literature concerns the
perils
of falling for a soul mate . . . And these tales always end badly, with disgrace
and death, so that the normal order of society is restored. The new matchmakers
take a traditional approach. They believe that people do and should marry within
their tribes.
So Jews should marry "within their tribe" to maintain "social
order"? I never realized my romantic fate had such potential. I'd envisioned
familial controversy, sure, but social chaos? That's a new one. And while we're
on the subject, why
is
the
featured matchmaker always described as a "comically exaggerated version of a
Jewish mother?" Why, in this article, does Jewish seem to be the prime example
of a commonality necessary for the perfect match? And why do most of the female
clients mentioned come off as silly little caricatures of the Jewish-American Princess, the Prada-loving prima donna who wants nothing more than to marry
rich and live in a penthouse on the Upper East Side?
It's the perpetuation of the belief that Jews are only interested
in marrying other Jews, and it extends well beyond print. Hence JDate, "the largest Jewish
singles network" online. Its mission, as stated, is "to help strengthen the Jewish community
and ensure Jewish traditions are carried on for many generations to come." I've never tried it. I concede that
there's nothing entirely wrong with faith-based online dating — if religion is
a deal breaker for you, going to qiran.com or catholicmingle.com makes it that
much more likely you'll find your type — but doesn't the very existence of JDate promote the idea of Jews as an endangered species, sort of like pandas and ocelots?
The truth is that Jews constitute roughly 2.2 percent of the
U.S. population. That's about six million people, half the number of Jews estimated
worldwide, and nearly the total number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. For me,
these are daunting figures.
There is something obscene to me about marrying or dating out of responsibility.
They involuntarily galvanize in me a sense
of obligation — to the past, to tradition, to victims of the Holocaust,
some of whom are distant relatives. I assume that, by marrying within their
faith, many of my college friends were fulfilling a similar sense of obligation.
And yet there is something obscene to me about marrying or dating out of responsibility.
Trying to make sense of it all is exasperating. So, I did what
I often do when I embark on a journey (or personal essay) so circuitous that
collapse seems imminent. I called my mom.
"Mom," I asked, "why do you want me to marry a Jewish guy?"
"Years ago I had a conversation with myself," she explained. "I
thought, if
you had to choose for your children between a man that loved them truly and a
schmuck that happened to be Jewish, what would you recommend? And I'm pleased
to admit that I chose the former. What's important to me is that you're all happy
and in loving relationships."
As they say on Family Feud, good answer. I pressed her: "But why did
you
have
to
have
that
conversation
with
yourself in the first place?"
"It was just something that
I
faced up to and verbalized to myself," she said. "Yes, there are parents out there for whom
the
Jewish-ness of their child's partner is paramount, and I think it's bullshit.
At my worst, my most rabid Jewish self, I would never have said you must marry
a Jewish guy. It's too obvious that there is plenty of goodness out there that
is not Jewish. So give me some credit here."
"So what if I end up with a non-Jew?"
"I would say to you, that's great, I'm happy, I love you and
the person you love, but now you have to do even more work to figure out
who you are and how much of that you retain and pass down. I would assume
that someone
who really loved you would love you for who you are, and wouldn't try and make you
into someone you aren't. There are so damn many negotiations when you're with
someone, it's pleasant to have as few as possible. If you're not having to negotiate
how to spend Christmas, and Chanukah and Easter each year, it's one less thing
to worry about."
My head is pounding,
and she hasn't even mentioned kids.
"Plus, if you marry someone who isn't Jewish and you have
children, what will you do?" she said. "Or do you say, 'We're not raising our children with
any religion
at all?' At some point, you have to pick and choose."
What I don't have the energy to tell her is that, in some respects, I already have. If, one day, I have children, I will not raise them as agnostics. Nor, during the holiday season, will I decorate the house with Christmas trees and menorahs and Kwanzaa dolls and pentagrams. Will I subject them to Sunday school classes filled with Howards, Nates and Leons? To be honest, I'm not sure. But whomever I end up with, assuming I end up with anyone at all, will not be the kind of person who has a finite position on all things religion. It's a prerequisite.
That said, having recently gone on a date with a techno obsessive who doesn't have the stomach for
gory horror flicks (I recently paid $10.25 to see Amityville 4: The Evil
Escapes),
I'm
still
a
long
way
from
settling
down.
I
suppose I could hit up a sperm bank, knowing that Grandma would spend the rest
of her
life
figuring
out how to explain that one to her friends, or I could take the gentler route
and do as my mother said before she signed off from our conversation: "Don't look for a resolution here; that will make you
crazy. Just enjoy the trip."
But
since I never much enjoyed the trip in the first place, I'll settle on
a third option: I'll resolve not to be resolved. It's certainly
not the conclusion I'd hoped to come to while working on this essay. I'd hoped,
at the very least, to write myself into a state of indifference — toward
my
family's expectations, toward any lingering sense of marital obligation, toward
anyone and everyone who thinks I should be with a Jew simply because I am one.
Instead, it seems that I've come full circle.
Yet I'm not exactly back where
I started either. By beginning this, previously dreaded conversation — with
myself and, yes, my mother — about the complexities of faith and relationships,
I'm able to approach my love life and spirtuality with a little less anger,
and a little more freedom.
n°
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Tobin,
our androgynously named Texan, comes to Nerve after time served at Talk
magazine, Contents and a book-scouting firm that made her an expert
on post traumatic stress disorder. Her writing has appeared in Men's Health,
Elle, Time
Out New
York and Teen People.
