Veteran badchan Yonasan Schwartz sings for new couples by night and repairs frayed marriages by day

Photos: Itzik Roitman, Mishpacha archives

Longtime badchan Reb Yonasan Schwartz never takes the Yiddish expression “you can’t dance at two chasunahs” literally. Just before this last Pesach, he was thrilled to dance at two weddings the same night — not that he’s looking for extra simchahs, considering he leads the mitzvah tantz many nights of the wedding season. But these simchahs were extra-special to him, the unexpected fruits of his passionate speeches, talks, and recent clips begging couples to try every avenue of resolution before — or even after — deciding to end their marriage. Indeed, these were weddings of “machazir grushaso” — remarriage to one’s wife after divorcing.

He has no official title or shingle hanging from his window, but the owner of Brooklyn’s Toys-2-Discover toy store chain by day and wedding grammer by night (although after three decades he says he’s slowing down) has been producing widely-viewed weekly video clips for the last three years, sharing his thoughts on shidduchim, shalom bayis, the tragedy of throw-away marriages, divorce and parental alienation.

Because really, no one has a window to the minefield of family dynamics like a skilled mitzvah tantz badchan, who has to keep the peace all around, show honor to all sides and be very funny and entertaining without offending anyone.

Reb Yonasan always knew his mouth was his most powerful tool, although he assumed that only went as far as the dance floor. But it was during the Covid lockdown that he discovered people were interested in what he had to say even if it wasn’t in rhyme or grammen. His insights into shalom bayis, divorce trauma, parental alienation and the ubiquitous shidduch crisis are profound — and really, what else would you expect from someone who’s spent most nights for the past 35 years navigating complex family relationships while sending new couples into their future?

“A good badchan is really a family therapist,” Reb Yonason says. “He has to be highly intuitive and very quickly tune in to the nuances of the family dynamics. With a few words, he has the capacity to make shalom between relatives or fan the flames of machlokes. I don’t even know most of the families I do weddings for, but after doing this for more than three decades, an hour of gathering family details from a few different sources is usually enough for me to know what to say and what not to say.”

A “badchan” is loosely translated as a “jester,” but a family who commissions one for their child’s wedding knows it’s so much more. At a chassidic wedding, the badchan is the link between generations, weaving his verses as he summons the honored relatives to the mitzvah tantz — a dance that, according to tradition, joins the souls of those generations together. And as the two halves of the soul — husband and wife — have found each other, it is also a mirror of something cosmic — a dance of the Jewish People reuniting with the Shechinah.

And that’s why it’s so painful for Reb Yonasan to see marriages breaking up, as well as so many singles waiting to find their zivug. On his popular weekly clips, those are the topics that get the most traction. In fact, he’s even started his own campaign: It’s called ShidduchCall, and it’s a sort of matching campaign, although with a different currency. Instead of money, “donors” pledge hours to network for their friends. Within a year of its creation, hundreds of successful shidduchim have already come about.

It started when he talked on the shidduch hotline “Leshadech” last year, after which he says he received dozens of calls from broken parents asking him for some eitzah to help their children find shidduchim. He tells of a 29-year-old bochur in Eretz Yisrael whose friends, eager to help him, got together and offered a certain very busy and popular shadchan $20,000 to find him a shidduch. The shadchan had a better — and cheaper — idea: that each one of those friends pledge at least 20 minutes every day to work the phones on behalf of this bochur. One week later, he was a chassan.

“We’ve created a matching campaign — not with money but with the most precious currency — your time,” Reb Yonasan explains. “Look, I know what it means to be busy. I have five retail stores, a wholesale business, I do weddings and I visit the hospital once a week. I have no time, and you have no time. But just pick up the phone and do it, and G-d willing, you’re going to see success.”