Lonely Jewish hearts

Today's Scene features "Cupid's Crisis," a tale of heartbreak and woe among Cleveland's single Jews. The dwindling number of East Side faithful in their 20s and 30s has created a major dilemma: If you want to marry within the tribe, the pickings are slim. You'd have better luck finding leftovers at the buffet table following a Jimmy Dimora fundraiser. Illuminating this problem took hard work. As part of my exhaustive research (which involved equal parts matzah ball soup and martini chugging), I was forced to join JDate, the Jewish equivalent of Match.com. There, I posted a profile asking all the eligible men to share their dating sagas. Alas, not everyone understood the assignment. Apparently, several clueless lads assumed my ad was just a creative pick-up line. And they answered the call of duty in their own special way: ZenCOhen, a 41-year-old who says he's "as comfortable in a tux accepting a Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden as I am in jeans, beating up fascists" was perhaps the most straightforward suitor. "So, when you go on a date, you can expense it?" he writes. "If so, you should take me to Lola :) purely for the story" Then there was DonLockwood9275, a bearded, 31-year-old sportswriter from Oberlin. Very earnest. Just a little slow to catch on. He begins by addressing me as "Lauren." [My name is Lisa.] "I won't get started by detailing how I never thought I'd ever try internet dating. I think that's the case for everybody and to state it again would probably be cliche. However, I liked what you had to say in your profile and you seem like a pretty interesting person." Strange, because my profile just said I was a reporter doing a story on Jewish dating. Anyways, when I didn't reply, he tried again, two days later. His rambling message suggested that he'd done a bit more homework this time: "I will say that for a writer, which often demands consuming information, research, the accumulation of facts, you divulge nothing in your profile. This is rather selfish, in my opinion." And you wonder why Jews can't get a date? — Lisa Rab