A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist's Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl Read Online Free PDF
Author: van Wallach
subdue my maverick political and economic views around certain liberal friends, lest their eyes bug out in disbelief and they dump bowls of boiling matzoh ball soup on me.
On the Jewish front, I have the family menorah and the Union Prayer Book from Mission, and historical books on Texas Jews mentioning that hardy Prussian on the prairie, Rabbi Schwarz. Mrs. D gave me her wonderful antique edition of The Works of Flavius Josephus, inscribed with the date, December 30, 1916. Ornate formal photographs from the 1890s of my great-grandparents, Esther and Lehman Michelson, have pride of place in my apartment. The chai worn around my neck? Mom gave it to me for Hanukkah, 1979, four years before she died of cancer. While a Baptist preacher presided over my mother’s funeral and she was cremated, her older sister Charlotte, a fervent Baptist, placed her tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Gonzales, Texas, next to their parents’ graves. My son had the bar mitzvah I never had, and my brother and his son Tyler were among the honored guests. Whenever I’m in McAllen, I attend services at Temple Emanuel—where I feel most welcome. And I still say the Sh’ma every night, the way my mother taught me.
With my brother Cooper at my son’s bar mitzvah.
Chapter 2
Fear and Loathing on the Long Island Singles Scene
[In the summer of 1979, between my junior and senior years at Princeton University, I had a plum job as an intern feature writer for Newsday , a major daily based in Garden City, New York. After the summer I wrote this piece for the September 12, 1979 issue of The Daily Princetonian , for incoming freshmen. The anxiety in the piece about driving and gasoline reflected the gas crisis of that summer, which led to long lines at gas stations. My harebrained efforts to conserve gas and limit driving in my 1971 AMC Hornet put me into ridiculous situations. I’ve added bracketed explanatory notes to flesh out the last thirty-three years of life experience. Looking back, I’m surprised that I didn’t put any effort into Jewish dating events—but I did attend one at a church.]
Once school had ended last spring, but before my summer as a reporter on Long Island began, I immediately immersed myself in the cathode hot tub of American culture. On any evening in early June I hunkered down in front of Colonial Club’s TV, deliciously slack-jawed while advertisements played the summer hard sell, showering this winter shut-in with scenes of beach frolic, the open road and heavy, heavy socializing.
The message fit nicely with the brochures sent to the Newsday interns. TV said what to do, while the booklets and maps told me where to do it. (With whom was the problem.) Equipped with my first car, the Newsday social calendar and, of course, lots of gasoline, I was bound and determined to enjoy myself, even if I nearly killed myself in the process.
My main outlet for this urge was the Long Island singles scene. Various groups ran notices in Newsday , and, as a total stranger to such activities, I decided to investigate some of them. Beneath my thoughts then was an image of the mythical summer romance, a way of celebrating and sharing the first season of being truly independent.
As things transpired, Murphy’s Law—if something can go wrong, it will—became the organizing principle of my adventures, as the bubble of expectations shrank rapidly after continual prickings. Like a surfer who paddles farther and farther out to sea in search of the perfect wave, I wasted a lot of time looking for something that wasn’t there, while missing the lesser but more accessible possibilities for diversion. Once I shed the Mr. Goodbar mentality, things improved. There’s nothing wrong with watching the Yankees with neighbors.
So there were lessons to be learned, or relearned in some cases, over the summer. Mainly, I realized that in life, unlike sports, you don’t have to score to win. To make a deliberate search for the love of your
On the Jewish front, I have the family menorah and the Union Prayer Book from Mission, and historical books on Texas Jews mentioning that hardy Prussian on the prairie, Rabbi Schwarz. Mrs. D gave me her wonderful antique edition of The Works of Flavius Josephus, inscribed with the date, December 30, 1916. Ornate formal photographs from the 1890s of my great-grandparents, Esther and Lehman Michelson, have pride of place in my apartment. The chai worn around my neck? Mom gave it to me for Hanukkah, 1979, four years before she died of cancer. While a Baptist preacher presided over my mother’s funeral and she was cremated, her older sister Charlotte, a fervent Baptist, placed her tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Gonzales, Texas, next to their parents’ graves. My son had the bar mitzvah I never had, and my brother and his son Tyler were among the honored guests. Whenever I’m in McAllen, I attend services at Temple Emanuel—where I feel most welcome. And I still say the Sh’ma every night, the way my mother taught me.
With my brother Cooper at my son’s bar mitzvah.
Chapter 2
Fear and Loathing on the Long Island Singles Scene
[In the summer of 1979, between my junior and senior years at Princeton University, I had a plum job as an intern feature writer for Newsday , a major daily based in Garden City, New York. After the summer I wrote this piece for the September 12, 1979 issue of The Daily Princetonian , for incoming freshmen. The anxiety in the piece about driving and gasoline reflected the gas crisis of that summer, which led to long lines at gas stations. My harebrained efforts to conserve gas and limit driving in my 1971 AMC Hornet put me into ridiculous situations. I’ve added bracketed explanatory notes to flesh out the last thirty-three years of life experience. Looking back, I’m surprised that I didn’t put any effort into Jewish dating events—but I did attend one at a church.]
Once school had ended last spring, but before my summer as a reporter on Long Island began, I immediately immersed myself in the cathode hot tub of American culture. On any evening in early June I hunkered down in front of Colonial Club’s TV, deliciously slack-jawed while advertisements played the summer hard sell, showering this winter shut-in with scenes of beach frolic, the open road and heavy, heavy socializing.
The message fit nicely with the brochures sent to the Newsday interns. TV said what to do, while the booklets and maps told me where to do it. (With whom was the problem.) Equipped with my first car, the Newsday social calendar and, of course, lots of gasoline, I was bound and determined to enjoy myself, even if I nearly killed myself in the process.
My main outlet for this urge was the Long Island singles scene. Various groups ran notices in Newsday , and, as a total stranger to such activities, I decided to investigate some of them. Beneath my thoughts then was an image of the mythical summer romance, a way of celebrating and sharing the first season of being truly independent.
As things transpired, Murphy’s Law—if something can go wrong, it will—became the organizing principle of my adventures, as the bubble of expectations shrank rapidly after continual prickings. Like a surfer who paddles farther and farther out to sea in search of the perfect wave, I wasted a lot of time looking for something that wasn’t there, while missing the lesser but more accessible possibilities for diversion. Once I shed the Mr. Goodbar mentality, things improved. There’s nothing wrong with watching the Yankees with neighbors.
So there were lessons to be learned, or relearned in some cases, over the summer. Mainly, I realized that in life, unlike sports, you don’t have to score to win. To make a deliberate search for the love of your
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