About

About HaBitza.com:

HaBitza.com was founded by Vera Resnick and Deena Levenstein (read more about us below).   Both of us live in the Katamon area.  What are our roles on the site? One of us is currently doing fieldwork and research in the singles scene.  She is using herself as a guinea pig and so far she is thoroughly unsuccessful. The other, now married, is an “anthropological  historian” working from notes and memories of her Katamon single days (1978-1995) and from observations of the current situation. To see if either of us occupy our time with anything besides HaBitza.com, read our bios below.  We have different perspectives, which probably comes across in our writing.  But we came to a joint conclusion:  something has to be done.

It is incredibly difficult to be single for years when you want to be married.  It’s incredibly difficult to navigate the dating world where there seem to be many different languages and the level of misunderstandings is so high.  Our goal is to smooth the path of the single person dating for marriage by suggesting a different way of dating (The Rules), more responsible matchmaking (Matchmakers), and by offering blog posts that relate to issues that are critical, crucial, and often painful within the singles scene.  We see HaBitza.com as an interactive experience; many issues are those you are suggesting to us and many issues relate to things we learned the hard way, through personal experience.  We feel some issues should be taken more seriously, and some should be laughed at and laughed out.

We chose the name “HaBitza.com” after much nerve-wracking, scalp-scratching thought.  HaBitza, which means the swamp in Hebrew, is the name given to the religious/traditional singles scene in Katamon, Jerusalem, but the name has been extended for use in other areas where one finds high concentrations of religious singles.  The origin of the expression probably dates back to a column written by Meir Uziel for the Ma’ariv newspaper about swamps, puddles, frogs and princesses, relating to the woes of dating – although we don’t know who coined the expression for this neighbourhood.   Most singles shudder when we mention our site’s name but by using this name, we choose to honour the swamp (physical and virtual), all the princesses and frogs, and to challenge the swamp to become a better place.

Considering that this is a very sensitive topic for many, we walk a fine line of talking openly, trying to add some humour (get used to this spelling – we’re Canadian and British) to the situation and at the same time, remaining sensitive to people’s personal plights. We apologise in advance if any of our writing offends, for any reason.

We look forward to hearing your feedback!

Thank you so much for visiting. We wish you happy reading and happy dating.

Vera and Deena

Deena Levenstein

Hi. I’m Deena. I’m 30. I recently returned to Jerusalem after three and a half years away in Canada. Dating in Vancouver, B.C. was much harder because there was almost no one to date and at the same time easier because there was almost no one to date. Yeah, it’s not an easy game to win at.

I’m partaking in this venture for myself and for all singles dating for marriage because I believe that if there was a dating revolution, and we started to date differently, it would make this whole process much more enjoyable.

I’m a writer. Click here to see my personal blog and click here to read my blog for Jewish discussion.

Vera Resnick

Hi, I’m Vera.  I’m ancient.  Also very serious.  None of the humour in this site has anything to do with me – I wouldn’t approve of such narrishkeit (see glossary above).   I’m a Classical Homeopath (that’s alternative medicine for those who think it means “psychopath who likes Mozart”).   I have various sites and blogs on the net but they have gotten loose and are rampaging through cyber-space – when I track them down I’ll let you know.

I graduated the Old Katamon Dating Academy 14 years ago, after 17 years of relentless and fairly ineffective study…  I came to Israel 30 years ago from England.  When Deena was talking about dating I found myself thinking – what if it could be done differently?  Less angst, more fun?  Having turned down the possibility of introducing Old Katamon to the idea of Jewish Brides by Mail Order (the postal service is too unreliable, besides, the packaging would be a total mess),  the idea for this website was born…

P.S. The blog photo/icon (of a frog) is by Faye Pini at flickr.