Romance is not dead, and neither is a strong belief in Jewish communal life and continuity – at least according to a new survey of users of the Jewish dating app JSwipe.
According to the study, which was released on Oct. 2, more that half of respondents consider themselves to be romantics, 80 per cent believe in true love and 71 per cent hope to get married.
Likewise, the youngest group of respondents (18-24) were least likely to approve of intermarriage, with only 29 per cent agreeing that it is “positive in general/fine.” Contrast that with the oldest age group, 55-64, in which 41 per cent agreed with that statement.
“I believe it’s likely because many of the (55-64 age group) already have kids and are not necessarily looking for another marriage,” said David Yarus, the founder of JSwipe. “They’re more interested in companionship and partnership.”
That’s borne out in the data. In the section on dating, only 51 per cent of 55-64 year olds said they were looking for marriage, while 81 per cent said they were looking for a monogamous relationship.
But whatever the reason, that kind of surprising result – the youngest group approving of intermarriage the least and the oldest group approving of it the most – is indicative of the reason Yarus wanted to do the study in the first place.
“I’ve been frustrated over the lack of what I see as real, honest, open, meaningful, vulnerable dialogue around the millennial Jewish experience,” he said. “What’s real for us and what people care about, think about, the way we live, the way we practice, all of these things, (it) was kind of like a void in the overall conversation.”
READ: DAVID YARUS: CONNECTING JEWISH MILLENIALS
Too often, in Yarus’ experience, conversations about the millennial experience are tokenized in Jewish institutional discourse – if they’re included at all.
“We began this process to give people a voice. No agenda, no preferred outcome, nothing to prove – rather, to start a conversation with the generation rather than about them,” Yarus said in a press release that included some of the more interesting results from the study.
Of course, all the results have to be taken with a grain of salt due to the self-selection bias at play, considering all the respondents were people who had already signed up to a Jewish dating app and agreed to take a long survey. But even with that caveat, the three-part study – with sections titled “The State of Jewish,” “The State of Dating” and “The State of Jewish Dating” – is full of nuggets that provide insight into the modern millennial Jewish dating experience.
In the first section, Yarus was gratified to learn about the high levels of “affinity and interest and excitement” in Jewish identity. Eighty-one per cent of respondents said their Jewish identity is important to them.
In the dating section, 71 per cent of respondents said they are looking for marriage out of their dating experience, with only a slightly higher rate of women responding in the affirmative to that question. However, male respondents were over three times more likely to say they were looking for “something casual.” On the whole, half of respondents felt pressure to marry, but that number was much higher among female respondents (59 per cent), compared to male ones (43 per cent).
The study also asked how respondents’ families would feel if they married outside the faith. Just over half said their families would react negatively, while a further 40 per cent said their families would be “neutral.” And almost half of respondents said they “would ask someone to convert for them if things got serious.”
The study of almost 4,000 respondents was conducted in February. Eight per cent of the respondents were from Canada, 60 per cent from the United States and the rest are from Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Just over half of the respondents were aged 25-34 and almost 60 per cent were male.
