■•■

ANONYMOUS

I

would like to offer a new spin
on intermarriage. Some of us
are choosing to marry non-
Jews, not to escape our
Jewishness, but because it is our last
chance to bear Jewish children and
to perpetuate a faith and people we
love more than anything else.
Who are we? Jewish women,
mainly in our late 30s, who, after
years of Jewish singles events and
rejection by Jewish men, have given
up on ever finding a "nice Jewish
boy."
With loudly ticking biological
clocks, finding a nice gentile man
who loves us and is willing to have
Jewish children starts to look good.
After 20 years of dating and being
faced with looking into middle age
alone and childless, who could blame
us?
You do ... every time you publish
or deliver anti-intermarriage messages.
For someone who has a passionate
Jewish identity and wants nothing
more than to create a Jewish family,
these words are gut-wrenching.
No one has tried harder to find
Jewish husbands than we have. My

Where Have All
The Jewish Men
Gone?

entire adult life has been devoted to
the Jewish community. I was totally
immersed in a Jewish singles group
for years and am now the head of a
successful Jewish organization. I was
recently chosen for a prestigious
Jewish fellowship program because I
am thought to be "one of the future
Jewish leaders of my community." So
don't tell me that "I don't care" or
that I am "disenfranchised" or "une-
ducated." Quite the contrary, I just
can't find a stable Jewish man who
likes me as more than a friend.
I am no slouch or social outcast.
It is not just my mother who thinks
I am beautiful, kind, smart and
socially adept. Sadly, it is gentile
men, not my intended Jewish mates,
who find me exotic, attractive and
stimulating.

table with all my unattached, beauti:
ful, Jewish girlfriends.
This is not my imagination. It is
my reality, and it stinks. I am sure
that many will write in and say how
angry I am. Well, they are right. I
am furious. This isn't the way it was
supposed to be.
So I say, be careful whom you
criticize. We have been hurt enough.
The problem is more complex than
meets the eye. Do you know why my
Reform rabbi stopped performing
intermarriages? He could not face all
the lovely Jewish women coming in
for counseling, crying because they
could not find Jewish husbands. Add
that to your list of why some rabbis
do and some don't.
Before you blame us for the
demise of the. Jewish community
through our rampant intermarriage,
ask yourselves what went wrong in
your generation — in two-Jewish-
parent households — that your sons
reject their counterparts in such large
numbers?

Ask me about all the times I have
come home from a blind date or
Jewish singles event feeling totally
dejected and depressed. I have had
Jewish men confide in me that they
haven't dated a Jewish woman in 10
years; in fact, they don't even like
Jewish women — like I'm going to
be sympathetic!
My hobby now is to count
the Asian women sitting with
their Jewish husbands in the sanctu-
ary during High Holiday services.
It used to be just the "blond
shiksa goddesses" they went
after.
Several years ago I was invited to
the wedding of two Jewish friends.
The groom had 12 groomsmen —
all Jewish. Not one was married to a
Jewish woman. I sat at the singles

Reprinted with permission of Reform
Judaism magazine, published by the
Union of American Hebrew
Congregations.

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B'nai B'rith Leadership Network pool league is now forming. Play
begins March 9 at 7 p.m., at Fifth Avenue Billiards in Royal Oak.
Call Mike Kahan, (248) 362-4666.

Sign up now!
March 20-22, spring Shabbaton, singles 30 and up, Bais Chabad
Torah Center, West Bloomfield. Featuring Dr. Leo Steiner, talking
about relationships. Cost: $175 per person. Call Rochel Crockett,
(248) 855-6170 (email: bctc770@aol.com).

" " ' • ",:iiiii:;•,;•;,, , ••••••.:••••••`,.. ..;',,,. , :•'''''

•

2/20
1998

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