When I graduated from college, I moved to a city a few hours from my hometown that has a thriving Jewish population. I enjoy my heritage, but it has never been a top priority of mine to find a community of Jewish young adults my age. One of my best friends from high school, Naomi, is also Jewish, and, from the moment I unpacked my last box, she kept trying to set me up with her cousin who lived a short subway ride away. “He’s such a nice guy,” she kept insisting, “all he needs is somebody to give him a chance!”
To me, that was code for “my cousin has no idea how to talk to women, and I figured you’d be nice to him.” I wasn’t against going on a couple dates with some NJBs (“Nice Jewish Boys” for the uninitiated), but I just wanted to meet new people, and I definitely didn’t want to settle down. Jewish men are awesome, amazing, inspiring, sensational, but they had a tendency to put me in the marriage zone. I was generally not somebody they casually dated or hooked up with — something about the size of my tits and my responsible life choices meant that I was the person they could see bearing their children and buying a nice home with in the suburbs. And, being 22 and a commitmentphobe, I was Not Down.