LA Xpress and The LA Weekly uses porn star pix to suck in customers to the hooker ads. Why not a dating service?

Israel- A leading Jewish dating site apparently is in the habit of using stock photos of porn models in its banner ads, Ha’aretz reported today. It claimed that JDate used a photo of model Kari Gold to represent a “nice jewish girl” named Hila from Tel Aviv who purportedly is “very attractive, single, looking for a Jewish husband from a good family.”

JDate is the most popular dating site among Israeli and Jewish singles. Its banners advertise “tens of thousands of nice Jewish girls.” But the girl in the photo bears a striking resemblance to porn model “Sweet Devon” (www.sweetdevon.com), “a girl whose sole mission is to get off as much as possible in life,” according to one of her home pages.

JDate’s international site, which appeals to religious people as well, claims its purpose is “to help to find real people for real relationships” and “to help strengthen the Jewish community and insure Jewish traditions are carried on for many generations to come.”

MatchNet operates JDate and JCupid in Israel and nine other dating sites in the world. The company has been going through rough times, as its stock has taken a tumble on a small European exchange following a disappointing financial report, followed by cancellation of planned NASDAQ IPO less than two weeks after it was announced, and the firing of its CEO and President after four months on the job.

MatchNet Israel CEO Ehud Levy said that the company was a regular purveyor of a German stock photo outlet, and didn’t ask questions whether the girls were nice Jewish girls or porn stars: “We use pictures taken from an picture archive based in Germany, and we don’t know where the pictures come from.” Apparently some of its users, or perhaps fans of Kari and Devon, did.

Yoav Ribak, the Haaretz journalist who broke the story, could not be reached for comment.