Internet Dating for Dummy Jews like Myself

1. It's not personal. Really - when I make contact with someone else or vice versa, we are just two cards on a screen at first. Rejection simply means I or my opposite number decided that two random cards out of thousands don't match.
2. Corollary to the above: We all have a sense of humour and a love of life (or some other generic meaningless trait). You need to stand out to get noticed. For instance, you can tell a joke to prove your humour, or perhaps tell something quirky or interesting about yourself that isn't on the "traits" list.
3. Pictures are not a negotiable item. They increase exponentially the chance of you getting noticed. Conversely, items with no pictures will be skipped over quite often. Few of us like "blind dates", so don't expect people to take that chance on the net.
4. Corollary to the above (3): In your picture, you should smile friendly-like. Nothing is more off-putting than a bland serial-killer style stare at the camera. Also, choose your picture wisely - not too artificial looking, but still nice.
5. When you address someone, do so directly - in the second person ("you"). Don't write some general statement about how nice marriage is or send holiday greetings. We simple folk prefer direct communication over oblique hints.
6. If you don't like someone, have the decency to say so. There are few things more agonizing than sending a message to someone and never receiving even a formal response.

If anyone has anything to add to this list, I'm all ears.

Torn, Part II: On Being a Failure

Last year, I started a journal to express my anxieties and dillemas as a religious Jew learning in a university. Now that the new academic year is coming around, I have decided to try and renew this journal with the hope of expanding on the points I made in the introductory post.

I made mention in the introduction of my conversation with my RM (teacher) in yeshiva. There I complained of adjustment difficulties and keeping myself busy all the time. Finding hevrutas was very difficult, and I just did not succeed in filling up every seder with activity. Even more frustrating was what I felt to be a lag in my learning abilities. Try though I might, I rarely succeeded in finishing all the sources in the mar'e mekomot, and I always felt that everyone else understood everything and could keep up, while I was forever behind. My RM wisely suggested that I start studying some courses at University, a path that I would begin to take a year later.

Still, my failure to be able to last more than a year really smarted. My attempts to study in the BIU kollel were similiarly doomed to failure. In the easy class I was bored; in the challenging classes I couldn't make any headway. In the end, I just gave up, a veritable reject. It turns out I'm not the only one. From what I have heard, yeshiva students who decide to go to university rather than stay on were seen for many years, and saw themselves, as failures. Even though this perception is beginning to change, the amount of prepapration of yeshiva students for university is still lacking. Nothing resembling the corpus of the 'Torah U-Madda' ethos in America exists here.

So here I am, a guy who couldn't cut it in yeshiva now plowing his way through the dangerous minefield of Academic Judaism (more on that in the next post). The real question is, am I a failure, a grade-B Jew? Am I doomed to be considered inferior in two worlds - the yehsivish for not being able to learn, and in the academic for being frum?

If anyone has any answers, I'm all ears.

To Rectify an Historic Injustice (on Rav Goren)

As we approach the Day of Judgement, I would like to take this opportunity to adress a major injustice done to one of the major Rabbinic thinkers and activists in the State of Israel - Rabbi Shlomo Goronchik (Goren) (1918-1994), Chief Rabbi of the IDF from 1948-1967; of Tel Aviv from 1968-1972; and of the State of Israel from 1972-1983. Rav Goren was a highly prolific and original thinker, both in terms of halakha and general thought. He almost singlehandedly established the IDF Chief Rabbinate and helped turn it into an institution that positively affected not just religious Jews but all Jews in the army (indeed, the IDF Rabbinate's authority declined when he left).

His contribution to the subject of halakha and war, in all its aspects, is so large that it is simply impossible to mention the subject of war and religious Jewish thought without mentioning him. A highly public figure, he aroused considerable controversy (such as when he suggested blowing up the Muslim buildings on the Temple Mount) and demonstrated halakhic backbone - for instance, when he was matir the agunot of the Israeli sailors who died at sea, such as the members of the submarine Dakar. He left behind an impressive literary corpus (link includes only some his post-humously published writings) on virtually every subject regarding Jewish law and thought.

Yet, a review of the scholarly literature published in Israel on religious-Zionist thought finds almost no reference to Rav Goren. Thinkers and authorities from all ends of the religious spectrum - from the Rav Kook school to the Kibbutz Hadati and beyond, has been given due scholarly treatment. Relatively marginal figures (for their time) such as Rav Hayim Hirschenzon, as well as oppositional thinkers such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Eliezer Goldman have entire books and collections of essays analyzing their work and thought.

And Rav Goren? A footnote here, a short mention there, if we're lucky enough. True, he has been the subject of a popular biography and a few, very recent, articles by Dr. Aryeh Edrei of Tel Aviv University. A PhD Thesis is presently being written in Bar Ilan on the IDF Chief Rabbinate that will undoubtably discuss his contribution to the same. Still, even if we were to dig deep for scholarship and study of Rav Goren, we would still come up with a mere fraction of the attention given to others. A man who dedicated his life to the Jewish people, who was publicly involved in so many fields of thought and halakha, now seems doomed to endure the ultimate insult - that of being ignored and ultimately forgotten. I believe that those of us in the field of Jewish Studies have a moral responsibility to ensure that this does not happen. At the very least, we owe him the courtesy of acknowledgement.