Matchmaker, Matchmaker
On Netflix's Jewish Matchmaking
And we’re back!
I hope you’re all doing well. This weekend Neil and I rented a house on the Chesapeake Bay for a couple of days. I’m always surprised at how restorative things like “getting out of town,” “sitting outside,” and “not being at my computer or glued to my phone” are. But I am grateful to you for being at your computer or phone to read this newsletter!
Housekeeping notes: On Monday, paid subscribers will get June’s ET Ask Home. This month’s subject/interviewee is a reporter I really admire and I am very glad that she’s agreed to do this.
As always, if there is something you would like to see more or less of in this newsletter, please let me know. Only paid subscribers can comment on posts (talk around here is cheap, but not free), but all of you are welcome to email me with your thoughts. I just ask that you keep it polite and constructive.
And now onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
Former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his ANO party are clashing with the umbrella European-level liberal party to which ANO belongs because Babis is moving ever-closer to Europe’s far-right figures.
Indian Prime Minister Nardendra Modi inaugurated a new parliamentary building. The opposition boycotted the ceremony, which they said Modi was rendering a political event by insisting on overseeing the inauguration himself.
Ahead of Kyiv Day, the city was hit by what Ukrainian officials described as the largest drone attack since the start of Russia’s war.
India and China kicked out almost all of each other’s journalists.
For Foreign Policy, I wrote about India, Russia, the US, competing visions of global leadership, and how Russia’s war in Ukraine is also a threat to a multipolar world order.
MY VIEWS ON…
…Jewish Matchmaking on Netflix!
Early last month, Netflix launched Jewish Matchmaking, a follow on from its Indian Matchmaking (which I have not watched but have read). I’m not sure what I was expecting. But I both enjoyed it and was very frustrated by it.
The best part of the show, by far, is the matchmaker, Aleeza Ben Shalom, who is gregarious and opinionated and patient. She has fun little sayings (“if in doubt, go out!” “date ‘em ‘til you hate ‘em!””DEW date”). She meets people where they are. She is extremely clear that she’s working with a range of Jews and Jewish experiences. At one point, Dani, a young woman who, in adulthood, became less religious says that she became “less Jewish.” “Well,” the matchmaker gently replies, “less observant.”
What I do wish, though, is that the show had explored why the individuals participating in it chose to do so, and why they wanted to be with someone who is Jewish.
There is one couple on the show which is made up of individuals who would have otherwise used a matchmaker, which is to say, one traditionally Orthodox couple. But everyone else is making a choice and dating in a way that they probably wouldn’t normally. Which is fine! But I would have liked to hear them explain that choice.
Also, it is sort of presented as obvious. Of course they do! They’re on Jewish matchmaking! But given that two thirds of American Jews who got married in the last ten years got married to someone who was not Jewish, it’s perhaps worth treating the decision to only date Jewish people as not the norm, or at least not a given.
I write intermarriage and American Jewishness a lot in my book because it’s a big part of American Jewish history and because my husband is not Jewish. Some people who are (or at least presented themselves as) uncomfortable with intermarriage responded to my book in a negative, personal way, implying that I think that my marriage is superior, or that I can’t understand why a person would want to be with someone who is also Jewish. Neither of these things is true. I do understand why religious belief or tradition or cultural familiarity or any number of other things would compel someone to want to be with another Jewish person.
But it isn’t the norm for American Jews anymore. That’s worth acknowledging. And also worth acknowledging is the question: When you say you want someone with “Jewish values”—what does that mean to you?
For example, Dani: why is it important to you to marry a Jewish person? And when David, your first match, told you that he normally respects women’s time and implied that the issue here is that you’re less observant, why didn’t you say (or maybe you did and the show didn’t show it), “So treating somebody who’s less observant with less respect—is that what being Jewish means to you?”
(David ends this conversation by asking her if they could make out.)
This brings me to a digression on one of the matchmaker’s client’s, Ori. Ori is Israeli and lives with his parents in Los Angeles and only wants to date other Israelis. However, he also prefers blue-eyed blondes. Ori himself is not a blue-eyed blonde. What is Ori internalizing here? Also, at one point, the matchmaker suggested to him that he think not just of himself, but of the other person on the date, and it cut away to his interview and he said that the comment really opened his eyes. At this point, I texted a friend to ask if this was the worst person ever born. This was, of course, hyperbole. I watch Vanderpump Rules, which means Ori isn’t even the worst person I’ve seen on television this week. But it did strike me as bizarre that a grown man—one who, two episodes earlier, had told his grandmother that he was ready for marriage—admitted on television that a request to think about someone other than himself while on a date was an eye-opening comment.
I also found it uncomfortable that, though the show takes places across the United States and in Israel, nobody discusses their feelings on Israel or Zionism. In fairness, sort of, the show is careful not to air any other kind of political discussion. But given current events in Israel, and also given how large Israel looms in the American Jewish imagination, the absence of any discussion was striking.
Maybe this is all too much to ask for a show about dating. But the show shows Jews from all over the country and in Israel. It takes time to define terms the audience might not have been familiar with. For the sake of both its not Jewish and Jewish audience members, I wish it could have shown this, too.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
Last week I went to see a show by a klezmer group I learned about through my Yiddish teacher. It was fun! I used to be more hesitant to try new things or check out new scenes, but now I am less so, which is a nice thing to realize about yourself. Anyway the group is called Mamaliga and they are on tour. You can listen to their latest album here.
Israel Justice Minister Yariv Levin, in an apparent justification of his plan to give the government effective control over the judiciary, said that judges need to understand that Jews “don’t want to live with Arabs.”
I thought this piece by Amira Hass on the relevance of Primo Levi’s words to what is happening in Israel today was very moving.
Testimony began in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue killer.
Pro-book ban Florida mom is sorry for promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The Biden administration managed to walk a very fine line on the definition of antisemitism in its national antisemitism strategy…
…but what will the strategy actually do?
Some rightwing Jews launched “Jews Against Soros.” I guess what gets me is the idea that conservative Jewish people saying antisemitic tropes are fine so long as they don’t like their targets is somehow new.
This op-Ed on the Israeli right borrowing from their American counterparts—and giving them cover—is worth reading.
That’s it for now! Hope to see you back here soon.
-ET
"Bridging the Boxes: Hacker Matchmaking in Upstate New York, The Open Source Way" by opensourceway is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.