Dating service seeks to help clients find soulmates who share their beliefs

Looking for a haimeshe mench or shayna maideleh?

Then perhaps it's time to stop kvetching, varf a little gelt and sign up with the shadchen.

Jews looking for Jews now have a new resource to help them in their quest for a mate. It's called Chai Expectations, an online dating service recently launched by Carol Berlin. In a metropolitan area that includes about 6,000 Jews subject to a fast-paced modern age, maybe some old-fashioned matchmaking is just what the doctor ordered.

Berlin thinks so. She has been active in Charleston's Jewish community for more than a quarter-century. She worked at the Jewish Community Center for 26 years, organizing social events for most of that time, before retiring to become a full-time matchmaker.

Chai Expectations was introduced in Charlotte by Lauri Berzack. When Berlin heard about the project, she contacted Berzack and purchased the rights to manage a local version of the dating service.

Finding mates for people is not a completely new enterprise for Berlin. Nine years ago, she dabbled in matchmaking with a program called "Traditions." It was a low-tech solution, requiring a notebook, pencil and thick eraser. Two married couples were a result of those early efforts, Berlin said. Not bad for just one year's work.

The new service isn't really that different from "Traditions." In addition to a notebook, Berlin's got a Web site. But she still offers hands-on help. In fact, Chai Expectations is meant to be a personable alternative to other more impersonal online services, she said.

So she interviews everyone who contacts her and really tries to get to know them, she said. It's a consultation whose purpose is reciprocal: As Berlin constructs profiles of her customers, she shows them what she's all about and gains their trust.

"When I meet with somebody, I'm selling myself, too," she said.

But it's about more than satisfying two people at a time, she said. It's about Jewish identity and cultural continuity in an era when interfaith marriages among Jews are on the rise, a trend that worries many Jews.

"That's my mission: to make the whole community responsible," she said.

It's a message Rabbi Ari Sytner of Brith Sholom Beth Israel Synagogue in Charleston is actively promoting.

"Previously, the Jewish community played an important role in suggesting matches to singles," he wrote in an article posted on aish.com last year. "Today, however, the community can easily sit back and absolve themselves of their responsibilities, while the singles are left to fend for themselves. ... I believe that the first step is for us all to realize that the issue of Jewish singles is not 'their problem' to deal with, but all of ours."

The Orthodox Jewish tradition prohibits interfaith marriages.

'What I believed in'

Since Berlin launched her Web site in May, she has advertised in synagogue newsletters and Jewish publications throughout the Lowcountry and mailed 300 postcards to individuals. Already, she has 100 e-mail addresses of interested singles and 25 formal applicants.

One of them is Karen Shelton, a 60-year-old legal nurse consultant who saw Berlin's ad in the Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim synagogue's newsletter and called to set up an interview.

Shelton converted to Judaism four years ago. "It summed up what I believed in," she said. The, she tried Web services such as Match.com, but found them much too impersonal. "People can be, well, not very nice."

She said she's looking for a personalized experience that, ideally, will lead to a partnership but might at least lead to friendships and immersion in Jewish culture.

Married for 23 years and the mother of an adult daughter, Shelton has been single for years and very busy as a legal nurse consultant. But, she said, it's time to reconnect.

When she met Berlin, she felt she was placing herself in good hands, she said.

"She is down-to-earth, warm, caring. ... We talked about my wishes, my expectations."

Before she can develop a relationship with a new mate, Shelton felt she needed to develop a relationship with the matchmaker, she said.

While Shelton and others are determined to find a Jewish mate, not all Jews are opposed to the idea of intermarriage.

"The Reform movement does not view intermarriage as a total disaster," Charleston's Rabbi Anthony Holz said. "While we prefer that Jews marry Jews, intermarriage creates an opportunity."

That opportunity is to introduce non-Jews to a rich culture and, in so doing, strengthen it, he said. "It's a test of how good we are at doing our job. If we meet people's needs, they'll stay with us and bring other people with them."

Holz said that Jewish expectations for marriage were set long ago, when Jews lived in ghettos and suffered unrelenting discrimination. Intermarriage was simply not a big issue because it was not an option for most.

"Today, we have choices which our grandparents did not have," he said. Today, Jews benefit from substantial freedom. "There is no reason to be Jewish other than because you want to be Jewish," he said.

And shutting oneself to the possibilities of enrichment is to ignore the massive changes that have affected the lives of Jews, Holz added.

"There are going to be wonderful people you will meet, and not all of them are going to be Jewish," he said. Besides, no matter whom you marry, you are going to face challenges.

Helping interfaith couples deal with those challenges is a Boston-based organization called InterfaithFamily.com.

Micah Sachs, its online managing editor, said that although InterfaithFamily.com encourages couples to make choices compatible with the Jewish faith, it doesn't push conversion. Rather it recognizes that intermarriage is inevitable so long as Jews remain a tiny minority in their communities.

"In previous generations, religious affiliation was a birth right," Sachs said. "Now, its a choice."

His Web site gets about 20,000 users each month, three-quarters of whom are Jews in a relationship, he said.

And interfaith marriages in the United States are on the rise because Jews, though not necessarily less religious than in the past, are more mobile and have fewer ties to traditional Jewish communities, he said.

Staying in the faith

Interfaith marriages might be a fact of life, and Jews might be more integrated in society than ever before, but that doesn't stop some from trying to snag a fellow Jew.

David Dorfman, 47, is a schoolteacher in Darlington. A New Yorker who spent six years in Pittsburgh before relocating to South Carolina in 2005, he had been married 15 years to a Christian. At first, the relationship flourished, he said. His wife encouraged him to rekindle an interest in his Jewish heritage, and he appreciated her support.

Eventually, she had what Dorfman called her "great awakening" and became a fundamentalist Christian. It became clear that they were too different, and three years ago they separated, he said.

"There was a realization that there are certain things in culture and religion that can't be reconciled," he said.

Still in Pittsburgh, he dated once or twice, but decided he wanted a change of scenery. He answered an ad for schoolteachers and moved south with his cat, Moses.

Darlington has a Reform synagogue and small Jewish community, but not very many eligible bachelorettes. Rabbi Jeff Ronald told Dorfman about the new dating service. "He's been helpful," Dorfman said of his rabbi, "because he wants his members to be happy."

The news got the schoolteacher thinking. Professionally, he's in a groove, happy teaching 12th-grade economics and government.

"At this point in my life, do I want to meet someone? Sure," he said.

But she's got to be a practicing Jew.

"I'd rather stay single the rest of my life than get married to a non-Jew," he said. "The risk is too great."

Dorfman said he likes what Berlin has to offer: mediation.

"It's pragmatic. There's something wholesome about it," Dorfman said.

Berlin said that, so far, more women have signed up than men. But she's determined to work with everyone who comes to her in search of a companion and plans to extend the reach of Chai Expectations to Savannah, Myrtle Beach and Columbia, making it a regional service. And she soon will start cross-matching with singles using the Charlotte service. Already she has won support from Jewish congregations and organizations outside the Charleston area, she said.

Will the schlepping be worth it? True love has no boundaries, Berlin said.

The annual fee of $800, half of which is paid up front and the other half when the first match is made, includes background checks on prospective suitors and Berlin's active involvement. The subscription year begins on the day of the first date.

No suitor information is shared, not even a photograph, before the first meeting, Berlin said, and clients are allowed to date only one person at a time. Everything goes through her.

It's a lot of work, but the reward — partnerships for singles (maybe even a chuppah), a shiddach for the matchmaker (could there be a better mitzvah?) — is well worth it, Berlin said.

"There's somebody for everybody, let's face it."

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.

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