Several Jewish-related items appeared over the weekend in The New York Times:

Shidduch vetting in the Orthodox world has gotten out of control, writes Tamar Snyder in the Wall Street Journal:

Just as the economy is headed to recession, the shidduch system is in crisis mode. Or so the rabbis moan, noting the surplus of women eager to marry and the corresponding shortfall in the quality and quantity of available Jewish men. It’s not that there are more Orthodox women than men out there; experts instead attribute the shortage to the broader sociological trend of postponing marriage, which works to the disadvantage of women looking for spouses their own age or just a few years older. Men who are 30 will date women as young as 18 and may turn their noses up at dating any woman past the age of 25. The 20% or 30% of women who don’t get hitched right away begin to worry they’ll be left out in the cold for good.

Lisa Hostein’s son Ezra (left), with his buddy Alec, boards the bus to summer camp.

Anyone who’s ever sent a child off to overnight camp for the first time knows exactly how I’m feeling. Oddly, the pit in my stomach only developed on Day 2. I was a bit teary during Ezra’s bus sendoff to the B’nai B’rith Perlman Camp in the Poconos but it was all so overwhelming, the reality of the situation didn’t sink in. (Plus I had to keep it together for my 7-year-old, Sam, who I knew was going to miss his brother terribly.)

I’ve shipped him off for a few days before – to his grandparents home or to a sleepover at a friend’s. But sending my 10-year-old to camp feels even harder than sending a child off to college; that may sound naive, but at least then you can talk or email or text-message as frequently as you want.
Now camps – and us parents – are struggling with the balance between letting camp be the traditional ‘away’ experience and relying on the Internet age, with online photos and email correspondence to stay a little more connected.

This balance itself is obviously a hot topic, as these articles in the Boston Globe and the Washington Post illustrate.

Yes, the online photos help, as do the occasional ‘Ezra sightings” as reported by his older cousins who are counselors there.

But it’s the silence that aches. His bedroom is eerily quiet, his infectious laugh doesn’t resonate throughout the house; I even miss the usual no-nos: whining, shouting and indoor ball-playing.

But I was the one who pushed for this. My husband was much more skeptical. Having spent the best summers of my life as a camper and counselor, I know what camp can do to help develop confidence and independence. And I knew it had to be a Jewish camp. The latest studies only confirm what I had long ago learned first-hand: Jewish camp is a pivotal experience in nurturing Jewish identity. Of course, only when I was much older did I realize how formative my many summers at Camp Young Judaea in New Hampshire had been. Although Ezra goes to Jewish day school and lives in a much richer Jewish environment than I did in my youth, I knew nothing compared with the joy of Shabbat, the connection with Israeli counselors and the Jewish spirit that permeates Jewish summer camp.

Even as that silence grows increasingly louder each day, I know we did the right thing sending our eldest off for a month. Although maybe we did it too soon?

Glynis Ann Ritchie has a touching essay in The New York Times’ style section about how she, a starry-eyed American Jewish girl, fell for a hunky Israeli soldier on a Birthright Israel trip. Though the Israeli turns out to be part of the parade of callous men that Ritchie says “opened up my chest, scooped out the contents and tossed them into the trash,” he does leave her with something positive and long-lasting: a healthy self-image.

Jon Stewart worries that gay marriage in California will lead to children being raised with two Jewish mothers:

Someone please let the Daily Show know that there is no need to worry (at least for now)… as noted earlier this week … the ceremony in question was an intermarriage.

The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles reports on a lesbian couple’s long road to the chupah:

Amid a crush of photographers, a handful of largely drowned-out protesters, and hundreds of supporters tossing rose petals, Diane Olson and Robin Tyler stood under a chuppah on the Beverly Hills Courthouse steps on Monday evening to become one of the first lesbian couples to legally marry in California.

The couple had been among the original plaintiffs to sue the state for discrimination in the lawsuit that eventually led the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. In recognition of that, the County of Los Angeles arranged for the Olson and Tyler to receive their marriage license at 5:01 Monday, just after the courthouse closed for regular business, ahead of the hundreds of same-gender couples who would flood the courthouse the next day.

The moment was an electrical mix of the spiritual, personal and political.

In the Huffington Post last week, Tyler wrote about the challenges posed not only by marrying her same-sex partner, but also by the fact that her partner is not Jewish:

[A] reporter for a mainstream Jewish newspaper asked me last week[,] “What do you think of intermarriage?” I replied: “If women want to marry men, it’s perfectly okay with me!” But when the reporter phoned to interview me, she said she meant “interfaith marriage.”

At least one Jewish organization is psyched by the California Supreme Court ruling to allow same-sex marriages. The secular Sholem Community and its vegvayzer (that’s Yiddish for leader, apparently), Hershl Hartman, is planning to officiate for same-sex couples. The full release follows:

Los Angeles — With the California ban now lifted on gay marriages, The Sholem Community, a progressive, secular Jewish organization, is set to provide support to both Jewish and intercultural gay and lesbian couples who wish to marry.

The Sholem Community’s education director Hershl Hartman, a Secular Jewish Leader (madrikh in Hebrew, vegvayzer in Yiddish) who is certified to perform marriages, welcomed the Court’s ruling. “I am thrilled that the California Supreme Court acted in the interest of equality, justice, and humanity by extending a fundamental civil right,” said Hartman.
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The Jewish Transcript in Seattle profiles Joel Blatt, a twice-married consultant who invented a new dating site with the goal of meeting a nice Jewish girl. Plus, click here to listen to Blatt’s interview with ABC News Radio.

Here’s the opening of the Transcript article:

Getting by — and dating — with a little help from your friends may have just gotten easier, thanks to a local entrepreneur’s spin on matchmaking.

In March, fed up with the online dating world, Joel Blatt created Sparkbliss.com, a Web site that he describes as “LinkedIn, for dating.”

Blatt, 42, who works for a Bellevue consulting firm, has been married twice — both times to non-Jewish women. While Sparkbliss is not specifically a Jewish dating site, Blatt said he did create it with the goal of meeting a Jewish woman.

“I’ve tried JDate, I’ve tried other online dating sites, and they don’t work very well,” Blatt said. “I couldn’t take anymore of those awful dates. I wanted to meet the right people.”

The trouble with most online dating sites, he contends, is simple: profiles can be viewed — and judged — based on search criteria entered by site users, but those profiles are not always true representations of the singles on the site. Blatt said that he wanted that possibility eliminated from the equation.

June will be exciting for Jewish arts on both coasts.

San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum opens June 8th. JTA’s Sue Fishkoff has already written about its unique mission, and here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about architect Daniel Liebeskind’s visit and thoughts on his latest architectural masterpiece.

Meanwhile, in New York City, many Jewish museums are hosting exhibits and concerts, from “Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered,” (at the Jewish Museum through Aug. 3) to “Spirit of Sepharad: From Casbah to Caliphate, a 500 Year Journey” at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on June 25. See the New York Times’ take on these and other New York Jewish arts events this summer

Abe gives the speech at this year’s Y.U. graduation… (more…)