The Virtual Writing Studio/PR Office of Esther D. Kustanowitz

Since Tuesday I’ve been here in Jerusalem, thanks to the Nefesh B’Nefesh flight which imported me in order to introduce me to their work in bringing Jews to Israel for aliyah, and on occasion of the first international Jewish blogger convention. Coverage of that has been all over the web, including at MyUrbanKvetch and Jewlicious, and in several print publications as well, including Ynet (in which I’m quoted) and Haaretz (in which I’m not quoted, but CK from Jewlicious and Friend of Esther Benji Lovitt–of WhatWarZone.com–are).

I also did three radio interviews, for Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) and Reshet Bet (Channel 2) in Hebrew and for IsraelRadio in English. (Links to come when I have them.) The Hebrew interviews were difficult, but hopefully I didn’t sound too insane. You’ll be the judge of that when the links go up, I’m sure…

Here are some links to press coverage which contain quotes from me:
Ynet (Hebrew)
Ynet (English)

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

Everyone’s favorite temp, Ryan, talks with indie writer-director Quentin Tarantino about becoming a Jewish partisan for “Inglorious Bastards”…meanwhile, the federal investigators looking into the circumstances of Heath Ledger’s death were talking with an immunity-seeking Mary-Kate Olsen about her potentially testifying, and then decided to close the books on the case….Christina Applegate is fighting cancer, and next weekend, Madge and Guy are justifying their love.

Just another week in Idol Chatter. Click on the links and enjoy the marginally-spiritually-related dysfunction of our celebrities. (And send good thoughts to Christina, if you’re so inclined.)

Just back from Israel, and right before I go back (don’t ask, it’s a lot of flying, and explanation will come soon enough!), I’ll be at the CAJE conference in Burlington, VT, teaching basic tech skills to educators…I’m in the same room all three sessions, so I should be easy to find.

If I’m not there, I’ll be wandering around the conference, attending other sessions, and presiding over the Bloggers Cafe (Monday and Wednesday from 4:15-5:30, in Votey 206), where novice and seasoned bloggers will have the chance to put what they’ve learned into practice. Come on by!

8/11/2008 Monday 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM
People of the Blog I: The Basics of Jewish Blogging
Votey 205

8/11/2008 Monday 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM
What a Shayne Facebook: Social Media and Next Generation Jews
Votey 205

8/12/2008 Tuesday 10:15 am - 11:30 am
People of the Blog II: Jewish Blogging Strategy
Votey 2005

New posts added all the time! Keep this page bookmarked or RSSed to make sure you’re up-to-date!!

I’m in Israel for the summer, meeting different people (and eating new things apparently) and doing business in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. While it’s a surreal life, it’s an exciting one. Follow my experiences at MyUrbanKvetch.com, or see below, where I’ll list the posts as they go up.

What I Learned at Google
Geek Tiyul (PICZ Goes North)

Shout: The Pride Parade and the Quest for Identity

Scoop’d: How to Eat Hummus Like an Israeli

TV Show Nails Religious Singles Scene in Jerusalem

ROI Summit Concludes, Esther Crashes

Holy Hip-Hop! Pre-Sabbath Breakdancing in the Holy Land
Old and New in the Israeli Hip-Hop Scene
Tagged in Tel Aviv
In Honor of the Sex and the City Movie: Who’s Your Favorite Man?

Eurovision 2008, Liveblogged from Jerusalem

Football Jewligans in Gan Sacher

Tel Aviv Intermezzo

“You’ve Got a Friend”: Modern Dance Invades President’s Conference
President’s Conference Day 2 (cont’d): Future of Jewish Leadership

Adventures in Israeli Cuisine, or “What’s That On My Plate?”

President’s Conference Day 2: Opening Plenary

President’s Conference Day 2: Writers Facing Tomorrow

President’s Conference Day 1: In Brief

President’s Conference Day 1: Pre-Conference Contemplation

May in Jerusalem

The piece below originally appeared as part of the Jewish Week’s “Big Ideas” Issue in December of 2006 and decried a lack of research on Jewish singles and suggested a center for research of single life which could double as a young community center and living space for single Jews.

Very recently, researcher Steven M Cohen produced “Uncoupled: How Our Singles are Reshaping Jewish Engagement,” a study about unmarried 20-somethings and 30-somethings and their habits regarding connection to Jewish life. (He’s speaking at the PresenTense Institute this Thursday at 1pm, and I’ve been invited to comment in response. See here for directions.)

