Free JDate for Birthright Alumni & Why Michael Steinhardt should buy JDate

Joshua Bloom is a consultant to Rabbis for Human Rights and B’Tzedek’s LIFE Program. He currently lives in Jerusalem. He submitted a series of great ideas. These are just two of them.

Free JDate for Birthright Alumni

So you returned from Taglit-Birthright Israel without finding your “bashert” (b’sheret), but you feel more Jewish than you’ve felt since, well…your bar or bat mitzvah. Now what?

Maybe it was the Jewish communal atmosphere among your Birthright group or maybe it was all the hot Israelis you saw, but as the research shows, after your Birthright trip you are more inclined to want to date and marry a fellow Jew and make Judaism a part of your life than you were before the trip.
If you are in college there is always Hillel. If you are already out of college, there is Birthright Israel NEXT and a slew of organizations that are eager to engage young Jews in their 20s, get you involved and want you to come to their events.

Birthright Israel NEXT, for one, offers alumni a chance to host Shabbat dinners for free with their donors footing the bill. It’s a great idea and I’ve been to several wonderful Birthright Israel NEXT Friday night dinners. Their alumni organization runs a ton of JDate, but if you do, you might get instantly turned off by the whopping $39.99 a month membership fee. But if you had a chance to use it for free, perhaps you would give it a try. Now I realize that JDate is not the “be all, end all” of the Jewish dating world, but they do boast having hundreds of thousands of members so they are definitely doing something right.

So here’s my pitch: Taglit-Birthright Israel and Birthright Israel NEXT donors and/or JDate itself should consider offering Birthright returnees one to three months of free JDate access after participants return home. Birthright and Birthright NEXT donors tend to be more interested in young Jews expressing their Jewish identity and marrying fellow Jews than getting participants to make aliyah, so based on their funding objectives, giving out free JDate access makes a lot of sense. For JDate, it is an amazing opportunity for a ton of free publicity among a key demographic. Plus, those that use their unlimited service once are probably more likely to pay to use it again in the future, so quite possibly this idea could be a sound investment for them.

So, what do you think? Would single Birthright alumni use JDate after they returned from their trips if it was provided to them for free? Do you think there is a funder out there that would fund something like this? Would this be a win-win situation for JDate? Let me know what you think.

Hey Steinhardt, Why Don’t You Just Buy JDate?

If you have ever been to an event for young Jews where mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt got up to say a few word because he essentially paid for the whole shindig, chances are you’ve heard his spiel where he tries to play a Jewish matchmaker, encouraging Jews to pair up, marry and procreate. He often goes as far as offering to pay for couples’ honeymoons to Israel or his estate in Anguilla if they meet at the event.
Michael Steinhardt loves for Jews to marry fellow Jews, for them to create Jewish homes and raise Jewish families. He invests his philanthropic money into organizations like Taglit-Birthright Israel, Birthright Israel NEXT, Makor and the Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE) in his personal attempt to try to offset intermarriage.

Given that Steinhardt wants young Jews to couple up, I have a question for him: “Why don’t you buy JDate and make it affordable or free?”
Hundreds of thousands of Jews have profiles on JDate. It is the gold standard of Jewish internet dating. It is probably the single biggest force in the Jewish world that fosters Jewish couples to meet and marry. Yet, the price tag for joining the site is outrageous at $39.99 for a single month.

In my post above, I suggested Taglit-Birthright Israel and Birthright Israel NEXT donors like Steinhardt should offer one to three months of free JDate memberships to Birthright participants upon their return home. If that is a good idea, then why not go one step further and encourage Steinhardt to just buy JDate outright?

If he or some other Jewish philanthropist bought JDate, it might still be worthwhile to have a bit of a velvet rope policy so the site maintains its Jewish identity and does not completely degenerate into a Craigslist.

There are ways to maintain the quality of the site while still making it much more affordable or virtually free for users. Lowering the monthly costs to $5-$10 a month would be a great start. Like I suggested in my last post, free membership vouchers can be offered after participating in Jewish programs like Birthright. Free memberships could be offered to synagogues and JCCs to pass along to their single members who join their communities. Free vouchers can be given out to graduating college students through Hillel. Coupons can be put in HEEB Magazine and on popular Jewish blogs. Jewish singles events like MJE or the Matzo Ball can give out free JDate membership at the door. Essentially make it so ubiquitous that if you want a free or discounted membership, all you have to do is to do something else that is Jewish and that will be your golden entry ticket into JDate.

Steinhardt certainly has the money, so Michael, if you are reading this, how ‘bout it, can you buy JDate already?