Esther D. Kustanowitz

Courting Catastrophe
by Esther D. Kustanowitz
New York Jewish Week, First Person Singular
June 16, 2006

Even if you haven’t seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s documentary about global warming, you’re probably aware that the planet is headed for environmental catastrophe. We’ve had some inklings of this. We know that our aerosol hairsprays are destroying the ozone layer, and more recently, we’ve watched helplessly as tsunamis and hurricanes have wrought devastation at home and abroad, sweeping away people and property in giant waves.

Enter the new crisis. In a series of newspaper ads for Shavuot retreats, one getaway promised analyses of some of the more salient issues within the religious community. The first workshop was titled “the singles catastrophe.” Last year, organizations held workshops on the singles “crisis,” but this year, that word was used to describe a session on the situation in the Middle East, and the singles situation got an upgrade. So, to recap: Arab-Israeli conflict? Crisis. Singles situation? Catastrophe. (Hyperbole? Priceless.)

Perhaps we started off as a “situation,” a “weather system” or a “tropical storm.” But the amateur anthropological meteorologists have reassessed the threat. (“Batten down the hatches! Reinforce your windows! The Jewish singles catastrophe is coming!”) A part of me soon expects an ad proclaiming the “catastrophe” a worldwide “pandemic,” surpassing avian flu and the Ebola virus. Find Patient Zero. Put him in quarantine, as if he’s not there already. Start everyone on Cipro as a precautionary measure. Get the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involved. They’ll start working on a vaccine immediately.

While certainly not on the same literal level of devastation as Ebola or Katrina, the language that is regularly used in describing the state of singlehood in the Jewish community conveys an undue sense of panic. At events, singles are lectured on the importance of marrying and building a Jewish home, a goal that brought most of us to there to begin with. Sometimes it’s a “soft sell,” an emphasis of Jewish commemorations or text study that reminds us that it’s “not good for a person to be alone,” or that urges us to trust that Hashem, who provides for all, will bring us a soul mate. Other times, it’s a “hard sell,” the rebuke of a prophet urging us to repent, reprimanding us for not having married and procreated years ago, as if we spent the last decade frivolously turning down marriage proposals, and as if we could actually travel back in time and correct said “mistake,” if a mistake is really what it was.

And while we’re making analogies, let’s talk dinosaurs. Geologists theorize that eons ago, the earth experienced “mass extinctions,” that a natural disaster, an ice age, meteor or other seismic event obliterated the dominant class of animal life and enabled the rise of a new class of animals. As singles watch their community of friends marry, have kids and move away literally and figuratively, they experience the social equivalent of mass extinction. They find other friends, and either find their bashert and leave the group, or watch as the process happens all over again, resulting in another tectonic shift, another extinction. Social refugees, they fend for themselves, because Jewish life is geared to the coupled and impregnated.

Even if it originates from a place of love and concern, merely making the analogy between natural disasters or diseases and the contemporary state of Jewish singles is designed to create chaos, panic and further isolation. Convening conferences and establishing a plan for battling the dreaded and apparently imminent “catastrophe” in the name of Jewish continuity serves only to separate single and married people and slot them into a clear hierarchy. Perhaps it’s time for the Jewish community at-large to stop declaring singles an affliction to be cured, and bring singles issues out of quarantine. Beyond the fear, people will discover that single Jews can provide vital contributions to Jewish communal life, whether or not we’ve done our procreative part for Jewish continuity.

You can’t love a hurricane’s winds into not blowing. And perhaps certain houses are stronger and more likely to survive devastation. But a storm will do what it will do. And the community’s role is to create an environment that nurtures and rebuilds and provides shelter and support for those whose lives have been afflicted by forces within and beyond their control.

Esther D. Kustanowitz, who’s generally fond of metaphors that prove a point, can be reached at jdatersanonymous@gmail.com.

A Dating Departure
by Esther D. Kustanowitz

A few months ago, I went on a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. JSinglesCruise, a division of the family-owned and glatt kosher Kosherica Cruises, took us to exotic ports of call aboard Celebrity’s Infinity, a luxury liner so vast it seemed impossible that such a thing would move, let alone transport 2,000 passengers and crew through tropical waters. But move it did — at first, haltingly, conveying the unshakable feeling that your balance had been disrupted.

