The guilt that a Jewish mother imposes on her own children can knot up your stomach worse than fasting on Yom Kippur. And nothing brings out that motherly nag like the institution of marriage, specifically their matronly desire for Jew on Jew marriage–the holiest of holies.
Luckily there’s now Yenta, a location based dating app for young Jewish singles, straight or gay. Upon starting up it tells you to “find your Jewboo.” It’s like Jdate on wheels, or grindr in synagogue. Tara Palmeri from The New York Post put the app to the test on Thursday. However, as a gay Jew with an iPhone, who’s ready to meet the culturally Jewish husband of his mother’s dreams, we feel better qualified to assess the neuroses that happen when two Jews connect. The app doesn’t expressly promise that it will get you hitched, but we’ve decided to include that as a factor since it’s the endgame for all Jewish singles–or so their yentas hope.
The sign up process for Yenta is really easy. Post a picture of yourself and choose a username and you’re ready to go. The app also asks you to answer three things: “What’s your shtick?,” “What will impress my mother?,” and to pick a position on a sliding scale of how Jewish you really are.
Other similar apps, like Grindr or Scruff, ask users to submit a wealth of details like age, height, weight, location, interests, what they’re looking for, and even in some cases, what category of “gay” they are (i.e. bears, twinks, muscle, etc.) Part of Yenta’s problem is the lack of information that’s displayed on a user’s profile. Most users skipped answering the only two real questions, so the only viewable details on most profiles are a username, a picture, and how Jewish they are. Not sure that looking at a gallery of punams is the best way to find a guy to bring under the chupah.
We downloaded the app yesterday and spent a day flirting around. The app is pretty buggy, often saying that it couldn’t find our location or that users were not available (to be fair, yesterday was launch day). This reporter answered that our shtick was “whiskey” and that “being any part Jewish at all” would be the thing that could impress our mom. We moved the “Jew meter” as close to “Just Jewish” as possible–sorry, mom.
Overnight we were finally messaged! Our Jewish prince had arrived and he was beardy, young looking, and only two miles away! “Matt” is his username which made us wonder if he’s a Matt Rubenstein or Matt Goldstein, or possibly something even more Jew-y. He even called us “cute” in his introductory message. But uh-oh, big snag. On his “mom question,” Matt admits that he’s a gentile and “maternal guilt doesn’t work” on him. Oh to be fetishized, what a disappointment!
Users should have to show their bar mitzvah certificates to get an account or else this Jews-only country club is going to be rendered completely useless.