Endogamy vs. incest taboo

Last night I engaged in some semi-ambiguous socializing with someone that I met last week at a talk. His work and mine intersect in some interesting ways, and I wanted to know more, and also found him quite cute, at least from the distance I was sitting (we spoke in person only briefly after the talk). He turns out to be my neighbor, at least by local standards, so we met up at a nearby cafe, and chatted about work- and theory-related stuff, and then moved to general feeling-out kind of shmoozing with just a hint of flirtation. This was all well and good, but something was off for me, and it wasn't just that he was Israeli, although culture clashes at different levels do seem to cause problems in my interactions with the manly sabra types and undermine their general hotness. And then it came to me in a flash: he looked really quite a lot like a cousin of mine -- and here I mean the son of my somewhat-older first cousin. And is just four or so years older, I think.

And herein lies the problem. In principle, I'd like to settle down with a Jewish guy. Or maybe, all things being equal. It's not a deal breaker, but I need someone who gets it. Either from growing up like me, or from being sensitive or similarly cultured or whatever. So that's the push towards endogamy -- it would make really a lot of things easier, like not ever having a Christmas tree in the house (I just can't imagine it), or raising kids to be traditionally agnostic, or lessen potential problems with my parents and those relatives on the religious side. But on the other hand, as soon as anyone even vaguely resembles any member of my family, poof! The idea of anything sexual with them is icky in the extreme. Some of you know that I didn't kiss even one Jew between the years of 1992 and 2005, and then the guy who broke my dry spell was 6'4" and blond (and 25!), which I think is no coincidence. (I've gotten better over the years, though, and in the last month and change have actually kissed three, although Jew Number Two kind of reinforced my "maybe not so much with the Israelis" feelings, in that instance, with his octopus-like tendencies.)

So I'm wondering just what to make of this. Am I the only one with this issue? It can't possibly be. Other people manage to meet and marry within their tribe all the time. I wonder what I'm missing here...