Your Mate in Cyberspace
Online Dating Turned Mainstream.com
Natalie B. Anzarouth
In the not-so-distant past, if a girl decided that things weren’t working out with a guy she had started seeing, she used to have to wait until their next date – often days – to give him the news in person. The invention of the telephone made things a little bit easier for the faint of heart, providing the option of eliminating an uncomfortable face-to-face encounter. But over the last ten years, with the emergence of a host of electronic forms of communication, some have managed to completely avoid that dreaded conversation.
Today, a girl can send a five-word text message from her mobile phone to break things off, and seconds later, get confirmation that it was received and read by the person she no longer wishes to see.
Advances in technology have irrevocably changed the landscape of today’s dating scene.
E-mails, instant messaging, blogs and other forms of online media have transformed the way singles meet, connect and interact with one another.
Back in biblical times, although their choices may have been more limited, it seems things were far simpler. Parents themselves took on the responsibility of finding suitable mates for their children, including Avraham, who sent his faithful agent Eliezer to find a wife for Yizhak. Following Eliezer’s encounter with Rivka, it was determined that she was meant to marry Yizhak. The conventions of matchmaking used by Eliezer have been carried out, largely unchanged, throughout thousands of generations – most recently in cyberspace – emerging into the hip nouveaux way for mainstream society to date.
In Syrian-Sephardic culture, the buzzra (arranged marriage) has been an integral part of our tradition for centuries – it’s how most of our grandparents and just about every one of our great-grandparents found one another. For many of the single men and women in our community today, the thought of such arrangements seems archaic and unfashionable.
But have the days of buzzras really come to a grinding halt or are they just beginning to take off in a new and modern way? Has the so-called old-fashioned way of dating reemerged in popular culture, masked behind a URL address and taking the form of a sophisticated database?
Online Introductions Turn Mainstream
If a doctor is considered a good catch and a lawyer is a great catch, then surely a successful congressman should be regarded as the most coveted of bachelors – according to the standards of at least a few Jewish mothers. And where would one go to meet such a man? Socialite parties? Local watering holes? Not quite. The place to meet six-term
Jewish Congressman Steve Rothman, was cyberspace. For the popular, handsome
Democrat from Passaic, the ideal place to find a wife was a popular website for Jewish singles. Following his August 2006 marriage, the congressman has been an outspoken proponent of online dating.
With nearly 85 million singles in the United States,
*
online dating has been a growing popular trend in America since the 1990s. In 2003, according to U.S. News and World
* Kurlantzick, Joshua, 2001. U.S. News and World Report: Hello, Goodbye, Hey Maybe...

Report, 40 million Americans visited online dating sites. And while these dating sites assisted singles with exchanging telephone numbers – the industry itself was taking in some numbers. According to a 2005 article
†
published in the Online Information Review,
“The industry grew 400 percent in 2002, with revenue of US$302 million,” and a reported 16.3 million people were enrolled on some kind of dating site. Projections for
2007 indicate that the industry may be set to approach the $700 million.
Perhaps even more impressive than the dollars involved, are the numbers of successful matches. The popular Orthodox Jewish site sawyouatsinai.com boasted 336 matches as of late December 2006, while the similarly positioned frumster.com tallied an impressive
710. Contrary to the stereotype, most of the singles matched have highly desirable traits, and are not among those who would seem to have trouble meeting someone using traditional methods.
Not all sites provide figures on actual matches. Some measure effectiveness by the size of their enrollment. Registered non-paying users at the largest Jewish site number in the high six figures, with over 75,000 users subscribing to the premium fee-based service.
These Jewish match sites represent both an opportunity and a stumbling block for many
Sephardic singles who have become increasingly disenchanted with the waning party scene. Although the established sites promise access to thousands of Jewish singles, the standard that defines who is really a Jew are vastly more stringent in the Sephardic community. Furthermore, until fairly recently, enrollment on these sites by Sephardic and especially Syrian Jewish members was very limited.
While the growth of Sephardic registration at Frumster (see sidebar) has been impressive
– with almost 20 percent of the 20,000 plus users classifying themselves as such, it was the launch of Sephardic Link that officially established online dating as a viable option for the Syrian-Sephardic community.
Commonly referred to as “SY Link,” the site was formed in June 2005 and launched to the masses in July 2006. “We noticed how well dating websites were doing in the outside world and felt compelled to bring this new social ‘tool’ to our own community, and adapt it to suit our needs,” explained one of the founding members of Sephardic Link. With the backing of Rabbi Eli Mansour and Rabbi Raymond Harari, Sephardic Link has registered some 1,500 applicants and boasts three couples that are either engaged or planning to get engaged.
The Guy, The Girl, and The Agent
But unlike self-service sites such as Frumster, Sephardic Link does not publish member profiles on the web for users to peruse freely. Instead, each member either chooses or is assigned to an agent, who works on finding a match for them. When a match is suggested by the agent, and approved by one of the parties, a message is sent to each member. The
Sephardic Link team, which one director explained was set up by trained professionals including psychologists, relationship specialists, and rabbis, implemented detailed security measures in order to ensure member privacy.
†
Smith, Alan D., 2005. Online Information Review. Vol.29, Iss.1. Exploring online dating and customer relationship management.

