Matchmaking, perhaps the original dating app, is booming in Lakewood

LAKEWOOD - Tzodek Katz was sitting outside the French Press Coffee Roasters on East Kennedy Boulevard when he got the good news.

“They’re engaged,” he said after looking at the text message with a smile. “It just happened.”

The couple in question were two of Katz’s clients.

No, he’s not a jeweler, a real estate agent or even a therapist.

Katz is a matchmaker.

For more than 20 years, he’s helped local Orthodox singles find marriage partners through a process known as Shidduch, which dates back to the Old Testament and is known by some as “the system” for bringing ultra-religious Jews into wedlock.

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“We are very marriage focused and long-term marriage focused, it is the outlook on life,” Katz, 47, said about the Orthodox approach, which he contends is not forced or arranged coupling. “You have to be married. And you have to have a good marriage.”

And at a time when Lakewood is experiencing a population explosion, sparked mostly by an influx of Orthodox residents, Katz’s business and that of other local matchmakers is booming, they say.

“When you have a bigger group you will have more people,” said another a veteran township matchmaker who requested anonymity. “It is a change of population that affects things. People come and meet me from all over.”

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The number of marriage licenses issued annually in Lakewood has more than doubled in less than a decade, according to the Township Clerk’s Office, which revealed that 1,089 licenses were purchased in 2022, up from just 457 in 2014.

But the system is not without its critics, some who claim it is forced marriage and leaves single Orthodox women with few options.

Under Orthodox law, single men and women do not engage in conventional dating and are barred from even touching members of the opposite sex who are not relatives prior to marriage.

They rarely socialize as well so such arranged meetings offer one of the few alternatives, experts say.

“Generally, the boys and girls don’t really go to school together or go to camp so it is understood,” said Meir Goldberg, a Lakewood resident and director of Meor Jewish Experience at Rutgers University, a Jewish outreach and education group. “That gives an advantage to the girls, the girls really hold the cards.”

The use of a matchmaker, or Shadchan in Hebrew, grew out of the separate restrictions and under the Orthodox view that the genders remain separate and marriage is a primary goal, Goldberg said.

“Anybody can be a matchmaker,” he said. “A friend, a relative, a colleague.”

While some charge a fee, which can reach thousands of dollars, others do it voluntarily or for friends and neighbors.

Goldberg says the practice is based on the premise that couples must be compatible and both sides need to know as much about the other as possible to ensure a successful union.

“It is important to have similar life goals,” said Goldberg. “And physical attraction is very important but it is not the primary thing.”

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'Not from the Stone Age'

While the process is structured and even restricted, Orthodox leaders claim that today’s matchmaking does not involve arranged or forced marriages.

“We're not from the Stone Age. I think that's what people think,” said Katz. “That's why I'm trying to show the reality. We don't force marriage, and we're not trying to push anyone when they're not ready. If they're not ready, they don't get engaged.”

The approach varies, but in most cases an Orthodox man or woman seeking a spouse contacts a matchmaker, who can be a paid professional like Katz or a family friend who does so as a volunteer.

“It is very similar to online dating or E Harmony.com,” Goldberg said. “You want to make sure that conceptually there is a match and then if he agrees then they take it to the girl’s side, they give the family the information and they check it out and if they are ready to go out they agree on a date.”

Parents and family are usually very involved, Katz said, and seek information on the prospective spouse’s education, background, religious views and family life.

“It's mainly the parents,” said Katz. “My bread and butter is dealing with the parents, and the kids have to like each other, you have to be compatible.”

Some singles have resorted to résumés and online connections in today’s high-tech world. Unlike education and job history, a résumé can include a man's or woman’s family background and a list of friends or relatives as references, complete with their phone numbers and emails.

“It’s a data sheet about the person,” said Yehuda Meyer, 29, a student at Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood who has been using matchmakers for several years. “To get a sense of who they are, a matchmaker will send it and if you are interested you follow up. If the man is interested he will tell the matchmaker, who gets to the girl, then the girl gets his résumé, and does research and if both sides agree they go on a date.”

