Fast, Nutty Engagement Trick

Apparently well-known in Israel (a friend of mine said it didn’t work for her):

TU B’SHVAT SEGULA FOR SHIDDUCHIM
Take a piece of paper and write the single’s davening name on it with the mother and father’s davening name on it and hang it on an almond tree the day before Tu B’Shvat. Example: the single’s Hebrew (or Yiddish) name ben/bat the mother’s name and the father’s name on a slip of paper. It is important that the names be correct. Be sure to enclose it inside of a plastic baggy for protection from the winter weather and secure it on an Almond (Shkaydia) tree before the start of Tu B’Shvat. The names must be hanging on the tree from the beginning of Tu B’Shvat all through Tu B’Shvat. Motzi Tu B’Shvat remove the names from the tree and give them (or mail them) to the respective singles as soon as possible. Many times a parent, friend or neighbor is the one who initiates putting the slip of paper (petuch) on the tree for the unsuspecting single. The single must be willing to either sleep with the petuchim under their pillows or wear them pinned inside of their clothing or inside of a pocket for that year or until they marry.

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Thursday Link: Soulmate Math

Enpey sent me today’s link ages ago.  It’s a rather bizarre xkcd post about soulmates. It takes a few leaps of logic that don’t strike me as very logical. All in the name of proving that the whole soulmate idea is kinda ridiculous.  Too bad the agenda is too obvious to permit the post to be credible.

I didn’t post it because I wanted to do the math for frum Jews. Calculate how many Jews there are in the world. Where they live. How likely you are to meet them. How many you’d have to meet to find your soulmate.

But somehow, more interesting things kept getting in the way – like trying a new carrot ginger soup recipe, or attending a kayaking club meeting.

But a quick google right now brings up an estimate of 1.6-1.8 million Orthodox Jews worldwide. Maybe 500,000 of those are chasidim. Probably an equal number are modern orthodox, yeshivish, heimish, Mizrachi, or some other group you’d be able to share a life with in a million years. So take off 1 million.

There are about 550k in Israel and 120k in the rest of the world outside the USA. Let’s assume that most of those are in countries that don’t speak your language and who you’d be highly unlikely to communicate with. Nix another 600,ooo.

Let’s say about a third of the population is too young for you and a third too old for you. Divide by three.  That leaves 133,333 people that you’d have to date to find your soulmate.

If you have 15 years or so for dating (on the assumption that when you hit 35, if you don’t add “froze my eggs” to your profile, you won’t get any more dates), that would be 8,889 guys per year.  If you freeze your eggs or find open-minded guys, that’s 5,333 guys per year.

Wow. I am so behind.

Jewish Monkeys?

Thanks to O for this story on a group of monkeys where the mothers help make shidduchim for their sons.

Word Cloud

I was adding tags to my posts when I wondered which ones were most used. I figured it was about time I tried a word cloud for this blog. So here it is:
(click to visit the app page and see it up close)

I was kinda shocked to see Rules up there as one of the largest words. Am I so obsessed with rules? Does shidduch dating have too many rules in it? (Am I adding to the count of the word “rules” right now by typing “rules” five more times?) I have to note that “rule” and “rules” are also present in a large size. How utterly ominous.

Then I noticed that “burger” is featured as well. I’m pretty sure I haven’t obsessed about burgers that much. So I figured maybe it was just picking up page one of the blog and clouding that. So I tried page 2, page 3, and the RSS feed. Same results: too many rules and a burger. So I tried just one post, one with absolutely no burgers in it, and got the same result.

So – whatever. Time to try a new cloud generator:
rule five minutes ready date dates until “ late ” “ guy girl time nobody dinner rules takes know kept felt pretty wonder last long says something value went good little move someone things stand women start keep table got engaged bad shidduchim tags dating tomato sauce course did small piece one everyone think – life engagement too talking black notes off name friends feeling back home wedding seen day degree end year married months kind people shidduch talk tell may tree interesting going etc between hearing old half seems tuesday brooklyn love esther gila alert periods husband next same subject library books weird debt december november october september august july june april march february january

And of course, once one begins testing online apps, who hath the self-discipline to halt?

This one you have to click through to see, and it’s more thorough – perhaps too thorough.

Okay, this is just getting frustrating. Does anyone know of a decent HTML word cloud app? It needs to be HTML or I can’t embed it in a WordPress blog.