I Want to be Your Shiksa . . .

Not sure if this rises to the level of the Sunday Styles Article That Makes You Want to Leave New York (like other Sunday Styles articles in the past — see below for more on that), but it comes close. This time it’s non-Jews using the Jewish online dating site JDate to score hot Jewish singles:

[D.] Coppola, 22, a real estate salesman from Brooklyn, is looking for a confident, intelligent and open-minded woman who shares his love of walks in the park, sushi and home cooking. He had some luck meeting women through Internet dating sites like AmericanSingles.com, but they were rarely good matches. Then he found what he now considers an online gold mine — JDate, a Web site that bills itself as “the largest Jewish singles network.”

Although he is Catholic by birth and upbringing, Mr. Coppola has long preferred to date Jewish women. “If a girl walks by in a bar, and I’m attracted to her, it always turns out she’s Jewish,” he said. “My friends say I have Jew-dar. I thought I’d go with the odds.”

Mr. Coppola is one of a growing number of gentiles who have lately signed on to JDate, which was established in 1997 as a service for bringing Jews together. The number of non-Jews on the site is difficult to estimate: 50,000 of its 600,000 members identify themselves as religiously “unaffiliated,” but they include Jewish members who don’t want to identify themselves as “secular” or with any particular sect. But interviews with people who use JDate suggest that gentiles have become an increasingly visible presence in recent years (full disclosure: this reporter is one of them) on a site that was designed to promote mating within the tribe.

The article goes on to note that generally, one’s reasons for using JDate “seem to come down to the old idea of the nice Jewish boy or girl”:

Agnes Mercado, a Catholic administrative assistant from West Hollywood, had never even met a Jew until she immigrated from the Philippines 15 years ago. But in October, a little over a year after the death of her Jewish boyfriend of 13 years, she placed an ad on JDate that read, “I am a gentile looking for my mensch, are you out there? I want to be your shiksa and your partner for life.” Ms. Mercado, 40, said that her late boyfriend had been “a kind soul” and that she believes his Jewish upbringing gave him a good character. She has just started seeing a 44-year-old Jewish man she met through the site, and is willing to convert if things get serious. “If I have kids, I would want to raise them Jewish,” she said. “It’s so ancient and full of traditions that make sense to me.”

. . .

Traditional stereotypes are alive and well, according to Robin Gorman Newman, the author of “How to Meet a Mensch in New York” (City & Company, 1995) and a dating coach with several non-Jewish clients who say they prefer to date Jews. “A lot of girls think that Jewish guys know how to treat women, so they want one,” she said. “On the flip side, non-Jewish guys think that Jewish women will take charge and make their lives easier.”

I’ve heard intermarriage equated to something along the lines of “carrying out what Hitler failed to do.” Some sound similar warnings with this particular JDate phenomenon:

To some Jews, of course, the issue of intermarriage is not at all funny. The most recent data available, from the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001, show that 47 percent of Jews who married after 1996 chose a non-Jewish spouse, an increase of 13 percent from 1970. If the trend continues unabated, some fear, it could lead to the end of the American Jewish community.

Jonathan D. Sarna, the author of “American Judaism: A History” (Yale University Press, 2004) and a professor of the subject at Brandeis University, argues that while gentiles who marry Jews may embrace Jewish traditions and pass them on to their children, such commitment is unlikely to last more than a generation in a mixed family. “Jews are much more in danger of being loved to death than persecuted to death,” he said.

And although some Jews object to non-Jews using J-Date (“Get your own site!”), the goyim seem unperturbed:

Mr. Coppola, the real estate salesman, said no one has ever admonished him for being on a site created to encourage Jews to meet and marry other Jews. Still, he does not advertise his background in his written profile.

Because he is not Jewish, he lets women contact him. “I respond, ‘You probably figured out by now I’m not Jewish,'” he said, adding that his status as a gentile has not seemed to be a problem: he has gone on about one date a week since he joined JDate a year ago, and has had several monthlong relationships.

But Mr. Coppola concedes that he does sometimes wonder if he is trying to become a member of a club that does not want him. “I feel a rabbi is going to knock down my door because I feel I’m doing a disservice to Jewish culture,” he said.

Now, on that category of Sunday Styles Article That Makes You Want to Leave New York. I remember two big ones. The first was “Where the Girls Are, and the Commute’s Easy” (blog post, abstract link), in which Manhattanites did the reverse Bridge and Tunnel commute to look for mates in Williamsburg — “earthy” artists who were also “Carhartt Guys” who (working from memory here) will cook you tenderloin for breakfast. Ugh.

The other article, “Partying Like it’s 1999,” (reprinted story, abstract link) dealt with unemployed Wall Streeters who supplemented generous severance packages with unemployment checks, using them to party on Monday nights until 4. They called themselves the “405 Club,” after the $405 weekly unemployment checks. I know at least one lifelong New Yorker who pointed to these two articles in particular as part of why she wanted to leave!