While Valentine’s Day week isn’t always a week of romance and celebration for everyone, this year, Cupid brought me two new clips to share.

Last weekend in the print edition and Tuesday online, the Forward published my piece “The Jewish Lonely Hearts Who Meet Online” – about online dating sites, the blame game that singles play with each other, and how we all could take a higher road when it comes to interacting online.

Then on Facebook, we launched some midweek discussions about JDate’s advertising, when that niche dating service launched its new ad campaigns, making some laugh and others cringe. With slogans taking a pot shot at Match.com (“6000 years of persecution and now you’re joining Match.com?”) and appealing to those who are waiting to “find someone who shares your love of gefilte fish,” the slogans run from the stereotypical to the unoriginal, playing to the broadest strokes of public awareness of what defines a Jew, and what those Jews are looking for when they’re looking for love online. (You can read the NYTimes article about this new campaign here.)

In a sad note this week, but relevant to Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to share things we love with people we love, the world lost famous comedian Sid Caesar. The Jewish Journal asked me to write something – since I love writing about entertainment, TV and comedy, and did feel a bit personally connected to Caesar (even though we had never met), I wrote this piece – “My Friend’s Seder With Sid: Remembering Sid Caesar,” now featured in the Jewish Journal’s Religion section – about how virtual connections can become real, with people acting as emissaries and interceding to create real-life connections. The story contains some of my friend’s personal reflections of her time with Sid over the last year, and reminds us of how much laughter he gave the world. May his memory and his work continue to be an inspiration to those of us who dabble in or appreciate comedy. 🙂