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December 8, 2000/Kislev 11, 5761, Vol. 53, No.11
Romance spins on web
Couples click online at jewish dating sites
RAHEL MUSLEAH
Special to Jewish News
Sheryl and Harold Grossman would probably never have met if it weren't for the Internet.
Three years ago, while Sheryl was teaching Hebrew school in Greensboro, N.C., she showed her high school students how to use Jewish Web sites. For fun, she filled out a profile on a matchmaking site with her background - but didn't send it in. Without her knowledge, someone at the school submitted it to the site.
Cut to Atlanta, where Harold frequently chatted online, but rarely to anyone Jewish. When his father suggested he try to meet "a nice Jewish girl," Harold went to jewishcommunity.com, found Sheryl's profile and put her on his Buddy List.
Three days later, at 2 a.m., both Harold and Sheryl were online at the same time. Harold sent Sheryl an instant message and soon after, they switched to the phone. They talked until 9:15 a.m.
"We fell in love with each other's personality," says Harold, a 29-year-old computer programmer. "I told her I loved her two days later, before I had even seen her picture. We just clicked."
Ten days later, he drove to meet her.
"When I first held his hand," recalls Sheryl, "I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. There was something so calm about him that made the world stand still."
Harold proposed the next day, while they were looking at rings in a local mall.
"He pulled me over to a bench and sat me down," says Sheryl, now 23. "He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I didn't hesitate at all."
They were married a year later, in June 1998, and live in Virginia Beach, Va.
"I'm a shy person at heart," says Harold, a Conservative Jew. "I belonged to a Jewish singles group, but it was hard to go to functions, introduce myself to someone and say, 'Hi, my name is Harold.' On the Internet I didn't tense up because we weren't meeting face to face. I could be myself."
For the Grossmans and many others, the Internet has become the techie version of the old-fashioned matchmaker.
Jewish chat rooms and cybermatch services have enabled Jewish singles of all ages, denominations and marital status to search the globe for their basherte (soul mate) - or at least to alleviate loneliness and find friendship.
Harold Grossman's Web romance inspired his father, Stewart, a widower, to try the same chat room. There, he met Shelley Shiavo, who had been widowed six years previously at the age of 43. For two weeks, they talked online from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., transferring soon to the phone. After dating for a year between New York and Georgia, they also married in June 1998.
"There was almost an immediate connection online," Shelley Grossman recalls. "When we met, I realized he was the opposite of someone I would have been attracted to otherwise. He was over six feet and heavy set. But I felt I had met my basherte."
The Jewish ingredient adds a level of trust: "Going to a Jewish site puts certain parameters around the people you meet," says Shelley, an elementary school teacher.
Still, when she met Stewart at the airport in New York, she was aware of the risks. She gave two friends Stewart's screen name, full name, address and phone number and told them if she didn't call by 4 p.m., to call the police.
Unfortunately, her story does not end happily. Eight months after they married, Stewart died suddenly on his way to work, probably of an aneurysm.
Though she is still dealing with his death, Grossman is determined not to remain alone.
"I went online again to keep my mind occupied. I figured if it could happen once, it could happen again - but I didn't really believe it would. I went into the same room again - jewishcommunity.com-and found someone who lives three miles away, also a widower."
The Grossmans' intergenerational stories typify the way Web romances unfold. Whether in a chat room or through a dating service, long Internet conversations usually give way to the phone and then to in-person meetings.
"I read a description of Internet relationships as 'getting to know someone from the inside out,' " says Shelly Grossman. "You get to know a person from the inside before you know the superficial things, like what they look like and how much they weigh."
For younger singles, the draw of the Internet often starts out more playfully, and the common bonds may be less painful.
Einat Loskovitz, 25, found her husband, Neal, 28, in America Online's Jewish chat room.
"We were both bored and decided to log on," says the sociology student who was then living in Boston. "I wasn't looking to meet anyone because I thought they were a bunch of freaks online. Everyone in the room had left and we were alone. We found we had a lot in common."