In such an environment, 99 other single Jews gathered, some with anti-seasickness patches behind their ears, to commence their search for love, a great vacation or (God willing) both. But with multiple viewings of “Jaws” and “Titanic” assailing my memory, plus the regular bout of singles event anxiety (yet to become an actual DSM diagnosis, unfortunately), the lurch was both emotional and physical for me.

It had begun the night before departure, like the night before my first day of camp or college. Part of it was the packing process. The more I put into my suitcase, the more it seemed to take out of me. I wondered if clothes would hinder me socially or matter at all. Still, beyond the grip of my own anxiety, I understood that future always lies just beyond the vanishing point of your own vision. On the horizon, there was something — of an unknown quality and duration, but still, something — to be found.

(more…)

Living the List (JW–May 20, 2006)

I only deserve the best,” a friend recently told me. “I’m not just taking the first guy who really likes me because I’m sick and tired of waiting. People who do that are making the biggest mistakes,” she said, noting three such couples in her life, who “got married, not sure that the love was there,” and are now divorcing. “If I have to wait longer, I will.”

For those concerned with Jewish demography, women (and men) like my friend are dooming the Jewish people to slow, steady destruction. They’re marrying later, decreasing the number of children each couple is likely to have. And by the time we reach a certain age, even if wanting children is in the plan, we’ve been so single, for so long, that doing our national duty is less important than finding a soul mate, someone who has most of the qualities on their lists.

Everyone has his or her deal breakers. But many have cited the mere literal or figurative existence of such lists as illustrations of the “pickiness” and “inflexibility” of singles. If reasonable, the list can function as an independent auditor, which theoretically helps singles to make smarter choices. If adhered to inflexibly, the list can be a single person’s undoing.

At the recent “Michael Steinhardt Presents…” series at Manhattan Jewish Experience — named for the philanthropist/event emcee — dating coach Robin Gorman Newman suggested that singles “actually write down” their lists and, after looking inward to determine what they themselves have to offer, to assess whether they were really giving people a chance and “throw half of it out the window.”

“Making the effort isn’t enough; the right attitude has to be there first,” the “How to Marry a Mensch” author told the audience of singles ranging in age from 20s to mid-40s. “Everyone wants to be ‘on Cloud 9,’ but Cloud 8 isn’t anything to sneeze at.”

Co-panelist and Manhattan Jewish Experience Rabbi Mark Wildes noted that the list “sometimes grows as time goes on,” and suggested reducing the list to one item: “I believe we are incomplete without a partner, someone who understands you. Reduce the list to that one person who understands you.”

But therein lies the problem, especially in high-density areas like New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, where every night presents a crop of fresh new faces to assess for compatibility: Sometimes choice itself is the problem. Confronted with a veritable buffet of tasty options, even if they find an 80 percent match — by all accounts, a pretty good fit — singles experience the nagging feeling that there still might be someone out there who’s better.

Still, singles complain that there’s “no one out there.” What they mean is that they had a certain set of expectations when it comes to dating, and that when those expectations were not met, they were disappointed. The fact that there may be hundreds or thousands of other compatible singles out there might as well not be true, because it feels hopelessly false.

While most of the singles in the room at MJE or at Makor or the JCC or any other Jewish meeting place on any given night are looking for love — or answers — with the hope of a committed Jewish relationship, few of us are looking for “baby daddies.” Yes, even without reminders from doctors or demographers, we’re all aware of the biological challenges that face us as we (especially women) age. But we want partners. And we’ve waited this long — we’re willing to delay the procreative process until our lists have more checks than exes on them.

My friend deserves happiness, to love and be loved in equal measure. She says she’s not willing to settle. But I like to think that she — and singles like her — are not married to their lists. They’re still open-minded enough to give the decent ones a chance; they’re willing to look at the big picture rather than judging on a sacrosanct list of must-haves and must-not-haves. They’re the ones who refused to date Republicans, until they met one they liked, who refused to date men their height or women they claimed were “not their type,” until they did and found they were.

Although they often help us, our lists are not divine, nor even divinely inspired. They’re human, and superficial, and inherently flawed. Just like the singles who made them.

Esther D. Kustanowitz will be demanding answers from a panel of dating experts at Makor on Sunday, May 21. For more information, e-mail jdatersanonymous@gmail.com or visit www.makor.org.