The system is straightforward: Teachers receive $200 for each first date they facilitate. And the results speak for themselves: So far there have been 514 first dates and 127 engagements, and even the dates that don’t culminate in a broken plate tend to be pretty much on target.

Simchaseinu, which started with only two Lakewood schools, now encompasses eight schools in Lakewood, and has expanded to schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well.

While Shloime is now happily married, he hasn’t lost his passion for the initiative he began in more challenging days. At the beginning of each school year, he speaks at teachers’ conferences, sharing his conviction in the immense power they hold, as they’ll be getting to know hundreds of girls.

To support the teachers’ involvement, Simchaseinu has also created a centralized résumé database. Each year, schools submit alumni résumés, giving teachers a convenient way to redt shidduchim whenever an idea strikes. The organization also collects graduation photos, compiling them into a dedicated volume distributed to participating teachers.

When a teacher hears of a bochur seeking a match, the book allows her to quickly reconnect faces with names — and with students who might otherwise have drifted to the back of her mind.

Some people doubt that teachers can be active players in finding shidduchim for their former students, considering that at least a year and a half often elapses between graduation and when the girls start shidduchim.

“How can you assume the teachers will even know what they’re like at that point?” a friend recently asked Shloime.

He gets that question often, but the numbers speak for themselves. The teachers may have last known the girl when she was 17 or 18, and while she may have changed since, they still have a sense of her character and strengths. And if they’re uncertain, they can always reach out to her family or friends to make sure the idea is on target.

“I think the issue until now was that we didn’t see this as a problem we could help solve,” one teacher told Shloime recently. “We assumed it was for rabbanim and shadchanim to tackle. But now, with the numbers coming out of Simchaseinu, we finally see that we can have a massive impact.”

From time to time, Shloime and his wife travel to South Fallsburg to update Rosh Yeshivah Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel on their progress. Rav Wachtfogel, who has been a strong proponent of the idea that boys start shidduchim earlier in order to close the gaps, told Shloime on his last visit,  “Shloime, I have to tell you, I’ve heard many ideas to help the shidduch crisis, but this is the only one that I’m really seeing solid results from so far. Chazak v’ematz!”

Back during his early days redting shidduchim while still single, Shloime developed close relationships with some of the most prominent players in the field, including Rabbis Tzadok Katz, Shlomo Lewenstein, and Yisroel (Freddy) Friedman. And he kept hearing the same message from all of them, all the time: Shadchanim are stretched incredibly thin. There just aren’t enough to reach everyone.

Shloime recently went out for lunch with one of these shadchanim, who put his phone on silent when they entered the restaurant. As they got up to leave, the shadchan glanced at his phone, and the smile on his face disappeared.

“Shloime, look at this,” he said, showing him his phone.

Shloime gasped. In a little over an hour, the shadchan had over 200 missed notifications — texts, emails, and voicemail.

“People think ten times before they call me, because they know how busy I am and don’t want to disturb me,” the shadchan said. “And yet, look how many of them reached out. How am I supposed to respond to all of them?”

Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Kanarek, a veteran educational visionary in the Lakewood area, once gave Shloime an analogy for why Simchaseinu’s work is so vital. He compared the situation to four lanes of cars racing down the New Jersey Turnpike at 70–80 mph — and then suddenly, the busy highway turns off into the narrow streets of Meah Shearim. The traffic jam would be so intense that it would take weeks to clear.

“That’s what the shidduch system is like,” Rabbi Kanarek explained. “Klal Yisrael is growing at a rapid pace, and we’ve built an infrastructure to accommodate our burgeoning needs. We have numerous schools, shuls, shops, urgent cares — whatever a society may need. But when it comes to shidduchim, we haven’t built a robust infrastructure. More or less, we’re relying on the same handful of well-known shadchanim we’ve been turning to for the past two decades, and they simply can’t handle the volume.

“That’s why initiatives like Simchaseinu matter,” he continued. “It teaches people that they, too, can be shadchanim. All it takes is knowing two people — and if you’re in chinuch, you have even greater access.”

Less Pain, More Gain

ZUUG

Innovators: Rabbi Moshe Pogrow and Mrs. Varda Berkowitz

Established: 2025

If both sides are interested in exploring the suggestion further, the platform hands the shidduch to a mutually agreed-upon, pre-vetted shadchan 

For nearly two decades, the NASI (North American Shidduch Initiative) Project has attempted to ease the pressures faced by countless individuals navigating the world of shidduchim. While widely recognized for its various initiatives to solve the age-gap issue, NASI’s most recent initiative is a digital innovation with the potential to reshape the entire matchmaking landscape.