Meet and greet

That first date is often a low-key meeting in a public place, sometimes as simple as a hotel lounge or a park, observers say. No handshakes, hugs or kisses, but often hours of discussion and questions.

“We're very focused on having fundamentals, are you on the same page religiously?” Katz said about those discussions. “And same goals in life. Obviously, no one has everything the same. But fundamentally, you have to have the basics.”

If the first date goes well, each side will reach out to the matchmaker and indicate they are game to meet again. But those follow-up dates are often arranged through the matchmaker until both sides feel comfortable connecting directly or decide they are not right for each other.

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“As they progress, for the third or fourth date they get longer, you can go 5, 6 or 10 hours and the discussions are very important,” said Goldberg, whose son met his fiancé in July through a matchmaker friend and married last month. “It is important in all realms and how they relate emotionally and in terms of the sexual realm as well.”

The process is fairly quick, Katz said. Singles usually decide in a few dates if they want to continue or if no marriage is likely, then they often move on to another person and repeat the matchmaking steps.

“You like this person? No? Okay, I'll give you another one,” Katz said about how the discussions often progress. “They’ll look at it, they'll come back and say, 'okay, this is not a good idea,' so I'll give them another until I get a good one.”

Isaac Yitzak, who celebrated his 25th anniversary last year, recalls meeting his wife through a matchmaker that had contacted his mother with several names.

“My mother kept a list of who is who and she [his current wife] was the first one I met,” said Yitzak, 44. “The first meeting was at my future brother-in-law’s home. My parents came, her parents came and they went into separate rooms. We were engaged 3 weeks later.”

Yitzak’s daughter, Pessi, 17, hopes for a similar process when she enters the dating world in a few years.

“For sure, I trust my parents,” she said. “And they have my best interest in mind. I trust them and that is what I will do.”

Step by step, but hands off

Mendel Genechovsky, 24, started his search with a matchmaker three years ago and has connected with several dozen women since then.

“You laser focus on the goal, let’s see if it is going to go,” he said during an interview. “There is an element of pressure, you do not want to waste time.”

Speaking by phone from Florida, Genechovsky, also a BMG student, said he was there visiting a woman he matched with three weeks earlier and had seen regularly since.

“I have a cousin of mine who knows this girl and she thought we might be a good idea,” he said. “She happened to have been in New York, where my family is in Rockland County. I was interested and sent her my résumé and she was interested in going out.”

That first date consisted of Genechovsky picking up the woman at her grandparents' home and spending several hours in a hotel lounge.

“Then I flew down to Florida for the first time two weeks ago,” he said, noting he stayed with a neighbor. “We have seen each other about 7 or 8 times. I saw her in Rockland, then Florida, and she flew to New Jersey.”

“It’s not like we have to fly back and forth every other week for a year and half. If it is a couple of times before we either know or not,” he added.

Katz stressed that the background information and résumé-style profiles are no different than Match.com or other dating sites. He also points out that family involvement is not that unusual in our society’s history.

“Believe it or not, until 100 years ago, even 80 years ago, in America, the dating was parental,” he said. “You know, the whole thing of getting the parents into it is relevant. So we're really, we really didn't change.”

Matching or forced marriage?

But not everyone is supportive of the Orthodox matchmaking approach.

Fraidy Reiss, who lived in Lakewood from 2001 to 2009, said her marriage to an Orthodox man was “violent from week one.”

She contends the Orthodox marriage system, which she followed as a child and teen in Brooklyn, puts tremendous pressure on women to find a husband as early as 18, with no alternatives if they decline to marry.

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“Marriage in that community meets the internationally accepted definition of forced marriage, which is when one or both parties do not give full, free consent,” said Reiss, 48, who runs Unchained At Last, which opposes forced marriages and child wedlock. “There is all of this pressure to say ‘yes’.”

Married at 19, Reiss said her husband – whom she calls “a stranger” – was physically abusive and forced her to have two children.

She described being educated at a Brooklyn yeshiva where she had to sign a pledge not to learn to drive or even take the SAT exam so as not to have options if she wished to leave her spouse.

