The tradition of going abroad to make matches for eligible Jewish singles, in fact, goes back thousands of years to Eliezer, the servant of Abraham (there was a reason some of us suffered through Hebrew school), who traveled the ancient lands of the Bible in search of a wife for his master’s son Isaac. Thankfully, you don’t have to go by camel anymore to get a date. Just go online and tap the pools of other continents. International marriages for serious young Jews feeling parental pressures or the ticking of biological clocks are becoming more and more common, regardless of affiliation.
In May of 2003, Dina*, a single Jewish girl in Brooklyn was experiencing, as she calls it, a dating drought. She had been dating for months, her prospects dim. One day she received an e-mail via the Jewish dating site Frumster from a man in London. Daniel also had his fair share of dating woes. He had been dating since 1996, traveling to Manchester, Nice, Paris and Israel, looking to meet his match. Originally skeptical of Internet dating, he decided to try it out, and before going on a planned trip to New York, he went on Frumster and sent a message to Dina, who caught his eye. The two hit it off and eventually married.
According to Yael Buckstein, a matchmaker for the Jewish dating site SawYouAtSinai, while New York City and Jerusalem are the top destinations for eligible Jewish singles, but New York is the dating mecca, with many marriage-minded Jews flocking to the city from around the world to meet their matches. On SawYouAtSinai, members of the site choose matchmakers to find other Jews that meet their criteria. Buckstein has worked with members from countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, England and Holland, where the Jewish communities are small.
In Europe, it is common for young marriage-minded Jews to travel to other countries for dates because the distances between European countries are not far, explains Buckstein. “People from Europe are used to making that effort, and here they’re not.” In contrast, a Jewish single from Brooklyn would most likely not travel to Baltimore for a date—a concept that would be totally foreign to European Jewish singles.
Dating internationally is not for the faint of heart. Alexia Lyons, a 35-year-old party planner from London, has been looking for her match via Web sites like JDate and Frumster for over seven years, but to her disappointment many men tell her and her friends, “you sound great, but you’re overseas,” she says. “It takes commitment to date long distance, and the American men are scared of making that commitment to see where it can go.”
Lyons has traveled to Boston, Los Angeles and Dallas to meet men. She also knows many British girls who have moved to New York for this purpose, but for many like Lyons, it is hard to leave one’s job, family and community without a set plan.
Entering the New York Jewish dating scene can be a major culture shock for many of these young Jews. One difference that has caught many British singles by surprise is the idea of dating more than one person at once. Jeremy Ross, a 34-year-old Londoner who met his wife through SawYouAtSinai, had spent a great deal of time in the New York Jewish dating scene, and matchmakers often set him up with three or four people at once, which went against his upbringing and made him uncomfortable because in London it’s considered a big “no-no” to date more than one person at a time. But, “it’s a given that if you’re [in New York] for a short amount of time, you can [date] many at once,” he adds.
“There’s always been international dating, but the Internet opens up a lot of opportunities,” says Buckstein. Jonathan Strauss from New Jersey, who met his wife through Frumster, echoes this sentiment. Not long after he posted his photo online, he got a message from a girl from Basel, Switzerland, named Rachel. Jonathan and Rachel traveled back and forth for three months before getting engaged, and they got married four months later. “If a random [matchmaker] said some girl will come in from Switzerland… I would’ve said no,” says Strauss, “but because of our interaction through Frumster, I felt comfortable.”
Perhaps because of the phenomenon of international Jewish dating, organizations are beginning to cater to international crowds. A new dating site called JLove.com has distinguished itself by bridging the worldwide community through different languages that can be used on the site, such as Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch and Hebrew. And SawYouAtSinai’s annual singles retreat called Shabbat Nachamu, the weekend after the Jewish memorial day of Tisha B’Av, attracts hundreds of Jewish singles each year, including internationals who travel to the United States especially for this event.
Buckstein advises that singles should be open to opportunities that might not have occurred to them before, such as looking for a match when traveling somewhere for business or pleasure. And with the Internet and good deals on international flights, it is easier than ever. “Don’t close the door. You never know what might happen.”
*Names have been changed