As I tuned out my mother’s unhelpful advice, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why did I elect to go on my Birthright Israel trip with my then-boyfriend when I could have met so many eligible Zionist Jews as a single traveler? What’s the point of having three older brothers if they won’t set me up with their friends? Why aren’t Jewish leaders doing more to find me a boyfriend-I mean, ensure Jewish continuity? Oy, there goes the majority of the New York City dating pool, I thought. “Don’t go out with narcissists, those are the worst people.” Don’t go out with people who show you that they are selfish and only talk about themselves,” my mother, Navah, has warned me. “Don’t go out with people who have substance abuse problems. She desperately wants grandchildren, but not at the cost of a schmuck for a son-in-law. This greatly concerns my mother, who at my age was pregnant with her second child. The reverberating tick from my biological clock is a relentless reminder that, at the ripe old age of 28, I have yet to be fruitful and multiply. Finding my bashert is undoubtedly harder.
The Talmud says that matchmaking is as difficult for God as the parting of the Red Sea.