Wallach's New Book "A Kosher Dating Odyssey" Gets Coverage in PAW, and More

Class Webmaster Van Wallach's new book, A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist's Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl, earned an online write-up in the weekly blog section of the Princeton Alumni Weekly on May 4. PAW summarized the book this way:

Raised a Southern Baptist, Wallach slowly began to question his beliefs and was drawn to his parents’ Jewish heritage and later to the women who embodied it. In this humorous memoir that explores the search for faith and love, he looks at the challenges of dating as an ex-Baptist Jewish intellectual single man.

Wallach also did a Q&A with the Connecticut Jewish Ledger, focusing on his family background and insights into the many ups and downs of baby boomer dating.  In it, he touches on his experiences of transitioning from small-town Texas to Princeton, noting:

I found myself always drawn to Jewish women, whom I described as “smart, vulnerable and shtetl-lovely.” I never had any interest in seriously seeking a relationship with non-Jewish women – quite a change from my upbringing, because I didn’t know ANY Jews outside my own family until I arrived at Princeton University in 1976.

The book has a strong connection to the Class of 1980, as the book was published by Coffeetown Press in Seattle, where Catherine Treadgold is the publisher, and classmates Cora Monroe and Steve Hughes contributed blurbs that are contained in the book.