Radar's single shiksa hunts for this year's hot new accessory: a Jewish husband

The first time I met Christ Killer, he said, "You look like you should be wearing furry heels, eating bonbons with two little dogs. In bed." In other words, Christ Killer, whose given name is David Abitbol, correctly identified me a shiksa: a Jesus-loving, non-Jewish woman whose Miller-Monroe fantasy currently poses the greatest threat to the chosen people.

I was looking for a secular Jew, complete with all the tall, dark, and handsome, but without the pesky yarmulke or dentistry degreeUnder his ominous moniker, Abitbol runs jewlicious.com. He lives in Israel and occasionally New York City, and has been known to enjoy a good shiksa here and there. Still, he was skeptical about assisting me in the noble and generations-old gentile pursuit of trying to land a Jewish husband. Good Jew that he is, Abitbol is concerned about the marriage crisis sweeping the nation, especially in New York City, and especially among Jews.

"The community is all up in arms about it," he told me over hummus on St. Mark's. "Jews aren't getting married, or they're waiting until much later to get married. The majority of Jews under 40 have never been married, which is a new trend. When you talk to men and women in New York, they say that it's hard to find an appropriate Jewish mate. It's bad for the continuity of the Jewish community, because if people are not getting married and creating family units, the Jewish population will shrink. That threatens the continued viability of the community. You're already coming into a field that's got a lot of competition."

The marriage market is tough enough, but a shiksa looking for a Jewish husband is up against an entire culture rooting for her failure. Trimming the intermarriage rate is paramount to a number of associated Jewish federations that collect charitable donations and redistribute them as needed to Jews and non-Jews alike. Without a steady, generational replenishing of the culture, there would be no one for the federations to collect from. "What they're doing now is spending a lot of money on Jewish singles programs," Abitbol said. They will do anything in the world to get Jewish singles together and married."

Unfortunately, no such programs exist to help Jews marry shiksas, save for good old-fashioned female ingenuity—and, of course, the sage advice of Jewish friends and associates. I told Abitbol that I was looking for a secular Jew, complete with all the tall, dark, and handsome, but without the pesky yarmulke or dentistry degree. I was looking for one of those "new Jews" you hear so much about; someone for whom Shabbat is an excuse to have a party and keeping kosher doesn't interfere with dinner dates.

"Looking for a Jew without the inconvenient accoutrements is kind of bizarre, no?" Abitbol asked. "You basically have a type, but why does he have to be Jewish? I can tell you from experience that being Jewish is no guarantee of anything other than a circumcised cock. Many of the highly secular Jews that are in the target market are so assimilated that you may as well just date a non-Jew. These are complex and complicated matters indeed, and you may not fully understand what you're getting yourself into."

Oh, I think I knew. After all, Jewish men are expected to be educated, financially savvy, morally sound people. Why not exploit that stereotype for personal gain?

Any single shiksa with her eyes on the prize will tell you that new Jew stock is rising and Jewish husbands are looking more attractive than ever. After his wife Jessica's many More conspicuous than halvah, more practical than gefilte fish, Bamba is the shiksa's answer to inappropriate cleavage or a lower-back tattoorecent blunders (probable plagiarism, Oprah payola), Jerry Seinfeld went on a rampage, calling people "wacko" and demonstrating the kind of blind, unwarranted support that every girl deserves. Sure, it may have been a bad career move, and sure, he and the wife have been sued since the outburst, but seriously, what a guy. Unfortunately, finding a lower-case Jew like Jerry is as difficult as nabbing a nonmaterialistic i-banker, or a hard-body who doesn't expect you to work out.

Maybe because he was getting ready to leave the country again, Abitbol graciously agreed to help me find Jewish love. Abitbol thought that I should focus on embedding myself in target-rich environments, with one caveat. "The one place you should never go is singles parties. You'll never meet anyone there. The dynamic is too Jewy. It's okay to hang out at a bar where 98 percent of the people are Jewish, but a Jewish party is only going to attract people who are looking for other Jews."

The abundance of Jewish markets, delis, and knisheries in New York City, however, is not only fair game, but also a necessity in scheming a chance encounter with an unwitting Jewish man. Case in point: the Bamba. Bamba is a not entirely undelicious snack food (imagine peanut-flavored cheese puffs that melt in your mouth) manufactured in Israel. I had never heard of it before Abitbol pointed it out to me as a popular Jewish nosh, but the hideous cartoon toddler printed on a metallic blue bag serves as rather effective cultural bait. Even the clerk at the market asked, flirtatiously, "You know the Bamba?" More conspicuous than halvah, more practical than gefilte fish, Bamba is the shiksa's answer to inappropriate cleavage or a lower-back tattoo. Even if she isn't passably Jewish in appearance, a bag of Bamba shines like a beacon to Jews in a sea of no-account WASPs.

