It’s my first time at Friday Night Live in 15 months.
I had vowed I’d stop going upon turning 40 (May 28, 2006). This was my second time back.
"Could I see some ID?" asks a young friend.
I ask her about the flyers she’s handing out.
"I’d give you one but …" she says.
I no longer meet the ATID age group of 21-39.
At the end of the service, Danielle Berrin, Rob Eshman and his wife Rabbi Naomi Levy and others join the rabbi and cantor on the bima. They make hamotzi and sing a few songs.
Danielle can sing on key. I wish I could. I’m no Air Supply.
The dialogue begins half an hour after services.
When Rob sees me, he walks over.
I like that. I’m sick of having to chase people down to talk to them. It makes me seem needy.
"I recognize you from the Jewish Journal cover," says Rob.
"Why did you put that whacko on your cover?" I respond. "You’re just giving him credibility."
"See the letters we got?" says Rob.
"Yep."
"Some people can’t take a joke.
"How did your cover go over?"
"I’m huge with the homeless and the mentally ill. They’ve always loved me."
"They’re your consitutency.
"Hey, I was thinking today that you should write up your Jewish beliefs."
"I believe in hypocrisy!" I say as he walks away.
On to the discussion between two of the funniest men in the Jewish establishment.
Rob says that there is no story that his publication fears to pursue.
He’s practiced his lines and has most of us laughing.
"Rabbis are the rock stars of Jewish life," says Rob.
Eshman says that he used to sit a in a "row of dreck," Naomi’s description of the men stalking her at the Mishkon Tephilo Conservative shul in Venice.
The first time Rob introduced himself, she turned around and in the course of wishing him gut shabbos, accidentally sprayed him with herring.
He figured that if he still loved her after that then his feelings must be real.
Most of the comments from the audience say the Jewish Journal is a left-wing rag that pays insufficient attention to Islamic terrorism.
Rob and Rabbi Wolpe note that the paper has moved to the right since Rob took over.
It used to be left-wing and now it is center-left.
Throughout the dialogue, I find my eyes wandering over to a young woman displaying amazing cleavage. She keeps fruitlessly tugging her tight top over her breasts.
I love it when women dress inappropriately and then keep tugging their dresses down and their tops up.
Rob’s wife squirms in the back as he keeps taking it on the chin.
He’s asked which segment of Jewry gives his paper the most grief.
"Depends on the day," says Rob.
One bloke asks what the Jewish tradition has to say about publishing a newspaper.
Rabbi Wolpe notes that if one followed Jewish law, it would be impossible to publish any newspaper, even the most anodyne.
An acquaintance of mine, Joseph, says: "I see Mr. Ford is with us tonight. I do not approve of the way he makes his living. Why did you put him on the cover? Why not profile someone representative of the Jewish community?"
Rob responded that I embodied bloggers and that they raise important issues about responsible speech. Rob added that I had recently broken an important story about the mayor.
An acquaintance inquires of me afterwards: "Does it ever get to you?"
I reply: "It always gets to me. It’s just a matter of how much. Sometimes it bothers me a little and sometimes it bothers me a lot."
One of my mother’s favorite sayings was that criticism rolls off my father "like water off a duck’s back."
At the end of the program, the elegant Danielle Berrin introduces herself. She’s even more beautiful in person. She’ll be leading a discussion group among the ATID crowd after every Friday Night Live.
Rob writes in the latest Jewish Journal:
I know too many beautiful, brilliant single Jewish women in their 30s and 40s.
I hear too many stories about the lack of available Jewish men, the first dates who are too lost or too pathetic, the fights over marriage and children that end the relationship and send the woman, now a bit older, diving back into the ever more shallow pool.
But I don’t blame these women, of course not.
I blame rabbis.
That’s right.
They see the same lonely, sensational women I do: a slim, passionate Hollywood executive pushing 40 who simply, desperately, still seeks the elusive nice Jewish guy. A brilliant doctor with a runner’s body who, at 44, still can’t find "the one." A writer who asks me to keep my eye out for any Israelis new to town, because she figures she’s dated most of the native Jews. A marketing executive who has given up on finding the right Jewish man: "If it happens, it happens."
I ask her if she still wants children, and she says, "More than anything." And tears come to her eyes.
I talked with four of these women over the space of three days last week, all wondering if I had come across any single Jewish men. I mentioned a name. Here’s what happened: They had already dated the guy. I mentioned another name. Already dated him, too: At 41, he was not quite ready to settle down. A straight, eligible Jewish man in his 40s gets around this town faster than the weekend box office numbers.
Why do single women get so much more sympathy than single men?
Here are my thoughts:
* What single women want sounds more noble than the thing primarily on male minds.
* Women complain more. You’re not going to find as many as ready to shed tears over their lack of a spouse and children. That doesn’t mean their pain is any less real.
* Women who never marry don’t fall apart as often as never-married men. Therefore there are more impressive single women circa 40 than impressive single men.
* There are more 40-year old women than 40-year old men because men die more, particularly single men.
