Desperately seeking
By Shoshana Kordova
Don’t despair for the bearded man searching for the “hotty” who hosted a Friday night dinner in June and likes Rice Chex cereal. Although he can’t remember her name - despite her “witty humor and personality,” and perhaps more oddly, despite having eaten dinner at her apartment - all is not lost. He has told the world of his search by posting an ad on a Web site called AlmostMetJew.
“We think of the site as a lost-and-found for people,” says Adina Schwartz, 26, and Devorah Jacoby, 25, two single New York Jews who launched AlmostMetJew in June. “This site is creating an opportunity to not be left wondering `what could have been,’” they say via e-mail. AlmostMetJew (www.almostmetjew.com) primarily attracts religious New York Jews, estimated to be in their 20s and 30s, who are searching for what the site calls “the one that got away” - the woman “so beautifully davening tehillim” [reciting Psalms] on the subway, the man on a date with someone else at a kosher restaurant (”We were both waiting for dates … had a little exchange. Yours seemed to be going better than mine, but who knows?”).
As of Tuesday, there were 37 postings by men seeking women and 22 by women seeking men. There were also 21 ads under the “Jew Searching for Jew” category, which is meant to help people find long-lost friends and relatives, and includes an ad for the Messiah. There are about 150 users registered on the site, which had 11,514 hits in June and July, say Schwartz and Jacoby. There were 1,897 unique visitors in June. The site founders say they are not looking to make money, but hope to cover costs through advertising.
Schwartz and Jacoby – who have been friends since their days at Bruriah, an Orthodox high school for girls in New Jersey – came up with the idea in February, after Schwartz had a conversation with a guy at a bus stop but never found out who he was. Jacoby, an accountant who had recently read about a section of the popular Craigslist Web sit called “Missed Connections,” suggested a site for missed Jewish connections, “since the Jewish world is so much smaller and there would be better chances of finding someone.” Schwartz, who works for a pharmaceutical advertising agency, loved the idea. The high school buddies found someone to design the site, and AlmostMetJew went live.
But while the site is meant for people looking for that potentially special someone with whom they’ve already had an interaction, some people had little or no contact with the targets of their ads – occasionally making the Web site seem to function as a way to help people stalk their romantic interests.
In one posting, a man can’t decide which of two women he’s trying to pick up. “One of you had blond hair and was wearing a black top. The other had black hair with raised sunglasses,” he writes. “That’s where the dilemma comes in: BOTH of you were very pretty.”
“There is always a concern that people may use the site in the wrong way,” say Schwartz and Jacoby. “However, there is so much potential for good from this Web site that it’s worth it.” They say they have implemented some security precautions, such as keeping posters’ e-mail addresses off the site, filtering out curse words and reserving the right to remove “inappropriate or offensive posts” (which they have done once).
The site has so far resulted in at least one date, and people have found long-lost friends, the site founders say. R.S. from Queens was surprised the site “worked” in that she got a response from Zev, who she overheard at the Salute to Israel Parade in New York. “You were playing with your friends’ baby and said something like: ‘My mom keeps asking me about grandkids, but the wife comes first,’” she writes in her ad. Zev wrote back, but after two or three e-mails they lost touch without actually meeting, says R.S. via e-mail.
“I decided to post the ad because I thought the Web site was a clever idea, it’s a unique way of connecting with people who perhaps you would never have met,” she says. As to whether the site will expand to include Israel, Schwartz and Jacoby say they would like to go national and eventually international as AlmostMetJew becomes more popular. But if a recent posting is any sign, Israelis may not have long to wait. If anyone knows an Eli who was sitting near the Davidka in Jerusalem when he helped a woman in a short brown skirt figure out her map, tell him that an American tourist is looking for him.