Funny personals from Jerusalem Post

September 11, 2018 5:17 PM

Years ago I saw a set of personal ads that purported to be actual personals from the Jerusalem Post. The only one I remember was something like "Observant female, fasts on Yom Kippur, Fast of Gedalia, Tish B'Av, Tenth of Tevet, Fast of Esther, etc, seeks observant male for life in the fast lane." First, does anyone have a copy of these they could send me, or a link to them? Second, can anyone verify that they were actual personals that appeared in the paper? Even if not, they're still funny, but even funnier if true.
posted by ubiquity to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

Are you sure they were in The Jerusalem Post? What you describe sounds like a project by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir titled "Sexy Semite" (2000-2002), which ran in New York's (now defunct) Village Voice.

You can view some of the personals on Google Images. Carol Zemel's article "Emily Jacir: The Place Beyond" discusses the work. I have more sources if you are interested in such. Apologies if this is not what you were thinking of.
posted by standardasparagus at 7:07 PM on September 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: You could try this page, this, and this.
posted by lemonpearl at 7:19 PM on September 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: lemonpearl has it. I'd still be interested in source verification. Though since I remember these as "Actual Personal Ads taken from the Jerusalem Post" and lemonpearl's first site is titled "Actual Personal Ads taken from Israeli newspapers" while their second site has no title and their third site is titled "Actual Jewish personals," I'm beginning to fear they're made up. That's the kind of fact erosion one generally sees in gossip and urban legends, not in factual reproduction from a source.
posted by ubiquity at 6:39 AM on September 12, 2018

Have you seen Oy!: The Ultimate Book of Jewish Jokes (Google books link), by David Minkoff? It includes the "couch potato latke" phrase, which makes me think that your personals are...somewhat impersonal.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:54 AM on September 12, 2018