This morning, when I turn on my computer, I see an email with these two words in the subject line: “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.”
I assume it’s a press release for the local matchmaking event I’m planning to attend at the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, called “Make Me a Match: A Lighthearted Look at the Jewish Dating Scene.”
I’m wrong. When I open the email, it says:
“Hello Rachel,
“I have an amazing Jewish man for you to meet. He’s not my son, nor my grandson, nor my brother. He’s my husband’s best friend.”
It’s from a j. reader — a woman I’ve never met — and she’s matching me up with her husband’s best friend. I feel flattered. I’m grateful. But she doesn’t stop there. She goes on to tell me:
“He’s from Israel, in his 40s, and has lived in the Bay Area for some years. He has many friends, a great job, a home … but what’s missing is a family.”
A family? Well, that pretty much describes my daughter and me. For a moment, I’m so caught up in the details of this email that I miss the point: This sweet woman has taken the time and energy to do some local matchmaking.
Undeniably, one of Judaism’s highest mitzvahs is matchmaking.
Naively, I’d thought that matchmaking nowadays only happened online, as you take it into your own hands to match yourself with a possible suitor. I’ve tried online dating off and on over the past few years, and initially it was exhilarating to scroll through hundreds of photos and bios. Just look at all those choices! As a writer, I also loved the fact that I could read what a man had written before meeting him.
Still, where’s the humanity when you’re trying to connect with someone on your computer screen? There’s no eye contact, no face-to-face, no “How are you?”
That’s why I’m off to attend my local JCC’s “Make Me a Match” event, where I’ll get to watch the documentary film by the same name. Maybe I’ll learn something new about how to meet a man.
The chairs are lined up in rows, and I’m sitting next to Donna, a widowed single mom of two children. She tells me that she’d like to meet a Jewish man, but it’s just not that easy in the suburbs where she lives.
Seated in front of me is a giggling group of women that made the trip to Berkeley from Modesto where, they tell me, the number of single Jews “is very limited.”
I can see that even here, in the Bay Area, bona fide matchmaking is not at all outdated. More than 40 guests have come tonight, eager to connect with another single Jew.
Tonight’s event facilitator is Craig Harrison, a coach and motivational humorist in Oakland who runs his own company, Expressions of Excellence.
“Thanks for coming, Rachel,” Craig says to me, and then he adds in a whisper: “You just brought the age factor here down 10 years.”
I look around closer and he’s right. Most of the singles here are definitely a decade older than me. And many of them already seem to know each other.
“Hey, how did that date go last weekend?” one white-haired man yells across the room to the other.
“Never saw her again!”
Before the film, we get the chance to shmooze. Craig has quite a spread for us: red and white wine, cheese and crackers. “Nosh,” he says to us, and we do.
I walk around with my spiral book, jotting down notes until I’m stopped by a man in his early 60s. “Hi,” he earnestly greets me. “What’s your name?”
But then the lights go out. I find my seat and watch the film about how to find your “beshert” (the one that’s meant for you).
Yet my mind wanders. This afternoon, I wrote right back to that kind j. reader and asked her to tell me more about her husband’s best friend.
She responded: “He adores kids, and wants to be a father. He’s always looking longingly at families when he’s out. What man does that?”
She ends her letter to me by saying: “I know for sure, whoever ends up with him will be blessed, adored and cared for.”
Tell me: What kind of woman would not want to meet this man?
At this moment, his phone number is written on a Post-It stuck to my computer.
As the film ends, I sit back and wonder if there’s something about this matchmaking endeavor after all.
Rachel Sarah’s book, “Single Mom Seeking: Play Dates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World” (Avalon/Seal Press) is due out this fall. She can be contacted at [email protected] .