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Singles

Don’t panic!

Keep on looking, says Esther

Sabra love

I\’ve been considering giving up on Israeli men, at least the purebred Israeli men, the sabras. What\’s painful is that I say this as someone who has made my home in Jerusalem, and I am hesitant to make harsh generalizations about Israeli bachelors, especially as Israel celebrates its 60th.

Status symbol

Status used to be about social hierarchy — whether you made a good living or were born into the right family or had achieved prominence in your community. But these days, if you say the word \”status\” to Generation Single-and-Facebooking, you may be understood very differently

Honey, you’re home!

Stop me if you\’ve heard this one before.

Student gets into good university. Student obtains esteemed degree. Graduate flounders in unsteady job market; must confront the dreaded possibility of moving back in with her parents, Ima and Abba, whom I dearly love — and come college, was all too ready to leave.

Accountability

As usual, it started out with questions.

\”Where do you work? What do you do? Have you been on any trips lately?\”

I was all for talking about myself, what I do, where I\’ve been, where I\’m going. But then it got personal.

Goodbye, my almost

In an earlier column I talked about the differences between an \”almost\” and a \”beshert,\” and how I will always have a special place in my heart for that \”almost\” who helped me to find myself and the person that I\’m supposed to be with. What I realize now is that as time goes by, my \”almost,\” just like nearly every memory of old friendships, is starting to fade in importance.

Just embrace the madness

There\’s a time in every relationship when its strength gets tested. For God and Abraham, it was that whole sacrifice your son bit. For Esther and Ahasuerus, it
was the \”please don\’t kill me and everyone I know\” thing. For Mr. and Mrs. Zebra, it was are you coming on this cruise with me or do you want to stand in the rain all day and argue about it? For many couples, the not-so-shining moment is the NCAA basketball tournament

Attack of ‘The Mothers’

I know how to handle men, but their mothers? An entirely different challenge. Until I moved to Los Angeles, I had never been \”hit on\” by women. Now women twice, thrice, even four times my age (I call them mothers-on-the-prowl) approach me nearly every Shabbat. Sometimes, they attack in the middle of the Amidah.\n

Fighting words

It\’s been three months since we called it a wrap. We\’d become different people than we were and outgrew the priorities we used to share. To say I\’ll miss his sarcastic jabs, one-ups or whoops of victory when he opens a single paycheck worth half my yearly salary — that would be a stretch. But the competition did push us to improve our craft, to excel, to outdo ourselves, along with each other.

Leave the house

So, hopefully, despite the fact that I\’m not suffocatingly lonely or in a relationship laced with toxic levels of resentment, I still have a fertile patch of pain from which insights can grow, like that brilliant one I had earlier about leaving the house. What a relief.

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More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.