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Shallow Men And The Women Who Suffer (The Male Lust For The Supermodel Perfect Mate Alert)
Jerusalem Post ^ | Rabbi Shmueley Boteach

Posted on 03/18/2006 7:03:00 PM PST by goldstategop

The miracle of Purim owes much to a superficial, womanizing male who set about dating as many women as possible to find the one that was the most beautiful. Ahasuerus is like so many shallow men today who reduce women to nothing but a slim figure and a pretty face. But in the end, the story of Esther makes it clear that the secretly Jewish queen was chosen not for her looks, but because she "found grace and favor" in the eyes of all who beheld her. There was a womanly dignity, a sublime feminine majesty, to Esther that the rest of the harem lacked. They were empty suits, packaging only, without substance or personality. They were the kind of women who attract attention with low-cut blouses rather than high intelligence, short skirts rather than a lofty spirit. But Esther is a woman possessed both of outer and inner beauty, a heroine who exhibits uncommon wisdom, courage and dedication to the helpless. In short, she is a woman of outstanding character and her story is that of the triumph not only of the Jews over their enemies, but also of a woman's ability to win over a man with her brains rather than her bust.

How tragic, therefore, that Jewish men today have adopted the dating mores of Ahasuerus. And I'm not just talking about secular Jewish men whom we might expect to have adopted less lofty criteria in their choice of a mate. Rather, I am speaking especially of Orthodox Jewish men who have become so obsessed with the three modern virtues of a real woman - large chest, long legs, slim figure - that heart, mind, even the sparkle of her eyes, count for almost nothing.

I once served as matchmaker-in-chief for JDate. But I now find matchmaking nauseating thanks to the dispiriting superficiality of today's Jewish men. I now know that the countless men who tell me how desperate they are to find a really nice girl are lying through their teeth because what they really mean is a woman who looks like a model. At my weekly Sabbath table, where I host many singles, I watch as the men immediately dismiss even the most interesting women with the warmest hearts if they lack a bombshell body.

If she's short, she's out, and if she's overweight, well, that's the kiss of death. I'll set up men with women who I know to be attractive and charming, only to have the guy call me back the next day and complain of a lack of chemistry, by which he always means, "She wasn't pretty enough." The poor woman never had a chance. Before she opened her mouth, her body did her in.

BUT WHY would we expect anything different? Superficial people seek superficial qualities, and men today are about as deep as a crack in the sidewalk. They have been given one criterion for success, money, and they use that money as a commodity to purchase a woman's chief commodity, her physical beauty. Today's religious men are trained to appreciate little else.

I know a 20-year-old Jewish girl who developed a dangerous eating disorder because her very religious parents told her that unless she lost weight the type of yeshiva student they wanted her to marry would not take her out.

But weren't Jewish men, especially Orthodox ones, supposed to be different? The nation that gave the world's Solomon's Ode to a Woman of Valor, where a woman's God-fearing qualities are what make her beautiful, have betrayed that ideal utterly. If you are a woman in the Jewish singles scene who isn't stunningly attractive, you're going to wait a long time to get married. And once you're married, you better keep your looks up, because the women who are going to be praying with you in the ladies' section spend five hours in the gym for every hour they spend in the synagogue. They're not fools. They know that their husbands are trained to appreciate muscle tone rather than piety. And don't have more than two children, even though we need as many Jewish babies as possible, because kids will make your figure go to hell and your breasts droop almost as far.

NEVER believed that I would witness a time when even marriage-minded, Orthodox men would become womanizers, giving themselves the latitude to date as many women as possible so that they can find "the best." In yeshiva I was taught one did not date a woman the way one shopped for a car. Rather, you focused on one woman completely and tried to develop a soulful connection with her without worrying about what else might be out there.

Recently, I had a young rabbinical student of marriageable age at my home. He told me he had already dated 40 girls and had not found what he was looking for. I was stunned. "Forty nice, religious girls, and not one of them was good enough for you?"