“I was from a very poor family and I had fewer options,” said Reiss, who eventually separated from her husband at 32. “My parents were divorced and that meant I was damaged goods. In that community, misfortune is brought by God and means there was something bad you did.”

Yael Reisman, director of communications and field building for Footsteps – a nonprofit that helps those seeking to leave the Orthodox community – said pressured marriage is a major problem, especially for women.

“The matchmaking process that many of our members find themselves in is almost always something that they do not have control over – it's a chapter of their life that is foisted onto them,” she said. “It's a communal pressure that is accepted as a community norm. Opting out is essentially impossible.”

Why matchmaking is on the rise

Lakewood’s population grew faster than any other New Jersey municipality between 2010 and 2020, rising from 92,843 to 135,138, according to the U.S. Census.

With the township’s Orthodox community estimated to be 70% or more, the matchmaker demand only grows, observers say.

Federal data also revealed that nearly half of Lakewood’s population is under 18, compared to the state average of 21%. Not surprising since Orthodox law restricts birth control and couples produce up to 5, 6 or 7 children.

That means there is a growing population of prospective Orthodox singles as they enter their late teens and early 20s, the prime years for matchmaking, experts say.

“In our community, it went up maybe a year, it's 23 instead of 22,” Katz said about the ages the Orthodox spouse searches begin locally. But experts said the women can be involved as young as 18.

A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that Orthodox Jews marry younger and bear at least twice as many children as other Jews.

“And they are especially likely to have large families,” the study said. “Among those who have had children, nearly half (48%) of Orthodox Jews have four or more offspring, while just 9% of other Jewish parents have families of that size.”

A crisis in the faith?

Even as Lakewood’s population grows, its matchmaking pool has hit what some call a crisis, with more eligible women than men, experts said.

Matzav.com, a Jewish news and information site, published a study in 2023 on Lakewood single Orthodox residents and declared that by 2025 there will be 1,166 more matchmaking-age women than men, calling it a “tragedy of immense proportions.”

Experts say the reason is that single Orthodox women enter the system of matchmaking earlier than men.

“Most girls go to Israel for a year of seminary and come back at the age of 18 or 19, after high school,” said Mayer. “The guys spend a couple of years post high school and then at a yeshiva and then Israel at 20 or 21 so they don’t come back until 22 or 23. Then they start dating.”

He said another theory is that more men fall out of the system than girls, often getting married later.

“There are not enough boys for the girls, it's a problem,” said Katz. “It's very controversial what's causing it and if something's causing it."

Some people say it is because the boys mature much later, and therefore there's a gap.

The personal touch of the matchmaker is key, experts say. There is no training, licensing or requirements to be a matchmaker. They also do little to no advertising.

“I try to use intuition to think of the right type of person,” Katz said. “I'd rather have a discussion and then get you through the discussion than questions and answers. It is really that we believe that everyone before they're born has some kind of, you know, soulmate.”

Aleeza Ben Shalom, who brought matchmaking national attention through her 2023 Netflix series, Jewish Matchmaking, said the profession requires a unique person with a combination of skills and natural outreach.

“Matchmaking is a combination of instinct, experience and there are people who are trained in coaching and finding a relationship who also do it,” said Ben Shalom, a 16-year veteran who has matched Lakewood couples. “It is a system that works because we are not going on chemistry alone, it is not entertainment and hobbies. Everyone is seriously looking into a life partner.”

Nussi Weinstock, 48, said he met his wife of 26 years while living in Belgium through a matchmaker that contacted him in Europe and his wife in Staten Island.

“She was the second one, the first one for me didn’t work out,” said Weinstock, now a Lakewood resident. “I think it is a good way. Her family contacted the matchmaker and the matchmaker contacted me. My father-in-law flew out to see me and I came to meet the girl four days later and it happened.”

Joe Strupp is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience who covers education and several local communities for APP.com and the Asbury Park Press. He is also the author of three books, including Killing Journalism on the state of the news media, and an adjunct media professor at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Reach him at jstrupp@gannettnj.com and at 732-413-3840. Follow him on Twitter at @joestrupp

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Matchmaking is still an important part of Orthodox Jewish culture in Lakewood, NJ