A. Pinsker writes in the New York Press:
This summer’s latest flesh-hungry American Apparel ad features a black-hat Hassidic gentleman looking mysterious above some hot, gold-scripted Hebrew letters. Of course it triggered memories of Matisyahu, Y-love and last summer’s Australian post-orthodox “hipster Hassid” boyfriend. He led me to my own Jewish identity and granted me my first threesome—with an Israeli (formerly) ultra-conservative Jew, of course.
The personal is political, and I, a half-Jewish girl, had never dated a Jewish guy. I always said that since my dad’s Jewish, it’d be just too close to home. As a 27-year-old feminist who’s lived around the world, I’ve gone global and dated almost every other nationality, religion and race. Maybe in more happy, traditionally Oedipal homes, girls want to date someone like Dad. I was always more into blue-eyed blondes: Germans, Scandinavians (very creepily like my Ukrainian-born mother) or Asian men.
My mother married my New York Jewish dad most likely to spite her very old-school, anti-Semitic parents. I grew up agnostic, like both my parents: My Dad loves Christmas and my mom is into Zen. However, when my parents had a particularly bad fight, when all the usual insults weren’t quite enough, she’d use the most heinous: Jew.
