Esther Jungreis has seen time and time again the pain of young singles whose failed relationships have taken a toll on their souls.
“When you give your heart to someone, it’s very painful. It’s not like it’s a fun thing and you get over it. There are deep scars that are left on every heart and every soul,” she said.
According to Jungreis, whose late husband was a rabbi, the best bet — “that which the Talmud advocates” — is to marry early.
A moot point for singles who are successful in their careers but, alas, mateless. For that reason alone, Jungreis has devoted much of her life energy to matchmaking, her answer, as she says, to the Jewish continuity crisis. Through Hineni, so many matches and marriages have been sparked that Jungreis has lost count.
So who exactly is she?
In the New York Jewish world where she’s lived for over half a century, the 63-year-old Holocaust survivor and Orthodox woman is a legendary figure: a magnetic orator and a supreme matchmaker.
She runs Hineni, a Jewish outreach and education organization that has so burgeoned over the past two decades years that her Tuesday evening Torah lectures draw up to 1,500 young people every week. The classes are also broadcast on cable television.
Between lecturing around the world, writing a regular column for New York’s Jewish Press, and offering spiritual guidance to, it seems, any Jew in need, she has become something of a local celebrity.
She and her helpmates — her daughter and daughter-in-law — have become renowned not simply for the number of matches made.
“We don’t just want to set up people for the sake of setting them up, because it’s really important to know that if someone makes an effort on your behalf, they respect you,” she said.
So all of you over-anxious parents out there, distributing your single children’s phone numbers with hearty and indiscriminate abandon, should take note: Jungreis thinks you’re doing more harm than good.
“Once you reach your early or mid-30s, it’s no longer fun to date. It’s a chore. And if you meet somebody who’s absolutely from left field, you just feel that the people [who set you up] have no respect for you. You would have been better off staying at home and reading a book,” she said.
Feel like love could be lurking around the corner? That woman next to you in line at the coffee bar who gives you a knowing smile? The guy on the train who is too busy checking you out to read his newspaper? Could this be love? Maybe in the movies.
“Whether we like it or not, we are products of Hollywood sentimentality and romance. We are supposed to just see him or her, there is instant chemistry, and you just know that you’re in love. You fall in love,” said Jungreis.
The key word, though, is “fall.”
“The very word ‘fall’ should tell you that something is wrong because if you fall, then eventually you have to stand up. Very often when people stand up after falling they realize that it wasn’t all they had anticipated.”
Instead of honing in on electrical currents or packaging, “we get carried away with he’s so cute, she’s gorgeous, that we forget that an unkind person who is gorgeous can very quickly turn into someone who’s very unattractive and undesirable.”
Jungreis advocates looking for admirable character traits.
“The one thing we should be looking for, character traits, is the one thing we are not looking for: a smiling face, a warm heart, a kind person. These are precious gifts that you cannot buy,” she said.
The Talmud offers up some advice: bekiso, bikasso, bikosso. A man’s character is expressed through his pocket (Is he generous?), his anger (Does he have a short fuse?), and his manner of drinking and eating (Is he a glutton?).
Jungreis sees single women, especially, as getting the short end of the bargain. As women grow older, single men their age prefer to date much younger women. And often, Jungreis finds that men string women along, only to shy away from commitment at the last minute.
“Girls make a very big mistake. They make themselves too available. They are willing to move in with a guy very quickly, and then they get into these relationships that are endless. And then after the boy gets tired of them, he says, ‘I love you — but.’ That means it’s over.”
And what of all of those married couples who throw their hands up helplessly whenever their single friends ask for some introductions? “We just don’t know anyone! All of our friends are married or are seriously involved,” they say.
To this, Jungreis has only one response: They aren’t trying hard enough.
“I think in general people don’t try hard enough for others. We live in a very selfish world. Everyone is really out for themselves,” she said.
So while the bulk of the responsibility has fallen upon communal organizations, Jungreis asserts that people can help on an individual basis.
“Every individual must assume that same obligation. People should invite singles to their homes for Shabbat where you allow people to meet. You never know, every individual can make a difference,” she said.
In her book “The Committed Life,” Jungreis provides a remarkable example of an outstanding commitment to looking out for the unattached. On his deathbed after undergoing a final operation for cancer, her husband, Rabbi Meshulem HaLevi Jungreis, whispered to her, “There is a very fine resident here. He is single. You have to try to find him a shidduch.”
“I’ll never forget that. I’m standing there, and my heart is falling out as I see the life departing from my husband’s body, and he’s whispering to me that I should take care of the young resident. Would you believe that?” Jungreis said.
But she sees such a commitment as essential.
“Single people are so full of pain and nobody knows it. It’s a miserable world out there for single people unless you get some real intervention.”