By Rachel Lieff Axelbank
As a single, twenty-something Jewish coquette, I, like many of my single, twenty-something Jewish coquette peers, am plagued by a conjunction of that constant onus to date and marry a nice Jewish boy and my suspicion that, well, I’m just not attracted to nice Jewish boys. Blame it on an evolutionarily supported predilection for genetic diversity; whatever it’s about, they’re lacking something. Something that grabs me. Something that’s patently not lacking in the tow-headed, Roman numeraled squash players I knew at Princeton or the smoldering immigrati recenti who—far more than the cannoli—make so tempting my jaunts to the North End of Boston.

Israeli Jews, however, are a different story.

The time I saw Jon Stewart doing live stand-up, he drew a distinction that captured this phenomenon perfectly.

“You have American Jews, who are the ‘let me help you with your tax return’ Jews,” he said. “And you have Israeli Jews, who are the ‘hold my machine gun while I take a leak’ Jews.” Could he have put it any better?

The contrast is so marked and moreover, reliable, that I almost think it merits its own idiom. I can just hear the Emerald City doorman telling Dorothy et al: “Well, that’s a Jew of a different nationality—come on in!”

Here’s the weird, and also awesome part: these Israelis seem to have a similar appetite (to say the least) for us American maidels.

While in Jerusalem for work this past summer, I found myself awaiting security clearance to enter Prime Minister Olmert’s office, with ample time to feast my eyes on the secret service guys. As I wondered whether I would ever get my passport back, I was pleased to realize that my appreciative glances were being returned by these men—men fit for a Vogue photo spread (although the next page would feature them divested of fatigues and down to only their Yigal Azrouël briefs and surveillance headsets). As I passed through the third and final metal detector, I turned to catch a wink from the cutest one. And although I very coolly met the wink with a coy smile and a toss of my hair, what I really wanted was to run back, throw my arms around his knees and cry with gratitude, “You like me; you really like me!”

I called this “weird,” and here’s why: just as Israeli men got it going on, so do Israeli women.

My male Hebrew school classmates all verified this, and even if we mistrust the judgment of men who once chose “SimCity” or “Talk to the Hand (‘Cause the Face Ain’t Listening)” for their Bar Mitzvah themes, surely Leo DiCaprio is to be believed.

I tell myself that I’m not exactly a girl who would pose a challenge for Yenta the Matchmaker. Nevertheless, I wonder: why on earth would any guy want a pale, neurotic monoglot like me…when the Holy Land is teeming with lithe, olive-complected beauties who breezily switch between Hebrew, English and each of their parents’ Argentine dialects?

And yet, it is so. As soon as I open my mouth and deliver a faltering “lo midaberet ivrit,” smiles spread over their faces.

“You are—ehm—American?” Ohhh, the misplaced syllabic emphasis, the voiced uvular fricatives, the verbal tic of Zionism. I swoon, and they go on leering.

A friend of mine has suggested that perhaps our appeal lies not in our alabaster countenances, but in the prospect we hold of a nice, crisp Green Card. I would call this friend cynical. Others would call her someone who has simply spent a lot of time in Israel, but I remain unconvinced.

My evening off during the same summertime business trip to Israel found me in a Tel Aviv nightspot with a college buddy and a pair of (female) Israelis he’d befriended. Chatting with these women, I shared with them my eagerness to take a crack at the Goldstar-clutching talent milling about the bar. I tossed out the Jon Stewart anecdote and was rewarded with their enviable throaty, Semitic laughs. Then one of them said: “I know—why can’t they be more like American guys?”

(Imagine Ehud Banai record scratching to a halt).

What?

“I love those nerdy Jewish boys,” she went on. “Israeli men are all so macho and…sexual.”

I wanted to shake her, but her friend nodded. Then they both glanced longingly at my college buddy, who was in Tel Aviv to conduct research for his PhD and was at that moment peering through his horn-rimmed glasses at a volume from the book bag he’d brought along to the bar.

So, what’s at play here? Should we coin yet another idiom, one that proclaims “the marital prospect is always greener on the other side of the El Al flight”? Or perhaps just “the green card is always greener …”?

I have no idea, but until I get my transfer to the PresenTense Haifa bureau, you can find me ogling the immigrati recenti in the North End.

Rachel Lieff Axelbank is a single, twenty-something Jewish coquette-slash-renegade writer. She lives and works in Boston.