Hollywood — The recent announcement of Natalie Portman’s engagement and pregnancy has had a profound impact on countless Jewish single men.
Surveys indicated that these men have abandoned their delusional notion that they were fated to marry the Jewish actress, and they are now ready to embrace the notion of marriage to NNP (non-Natalie Portman) women.
“Until I heard the news, it really seemed hard to consider marrying anyone else,” said 35-year-old Neb Buch, an accountant who had been dating his girlfriend for eight years without a proposal. “I experienced devastation, denial and then acceptance that my Queen Amidala and I will not raise a Jewish family in the Garden State — Teaneck specifically.”
Mr. Buch is now engaged to wed.
This sentiment is being shared across Jewish dating websites as well. Jdate.com and Sawyouatsinai.com reported that the hundreds of male subscribers who had described their perfect woman with the words, “Natalie Portman,” immediately changed their profile to reflect something actually grounded in reality.
“I really thought she was the one,” bemoaned a 28-year-old Ivy League lawyer, Abe Bitmeshugah, who runs a Natalie Portman Fan page on Facebook. “I’ve seen all of her movies a hundred times, we really had something. She was my Bashert. She’s Israeli, I’ve been to Israel. She went to Harvard, I went to college. But now that she’s pregnant, with a goyish fiancé no less — she’s nothing to me.”
Mr. Bitmeshugah, who is now also engaged to his off-again–on-again girlfriend, added with a bit of hope, “unless it doesn’t work out, please God.”
Prof. Len Saxy of Brandeis University, in a study released today, found that 22 percent of all single Jewish men had planned to marry Portman. He noted that that figure tripled among Birthright Israel alumni.
“It’s just one more proof that Birthright trips are having a profound and profoundly positive impact on everything,” Saxy said. “And engagement is the key word here.”
Prof. Steven M. Cohen, best known for his Survey of the Week Scholarship Inc., bitterly disagreed with Saxy’s findings, and warned that with Portman no longer eligible and marrying a non-Jew, assimilation rates may reach “disastrous proportions.”
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