Miss Penguin I'm going to be blatantly honest here: I have a thing for Jewish guys. Maybe it's because I'm in New York and surrounded by them - my best friend is an orthodox Jew, I work with all Jewish men and I went to NYU (jokingly called NY-Jew), where they close the
Weinstein dining hall on Friday nights so the more religious Jews can have their Shabbat meal. But I just feel like most of the guys I go for are Jewish (or, if they're not Jewish, which is rare, they probably look Jewish). I love their dark curly hair, their big noses and their circumsized... *ahem*. Hehe. Okay, now I'm just being silly. I jest! I jest!
But seriously. I love Jewish men. And this is a problem for me because I'm not Jewish. And Jewish guys, even if they're not very religious, often won't date non-Jewish girls. (For those of you who don't know, Judaism is considered to be passed
through the mother, so to marry a shiksa is to take away your
children's Judaism and cut off the line, and thus most Jewish guys won't get serious with non-Jewish girls.) I've actually been dumped because I wasn't Jewish. The whole story sounds kind of like something out of a bad episode of Seinfeld...
So this guy in one of my classes threw a party. Let's call him The Jew (since I give all my guys that I write about nicknames). I always was kind of drawn to him (it's that big nose, I'm telling you!) but never really got to know him in class. But at his party we ended up kissing and then I ended up crashing at his place. In the morning, we went out for breakfast and he ate bacon. BACON! I pointed it out and he was, like, "yeah, I don't really practice at all, especially if I'm not home." So we started dating. My roommate had warned me in the past - "be careful with those Jewish guys," she said. "They'll date you but they won't get serious with you." But I didn't take her advice. I mean, he ate bacon and he told me he didn't practice. I thought I had nothing to worry about.
Things were going really really well. We were hanging out a lot and talking on the phone until all hours of the morning. Then Yom Kippur came and he went home to celebrate with his family. When he came back, he was distant (and when he wasn't busy avoiding me, he was being an asshole). After a couple of days of this, I just asked him what was up and he was, like, "I can't date you. You're not Jewish." Apparently, he did some reflection on the "day of atonement" and decided that he didn't like me enough to field the harassment from his mother about why he wasn't dating a nice Jewish girl. Or at least, that's kind of how he explained it. He said he's dated non-Jewish girls before but he just didn't like me enough to overrule my shiksa status. Which is strange because every time we hung out after that, we ended up having a blast and hooking up (yes, I know, not one of my proudest moments), so he must've liked me a fair amount. We had to stop hanging out so that we would stop hooking up. I mean, come on! Ridiculousness.
After this happened, I asked another orthodox friend of mine (a male) if he would ever date a shiksa. His reply was "no, but I would hook up with one." EXCUSE ME?! This really made me angry (as I'm sure you can tell by my capitalization). If you won't date us, you have no right to hook up with us! That's just toying with our emotions and it's a big double standard. We're good enough for you to be physically intimate with but not emotionally intimate with? It's also a double standard because it's totally fine for Jewish men to hook up with girls but it's not okay for Jewish girls to be hooking up at all. Plus, for some Jewish guys, there's even a certain "shiksa appeal" (there we go with the Seinfeld references again) - they want them because they can't technically have them.
So I think I'm going to have to convert. I've tried to get over my Jewish guy fetish, but I just can't seem to kick it. I definitely have a type...The guy I'm dating now (The 35-Year Old) is Jewish. I don't think he cares, though - he's almost anti-religious and has that self-loathing Jew thing going on. Then again, I didn't think The Jew would care either, seeing as how he ate bacon on our freaking first date. But then he dumped me...Even my soulmate (who's Indian) wants to be Jewish too. I'm surrounded!
To all you Jews out there reading this, would you ever date/get serious with a non-Jew? And to religious people in general - would you ever date someone who wasn't your religion?
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Comments (98)
I'm not religious but I have no problems with dating people of a different religion....as long as they don't sacrifice cute animals. Killing cute animals is a big NO-NO in my book.
I think I could date outside my religion but I'm not sure if I could marry outside my religion. I think that anyway you look at it, it's gonna be hard.
Heh, heh... you want to know what's really messed up about us Jews? That whole matrilineal baloney was made up by a group of old men a long time ago when the identity of a baby's father couldn't be determined concretely. Before that rule, you were a Jew if your father was a Jew. (Hello! The 12 Tribes of Israel were headed up by MEN not women.) My mom's not Jewish, my Dad is, and I was raised a Jew. I'm so strongly Jewish that the idea of having to "convert" in order to marry a Jewish man seems utterly ridiculous and insulting.
I'm dating someone that isn't Jewish right now. I'm struggling with it because if this relationship has the potential to lead to marriage it has to be okay with him (and his family) that any children we have will be raised Jewish. I've dated Jews and non-Jews, and frankly it doesn't matter to me as long as I know that if we got married, he'd (and his family) would be okay with having Jewish children.
