Dating While Jewish, Since October 7th

While I have experienced antisemitism throughout my life, it never infected my dating life like it does now.

photo: Tibor Pápai/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay written by Joshua Namm, a longtime Jewish community professional.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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I almost never write about personal issues.

In fact, my last personal article was about an incident I experienced in August of 2023. It was published just four days before October 7th, and was about a woman I met on vacation who openly defended her uncle who had been a member of the Hitler Youth. (“Defending” is too kind, what she actually did was announce it proudly to me, and then she condescendingly defended him when I reacted like an actual human being.)

Before October 7th, most people would have assumed that kind of thing was a remnant of the not-so-distant past. When she defended her Nazi uncle, I was extremely angry, but not even remotely surprised. Blatant antisemitism is something that happened … sometimes.

After October 7th, we’ve seen antisemitism up close on a daily basis.

This essay, like that one, was written because people need to understand that antisemitism is real, takes many forms, and is not remotely just an abstract idea, but an increasingly common feature of everyday life for Jews. It is personal.

That was the case on a date I had in December.

I am an American and my date was British. So, because small talk is always part of a first meeting, I expected the usual “You guys think we all eat crumpets.” followed by something like, “Well, you guys think we’re all cowboys who surf and hang out with movie stars.” “You drink tea, we drink coffee.” “You drive on the left side, we drive on the right.” “You had an empire, we’re the most powerful country in history” And so forth.

It was actually a lot of that. Until it wasn’t.

There were some early hints. I mentioned that I like to make Israeli salad and was met with what struck me at the time as an angry look. The same was true of her very obviously negative reaction when I told her that I write about Jewish issues and antisemitism.

Yet, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I should know by now that my “Spidey sense” for identifying Jew-haters is very good. (For example, I knew there was something very dark about the Hitler Youth woman before she said a word about her Uncle Adolph, or Günter, or Hans — or whatever his name was.)

I have had that feeling multiple times in my life, and I’ve learned to trust it. That “feeling” is almost always correct. You can’t be paranoid, but you can learn to trust your instincts about real Jew haters.

That said, I know that the best solution to avoid what I am about to describe would be to exclusively date Jewish women. I also know about J-Date and J-Swipe. I know that there are Jewish singles events. I know that you can meet people by joining activity groups. I know that there are people in the community who set up shidduchim¹. I know that there are people at shul, Shabbat dinners, and synagogue events.

I have tried all of those things. And not once or twice, but for years. So, if you know a tallish, seriously Zionist, somewhat artsy, politically conservative, culturally hip, semi-traditional, but healthily anti-conformity woman, who loves live music — please let me know. And even then: I’m picky and have a right to be.

Not that the community has presented me with a lot of opportunities to even be picky. In my experience, if you are not a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or in some otherwise prestigious field, you aren’t at the top of anyone’s list of candidates. That may be the subject of another essay.

So, I have dated several non-Jewish women. I prefer to date Jews because being Jewish is so deeply rooted in me that I know by now it will likely become an issue with non-Jews. In fact, my last girlfriend was agnostic, was supportive of Jewish holidays, but felt absolutely no connection to anything Jewish. Which obviously makes sense.

There were multiple other issues, but she was in no obvious ways antisemitic. When we broke up though, she still cited my “revulsion” at eating pork, or mixing meat and dairy, as reasons for the breakup. (That despite me making it clear on dozens of occasions, I had no problem with her eating either, and was definitely never “revolted” by any of it. I just don’t do it.)

I have had other relationships where me being Jewish was cited as the reason for a breakup. That may not be antisemitism as much as the tendency of some people to grasp at any straw to justify a breakup.

Then there are the actual antisemites. Which brings me back to the date.

Toward what ended up being the end of the night (for good reason), I mentioned again that I am Jewish. Which is something she absolutely already knew before that night (it’s prominent on all of my dating profiles), and it had come up many times during the date, but this last time it really seemed to finally dawn on here that I am, unwaveringly, Jewish.

One of those Jews.

That is when reality hit me, again, like a Sandy Koufax fastball … to the face.

She began the Jew-hater portion of the evening by explaining to me that she is half Indian (from India). Okay, fine. Lots of Indians live in England. But, like Ginsu knives, I knew that there was more. Much, much more.

That’s when she announced to me, with extreme self-righteous fanfare, that she was “also Iranian and a Muslim.”

“Okay,” I thought, “you’re so experienced at bad dates, awkward situations, and unpredictable weirdness, you will (being a Southern Californian) ride this wave of weirdness out until you can go home and write a column about this. Which is also due tomorrow.”

Then she began spewing every predictable trope that we have all heard relentlessly since October 7th. Starting with “Israelis murder babies in Gaza,” “Palestine is an ancient nation,” “Palestinians are an ancient people, while Jews arrived in 1948.” Blah, blah, blah.

