So, with technology on the brain, I was drawn to The Tinder Swindler on Netflix while traveling home from a visit to my mom this past week. Having been married for 22 years, I have no direct experience with Tinder, but, as a woman who spent my 20s single on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I vividly remember blind dates and personal ads and the sometimes-glaring discrepancies between the way potential matches presented themselves and who they turned out to be.
So, there was a lot I could relate to in this 21st century scandal and I was eager to learn a little more about how an app like Tinder might figure in the lives of my college students. I was caught by surprise when it was revealed that the villain of this story is Jewish. How did this happen? Was it simply insatiable, materialistic yearning that drove him to invent a fraudulent persona on the backs of the women he seduced into trusting him?
Purim, which we celebrate this week, is a holiday that encourages us just once a year to try on masks and alter-egos, to cross lines that usually define clear-cut boundaries.
When the holiday is over, we go back to being who we really are, recognizing and acknowledging parts of us that only get expressed in our shadow. Our masks conceal, but they also reveal something about our fantasies. The Tinder Swindler is an important reminder that the internet is a virtual mask we can put on at will.
It is the lens through which we see ourselves and others, and it shapes our aspirations and dreams. We live in a world where it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the real and the virtual, between what is authentic and what is fakeβor, perhaps more relevant to this discussion: between who is authentic and who is fake. As we navigate this complicated technological landscape, may we all be blessed with the wisdom of Esther, who knew when to conceal her identity and when it was time to stand as her true self, unmasked for the good of her people.
