Teenage Romance in the Digital Age

Those of us in our late 30's are the last generation who got through our high school years without social media. I still remember coming home exhausted from regional Jewish youth group events on a Sunday evening only to pick up the phone and make long-distance calls to the out-of-town friends I had just hung out with over the weekend. It was only a little more than twenty years ago that high school teens used the phone to communicate with their significant others because there no one had email yet. Everything is different for teens today. In my recent technology column in the Detroit Jewish News, I wrote about how social media has changed teenage romance today. Here's the article:

Teenage Romance and Social Media: What Are Teens Up To Online?

It wasn’t too long ago that teenage romance meant passing private folded notepaper in school classes, writing love letters and mailing them in actual envelopes with stamps, and waiting your turn to use the family’s landline telephone to call the object of your affection. When it comes to teenage romance today, much has changed in a short time.

A recent Pew Research Study looks at how digital tools and social media platforms have been fully integrated into American teenagers’ dating and romantic practices. As to how this affects the Jewish community, Jewish communal leaders who have long been concerned about dating habits of Jewish teens for the sake of Jewish continuity will be able to learn a lot from this study.

Over 1,000 teens in the U.S. ages 13 to 17 were surveyed by Pew and more than a third of these teens reported that they are currently dating someone or have dated someone in the past. However, only one quarter of them have met a significant other online. This means that while adult Americans are using online dating websites, like JDate, to find romantic matches, teens are still resorting to traditional methods for finding romantic partners. However, as the Pew study discovered these teens are using social media at an increasing rate when it comes to flirting, asking out, connecting and breaking up.

Twitter: Don't Expand 140 Character Limit

A woman once called the newspaper to place a death notice after her husband died. The newspaper representative explained that their policy is to charge by each word. "Well in that case," she replied, "Just print 'Max Schwartz died.'" They man responded, “There is a six word minimum." She said, "Fine, print: 'Max Schwartz died. Cadillac for sale.'"

I love that joke. I love it not only for its levity, but also for its brevity. As a rabbi, I must tell you that the stereotype that rabbis are long-winded is true. After all, we have a lot we want to say and it's much more difficult to tell a long story than a short one. You've heard the famous quote that has been attributed to many different authors: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

Over the years, I've become better at keeping it brief thanks to Twitter. Yes, the same social network that gets a bad rap because it's a time killer, a way to avoid the real world, a place for gossiping and complaining, bragging and boasting has made me a more concise writer. I've trained myself to condense my thoughts on a controversial article down to 140 characters or less for a tweet.

Rabbi Bob Alper Makes Pope Laugh in Comedy Contest

While my colleague Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City certainly got more face time with Pope Francis during his recent visit to the U.S. than any other rabbi, it was another rabbi who received the title "Honorary Comedic Advisor to the Pope."

Rabbi Bob Alper, the 70-year-old Reform rabbi turned stand-up comedian, had his joke chosen among thousands in the recent "Joke with the Pope" contest. Professional comedians including Bill Murray, late night television hosts Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon, and comedy writer Mike Reiss were among those who submitted video jokes to the jokewiththepope.org contest on YouTube. Even Brooke Shields recorded a joke for the Pope while sitting in her closet.

Rabbi Alper's winning submission allowed him to choose a charity for a $10,000 donation. He chose Housing the Homeless in Ethiopia. I've long been a fan of Rabbi Alper since first meeting him at a synagogue in East Lansing in the mid-1990s during one of his performances and book signings. In 2007 I had a chance to open for him at a comedy show and it was truly one of the highlights of my life.

Rabbi Alper's winning joke sumission was: "I’ve been married for 46 years, and my wife and I are on the same wavelength. At the same time that I got a hearing aid, she stopped mumbling."


In an interview, Rabbi Alper said the one-liner was among his best work. "It’s reality,” he said. "It’s something with which people can identify. It exemplifies the Pope’s values, which are family, humor, warmth."

Mazel Tov to Bob Alper for making the Pope laugh and for his new gig as the Honorary Comedic Advisor to the Pope.

