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Going Gentile into That Good Night (via Nerve)
May 22nd, 2025 by Jessica Gold Haralson
Some of Tony’s best friends are Jews. His most significant boyfriend was too, he says. So when his Jewish friend Jessica said, “You can date all the WASPs you want, but you’re not going to find someone who’ll talk about his feelings or be willing to analyze them,” Tony, a New Yorker of non-Jewish Italian descent, found himself posting a profile on JDate.com, “the premier Jewish singles community on the Net.”
No avid J-suitor will be shocked to find Tony’s profile (which makes clear that he’s not Jewish) among the “BlueeyedJew”s and “BagelBoy”s who are both members of the site and members of the tribe. Non-Jews in search of Jews — gay and straight, male and female — have become commonplace on JDate. The percentage of JDate’s 650,000 members identifying themselves as religiously “unaffiliated” is now 13% and rising. (Caveat: that designation also includes Jews who don’t align themselves with a particular Jewish movement, e.g. Reform or Conservative.) JDate has not gone so far as to add check-boxes for religions other than Jewish — it’d be philosophically tricky — but non-Jews have reached at least one measure of critical mass: the site has added the option of designating oneself “Willing to convert.” At this point, it’s entirely possible that JDate could bring together two Gentiles. (”It’s kismet! We’re both into film noir, snowboarding and Jews.”)
JDate spokesperson Gail Laguna says she’s heard no complaints about non-Jews using the site and that no serious thought has been given to excluding them. (More conservative Jewish dating sites do.) “The site is designed for Jewish singles — there’s no way to make that clearer,” she says. “We just want to make sure everyone has the tools they need to represent themselves openly and honestly.”
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