After three years of revising, fine-tuning, and perfecting, NASI unveiled ZUUG, a platform designed to restore efficiency and dignity to a process that, for many, has become overwhelmingly difficult.

The inspiration arose from an unexpected source, says NASI founder Rabbi Moshe Pogrow. He learned of a successful Israeli online shidduch system called Algo, created by graduates of the Israeli military’s tech division and geared primarily for dati leumi singles. That platform grew rapidly, now boasting some 35,000 members.

Intrigued, Rabbi Pogrow and NASI’s Mrs. Varda Berkowitz met with several couples who had connected through Algo, and were surprised by what they heard.

“I’ve been working with shidduchim for eighteen years, and I’ve never come across couples who actually liked the process,” Rabbi Pogrow says. “Everybody knows the system can be very challenging and frustrating. Yet here, they were all raving about how smooth and on-target the system was.”

While Algo was designed for a more modern Israeli crowd, Rabbi Pogrow and Mrs. Berkowitz recognized the potential of a smartly designed algorithm to address the mainstream American yeshivah world’s most painful shidduch challenges. The NASI team thus set out to develop a refined platform, coming out with ZUUG last year.

ZUUG uses a sophisticated algorithm that begins with an interactive intake process of over 50 questions. These are not just superficial queries: Aside from requesting a résumé and some basic descriptions, the system delves into core identifying areas, determining comfort levels on a variety of fronts. For instance, it poses various levels of frumkeit and prefered hashkafic paths, personality traits, and acceptable family backgrounds.

Users meticulously detail their own values and preferences, as well as basic preferences in a spouse, such as height and age range. The algorithm then combs the database to identify compatible matches, generating suggestions that are, in the words of shadchan Rabbi Tzadok Katz, “spot on.”

The beauty of the technology-powered system, which in time may even help reshape the entire platform of mainstream shidduchim, lies in its discretion and fidelity to the traditional shidduch process. When a match is found, ZUUG sends on the suggestion, making sure to maintain privacy. Only a first name and an overview are initially  provided, and if both sides are interested in exploring the suggestion further, the platform hands the shidduch to a mutually agreed-upon, pre-vetted shadchan. The shadchan then receives the full résumés and proceeds to redt the shidduch the conventional way. This way, the full profiles remain completely hidden — even from the shadchanim — until preliminary mutual interest is established.

This methodical, data-driven approach directly confronts two prevalent challenges to the current system. First, ZUUG addresses the common issue of girls being forgotten. Shadchanim, juggling hundreds of names and résumés, simply cannot remember every single girl they met months prior, and this leads to tremendous pressure on parents to “check in” and remind the shadchan about their daughter — a frustrating, anxiety-ridden loop for everyone involved. With ZUUG, no résumé slips to the bottom of the pile, as the platform maintains an active memory of every user.

Second, it resolves the converse issue of boys and their parents being flooded with résumés. Overwhelmed and lacking clear criteria, they often resort to focusing on external markers, such as name recognition, material success, and the endless, often detrimental, exchange of photos. ZUUG’s limited, data-driven suggestions cut through the noise, promoting substance-based consideration rather than the pressure to give a yes based on superficial details.

The ZUUG developers are acutely aware of the controversy over photo sharing, but also recognize that that many families feel strongly about parents seeing a photo before moving forward. Therefore, the system is designed to keep users firmly in control of their images at every stage.

The user can instruct their chosen shadchan not to share a photo when suggesting a shidduch, or grant the shadchan discretion to share it with mutually agreed upon prospects. Alternatively, the user may allow a potential match a one-time viewing of the photo, enabled by technology that prevents saving or sharing.

“This puts the discomfort surrounding photos, privacy breaches, and unwanted sharing to rest,” says Rabbi Pogrow.

In just a few months since its rollout, ZUUG has amassed over 2,000 users — most of them under age 26 — from mainstream yeshivos and seminaries. The platform has garnered strong endorsements from leading rabbanim, who commended its sensitivity and rigorous safeguards.

After a direct review, Yeshiva of Greater Washington rosh yeshivah and international lecturer Rav Ahron Lopiansky, who at an Agudah convention decried shidduch pictures as “the klipah of chitzoniyus,” said the system was “amazingly professional and very dignified. Hopefully this will help many people.”