But the more I think about it and write about it (on JDatersAnonymous and in the creation of a book proposal on the subject of Jewish singles), and the more I see of the communal approach of the PresenTense Institute, the more relevant I think a proposal like this is–people have their own projects and interests, but the spirit of the collective inspires individuals and their creativity. While this piece was written for the Jewish Week and therefore centered on New York City, the truth is that such an institute could exist in another major city somewhere–Chicago, LA, San Francisco or Jerusalem–and would yield interesting research as well as perhaps some interesting friendships and relationships.

So here’s the piece again for your re-consideration. Looking forward to the discussion. (And yes, the piece is available for reprints–reasonable rates, just ask.)

JSinglesSpace and the Continuity Cafe
by Esther D. Kustanowitz

Each year, a new crop of idealistic Jewish twentysomethings moves to New York City in an attempt to forge romantic futures and financial fortunes in the city that never sleeps. The number of people crammed into Upper West Side two-bedroom apartments that were converted to three to accommodate each year’s immigrant singles thematically recalls Lower East Side tenement days. 10024 has so many single Jewish women that they may not even all show up in a JDate zip code search (a true story from JDate customer service). And many of those twentysomethings stay uncoupled until they’re thirtysomething or fortysomething, clustering in tribes of the seemingly-eternally single. But despite all of these fascinating trends, academic studies have yet to focus on Jewish singles anywhere, let alone within the borders of New York City.
[Read more →]

In an acronym: ROI.

For more info about my involvement with this summit of Jewish innovators from all over the world, check out these posts at ROI120.com, and this article in the NY Blueprint.

Stay tuned for more.

I wrote the thing weeks ago, but then found myself in Tmol Shilshom, a Jerusalem restaurant where the theme is books. Surrounded by the works of famous Hebrew and English authors, I finished the final column. I usually don’t reprint the entire thing on my blog, but it will be the last time, so I wanted to share.

(And yes, columns are still available for reprint.)

Thanks to everyone for their support for the column over the last four and a half years, as well as your commitment to this ongoing conversation.

“Know When to Walk Away”
by Esther D. Kustanowitz

How does one become a Jewish singles columnist, anyway? On recent reflection, it has occurred to me that perhaps I’ve only found myself here, an untrained sociologist Jane Goodall-ing it in the singles jungle, because of the metaphorical significance and transformative power of transit.

Several years ago, during a work trip to Israel, I had been picked up at the airport by a taxi and was traveling to Jerusalem when the driver began making Hebrew conversation. It started innocently, with a “welcome to Israel” and “what are you doing here?” and ended in a question I didn’t quite understand. “At revakah?” he asked. “Revakah?” I asked. “Revakah zeh lo nesuah (‘revakah’ means ‘not married’).”

I had never heard the word before. Most of my Hebrew was biblical, and most unmarried biblical women were referred to as betulah, which most English Bibles translate as “virgin.” Where, linguistically, could “revakah” have come from? I tried to “shoresh it out,” parsing the word and looking for a root. Since it was unlikely that the resh-vav-kuf could be read as “rock,” the best logical word origin I could find was the word reyk, meaning empty. If Genesis was right and it was “not good for a person to be alone,” then was it a huge leap to identify a person who hadn’t found their soul mate as, to an extent, empty? The Hebrew language seemed to think not. In that moment, an idea began its path of transit.

More recently, I was on a bus, spiraling down the West Coast. The sea was out of sight, and clouds sagged low over the mountains, which rolled past the windows as if they were on a conveyor belt, and I was the one who was standing still. I knew it was an illusion; the bus moved, and the scenery passed, but instead of feeling like an active participant in our progress, I felt detached and stagnant. Noticing the vast expanse of Northern California land, I felt the solitude descend, a curtain closing on a dramatic chapter.
At the end of that trip down the coast, I found myself thinking about journeys, the constant wandering of being in transit, and — because I was headed to Las Vegas — the song lyric that urged me to “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.” I knew I wasn’t quite at “know when to run,” but “know when to walk away” began to resonate strongly. I don’t like leaving my destiny to chance — heading off into the great unknown has never been an area of comfort for me. But it became clear that any more hands of solitaire or broken gambling metaphors, and I would risk the erosion of the parts of me that I’m most proud of, precisely the ones I’d hoped to one day share with a family.

My four years writing this column seem commensurate to an academic degree in relationships, yet somehow I’m ABD, and without the coveted “M.R.S.” degree. Perhaps I need to concentrate on field work, move beyond the theoretical into the actual. This column has been the longest relationship of my life. But I can’t marry a column. The transition will be one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but I think that it’s time.

