I'm not Jewish. Can I use jdate.com?

In My Humble Opinion
1

You may or may not be aware of my adventures in online dating.

Well, the pool of available and interesting women living in the Cleveland area on match.com isn’t exactly growing by leaps and bounds, and it seems like there’s an inverse correlation between the quality of the profile, and the chances I have of getting a reply.

During a conversation at a family gathering Saturday, I mentioned my plight. An aunt and a cousin both said "Have you tried Jdate?

“Uhh … remember, I’m not really Jewish.”

You see, Dad’s Jewish (Conservative, if that matters at all), and Mom is Lutheran. Dad wasn’t too enthusiastic about raising me as a Jew, so it was off to church, Sunday school, and confirmation classes.

I’m not a very good Lutheran. When I do go to church, it’s usually a Unitarian-Universalist congregation. I’m lost on the Trinity, and I question the role of Jesus as “son of God.”

Back home in Buffalo, the Jewish community is small (about 20,000 adherents), and interfaith marriage is fairly common. Here in Cleveland, there’s over 80,000 Jews, and interfaith dating and marriage is supposedly much less common; the potential dating pool is much larger.

Hell, I look “Jewish,”, however that is, I have a Jewish last name, and I live in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. I don’t have a problem with raising my children, if I have any, as Jewish. Reform Judiasm is probably a closer match rto my beliefs than the Lutheraniam of the Missouri Synod flavor, considing that my own personal spiritual beliefs lean more towards a purer form of monotheism than Christianity with Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and all that.

So, are there any rules that would prohibit me from signing up on jdate.com, if I give fair warning that I come from the goyim side of a Jewish family? Would it be worth it?

2

Checking out the registration screen under religion, it seems all the choices are varying degrees of “Jewishness” except for the choice “Will tell you later” so I would assume you would have to be a Jew to join.

3

The people who are on there are looking for other Jewish people, however; given all of the qualifiers in your OP, you’re probably OK but you should provide full disclosure. Reforms now consider you Jewish if your father is a Jew and you practice the religion. You may have to convert to win over the future lady of your dreams but that doesn’t seem like a nonstarter for you. Good luck.

Haj

4

You’ve got the small detail of your mum not being Jewish, other than that you’re as Jewish as me, and I was able to fill out the profile (to see if I could, not because I’m interested) quite handly.

The Jewish communities I’ve always been exposed to have been very easy going. As long as you show up looking Jewish no-one’s going to mention anything and the form for the site lets you be open about not practicing the religion so it’s unlikely that you’d wind up with any women that would care about how Jewish you really are responing to your personal.

I suppose it’s all down to wether you’d feel comfortable about lying by ommission and not mentioning the lack of a Jewish mother. When a friend of my family died in a car accident earlier this year a Jewish relative on his mothers side was invented so he could be buried beside his dad in a Jewish cemetary and everyone politely avoided questioning, so I doubt anyone would really care.

5

I’m one of those single Cleveland women…but I’m out of your age range, I fear. I do have lots of single female aquaintances in the 20-40 range, so if jdate doesn’t work out for you, maybe I can fulfill my dream of being a matchmaker and find you a date!

6

I don’t think anyone is going to care. I tried it briefly, after much internal protestations (no pun intended) that even though I am technically Jewish, I didn’t want to limit myself because I couldn’t care less about whether I date Jewish guys. But the pool of prospects there seemed better than other places I’d seen, so I decided to give it a shot.

Most of the people there were Jewish, but about as Jewish as I am, i.e. not very. (Except for the Orthodox guy in Haifa who was separated with 6 kids and 30 years older than me, but well, he had other issues.) And then I got an e-mail from one quite hilarious Japanese guy, joking that “hey, I was so psyched when I saw a site called Jdate, because hey, finally, something for us Japanese people!” I did e-mail him back, but never heard from him after that. I suspect there are at least a few others on the site in my situation; Jewish, and don’t want to restrict themselves to Jewish guys, but don’t want to rule them out, either. Heck, whenever I’ve written personals for myself, I usually don’t even mention it.

I really don’t think anyone is going to care, or at least the pool of people you’d be interested in dating isn’t going to care. And I really don’t think the site administration is going to care. Just be upfront about it. Good luck!

7

I’ve come across a few ads from women on JDate announcing up front they were not Jewish, but looking for a Jewish guy, for whatever reason. My single Jewish female friends tell me they’ve seen the same thing among the guys. So you won’t be the only one, but I agree with everyone who’s said you should disclose up front.

Is this something you truly care about, or are you just trying to cast a wider net?

8

How does your mom’s side of the family feel about your kids being raised Jewish? Are you sure that you’re okay with it?

If you’ve got one Jewish parent, and really are willing to let your kids be raised Jewish (no baptisms, no communions, just circumcisions and bar mitzvahs) go for it.

9

Really, it’s casting a wider net.

Re: circumcision - it’s all kosher meat below the waistline. :smiley:

10

Really, it’s casting a wider net.

Re: circumcision - it’s all kosher meat below the waistline. ;j