Rav Shmuel Fuerst, rav of Agudas Yisrael of Peterson Park in Chicago, dayan of Agudath Israel of Illinois and creator of Shas for Shidduchim, called ZUUG “A fantastic platform for shidduchim,” urging singles and their families “to take advantage of this incredible opportunity to do powerful hishtadlus.”

We’re All Shadchanim

LESHADECH

Innovator: Zalman Spiegel*

Established: 2006

“Redting shidduchim is for everyone, no matter the age, affiliation, or level of expertise. Just make suggestions. Every single day. You might change a life forever”

O

ne initiative aimed at easing the overwhelming volume of names sitting on the heads of a small number of shadchanim is to turn everyone into a shadchan.

Two decades ago, Zalman Spiegel of Boro Park wasn’t very involved in shidduchim. All that changed when he realized that one of his neighbors, whom he saw every day in shul, had four daughters close in age — two of them already past the regular window for shidduchim in chassidish circles. Zalman wondered, in an area like Boro Park, where there are shuls on every corner for every type and kehillah, would others on the block necessarily know that their neighbor had a bunch of daughters to marry off?

And so, Zalman took the initiative, going from shul to shul and writing lists of people who had children in the parshah. Then he began distributing these lists, urging every person he met to start redting shidduchim.

“Anyone can be a shadchan,” he says. “They just don’t know it.”

With his conviction to make average laymen into skilled matchmakers, Zalman Spiegel eventually put together a team of volunteers and began compiling lists encompassing 50 shuls. Branding themselves with the name “Leshadech,” the team began actively spreading the idea of private people redting shidduchim.

Through extensive marketing techniques and tireless devotion, the Leshadech team has popularized the slogans “Redt-A-Shidduch” and “Did you redt a shidduch today?” You’ll find their slogans all over the Tristate area, whether on a bumper sticker in Monsey, a storefront in New York City, an ad in a Lakewood publication, or even on a Route 17 billboard that reads, “Thought of someone? Say something….”

“I have a great story about that billboard,” Zalman says. This past June, he received an email from an unfamiliar person on the West Coast. “Thank you for posting that billboard,” the writer said. Zalman later got in touch with the woman, who shared that her daughter had recently gotten married, and she explained the billboard’s pivotal role.

She said that her daughter had been teaching in a Brooklyn girls’ school, and one of her students thought of a shidduch for her. The girl encouraged her mother to make the suggestion, and she called once but never followed up on the idea, assuming that pushing a shidduch was a job for a “real” shadchan. But one weekend the following summer, when this girl and her family were making their way up Route 17 to the Catskills, she saw the billboard and asked her mother to try suggesting the idea once again. She did, and this time, it went.

“We got such a chiyus out of this story that we decided to supercharge our marketing campaign for the next few months,” Zalman says. They then printed their slogan on 2,200 seltzer bottles that were handed out in grocery stores and bungalow colonies in the Catskills. They also hosted a large shidduch event during the Nine Days, and followed up by distributing thousands of copies of Guide for Shidduchim by Rav Yitzchok Zalman Gips.

“Redting shidduchim is for everyone, no matter the age, affiliation, or level of expertise,” Zalman stresses. “Just make suggestions. Every single day. It can’t hurt — and you may change a life forever.”

Leshadech capitalizes on the summer months, when people are up in the mountains, away from the bustle of city life, and spend a lot more time socializing. They send out comprehensive lists of marriageable-age children from bungalow colony to bungalow colony, generating thousands of ideas.

Leshadech also began distributing calendars in heimish enclaves all over the Tristate area, with reminders about redting shidduchim and boxes to mark off each day a suggestion was made. They even marketed a Leshadech dreidel.

Aside from their extensive marketing, Leshadech is most well-known for its regular teleconferences, which host panels of experienced shadchanim who help motivate the average layman to start making suggestions.

“You can’t imagine how many people have told me that they have redt shidduchim thanks to the advice and encouragement they got from those teleconferences,” Zalman says.

And that first initiative that spurred this whole organization — the lists he would share with local kehillos? It’s still going strong and is a massive driver of community suggestions.

Meet Your Matchmaker

ADOPT A SHADCHAN

Innovator: Lisa Elefant

Established: 2019

“The shadchanim I knew typically operated in isolation. True, they were constantly meeting people and setting up dates, but it was with no formal structure to be able to network, collaborate, or share ideas across cities or communities”

Perhaps the most prominent of these recent initiatives was started by a woman who had been active on the shidduchim scene for many years before embarking on a new, revolutionary journey.

Mrs. Lisa Elefant had been active in the shidduch field for over 20 years before embarking on a revolutionary project that would embed a shadchan in every kehillah and create a network of idea sharing and other initiatives.

