The Jewish dating scene is in crisis. It's stagnant, outdated and, for many of the people stuck in it, it's utterly demoralising. As another Pesach rolls around and you sit at the Seder table wondering why you/your grown-up kid is still single, consider this: Jewish dating is the 11th plague.
It's a particular crisis for the growing band of Jews who are still single in their thirties and forties. They're single because they're holding out for someone Jewish but they're not meeting anyone, even when common sense dictates that they ought to have been snapped up years ago.
Thirtysomething Melanie* is one such person, displaying a list of personal attributes so impressive any Jewish mother would share her secret chicken-soup recipe to secure her as a daughter-in-law. Intelligent? Tick! Educated? Tick! Sociable? Tick! Successful? Tick! She owns her home and she's active in her community. Melanie has also been single for years, despite trying every Jewish dating mechanism going.
Fed up, Melanie is clear in her assessment of the Jewish dating scene: "It's a dysfunctional product market where demand and supply never shall meet."
Let's be clear: some are doing their best to help and they deserve praise and encouragement for their efforts. A handful of synagogues, party planners and matchmakers are trying to bring single Jews together. But the level of effort put in by these kosher Cilla Blacks is largely inversely proportional to the outcome, especially for the older crowd.
All of the men are too short and not terribly attractive
Melanie recalls: "I've had rebbetzens on the phone setting me up on a date 24 hours after they've given birth! But all of this expended energy does not seem to yield results." Feelings echoed by Lewis, a successful and sociable fortysomething: "I'm never short of matchmakers. It's good that people want to help. But not many of them can actually help. It's hard to meet someone."
So where's the missing matchmaker link?
If dating is a numbers game, then Jewish dating is not just stuffed, but actively stuffing itself up even further. The pool of eligible, single Jews in the UK is already small. But the nature of Jewish dating events and websites is making it even smaller.
What's on offer doesn't attract the full spread of single Jews. Jewish dating events are viewed by many as old-fashioned and pressured. I know this having spoken to a slew of singles, both for this article and anecdotally over the years.
The scene doesn't fully serve today's diverse and modern cross-communal, often unaffiliated, often older Jewish singles. Mainstream dating events hold little appeal for Jews who are used to going to warehouse parties, or alternative art events, or who last went to shul under duress in the '90s, or who basically don't want to socialise in a pressured atmosphere.
For Isabelle, 38, the dream of marrying under a chupah wasn't enough motivation to keep trudging through. Now happily settled with a non-Jewish partner, she says: "I always assumed I'd marry Jewish. I was part of the scene for years - I was still on JDate when I met my boyfriend - but I never met anybody on my level. The events on offer are very old-fashioned and cringeworthy.
The last one I went to made me sad and I wasn't even single at the time. There are plenty of 'cool' Jews but they don't go to these events."
For Isabelle, a culturally engaged party-animal and woman-of-the-world, "being thrown into a room to stand around with a load of singles" was never going to work. But even some observant single Jews find dating events too dry. Gary, 36, goes to shul every Shabbat but says: "Friday-night dinners are a bit stiff for me, although I do enjoy a good roast chicken."
This is bad news for those plucky regulars turning up to events time and time again and seeing the same crowd of people. There's little fresh meat to be had, because the fresh meat would rather be somewhere else. This is very sad for the plucky regulars, as some of them are delightful - I made friends with a few of them when I was single and attended events myself.
Having said that, it's time for the harsh bit. Some Jewish singles aren't just put off by the nature of dating events: they're also put off by what they see as a lack of quality on offer.
Emma, 36, tried her luck at a couple of Friday-night dinners - which she describes as "heinous meat markets where I felt vulnerable" – as well as at a synagogue party.
She doesn't mince her words when she recalls: "The men are 3/10 while the girls are 8-9/10. The men are too short and not attractive. Where are all the tall, eligible, single Jewish men?"
Emma's blunt words might seem cruel but when you look at how many perennially single Jews there are, they're not words that the community can afford to ignore.
Quality control is absent at events and online and the ensuing dissatisfaction works both ways - the men aren't always delighted with what they find either.
Ben is a tall fortysomething acquaintance. A former regular on the scene, he once told me: "Events don't work. JDate doesn't work. But you go to events and go on the internet to put yourself in the right frame of mind - to open yourself up to the possibility of meeting someone."
After years of both, he met a non-Jewish woman. She converted for him and they married soon after.
Others feel unwelcome before setting foot through the door. Oliver, 39, would love to meet someone Jewish but he feels excluded from the scene. Oliver says: "I've got a complex relationship with my cultural identity, I don't fit into the usual mould and I find quite a few of the girls in it quite snobby. I've given up hope really."
A word on internet dating. For many, it's as dispiriting as the events scene. As one matchmaker once said to me: "JDate is dead." Not quite: I met my spectacular boyfriend on JDate, but that was after years of horror on the site: he was a shining diamond in a sea of plankton.
One glimmer of hope has been offered by the likes of Wandering Jews and Jewdas, which aren't dating-focused at all but do offer up alternative unaffiliated parties and dinners, mostly for a younger crowd. However, with a scene splitting up into opposing strains - nice yet staid and politically wacky - problems remain. There are singles who aren't attracted to either of those factions.
What's needed is something that would attract as many people as possible - facilitating true choice by upping both the quantity and the quality on offer. You don't have a true, helpful Jewish singles scene until everyone who's out there looking has met everyone else in the same situation.
Lewis reflects: "It's not down to the scene. It's down to me." But that's only partly true. Until the Jewish dating scene can truly welcome and serve everyone who needs it, there will be singles at the Seder table for a long time to come.