'If you seek hell on earth, if your life is going smoothly and you want to disrupt that, then marry a Jew,' said Rabbi Issac SchoenfeldOf course, there are no guarantees. Josh Neuman, new Jew and Heeb magazine editor asked, in all earnestness, "What's Bamba?" But it is the rough equivalent of the perennial women's magazine advice to "smile at men you see on the street or around the gym to make yourself look more approachable! Wear a little lipstick" Walking around the city, particularly in areas concentrated with Jews, with a bag of Bamba in hand garners a significant jump in solicitations from Jewish men.

It doesn't hurt to ingratiate one's self to the culture to a minimal extent, either. There are plenty of Jewish social events that aren't explicitly the singles markets Abitbol had warned me against. Heeb contributor David Kelsey escorted me to a Cholent for former Orthodox Jews at a synagogue on the Lower East Side. A blogger hanging around outside (who personally "wouldn't be interested in marrying anyone who believed in Jesus") said, on the condition of anonymity, "This is a psycho factory. Lots of people here used to be Hasidic. It attracts a lot of freaks in every sense of the term."

Inspired by this man's honesty, I admitted to Rabbi Isaac Schoenfeld that I was there in hopes of finding a Jewish husband. "If you seek hell on earth, if your life is going smoothly and you want to disrupt that, then marry a Jew," he said. That fit the bill, so when an accountant came over and started chatting me up, I asked him if he'd marry me ... in theory.

"My dream in life is to marry a shiksa!" He said. "Well, my dream in life is to be able to marry anybody I want, including shiksas. To narrow it down to your own little community makes it exponentially more difficult. But I tend to not date non-Jews because of my family. I could deal with it, but because my family is so entrenched in religious dogma they would not be able to handle it and I would not be able to handle that they could not handle it." Sadly, we would have no future together. Feeling unjustly alienated by the accountant's prohibitive family, I sought commiseration from Val Geffner, musician and, according to Kelsey, "major downtown character."

"Soul to soul, not general to general, you know," she said. Kind of. "If there's like a 'shiksa' that is vibrating in a soul-level, twin-flame way with a person, the basic truth is that souls are beyond religion and that bodies are costumes. And that I, even though I was born in a Jewish body, I'm fucking beyond gender, I'm beyond religion, because I'm a soul, I'm a point of light, like you are."

From what I could translate, Geffner was right.

One-time Hasid Levi Okunov is a likely candidate to employ a no-shiksas policy in his love life. But the young fashion designer is dating a lovely blonde non-Jew named Sarah Rinsch. She had never even heard the term shiksa. Okunov thinks that he made the first move on his former intern, but their getting together "happened magically."

'If Jewish guys in New York were bums, shiksas wouldn't be attracted to them. Politically, they're connected, business-wise, and I think women, and men, are attracted to power.'Okunov is a total mensch, but he's cynical about the motivation of a shiksa looking for a Jewish husband. "The reality is that if the Jewish guys in New York were bums, or weren't looked up to or didn't have the power they have, I really believe that a bigger percentage of shiksas wouldn't be attracted to them. Politically, they're connected, business-wise, and I think women, and men, are attracted to power. Even when Asians are going to be really rich, you don't find a lot of shiksas chasing them. They're also pretty good-looking people—a lot of them have a certain warmth and sweetness to them." He added, "The shiksas have it hard because by nature Jews don't want to marry shiksas."

Maybe not ideally, but we all have our compromises to make, or, as the case may be, our crosses to bear. And refusing potential love outright based on antiquated familial demands is almost as ridiculous as engaging a stealthy operation to win it in the first place. But if you do manage to win the affections of a Jew, even a highly secular new Jew, you should be prepared to convert. Christ Killer admits that he would marry a shiksa if she were interested in Judaism and willing to convert. "That kind of thing I don't consider intermarriage," he said. "If someone converts to Judaism, then it's not intermarriage anymore; then two Jews are getting married, which is fine."

So, should you find yourself, to paraphrase Rabbi Schoenfeld, looking to uproot your current state of shiksa contentment by dating a Jew, the following tips might be of use. But be careful, you might not know what you're getting yourself into.

• Believe in the power of the Bamba and other identifiable tokens that might capture the conscience of your potential King David. Read Heeb magazine on the subway, or just develop a Manischewitz dependence.

• Don't go for authenticity; the hard-core orthodox Jews won't be interested in you. Stick with the new Jews.

• Slake your taste for the sweet, sweet blood of Christ before hitting the town.

• Learn some Jewish phrases and use them in everyday situations. ("Oy gevalt! You kvetch like a yenta!")

• Remove any crucifixes or other holy paraphernalia from your home and hang a mezuzah on your doorpost.

• And don't forget to smile at Jewish men you see on the street or walking around the gym. And wear a little lipstick—it makes you look more approachable!