Dating As A Single, Orthodox Filmmaker Isn’t Easy

Leah Gottfried is the filmmaker behind the “Soon By You” web series. Image by Leah Gottfried
People often ask if I’m running out of story ideas for my web series “Soon By You”, which centers on Orthodox Jews dating in New York. I laugh. And then I cry. I have stories for days.
It’s an interesting experiment, dating your target demographic.
As much as I take bits and pieces from my own life and incorporate them into the show, my life imitates the show in the most bizarre ways. Like when we were about to release our third episode about a Shabbat date gone wrong. and I had a Shabbat-date gone catastrophic. Or the time soon after the fourth episode’s release when the guy I was seeing literally quoted a line from the show in a difficult conversation we were having.
There was the guy whose Kippah flew off as he ran to meet me.
And the one – okay many – who seemed baffled by my creative ambitions.
The more this happens, the more I think I should write a happy ending real quick.
The audience would certainly love that. They’ve been pining for a happy ending, a.k.a. a marriage, since day one. They want to see the lead characters, who clearly have a spark between them, get together once and for all.
But a happy ending isn’t so appealing to me. Perhaps it’s because of the stage I am in, and how cathartic it’s been to process my personal life on the page and on the screen.
After a particularly difficult date or relationship, I’ll take to the page and process the experience by writing. More often than not, these scenes don’t go anywhere, but it’s cathartic all the same.
Sometimes it’s hard to resist not taking notes during a date, or asking a guy to repeat something, slowly this time.
Rather than the happy ending, I love exploring the sometimes humorous, often torturous journey of dating as an Orthodox Jew. The terrible Shabbat-dates, the ghosters, the awkward Skype calls where you wish your laptop – or the world – would explode and set you free. Moments that are totally universal, with the added nuance of being Orthodox.
Often people come up to me and tell me their worst dating stories. My favorite one revolves around a guy who showed up incognito and spent the date hiding from law enforcement. Or maybe the one where a guy took his date to CVS to buy household items, and then took her right back home. There’s also the hiking one. which ended in a vicious attack of mosquitoes and blown up faces.
Being able to share these stories somehow makes the whole process that much more bearable. There’s a lot of frustration that comes with being Orthodox and single. Orthodox society places so much pressure on young people to settle down at an early age. So much of Orthodox life revolves around the family, that it can make one feel out of place all too often. There is also the challenge of searching for someone who you not only connect to deeply, but who has a similar level of observance as you. It’s a tricky balancing act, especially when you only have one or the other. The process can be enough to make anyone feel isolated. When someone reaches out to say they just went out with a guy like the arrogant lawyer character in my web series, I laugh and feel validated – because I just did too! We’re in the same boat, sister.
My peers often say that this stage feels like a waiting period, waiting for life to begin once they are married, “past the finish line”.
But for me this period has become my greatest source of creative inspiration. The moments when I’ve felt most alone are the ones that spur my most honest material. Through writing, I am able to transform painful experiences into powerful moments.
And as for my happy ending, I feel it rising. All I have to do is write it.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.