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| Tuesday, September 4, 2007 |
The AJL Mini Hot List: Noah Graff (Hot YouTuber)
This is part of our Mini Hot List in the Sep/Oct 2007 issue.
Meet Noah Graff. Noah is a 27-year-old resident of Chicago. He's a magazine editor and a film school graduate. He's quirky, smart, kind of cute and guess what ladies? He's Jewish, he's single, and he wants to meet the girl of his dreams. Despite years of dating non-Jewish women, Noah has decided that his ideal companion must be Jewish too. She should also be smart, attractive, a good conversationalist and ... willing to be followed around by a film crew on dates with Noah and have the date broadcast over the Internet where viewers will decide whether or not Noah should pursue a long term relationship with her.
As a teenager Noah attended Camp Ramah and loathed it. When he was 16 he went to Israel with USY, but found the same cliquey dynamic that he hated in camp. Then came the college and post-college years when, turned off by his earlier experiences, he gravitated towards non-Jewish women. Noah isn't religious, describing himself as a "holiday Jew" who loves the ritual and who now wants his kids to be Jewish. "I couldn't imagine my kids being Christian," he tells AJL. "Celebrating Christmas. That would kill me. I'm not so religious but I figure later in life I will be. Also we are a disappearing people because of intermarriage. It's also the family and the culture, but mostly it's the kids."
To that end, Noah tried all the usual things to find his ideal Jewish mate. Jewish singles parties were unsatisfying. He tried JDate but found that it was full of serial daters. He noted that "the women on JDate can't keep my name right because they go out with a different guy every week." After numerous failed efforts Noah decided to take a unique, decidedly Web 2.0 approach and combine his quest for a mate with his love of film. To that end he created a reality show, broadcast over the Internet at www.youtube.com/JewCompleteMe. JewCompleteMe will broadcast all his dates and viewers will be asked to select his soul mate. (How 21st century is that?) JewCompleteMe chronicles one date with Sarah, a bubbly blond Catholic (in an attempt to demonstrate why it is that he needs to meet a Jewish woman), as well as interviews with Noah and his family.
Despite the difficulties, Noah vows to persist and he vows to only date women who will agree to be filmed. "Bitter experiences in the past jaded me but I have an open mind," he says. "I'm an optimist, I'm pretty sure I'll find someone eventually."
-- Text by David Abitbol / Photo courtesy Noah Graff
This is part of our Mini Hot List in the Sep/Oct 2007 issue.
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