The search is on a for “a nice Jewish boy” — and no, this time it’s not your mother who’s looking. A team of scouts is scouring the Diaspora for the ideal single Jewish man for a new Israeli reality television show.
Once selected, the bachelor, who according to producers preferably will be good looking and “financially secure,” will come to Israel for the summer, when 15 young Israeli women will compete to capture his heart.
“We all grow up in Jewish houses and we know the dream of Jewish mothers is that their son finds a nice Jewish girl,” said Gadi Veinrib, a producer for the show, to be called — what else? — “A Nice Jewish Boy.”
The bachelor will be sent to Israel “to meet the nice Jewish love of his life,” he said.
The show’s producers will be holding casting calls for the show in New York, Los Angeles and a European city in the next few weeks. There may be teleconferences in Australia as well.
Producers are trying to get the word out via Jewish organizations. Already they have been flooded by hundreds of queries from the United States, Europe, Australia and South Africa, many from Jewish women offering their brothers, friends and cousins for the job.
In Israel, there also has been a huge response from women hoping to be among the pool of bachelorettes. Scouts also are searching for female contestants at university campuses, clubs and bars.
The show is also considering including Jewish women from abroad as contestants.
“What we are doing now is a worldwide search looking for the ultimate nice Jewish boy who is successful, has a nice job, and is good looking but still has not found his soul mate, his one and only,” said Veinrib, who was among the production team of the hit Israeli reality T.V. show “The Ambassador.”
“The Ambassador” struck a chord among Israelis concerned about the image of their country abroad. Veinrib, looking at that show’s success, thinks “A Nice Jewish Boy” also will resonate.
“I think what we are doing here is striking a nerve because assimilation is something we all feel strongly about, we as Israelis and Jews all over the world,” he said.
According to Veinrib, the show will be one of the first to have an international cast. He said he thinks the differences in culture and backgrounds among the contestants, despite their shared Jewishness, will make for good television.
The reality series is to take place over the course of three months. It will be set in a luxurious villa, complete with a pool and a lush garden, in central Israel.
The young women will live there, and as in the American show “The Bachelor” will be courted by the man on individual dates. Every week another bachelorette will be eliminated, and by the end of the show, producers hope, the man will have found his future mate.
Hagai Lapid, the show’s co-creator and executive producer along with Elad Kuperman, said Israeli women are enchanted by the idea of marrying a Jewish man from abroad. He believes that in part the pull comes from the assumption that such a man will have money, but it is also, he said, a reaction against the men in Israel.
“The men here are very aggressive and macho, and women in Israel prefer the personality of men from abroad, which is perceived as being more thoughtful, liberal and polite,” Lapid said.
Lapid said he came up with the idea for the show after remembering an American Jewish athlete at the last Maccabiah games who held a sign saying that he was looking for an Israeli bride at the opening ceremony. The sign included his phone number, and he received calls from thousands of interested Israeli women.
“This showed he struck some sort of chord, that maybe this is what women here dream of,” he said. So “we decided to see if we could create a nice Jewish boy for Israel.”
Lapid said part of the deal for any bachelor candidate and the female candidates from abroad is that they would agree to live in Israel for a period of time.
The producers are looking for women in their early 20s to mid 30s and for men from their mid 20s to mid to late 30s.
Interested? Send photos and a C.V. to the show at kuperman@hot3.co.il
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