Julie Wiener
Chasia, 27, is seeking “a bright mensch with genuine simchas
ha-chaim, enthusiasm for yiddishkeit and learning, and
Yeshivish-style hashkafa.”
Melech Tvi, 28, wants a woman who
is “ warm and fun loving with a zest for life, a love of
Yiddushkite, and has a desire to grow spiritually down life’s path
with me.”
Forget your Internet stereotypes about steamy,
anonymous hookups. Forget the photos of scantily clad babes. Unless
you have a fetish for Yiddishisms, yarmulkes and detailed
descriptions of religious observance, you’ll find the thousands of
profiles on Frumster.com to be, well, frum.
With more
Orthodox Jews believed to be unmarried than at any other time in
history, according to experts — and decreasing opportunities out
there for observant singles to socialize in person with the opposite
sex — growing numbers are turning to the Internet for help finding a
soul mate.
Even those from the fervently Orthodox end of the
spectrum, where leaders tend to frown on Internet use for anything
other than business, are surfing en route to the chupah.
Challenging Frumster, another site — SawYouAtSinai —
recently ventured into the market. Both sites see themselves as the
marriage-minded, observant Jew’s alternative to the immensely
profitable Web giant Jdate. Currently both are free, but they plan
to charge in the near future.
Frumster, founded in December
2001 by Canadian-born Israeli Grayson Levy (who recently sold the
site to Orthodox investors), has 9,900 active users around the
world, approximately 80 percent in the United States.
The
site offers users the chance to search by age, geographic location
and “hashkafa.” The choices: “modern Orthodox-liberal,” “modern
Orthodox-machmir,” “yeshivish-black hat,” “Carlebachian” and
“Chassidish.”
In addition to posting personality traits and
smoking habits, each Frumster male also lists how often he prays and
studies Torah and what kind of yarmulke he wears, and each woman
lists whether she wears skirts exclusively and intends to cover her
hair after she marries.
Frumster officials insist the site
is under rabbinic supervision and is heavily screened to ensure that
profiles are truthful and everyone is actually Orthodox, but they
are somewhat mysterious about the details of how.
Derek
Saker, the site’s director of marketing, said he cannot disclose the
site’s screening techniques and will not reveal the rabbi’s identity
other than to say he is a “YU type” and “more to the right.”
Channie Braun Michanik, 27, of Cherry Hill, N.J., is one of
196 people who met her spouse on Frumster. She credits the process
with being “private, modest” and enabling her and her future husband
to “do things on our own terms.”
However, she insists that
one should be sure to “check references” before setting up a
face-to-face meeting.
Michanik’s husband, Tzvi, also 27,
said he was reluctant initially to try Internet dating, seeing it as
“the latest fad.” But he ultimately decided “it empowers people who
did not feel they were attaining success through the traditional
shidduch method.”
With its novel approach, the rapidly
growing SawYouAtSinai hopes to avoid some of the perils of Web
dating. Launched in November, the site is the brainchild of
management consultant and entrepreneur Marc Goldmann, a single
Orthodox Jew.
Goldmann, 35, was impressed by the large pool
of Internet dating sites offered, but he was reluctant to post his
profile for all the world to see and leery of managing e-mail
contacts with people who could be lying. SawYouAtSinai, which is
open to Conservative as well as Orthodox Jews, aims to be a discreet
and more personalized alternative. Users must meet with a matchmaker
and provide references; the matchmakers then select appropriate
profiles for them to view.
Goldmann likens the approach to
having an “agent,” and many of the 74 matchmakers currently working
with the site say it has revolutionized their trade by expanding the
pool of potential matches and substantially reducing their
administrative burden.
However, users have to limit their
contacts to people the matchmaker selects.
Frumster and
SawYouAtSinai officials insist that the market is large enough for
both.
“Orthodox singles who really want to get married will
choose a variety of vehicles if they see potential in them,” said
Frumster’s Saker, who estimates that there may be as many as 80,000
Orthodox singles worldwide.
While SawYouAtSinai is “a great
idea,” Saker said that “for people frustrated with the shadchan
system it doesn’t provide an answer. Our site lets people be
selective themselves and make the judgment themselves.”
Unlike Frumster, SawYouAtSinai is too new to have spurred
marriages, but it already has 2,100 users and takes the credit for
three engagements.
And the site also appears to have
provided good luck to founder Goldmann: He started dating his
current girlfriend the day he decided to start the
company. |
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