But, I have to admit -- It would sure be nice to marry a Jewish man or one who wanted to become a Jew because I always envisioned going to shul with my ENTIRE family. (Even though my mom only went to shul for special life cycle events -- bat mitzvah, confirmation, Hebrew high graduation, weddings, funerals, etc..)
Read up on Judaism before you commit to conversion and make sure you have your parents' support.
I'm not Jewish, but i would have to say that if you're thinking about converting to a religion for the sake of dating, it might not be a wise decision.
However, converting because you love someone and hopefully spend the rest of your life with that someone is a different thing.
Religion is a weird thing.
I'm not Jewish or religious, but I wouldn't mind dating either one as long as their views were not so narrow in scope that it inhibited their ability to logically reason.
I thought Jews in USA were much less religious than they actually are.
@AnonymousBlonde@xanga - How would you differentiate between them and those non religious people who kill animals for food.
i live in NY too, so this entry cracked me up LOL
if you can't break the jew fetish, try a cashew (child of a catholic & a jew) . it's like jew lite, and they're usually open to seriously dating non-jews ;)
You should check out the play The Last 5 Years. The entire thing is about the relationship between a Jewish guy and an Irish girl. It even has a song called "Shiksa Goddess".
@SeitekiChibiNeko@xanga - Ah, but see, then they come from TWO guilt-ridden religions and I'm just not sure I could handle that. And I've tried Catholics. They won't date me either if they're at all religious because I'm not Christian...
I understand the Jew fetish.
I'm half Jewish, on my dad's side BAH! haha, but anyway... I'm an avid Atheist. The only religious type I'd date is a Jew, otherwise they'd have to be an Atheist (like my current boyfriend).
For your sake and the sake of any Jewish man you date every single rabbi will turn you away when you ask for a conversion because the maturity level reflected in your tone through-out this article suggests that you are not ready for a serious relationship and that you would not be able to begin to understand a commitment to a religious life.
I've tried to date someone who wasn't the same religion as I was, and it wasn't too bad actually. We were best friends before we started getting serious, and we decided that it would be better for our friendship if we just stayed that way.
I might date someone outside of my religion (that religion being nothing as I'm an atheist) but no way would I ever consider marrying one.
I would never date someone outside my religion, but I think it's low that those Jewish guys are willing to hook up outside their religion just for the sex!
wow...those guys were jerks.
@netsafire@xanga - My use of the term "sacrifice" implies that they wouldn't be using them to eat, but to give to the idol of their religion. Eating an animal for survival and sacrificing an animal to an idol are two different things.
"nobody said it was easy"
www.myglobalmatch.com
this blog is very interesting to me i must say. my boyfriend is jewish. i am filipino and catholic. we both have our traditions that we need to follow and our own cultures. i had mentioned that i had a jewish boyfriend and a co-worker of mine, an older lady, and she told me that he would never take our relationship seriously, because i'm not jewish. this upset me. but the more i mention that my boyfriend is jewish, the more i hear of this. yes, i am catholic, but i'm not too into it. i was born into it, i am baptised and that's about it. i never went to sunday school, i don't have my first communion, and i'm not confirmed. me not being jewish hasn't seemed to be an in issue yet. i have met his parents. they seem to like me. all of his friends like me (most of which are jewish because he's in a jewish fraternity).
i guess i'll just have to see what happens with him. your blog was very interesting though. and i've never heard the term shiksa before. that's interesting to me too. lol.
I love Jewish guys too!
And you're right, it's awful.
Like right now, I have a Jewish boy toying with me. And he's so adorable.
I think I may convert as well.
I am Jewish and my long-term boyfriend is Catholic. Neither of us are extremely devout in our faith and honestly speaking, don't know too much about it either. We both celebrate the major holidays, but none that are out of the ordinarily celebrated holidays. As of right now, we don't have conflicting emotions about this and don't see how this should stop us from marrying someday. We decided that if we were to have kids someday, we would most likely let them choose for themselves.
I was raised Catholic but am not religious, and I have a thing for staunch Protestants. It gets to be an issue. I have been dumped because "you need Jesus," because "you're Catholic" because "my mother doesn't approve" and my personal favorite, because "we don't go to the same church."
But, I don't let it get me down. It's really important that you don't convert just because you're into Jewish guys. You should convert because you're ready to marry a Jewish guy. It's commendable to convert in order to marry the love of your life (like Charlotte from Sex in the City for example) but talk to your man, and see if that is important to him. Convert for a specific person, not a whole ethnic group.Good luck!
up until recently I had only considered dating/marrying Christians, but I am having a change of heart because I realized there are a lot non-christian girls out there with great qualities who I can connect with really well.
btw, I do think it is important that you don't convert just because you want to marry someone who is jewish. I think you should only convert if you really do believe in the God(s) and beliefs of the religion, otherwise you're only pretending to be something you're not to get what you want...