(JNS) After 298 Jewish men and women had sat down, randomly paired together in a speed dating event in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., the dating coach Manya Lazaroff called out a question for them to discuss in their two minutes before being reassigned to another date.
“How much money does someone need to be financially stable?” Lazaroff, co-director of the Rohr Chabad Jewish Center at Texas A&M University in College Station, asked the couples in the ballroom of the school Oholei Torah.
Among the other questions that Lazaroff asked attendees, aged 22 to 39, were what their “love language” is, what they are passionate about, how long they would have to date someone before getting married and whether they’d ever fibbed to make their job sound more interesting.
The gathering, organized by Met at Chabad—a Jewish matchmaking site part of Chabad Young Professionals International—was billed as the largest in-person, Jewish speed dating event ever.
The event wasn’t just speed dating, according to Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, chair of Chabad Young Professionals.
“It’s a whole marriage strategy that we are looking to incorporate and implement,” he told JNS. “Marriage is a core Jewish value, and the first commandment in the Torah is ‘be fruitful and multiply’ to build a family, and to embrace the core Jewish idea of always living for our children and building a legacy for our community.”
“The value of getting married is something that has been undermined systematically over the last 70 to 100 years if you look at the social trends,” he added. “We realized that people are putting marriage off for many different reasons, and when they do realize that the biological clock is running out and it becomes important for them to get married, choosing a Jewish spouse wasn’t at the top of the list.”
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, many unaffiliated Jews have been exploring their Jewish heritage increasingly, including wanting to marry a fellow Jew, according to Kotlarsky.
“We found that post-Oct. 7, people had a rude awakening and want to be more connected,” he said. “The apps that match people up, like Tinder or JSwipe—it’s all based on superficial reasons, with very little focus on compatibility and forming long-term relationships.”
“As a Jewish religious organization, we want to bring back marriage for the masses,” he said.
‘Jewish with a purpose’
At the beginning of the event, participants filled out detailed questionnaires asking them to rank the degree to which they are, for example, Shabbat-observant or keep kosher, and about hobbies, passions and interests.
In the first part of the event, participants sped through about a dozen two-minute sessions held across long tables in two rooms. Later in the program, Met at Chabad used artificial intelligence tools to break participants into more compatible, smaller groups, with about half a dozen in each group. Those group sessions ran for about 45 minutes.
The groups played Jenga with large blocks, each labeled with an icebreaker. (One was “Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever been?”)
None of the six participants with whom JNS spoke immediately after the event was willing to be quoted with a last name.
Offir, 20, of Toronto, told JNS that the event was a chance to meet someone who shared his Jewish values in a very different setting from dating apps like Tinder or Hinge.
“I’m looking for somebody that has very similar core values to me,” he said. “I’m not just here for fun, and I prefer this method of dating because, on an app, you’re just judging a book by its cover.”
“I also hate texting,” he added.
Aviela, 31, of Tampa, Fla., said she came to New York for the broader Chabad Young Professionals retreat, which included the speed-dating event. She told JNS that she sought spiritual guidance and a soulmate.
“For the last 12 years, I haven’t dated a lot because there weren’t a lot of Jewish people in my town, and I was so afraid of marrying the wrong person,” she said. “I knew Hashem had my person in mind, and maybe he was at a Jewish event like this.”
“I don’t want someone who is ‘just Jewish,’” she said. “I want ‘Jewish with a purpose,’ with meaning, with a soul.”
Rochelle, 28, of Los Angeles, wasn’t sure she had met any prospective matches, noting the wide range of ages.
“This is an amazing opportunity to meet people from all over the world. There are people from France, Canada, Israel,” she told JNS. “I just think they should split up the groups by age. I’m a 28-year-old female. What am I doing talking to a 22-year-old boy who just graduated college?”
Benjamin, 30, of Orlando, Fla., has always been connected to his Jewish roots but finds dating in his hometown difficult because of the small Jewish community.
“I’ve been in a desert,” he told JNS. “Orlando is not Crown Heights or Miami or Chicago. My great-grandmothers were both Jewish. On every corner, you could find going back generations. To break a chain of that magnitude and marry someone not Jewish would be incredibly insulting to my grandmothers.”
He would not, however, recommend a speed-dating event to find a future spouse.
“It’s a terrible form for conversation,” he said. “It is not a lot of time. Conversations evolve over several hours. I think you can’t intimately understand anything about anyone in a span of only two minutes.”
