Aleeza Ben Shalom, star of the hit Netflix series “Jewish Matchmaking,” teamed up with Shagririm BaLev (“Ambassadors of the Heart”) to teach hundreds of people tips for dating and marriage at an event last week in Jerusalem.
“I was looking to make a major impact, and I believe we need a Jewish matchmaking movement. I wanted to collaborate with people who have a similar mission. While not everyone is a matchmaker, everyone can make a match,” Ben Shalom said. “I wanted to do this with them and all the other supporters because we want to reach out to as many people as possible to secure our Jewish future through marriage.
“We have soldiers on the ground fighting, so we’ll have a land, but will we have a people? Marriage is the only way to secure our future,” she continued.
The event, held at the Nefesh B’Nefesh Campus in the capital, included a networking session for professional matchmakers, and aspiring ones, followed by a Q&A session with Ben Shalom, who gave the participants practical advice such as how to handle burnout after many years of unsuccessful dating.
“We wanted to empower everyone to know how to make a match,” said Ayelet Glatt, international coordinator for Shagririm BaLev.
The social-technological initiative is dedicated to helping people within the Orthodox Jewish community find their life partners. They are set up by a carefully curated group of 1,000 “ambassadors” who have pledged their time and personal connections to help those close to them find the love of their lives.
Since its establishment in September 2019, some 345 couples have stood under the chuppah thanks to the Shagrirm BaLev network.
The initiative was born out of a student computer science project at the Jerusalem College of Technology. Now, through partnering with World Mizrachi, the platform is expanding its initiatives, not only within the National-Religious community in Israel but beyond the Jewish state’s borders as well.