They were married in January in Israel, where she was born, and now live in his hometown of Memphis, Tenn.
The anonymity of the Internet may be part of its danger, but it is also part of its appeal. Terry Klein, an Orthodox woman who divorced after 23 years of marriage, says her status while she was separated limited her participation in some events sponsored by Orthodox organizations that required her to have a get (Jewish divorce). An ad in a Jewish newspaper for jewishpersonals.com prompted her curiosity. She met David, 56 and twice divorced, on another site, Shidduch.com.
"There were people from Israel, Chicago, Massachusetts. When I found someone from Westchester, I wrote and said, 'I'm glad I found someone from the other side of the Hudson, not the other side of world.' Something clicked. He was lonely. I was lonely. We met a few weeks later and have been dating since.
"I was in relationship that ended badly," Terry says. "I was scared I wouldn't meet anyone at all. I got my confidence back. I don't know if I found a soul mate, but I did find a friend."
Not everyone finds happiness on the Web. Moshe, 45, an Israeli-born singer who has never been married, has met six women through the Internet, but does not compare it favorably with other dating methods.
"The women I met were very far from the fantasy I had created from their profiles. In some cases there was complete incompatibility. I felt as if I were cheated, or as if I had cheated myself by creating a fantasy. ... I tried the Internet, but this is not where salvation is going to come from."
Lauren Hirsch, 36, divorced with two children, is similarly discouraged.
"You talk to people in a bubble," she says. "You read their words and put your own emphasis on them. You don't have to reveal what you look like or how you dress. That's all invisible for a while. I felt I had more insight than from a personals ad because we had long conversations about life. I realized I was wrong. Reality can sock you in the face, like the fact that I have two kids or that someone lives in another town. On the Net, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is."
There are advantages, admits Lauren, who has dated seven men she met on the Net.
"You can be online when the kids are sleeping. You have privacy. You don't have to venture out of the house. There's instant feedback. I found it very exciting at first. It's a fun way to ease back into dating. You can play a little and experiment, and nobody gets hurt. But that's not a permanent way to meet."
On one occasion, Lauren says, she and some friends made up their profiles. But, says Shelly Grossman, "People can invent profiles, but I don't know how they can sustain it. Phoniness comes through, and sincerity comes through."
"My objective is to seriously meet someone, so why lie?" asks Jonathan from Boston, a 36-year-old divorced father of a 5-year-old, and a practicing Conservative Jew. "For the most part, people do represent who they are."
It's safer to reveal who you are on the Internet because "no one is sitting across the table and judging you," says Jonathan, adding that some women were reluctant to meet even after communicating for two months; the phone relationship was so wonderful, they were afraid of the next step.
Geography is a critical advantage, Jonathan says. The Web marriages he knows of all involve one partner relocating. A risk manager for a bank, he stresses he would only date someone who could relocate.
But the Internet is not always foolproof. Once, he says, he thought he was meeting someone from New York: She worked for the United Nations and her address had a New York-sounding zip code. In reality, she worked for the U.N. in Guatemala. Still, he flew her in for nine days at a cost of $450. She has since made aliyah.
Of the dozen women he has met following online connections, he counts many as friends, and he recently ended a relationship with a woman from Florida after nine months of in-person dating.
"As people get older and have more complicated lives," he says, "it's harder to get out there and meet other people. I know what I want. If the other person doesn't have it, I won't bother."
"Single" comes in so many varieties that this selectivity, Jonathan says, allows him to avoid the scenario he found himself in on a recent Friday night.
"I had signed up for a singles Shabbat dinner at a synagogue. Everyone was in their mid-20s and had never been married. I felt really lonely. The number of women who fit the type I'm looking for is small, but the Internet gives me a way to expand that."
Some of the names have been changed in this story to protect anonymity. Rahel Musleah is a free-lance writer living in New York.
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