“When we did our research, we tested over 20 Jewish sites out there, and not once did anyone check to see if we were in fact Jewish. On our site, everyone that joins chooses a rabbi that knows them or their family, and our team follows up with each rabbi so he can vouch for the 'Jewishness' of the person joining. Only then do we process their form. In this way the site has garnered trust from our users, as we can stand behind every person in the database,” said one of the site’s directors.
Indeed, an unannounced attempt by C OMMUNITY to complete a profile on the site using an assumed, Sephardic-sounding name, was discovered within hours – well before the point at which it would have been included in the database.
Although there are other sites, like Sephardicdate.com, which presumably cater primarily to the Sephardic community, enrollment on those sites is scant, and security and verification measures don’t compare to those in place at Sephardic Link.
“The singles themselves, who were always intrigued by internet dating, said they never would have joined other sites before and have their profiles made public,” one founding member of the Link said. “They loved the idea that it was discreet and the fact that there were rabbis overseeing the whole process and giving a recommendation to all those that joined.”
Aside from the lack of privacy, one of the chief complaints cited by users of other sites is the inability to gauge the seriousness of other members. Men routinely gripe on message boards about getting only a two percent to five percent response rate from female members to whom they send messages – and the responses they do receive are often completely incompatible.
Through their agent-driven system, the Link has managed to avoid this problem. A member who was matched through the site wrote, "One of the many things we loved about Sephardic Link was that they don't just set you up with someone because you and the other guy or girl just so happen to both be single. You can actually sense why
Sephardic Link thought the match would work out. It took Sephardic Link just one try with us and we couldn't be happier with each other.”
Since it represents a new concept for the target audience, building up enrollment was anticipated to be the project’s biggest obstacle. But to the surprise of many, registration has been brisk – especially among mainstream singles.
Having never gone to a traditional matchmaker, Joyce*, a 20-year-old college student from Brooklyn, is a typical example. Although she admits she never thought an online match site would embed itself into the culture of mainstream dating in the community, she joined nonetheless. “I thought it would give me the opportunity to meet new people, people I would never know or have the opportunity to meet,” she said.
As enrollment continued to ramp up, Joyce learned that the site had attracted more people than she ever thought it would. “A lot of the people I know are on it… You have regular mainstream people that really do want an alternative to the typical dating scene they are

surrounded by…. It’s really a great way to date and hopefully eventually find what you are looking for in a mate.”
Much of the buzz surrounding Sephardic Link, Joyce said, is the cases of couples who are already engaged or have upcoming engagements from the site. “There are people I actually know of that are really getting married. It’s amazing,” she said, adding, “It makes you really realize that you can meet someone from the site, and it’s not just another way to date. It’s a way to find someone. And you don’t have to go to a party to meet them.”
“There is a trend now for everyone to go out in groups, and so the chances of connecting with that right one are slim,” pointed out one Sephardic Link agent. “We are bringing back good old-fashioned dating.”
Noting that singles on the site should be more open-minded to dating people they already know, she explained how the match process is extremely thorough. “I look at religious level and family background. Then I look at their interests and try to find two people that hopefully will have things to talk about on the date.”
In suggesting dates to users of the site, she has found that members constantly tell her,
“We’re just friends.”
“They don’t realize they are halfway there. Who wouldn’t want their mate to also be their best friend? So yes, it’s a bit of a problem, but we’re working on changing the mindset in that area, and encouraging our singles to be more open-minded.”
One young couple in their twenties, who started dating through the site and plan on getting engaged shortly, wrote, “It's quite ironic that [he] and I have crossed paths many times in our lives, but never stopped and took notice [of each other] until Sephardic Link came around. In fact we were in college together for four years with the same major.”
Although the Link has seen the strongest interest from mainstream singles, young men and women from more religious families in the community have been watching the project’s development with great interest. For this segment, the Link’s infrastructure represents a powerful way to improve upon the conventions of traditional Syrian buzzras .
If registering with the Link became customary practice, instead of relying on a loosely knit group of matchmakers who may have access to only a subset of the eligible singles, matchmakers could harness the power of a centralized database that would contain a comprehensive list of all potential matches throughout the community.
As the site evolves, the founders are confident that more and more segments of the community will begin to use the service. “We knew when we began it would either be a huge hit or a total miss,” one founding member noted. “We only had one chance to do it right and we’re so glad it caught on…We hope to eventually grow from 1,500 users to
10,000 users. We are also slowly but surely building up our database of singles.”
One important change that has already been made on the site as a result of member feedback was having the option for an agent to send the match to either the female or male first. Initially, females were sent the match suggestion first, but as the agents soon learned, every situation called for a different approach. The new process has the agents deciding who the match should be sent to first.

From the other side, “The guys feel a lot better about it,” the agent explained.
“We know there will be many more additions and changes to the way our site works, which is inevitable as we grow and change with the times,” concludes one of the founders. “Either way, we feel we have the right recipe which is the basis for all things to come.”