Match.com, eHarmony and OKCupid are just a few dating sites that aim to help their online subscribes find their soul mates to live happily ever after. For the purpose of my blog and narrated slide project, I have chosen to look at the dating website JDate- it is the perfect combination of technology and religion. Plus, my mom would probably eventually make a profile for me in a few years anyway...so now I have saved her the trouble and nagging. JDate specifically says that it is “one of the world’s greatest online communities” and “ We're very proud of our members: smart, attractive, successful people from all walks of life, all professions and all ages, living life to its fullest. They’re all looking to connect, network and find romance” JDate also promises that their community will be way better than the bar dating scene and it is the “modern way for Jewish people to find love.”
JDate aims to “strengthen the Jewish community” while still finding their subscriber the love of their life. This connects to the ideas of community and lifestyle enclave found in Bellah’s Habits of the Heart. Bellah would define community to be a group of people that are interdependent and share certain practices. In the case of JDate, the community is then the shared practice of the religion of Judaism and the shared cultural values and traditions. Everyone on JDate (for the most part) is part of this community already. However, these people seek something beyond that community and thus find themselves on JDate. They are looking for their social enclave--what Bellah says is formed when people who share some feature of private life like shared leisure activities, or shared career goals. People on JDate might already have the Jewish community but are looking for someone on the dating site to delve further into that community by finding a social enclave and then finally-the ONE. I look forward to my narrated slide show project where I can explore the concept of community on JDate further. Have to admit, JDate is convincing me, at least, that by subscribing, I might find my social enclave--the lox to my bagel, the noodle to my kugel, and the honey to my apples.
J-Date can be seen through the lens of lifestyle enclave, but it is also an example of trying to keep together a community of people. You could meet someone who loves running, loves movies, loves cars, loves any number of things. So it is a wider net than one might find in other examples chosen by your classmates. One way to look at this is to imagine a dating site in Israel. There it would likely go without saying that one is Jewish, so it would not have the "enclave" aspect at all. but in the American context religious communities have to organize like this.
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