Bitachon.com is not your grandfather’ matchmaker.

[admin]

The Following was reviewed by JTA

Bitachon.com is not your grandfather’ matchmaker.

The online Jewish Singles site isn’t even quite like (ie www.orthodoxjewishsingles.com ) or Match.com. That’s because Bitachon is geared exclusively toward Orthodox Jewish Singles looking for their besherts, or soulmates.
That’ why, in addition to gender, age and occupation, the personal details section of Bitachon members’ profiles includes a space for tribal category, as in Cohen, Levi, or Yisrael.
Bitachon is one of growing number of Websites focusing on bringing together Orthodox Jewish Singles to ameliorate what some are calling a Jewish Marriage crisis among Orthodox Jewish Singles.
Last week, Bitachon — which was founded 10 years ago as spot for divorced or widowed people to meet — relaunched a new expanded site.
"What we wanted to do was to create activity on the site," he said. "People who come to the site will visit, browse profiles and say, ‘ have niece or a nephew looking for a Jewish Match,’" or marital match.
"That’ what shidduchim are all about," he added. " Jewish Match is always coming from an angle that is unexpected."
Rebbitzin Judi Steinig said Wohl’ line of thinking is on the money.
Some of the Orthodox Jewish Dating sites offer online profiles for users themselves to browse; with others, users work with matchmaker to find an appropriate mate. Sites include Sawyouatsinai.com, Frumster.com, Futuresimchas.com, Frumdate.com and Orthodate.com.
The increase in such sites, industry insiders say, highlights new direction in the age-old art of jewish matchmaking in the observant Jewish world.
Ruchie Travis, an acupuncture student and real estate title closer, met her husband, Alan, through an Orthodox online Jewish Dating service. She is 25; Alan, who works for the United Jewish Communities, is 36. She grew up in the United States; he is originally from Canada. She was raised in a religious household; he has returned to Jewish observance.
"Through more conventional means, wouldn’t expect that somebody would have found grounds to set the two of us up," said Ruchie, who was married in July. But by searching on the Internet, "it’s not limited to who you know and who your friends know. It really creates this worldwide (ie www.orthodoxjewishsingles.com )."
"We’re superbly happy," she added.
Marc Goldmann, CEO of Saw You at Sinai — the name is reference to a Torah commentary suggesting that everyone stood at Sinai along with their mate — has more than 300 matchmakers working for his company in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel.
Clients visits the (ie www.orthodoxjewishsingles.com ) site and fill in questionnaires about their lifestyle, religious observance, education and interests. Then they begin working with a matchmaker who, Goldmann said, "becomes their advocate," chatting with them on the phone and sending over profiles of potential partners.
Sinai’ computer-savvy matchmakers are a far cry from stereotypical matchmakers of the past, like Yenta of "Fiddler on The Roof."
"The typical stereotype was these little yentas who had their 3 x 5 cards, the grandmothers that would go to every place and find out information," he said. "That’ significantly morphed in today’s environment where now you’re having young people that are mainstream, hip, and understand the need themselves because they have been Jewish Single."
Over the last decade, Internet Jewish Dating has become increasingly popular and accepted in both the general and the Jewish worlds. (ie www.orthodoxjewishsingles.com ), a site for Jewish Jewish Singles, for example, has more than 600,000 active members. The profiles of two Jewish congressmen have even been spotted on the site.
Jennifer Landsberg Barnes got married three weeks ago after meeting her husband through Saw You at Sinai. She is from New York; he is from California.
"As someone who has participated in and run over 100 different Jewish Singles events over the years, think" the Internet "is great way to do it," she said. "We have the control to be able to say yes or no and not feel like we’re being pushed into a corner" by a friend or relative who is trying to make a match.
There has in recent years been sense among some members of the Orthodox Jewish Community that "there are many Jewish Singles who are not meeting the appropriate person," Steinig said.
The Orthodox Union has run Jewish Match Emergency Conferences aimed at addressing the issue, and Goldmann said he recently appeared on panel at a different event, "Jewish Town Hall: The Shidduch Crisis Revisited."
The advent of Internet Jewish Dating in the Orthodox Jewish Community has had the added effect of empowering observant jewish women, said Derek Saker, director of marketing at Frumster, which was initially site strictly for Orthodox Jewish Singles but has in the last year opened its doors to Jewish Marriage-minded Jews of all stripes.
"In the traditional Jewish world, woman plays second fiddle," he said. "They wait for someone to make a Jewish Match. They’re very much at the mercy of someone else making the effort on their part."
By contrast, he said, more than 55 percent of marriages set up through Frumster — which says nine couples get engaged or married through the site each month — emerge from jewish women taking the lead.
Steinig cautions that, useful though it may be, Internet Jewish Dating must be approached carefully.
" don’t recommend going into chat rooms," she said. "And any match that comes via the Internet has to be checked out carefully — but that should be in any case, wherever match comes from."
jewish matchmaking, she added, is " lot more than a skirt meeting a pair of pants.’’

JTA