I invoked October 7th several times. Even a slightly decent person would at least sputter a few insincere platitudes about our losses and suffering. More typical among Jew-haters, though, is the reaction I received: Each time I mentioned it, she showed no emotion, no recognition of what had happened, and in fact, didn’t respond at all. Not once.

Not being willing to admit that October 7th even happened is soulless, inhuman, and indicates that the person is totally comfortable with pure evil.

As proof that Jews are the actual evil doers, she claimed that her (Iranian) grandmother, told her many stories about “Palestine.” Of course those stories were all about how a bunch of Europeans, with no connection at all to the land, came in and “stole it” from the poor, poor Arabs — who all meant well, and were living in peace with everyone, including the Jews who were inexplicably already there, until (queue ominous music) the Zionists showed up.

At that point I felt like I had idiotically stumbled into a date with Rashida Tlaib (G-d forbid).

This was followed by her claim that Jews are never attacked in America, or Europe, and that Muslims are most commonly victims of hate crimes.

Me being me, I cited the latest FBI statistics (which demonstrate the opposite). She only sneered. That was met with the challenge of “Are you saying that my grandmother was lying?” I pointed out that her grandmother was Persian, was not an Arab, not “Palestinian,” and had no firsthand knowledge of any of this.

She asked again. I replied succinctly: “Yes, I am accusing your grandmother of being a liar.”

Liars lie.

It’s ironic in these situations the implication is always that we only defend Israel because we’re Jewish, not because we live this every day, it’s our homeland, and therefore know what we are talking about, and so are in possession of the facts. We react emotionally, while the antisemites are the rational “experts,” not only on Israel, but on Judaism itself.

Meanwhile some woman in Iran living most of her life under the Shah is presented as an authority on Israeli history.

When that didn’t work, her go-to authority became — wait for it — the BBC. Apparently, she saw a BBC documentary (yes, one documentary) which bestowed a level of expertise on her that everyone else can only dream of.

The unceasingly anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Western BBC.

All this while insisting that I “need to be educated.” This from a woman who then proceeded to read a Wikipedia entry to me from her phone. Wikipedia! From her phone! In front of me!

So, not the most intelligent camel in the herd.

But, seriously, what other minority would be lectured in this way?

Then came a comment that I get semi-regularly from these people: “If this is so important to you, why don’t you go there and fight for the Israelis.” The backwards logic of “You aren’t in Israel fighting, so you must be wrong about anything you say about Israel.” coming from a supposed actress in California, with no direct ties to the Arab world, is insane — yet typical.

It is the “dual loyalty” trope, and she was going to cite every cliché her little, hate-addled mind could think of.

She repeatedly returned to “Israel doesn’t need to bomb innocent people.” So, I cited the historically low civilian-to-combatant kill rate that the IDF risked Jewish lives to achieve. She clearly had never heard that (or most of anything I said that night) before, and she clearly just believed that it was some kind of Jewish propaganda.

I kept telling her to check everything I said on her own (you know, because she likes “research” so much). But not on Wikipedia, the BBC, or most other mainstream sources.

It became clear that she had been taught that the Jews launched an attack against “Palestinians” in 1948 while never having been provoked in any way. She claimed to not believe that Israel was attacked by Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq that year. Which explains why she got even more unhinged when I tried to explain that Arabs never referred to themselves as “Palestinians” until recently.

Then I gave her a brief history of our history in the region. She vacillated between increased anger and rage. She also insisted that Islam never conquered the region through warfare, not in the seventh century, not at any time since, and that Muslims never convert at the point of sword. Islam, she said, “only teaches peace.”

Hahahahaha.

If people like this seem unbelievably ignorant, remember that the Islamic doctrine of “taqiyya” (Arabic for lying) is very real.

Then, for some reason, she asked me again if her grandmother was lying. Again, I said: “Yes, she absolutely was.” She wanted her grandmother to be correct, not out of love for her grandmother, but out of hatred for us.

The bottom line is we are dealing with an ideology that is cult-like, whose adherents willingly choose to ignore facts, truth, and reality. Yet, this was the second date I’ve had in two months where my Jewishness was an issue. The other was a non-Muslim American (this one worked in the music business) who emphatically let me know the day after the date that there would be no second date because of my “views on the Palestinians.”

Which was odd being as I said nothing about “Palestinians” during the date. I did say that October 7th was a nightmare for our people, rising antisemitism concerns me, Israel has a right to defend itself, and that I am a proud Zionist. She also didn’t want to hear it: Jew-hatred über alles (German for “above everything”).

The last time I dated regularly was six years ago. While I have experienced antisemitism throughout my life, it never infected my dating life like it does now. This leads me to believe that, while anecdotal, things are definitely getting worse. People are clearly more willing to openly express anti-Jewish views because it is becoming socially acceptable. That alone should be a warning to all of us.

Worse, in their circles, not only is there no push-back, but now it’s even considered a virtue to express anti-Jewish views.

We need to be courageous (which most of us are), but we also need to be aware that we are Jews and the world will never let us forget it.

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1. Hebrew for the process of matchmaking and arranged marriage