An evening with Sasha Gordon and Rabbi Dr. Jack Cohen

All roads lead to my chuppa, albeit through expensive dating coaches

Well well well, tonight was a doozy!

After seeing this event blasted all over Crown Heights, I figured I should go in person and see what the local dating-industrial complex was serving alongside the sushi. The flyer promised useful tools for singles, but instead hilarity ensued.

Some made up Crown Heights organization brought in Mrs. Sasha Gordon and Rabbi Dr. Jack Cohen to speak to Crown Heights singles about dating, marriage, and presumably how not to stay single forever. What followed was a speech where we were subjected to some of the most retarded ideas you could possibly imagine about dating. What was advertised as a dating event ended up being a lead-gen buffet for a number of really unintelligent dating coaches hawking their services to everyone.

So the night gets started by emcee Chaplin Josh (Yechiel Goldstien’s stage name) telling us about how much faith we need to have in dating and whatnot. K, fine. Then he handed the mic to Mrs. Sasha Gordon, and the evening began its graceful descent into an unintended comedy show.

She got up and started explaining how you need fifty million things to align, match, confirm, cross-reference, be mom-approved, survive community intelligence gathering, and pass through some extensive committee before you can get married. I guess that explains all the older singles in the community.

Then she launched into a tirade on the importance of reference calls and extensive research before going out on a date. At this point I interjected and inquired what the purpose was of calling up random people who are going to tell you vague nothingness or simply flat out lie to your face. Not having anything super smart to retort, she just reiterated her reheated defense about how hearing complete bs is super important. Being at her speech, I understood her relationship with complete bs.

Then came the therapy sermon. Sasha went on to tell everyone that if you’re not cool with therapy, that is some kind of major red flag and you’re not datable. This was especially fascinating because, as the room was reminded, she is a therapist. I inquired as to why it was imperative that it be a therapist and that a mashpia couldn’t assist in resolving marital disputes. She reminded everyone that she was a therapist and about how qualified she was and how important therapy is for everyone. Obviously, anyone who’s been to marriage therapy knows that it doesn’t really improve anything, but that didn’t stop her self-serving rant.

Then it just gets better. Rabbi Dr. Jack Cohen, who seems to be competing with Rabbi Lord Doctor Professor Jonathan Sacks, Duke of TED Talkshire, in the honorifics Olympics, takes the stage. He starts off sounding a bit more grounded than Sasha Gordon, but then throws a curveball when he insists on the importance of shadchanim. In fact, he relays a story to us where he recently set up a couple, 40 and 48 and he was heavily involved through the first bunch of dates to assist them in “taking off.” If you’re in your 40s and you haven’t figured out how to properly communicate with the opposite sex, just give up on life at that point.

Eventually, the speakers sat down on a panel for a Q&A, and oh boy it was going to get even better. The dating coaches were sitting there, shamelessly promoting their services with the confidence of people who know that the line between helping and creating dependency is not always bad for business.

Someone in the crowd (not me) asked a very good question: how do clients know they are actually improving? Each of the coaches gave different random answers, all of which endorsed the never-ending dating coaching model (shocker). They all avoided the actual answer that a competent dating coach would give: you need us less over time. You are getting more dates, your dates are going further, you are communicating better, you are making clearer decisions, you are less anxious.

This entire event was a promotion for the otherwise bored, professionally useless people, whose only accomplishment is to perpetuate the enslavement of the Jewish community by permanent infantilization even into their 40s (!!!!). The tragedy is that the crowd was full of serious people who actually want to get married. They deserved better than the same regurgitated ideas that landed them in those seats in the first place. Maybe some people just need to dress better, be more secure, have some confidence, work on their social skills, and get permission to stop acting like one cup of coffee is a beshow. They deserved someone willing to say that you cannot coach, research, reference-check, and therapize your way into chemistry, maturity, or relationships. At some point, dating requires actual adults to act like actual adults.