But anyone familiar with the increasingly toxic shidduch system among the ultra-Orthodox knows that what many young men are looking for is anathema to Jewish values, namely, looks, money and pedigree. Find all three and you have hit the jackpot. Find only one, or even two, and you have "to settle."

Now, no doubt, in the secular world marrying money and marrying into an important family are also important. But when religious Jews marry for materialistic and ego-driven values, they degrade a glorious spiritual tradition.

It is high time that rabbis started giving sermons from the pulpit exhorting single men in the congregation to be gentlemen and reward women for developing the traits that Judaism truly values like compassion, wisdom and goodness. While physical attraction is always important in marriage - both for men and for women - Jewish leaders must begin inspiring future husbands to judge their wives' attractiveness by considerations beyond flesh alone. For if we fail, we'll continue seeing Jewish women feeling permanently insecure about their "imperfect bodies" rather than taking pride in their generous spirits.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: 10; boderek; dating; genderwars; jerusalempost; knuckledraggers; perfectmate; rabbishmuley; rabbishmuleyboteach; shmuleyboteach; supernodelwoman; whyanalertinheadline
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To: Mulder
Oooh, you said tits. I'm telling your mother.
41 posted on 03/18/2006 7:40:03 PM PST by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: elcid1970

The media ordained it. In renaissance times the more robust women were the idea of perfection (just check out the paintings) - not an anorexic, oversized boob chick to be found.
Think about THAT carefully!


42 posted on 03/18/2006 7:40:30 PM PST by derllak
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To: Gondring
The only hope a woman has is finding a man who knows enough about evolutionary psychology to despise his own genetic programming.

Truer words, never written.

43 posted on 03/18/2006 7:41:35 PM PST by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: goldstategop

The good Rabbi is right on the target. His only sins (in this article) are sins of ommission. I would be very surprised if this dominance of superficial dating criteria was solely a male attribute. Just as surely as this phenomenon exists outside the Jewish community, it exists in females as well as males.

This is a particularly American problem, and a particularly 21st century American problem at that. I don't know what the answer is, but the problem is more than evident.


44 posted on 03/18/2006 7:41:36 PM PST by Melas (What!? Read or learn something? Why would anyone do that, when they can just go on being stupid)
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To: Gondring
"If you just sit in front of a scary computer 10 hours a day waiting for cindy crawford + brain to come waltzing [in] and invite you to an evening of skydiving and sex, you're going to be dissapointed." --Connie Deighan

OK, I'll settle for a little less then [sadly putting away the parachute].

45 posted on 03/18/2006 7:41:47 PM PST by KarlInOhio (The tree of liberty is getting awfully parched.)
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To: Dog Gone
Now hey, I went on a date once with this guy - and out of the blue, he does a double-take, looks at me & says: "wow, you really are intelligent, aren't you" - like I should be dumb?

No, I'm not Jewish. Yes, I didn't bother seeing him again.

It's not male hating to state the obvious sometimes - just take a look at your television set, the magazines off the shelf. It's what sells. (and yeah, I know, there are men who aren't like that, Thank God!)
46 posted on 03/18/2006 7:42:45 PM PST by Smarti Pants (This American Patriot will never forget !!! Give me Liberty or Give Me Death!)
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To: Dashing Dasher

RWOS ping


47 posted on 03/18/2006 7:42:47 PM PST by Feiny (If you smoke after sex, you are doing it too fast.)
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To: goldstategop
Few women are interested in marrying a hunk. They're more astute judges of people's deportment and character.

If I'd gotten a dollar for every girl who had dumped me in earlier years, only to come back after realizing they guy she'd gone for was a narcissistic loser...well, then maybe I'd have had enough dollars to afford all the kids of jerks I would have been raising for them!

48 posted on 03/18/2006 7:43:09 PM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Gondring
I dated one that was a little prettier than the one in that picture, but she looked very similar and she wasn't silicone at all.
This is California, and I'm sure there is no lack of women who feel the need for enhancement though.

