JDATE.COM Not Just for Jews Anymore

Today's NY Times calls this a new trend, non Jews looking to date Jews on JDATE.COM. Read below for brief or CLICK here for full article

December 5, 2004
You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Love JDate
By SARAH E. RICHARDS

OMINICK COPPOLA, 22, a real estate salesman from Brooklyn, is looking for a confident, intelligent and open-minded woman who shares his love of walks in the park, sushi and home cooking. He had some luck meeting women through Internet dating sites like AmericanSingles.com, but they were rarely good matches. Then he found what he now considers an online gold mine — JDate, a Web site that bills itself as "the largest Jewish singles network."

Although he is Catholic by birth and upbringing, Mr. Coppola has long preferred to date Jewish women. "If a girl walks by in a bar, and I'm attracted to her, it always turns out she's Jewish," he said. "My friends say I have Jew-dar. I thought I'd go with the odds."

Mr. Coppola is one of a growing number of gentiles who have lately signed on to JDate, which was established in 1997 as a service for bringing Jews together. The number of non-Jews on the site is difficult to estimate: 50,000 of its 600,000 members identify themselves as religiously "unaffiliated," but they include Jewish members who don't want to identify themselves as "secular" or with any particular sect. But interviews with people who use JDate suggest that gentiles have become an increasingly visible presence in recent years (full disclosure: this reporter is one of them) on a site that was designed to promote mating within the tribe.