My Male Yenta
By Anne Miller
I have my very own personal yenta, and he is a stocky middle aged married man named Ron.
I met Ron soon after I relocated from Washington, D.C. to San Antonio, TX, for a journalism job. Ron is a respected member of the Jewish community, and a mensch by trade - the director of Jewish Family and Children's Services, run out of the Jewish Campus, but serving mostly poor non-Jews, of which there are many in this city.
JFCS got new digs recently, and I went out there a few months ago to check it out and interview Ron, who gave me the grand tour. In the massive kitchen, he hesitantly started explaining kashrut unsure whether I understood why there were double stoves and sinks. So I told him. And the floodgates opened. Next thing I know, he's asking where on the Reform to Chabad scale I fall, and can he have the appropriate rabbi call me.
About a week later I get a call.
"This is your rabbi referral service," Ron says.
He'll have the rabbi call me. And by the way, he knows this nice young boy who is on some Jewish board, Johnny, and can he pass my work number on to him?
Why not?
So Johnny calls me.
We meet for coffee. He is nice. He has dark brown hair and wears a T-shirt. That I don't remember much else about him should say enough.
There was another call, and another date with Brian at a Starbucks in August. He was short. He had just moved back home after college in Kansas, and knew no one. I could relate. I thought I might see him again, just to hang out, no big deal. He never called. I lost his number, so we're even, I guess.
I always found the pretext of the blind date...weird. Toss two random people together and hope they are just the right folks at the right place at the right time? I have never gotten anything, not friendship, not a peck on the cheek, from a blind date. It's like the lottery, this throwing together of people.
My parents met via blind date, and still I'm skeptical. But I don't want to give the impression that I am unappreciative of Ron's efforts.
There are only 10,000 Jews here, in the country's eighth largest metropolis, the smallest Jews to goyim ratio in a major U.S. city. Meeting anyone here, much less a nice Jewish boy, is tough (although, where is it ever easy to meet a nice Jewish boy?).
And I know what happened on Freaks and Geeks last Saturday night.
Then the other day, another a call. Ron tells me about a public service video he's making. And by the way, well, it's not like he wants to be yenta, and he really wasn't looking for this, ("But?" I say) and he doesn't do this type of thing ("But?") but, well, the director of the video just so happens to be a very nice Jewish boy - from a Washington suburb in Virginia - and his only goal in life is to meet a nice Jewish girl, and would I mind if he called me?
I'm beginning to feel like a real frontierswoman. One of those places where there's 100 guys for every girl, where she who drools and can't differentiate between the plow and the butter churn is still desirable because she's got the right ... plumbing.
But I like filmmakers, leftovers from a high school crush.
I'm still waiting to meet him.
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