I think what will give me the biggest laughs here in California regarding the strange things some people do to themselves are all the old heavy metal hippies who tattooed their heads in the hair line and now they are going bald.
Nothing like an old guy with "bad Ass" tattooed on their bald head while needing Depends.
49 posted on 03/18/2006 7:45:59 PM PST by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: Pukin Dog
Men are not looking for a dream-woman, just someone who doesn't come with their own zip-code, who can cook, knows when to shut up, and a few other things. Women no longer think that most of that is necessary anymore

It's not that it's not necessary, maybe it's just that your sales pitch needs work.

50 posted on 03/18/2006 7:48:24 PM PST by HairOfTheDog (Hobbit Hole knives for soldiers! www.freeper.the-hobbit-hole.net)
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To: LongElegantLegs
I am agreeing here as well, most women do not know what they want after all the BS on the TV, but one thing that has changed is the way society has made men subservient to women, the entire gay culture is popular because women like it that way, or so they think.
These days, the last 30 years, men can only make women happy by doing what ever they say, no one is happy now.
51 posted on 03/18/2006 7:49:12 PM PST by Roverman2K
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To: Gondring

Wow, that sounds more than just a little bitter.


52 posted on 03/18/2006 7:49:26 PM PST by Melas (What!? Read or learn something? Why would anyone do that, when they can just go on being stupid)
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To: HairOfTheDog
That's not a sales pitch as I would never consider marriage, even to a dream-woman. Its just the truth about what men would consider accepting in a woman, but is no longer available.
53 posted on 03/18/2006 7:50:26 PM PST by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: feinswinesuksass
If only I could clone myself...then all manly men would be happy.

Well God bless you for a wonderful great idea. :)

54 posted on 03/18/2006 7:50:37 PM PST by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: goldstategop
But I now find matchmaking nauseating thanks to the dispiriting superficiality of today's Jewish men. I now know that the countless men who tell me how desperate they are to find a really nice girl are lying through their teeth because what they really mean is a woman who looks like a model.

The same thing can easily be said for women, though to be fair they place much more value on money and less on looks, relative to men.

55 posted on 03/18/2006 7:51:01 PM PST by JohnnyZ (Happy New Year! Breed like dogs!)
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To: Pukin Dog

Well, you get what you're willing to put into it.


56 posted on 03/18/2006 7:51:35 PM PST by HairOfTheDog (Hobbit Hole knives for soldiers! www.freeper.the-hobbit-hole.net)
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To: DoughtyOne
Take a look at what young women are signing off on these days. Where in the past people urged them to do things that weren't right, today's women have minds of their own, and most guys are powerless to tell them anything.,

The easiest way to get babes is to "pretend" that you are a liberal. Bookstores in college towns are the best venue to apply this technique, bars in college towns are a close second. Anyway, pick out a girl that you are attracted to, try to determine if she is a, "free-thinking modern woman", then make your move. Oh, you will have study up on current liberal issues and B.S., but I guarantee that it will work 95% of the time!

57 posted on 03/18/2006 7:54:13 PM PST by ExtremeUnction
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To: goldstategop
Few women are interested in marrying a hunk. They're more astute judges of people's deportment and character.

Then how do all those hot chicks end up on the back of motorcycles with drugged out maggot invested boyfriends.

Is it the vibration of the bike or what?

58 posted on 03/18/2006 7:55:07 PM PST by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: derllak

We're still digging for the truth. What set of synapses moved the media to prescribe the tiny-waisted boob chick? I'm not looking for conflict here. Just which primal instinct created the impossibly figured Barbie doll?

But I do believe that young women of normal body weight have the best chance of attracting mates.

But just who defines normal body weight?

(Hint: Ann Coulter [sorry no photos!] once referred to the large number of `hippie chick pie wagons' in our midst, especially among Democrats.)


59 posted on 03/18/2006 7:55:15 PM PST by elcid1970
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To: All
The sad thing is there are plenty of women who have the same attitude. They want a guy who has the body of a Chippendale and anyone less is shunned.
60 posted on 03/18/2006 7:55:18 PM PST by COEXERJ145 (Real Leaders Base Their Decisions on Their Convictions. Wannabes Base Decisions on the Latest Poll.)
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