I don’t know what is or isn’t in the cards for me. If God is calling the shots, I’d like to believe that the Deity wants me to be happier than I am, if only selfishly, for the strengthening of my faith weakened by staying single. I’d still like to be able to contribute to the expansion of the nuclear family I’m already so blessed to have. Or perhaps I’m committing hubris — an English major’s favorite sin — by thinking that I’m on God’s agenda at all. I’m aware that my life has been a series of unique opportunities that have been both humbling and a blessing. It may make me selfish, but I’d still hoped to have more.

There has to be more than just the illusion of progress. It’s a gamble, but every change is. It’s time to put one foot in front of the other, fix my eyes on the future, and walk away from what’s comfortable, into what might, one day, be possible. I’m in transit again. Let the chips fall where they may. And next time an Israeli taxi driver asks me to define my status, whatever it is, I intend to celebrate it.

Esther D. Kustanowitz thanks her editors, readers, family and friends for their support of this column and her obsession with Hebrew. In her “retirement,” she will be working on her book about living Jewish and single, and will continue to blog at MyUrbanKvetch.com and JDatersAnonymous.com, among other places. You can always reach her at jdatersanonymous@gmail.com.

There’s compelling evidence to suggest that 2008 is the Year of the Matchmaker. There seems to be a coalescence of various iterations of matchmaking happening, which I chronicled in “2008: Year of the Matchmaker?” last week’s article in the NY Jewish Week.

An excerpt:

2008 was about a week old when the influx of matchmaker-related services started hurling themselves like Anna Karenina on the tracks of my singles-columnist life. “Are you a matchmaker?” a reader from Israel queries. “Have you ever used a matchmaker?” asks a friend in Arizona. A matchmaker emails, not about a match, but to insist that I remove a benign blog announcement about one of her events. She is attempting to cleanse the internet of all mentions of her that aren’t glowing testimonials. The e-mails are constant — from SawYouAtSinai and JRetromatch; from individual matchmakers; from articles in newspapers, from blog posts, and of course, from my Facebook friends. Is 2008 the Year of the Matchmaker?

Year of the Matchmaker?” one friend snarked. “Is that like the Year of the Rat?” (Um, sometimes.) As the year continues, so does the trend. A newspaper requests a comment about matchmaking. A magazine pegs me to do an in-depth story about matchmaking, for virtually no money. (No thank you.) I get an e-mail about the “Make-a-Shidduch Foundation” name, which is only a “Shidduch” away from the “Wish” that another organization grants to kids with cancer.

And then there are the stories: Friend 1’s matchmaker told her she isn’t attractive enough for that yenta’s clientele. Friend 2 tells me of her matchmaker’s assessment: that — even though her salary is at least triple mine — she is unmatchable because she doesn’t have a college degree. Friend 3 notes that her matchmaker has matched her with men incapable of basic conversation, “not appropriate for her on any level.”

I know it works for some people, and God bless them. But I admit my bias: I don’t love matchmakers. I had a very lovely matchmaker on Saw You at Sinai, but no successful matches resulted. An offline matchmaker with a religious clientele first expressed horror at my “single, never-married” status (“What? Not divorced? Not widowed?”), and tried to match me with secular men opposed to Shabbat and kashrut, because in her book, that’s what Conservadoxy was. One religious blogger I know reported that her friend had uploaded a new photo to her online matchmaker, and received a note back from the shadchan with the word “EW” in the subject line and a body text that included “berating and ridiculing remarks regarding this woman’s picture.”

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this. I protected your identities, but am happy to identify you (with a link if you’d like…) with your permission…Read more here.

Recently, I noticed that Jews seem to be enjoying a bit of the improv….and wondered why. Was there something innately Jewish about the art of thinking on your feet, being in the moment and working without a script?

Check out the article, in Issue 4 of PresenTense Magazine, here.

Welcome new visitors–I hope you enjoy the new decor and aim to provide you with fresh content regularly. Tell your friends to visit and leave comments–I look forward to your feedback on this site.

And of course, because blogging is a constant, here are some recent posts you might enjoy:

Beliefnet
Is Change the Only Constant (New Amsterdam)

90210 Redux?

JDatersAnonymous
The Week in Singles Stories: Jewish Standard Edition
Random JDate Shoutout of the Week

MyUrbanKvetch
“Have You Met Ted?”: Josh Radnor Owns Up to Jewish Roots
Shin-Bet Blog
Purim Costumes and Conundra

And more always coming…