Matt Jackson: An Interesting Jewish Jeopardy Champ

Passover is the 8-day Jewish holiday in which we ask questions at the seder table. For one quirky Jewish guy from Washington DC, Sukkot was the 8-day Jewish holiday in which he successfully answered clues with questions.

My kids and I make it a habit of watching the well-known television game show Jeopardy! each night. If we skip a few nights, we rely on our TiVo to catch us up as we binge watch several episodes at once. While my young children rarely know the answers to host Alex Trebek’s clues, they really enjoy tuning in each night and I’m convinced they’re learning something. Over the past week, we’ve been fixated on the interesting, if a bit odd, champion named Matt Jackson. He’s taken the world by storm as he has successfully won eight episodes in a row. While he’s far from catching Ken Jennings, who won a record 74 episodes in a row, Jackson has certainly kept the show entertaining. The paralegal has amassed a winnings total of $230,610 so far and will hope to add to that tonight.

Early in the show, Trebek asked Jackson to talk about his “very different” parents. He responded,“My mother is white, liberal and Jewish, and my dad is black, Christian and conservative.” Trebek responded, “Whoa — hello!” The Jewish bi-racial contestant is only 23-years-old and was 22 when he auditioned for the show. As we saw with the lengthy Ken Jennings streak, after several episodes Trebek struggles to find topics to shmooze about with returning champions. On a recent episode before Jackson won his seventh show in a row, Trebek asked him how he acquired all that knowledge.

Jackson explained that it was his grandfather Barnett Berman, M.D., a physician at Johns Hopkins University, who stands out as the most influential family member and/or teacher. Jackson said that his middle name is Barnett named for his (maternal) grandfather. “[My grandfather] didn’t just keep to his field. I remember at a Passover seder he tried to figure out who wrote the Torah and went on a long digression. He had a big collection of books. He got a computer, a PC, at a very early stage and taught me to use it.”

*Note: Matt Jackson contacted me to clarify that, "While of course my mother is Jewish and that's all that matters from the halakhic (Jewish legal) point of view, I am currently non-religious, or at least entirely non-observant. My Jewish family members are a huge and continual influence on me -- particularly through their lived commitment to education -- but I don't want to mislead anybody into thinking I am currently capable of representing Judaism as a faith."

Matt Jackson’s quirkiness (some are theorizing that he has Aspergers) — his awkward smiles at the camera, his quick, loud responses, and his ability to take huge leads over his opponents night after night finding all the Daily Doubles, has led to him quickly becoming a pop culture phenomenon early on in this new season of “Jeopardy!” I love that Jackson has talked openly about his Judaism and his family’s Jewish rituals including the Passover seder. “Jeopardy!” has always struck me as a “very Jewish” game show because it focuses on knowledge and asking questions. It requires competitors to have a vast knowledge of many subjects, which is at the core of Judaism — just think about the plethora of topics covered in the Talmud.

In the course of the history of “Jeopardy!” there have been a disproportionate number of Jewish contestants relative to our population in North America, including rabbis like Rabbi Joyce Newmark and Rabbi Sari Laufer. No doubt, “Jeopardy!” champ Matt Jackson is the most interesting one yet. I feel blessed that my kids enjoy our nightly ritual of watching “Jeopardy!” and you can bet we’ll be cheering on Matt Jackson as he hopes to continue his winning streak.


Update: As of October 12, 2015, Matt Jackson has 12 wins under his belt and close to $400,000 in prize winnings (4th on the all-time leaderboard). While he told me that he doesn't want to mislead anyone into thinking he is "currently capable of representing Judaism as a faith," he did a fine job explaining the concept of Tikkun Olam (social justice) in a recent episode when Alex Trebek interviewed him.
Final Update: Matt Jackson had the show's 4th-longest winning streak, surpassed only by Ken Jennings, Julia Collins, and David Madden. His 13-episode streak ended with a loss on October 14, 2015. Jackson's total winnings amount to $413,612.