She herself became a shadchan by accident. “It’s not like you’re born saying, ‘Okay, I want to be a shadchan,’ ” she explains. “It’s just something that kind of finds you.”

Her early success in making shidduchim came while she was simultaneously managing a medical office and raising a family. And while each engagement brought her great fulfillment, the nature of the work itself often felt like operating on a lonely island.

“The shadchanim I knew typically operated in isolation,” she recalls. “Yes, they were constantly meeting people, setting up dates, and so on — but it was with no formal structure to be able to network, collaborate, or share ideas across cities or communities.”

She also stresses that shadchanim can’t typically earn a living just from redting shidduchim, so they have no choice but to generate income through a more steady job. “It was just too time-consuming to really give each single the devotion they needed alongside running our very busy personal lives,” she admits.

Mrs. Elefant realized that the system was inefficient and limiting, leaving shadchanim exhausted and singles desperate for the consideration they needed and deserved.

This recognition sparked a groundbreaking idea: Adopt A Shadchan (AAS). In its first iteration, Mrs. Elefant’s vision was to designate shadchanim for specific shuls, ensuring that a dedicated, accessible shadchan was embedded within every 50 to 60 families, taking a huge burden off the community and the singles themselves.

The first crucial step toward this large-scale project was to build a robust network. In 2019, Lisa Elefant started a simple WhatsApp chat that quickly attracted about 30 shadchanim from various cities including L.A., Cleveland, and Toronto. The shadchanim quickly realized that just by collaborating on the chat, they were generating more ideas, each one of them tapping into a much wider pool of singles.

The network soon began planning the next phase of the operation: how to delegate specific shadchanim to large communities. However, then Covid hit, shutting down all in-person gatherings.

“That idea was out the window, at least temporarily,” Mrs. Elefant recalls.

But rather than abandoning their goals, the nascent group pivoted. They realized the true power of AAS was the network itself, and the team they had built became the engine for a new, powerful model of collaboration. This global network now includes 360 shadchanim from around the world and provides the backbone for all their current initiatives.

The first undertaking AAS began to tackle was the often misunderstood concept of speed dating. At the height of the Covid shutdown, they started organizing speed dating sessions via Zoom, managing groups of up to 60 singles.

“Before then, speed dating was often viewed as a resource only for the seriously desperate, causing mainstream singles to run in the other direction,” Mrs. Elefant points out. But by hosting various speed dating events, including some for working guys and others for older learning boys, AAS has successfully made it a common, valuable tool — especially for this demographic of singles who were getting older and growing increasingly frustrated with the conventional process.

“We’re still doing these sessions today, and they’re seeing very promising results,” Mrs. Elefant shares. The process allows singles to briefly meet 15 to 20 potential dates without the ordeal of screening a résumé, giving them the opportunity to make an in-person assessment before doing a deeper dive into the person’s history — avoiding the “broken telephone” and burnout many older singles and their parents struggle with.

Another highly successful AAS initiative is what they call the Wedding Blitz, where shadchanim attend weddings and meet the friends of the chassan and kallah during the downtime between the chuppah and the first dance. They also created Fredt (Friend Suggestion), a website where anyone can submit a suggestion for a single friend, which is then vetted and passed on to a shadchan. AAS hosts numerous Meet the Shadchan events each year, as well as offering coaching sessions for dating advice.

But above all, perhaps the most integral component of Adopt A Shadchan is its massive online database, where singles can create profiles visible to the substantial network of shadchanim, who work together to make matches every single day. On any given day, there are over 3,000 profiles available for the seasoned shadchanim to explore and match up, as well as a dedicated team of 48 volunteer shadchanim who are solely dedicated to the online database.

This multifaceted chesed organization has yielded 700 shidduchim since its inception. By buttressing the work of shadchanim with support and a vast shared network, AAS is tackling the lack of dedicated, full-time community shadchanim, albeit from a different angle than initially planned.

Looking back, Mrs. Elefant realizes that even without the pandemic, her original idea’s dependence on volunteer workers — which shadchanim usually are — presented a massive challenge. To successfully implement a community-based system like designating shadchanim to shuls, the community would first need to recognize the value of the role and structure it as a paid salary position.

“Shadchanim should be compensated for their time, not just for making a successful match,” she explains. “It’s not like they only succeed when they reach a l’chayim. They’re doing the tzibbur a huge service by guiding singles through the ins and outs of dating and finding their bashert, even when it doesn’t wind up working out.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1097)