According to the statistics, my chances of ever remarrying are slim. I’ve been told that I have a better chance of being killed in a mineshaft explosion than marrying after 40, and I’m already 50! And let’s not forget that I’m a Jewish woman who wants to marry a Jewish man, but I live in Orange County, a “Jewish singles desert.” Finally, although I would like a man to be my educational equal, I’d be happy if he had any type of advanced degree. So what are my chances of finding someone with whom I can live happily ever after? Let’s do the math.

When we plug in the percentages into the following equation, where:

M = marrying after 40
J = single Jewish men living in Orange County
G = graduate degree
(%) = chance of occurrence
CM = chances of marrying we get:

M (5.0%) x J (7.5%) x G (10.0%) = .0375% CM (“slim to none”).

Looking at this as a purely mathematical challenge, I considered which of these variables I could change. Well, I can’t get any younger, I’m not moving, and I only relate to “brainiacs.” The one thing that remained was the “Jewish factor.” So, if we take J and change it to JC (please pardon my choice of initials, but JC stands for Judeo-Christian), then the new equation looks like this:

M (5.0%) x JC (75.0%) x G (10.0%) = .3750% CM (“slim to slimmer,” a definite improvement).

I decided to try a free three-day trial on Match.com. However, I wanted to “hedge my bets,” and in my profile, I indicated that I was looking for a Jewish man. Just the act of filling out a profile on Match.com was enough to fill me with Jewish (as opposed to Catholic) guilt. They actually ask you whether you have any tattoos or body piercings! That’s against my religion. How could I post a profile on a site where people are defiling their bodies! Such a shanda. So I made it clear that I had no tattoos or piercings (my earlobes don’t count), nor would I date anybody who did!

Being the “new (nice Jewish) girl on the block,” the e-mails started pouring in, none of which were from Jewish men. And while I enjoyed their perceptions of me as an “exotic Jewess” (when was the last time someone thought of you as exotic?), when I read their profiles, I couldn’t help but hear Jackie Mason doing his "shtick" about the differences between Jews and non-Jews. I wondered whether these men wanted to date me just to see whether I would eat shrimp in a sushi restaurant.

After sifting through their profiles, I settled on two men. Tim and Jim. Somehow, they seemed “safe,” and I was able to rationalize the possibility of meeting them. Tim indicated that he was “spiritual, but not religious” and embraced all ways to worship G-d (except he wrote it with an “o,” which I will not do, for religious reasons). When we spoke on the phone, he told me that he had been raised Catholic. I was pleased to know that we had guilt in common and told him the joke about the shul (I translated the word for him) and Catholic church that shared a building and needed to come up with a name that worked for both religions. They settled on “Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt.” He wasn’t amused.

Jim was raised Presbyterian, but of Danish ancestry. We all know the story of the Danes, who, in a move to confound the Nazis and protect their Jewish citizens, marched into their villages wearing yellow Stars of David. I imagined Jim to be the descendent of Righteous Gentiles. However, when I told him that I thought the Danes were real mensches, he thought that I had insulted him. Oy, what’s a nice Jewish girl to do?

When all was said and done, I couldn’t do it. To quote Amy Klein, the author of True Confessions of a JDate Addict, “I’m so traditionally, culturally, psychologically, and emotionally Jewish that I never seem to fit with anyone else.” Nor do I want to. I’ll just have to take my chances.