Rabbi Shlomo Lewenstein discusses shidduchim, from personality profiles and possibilities to perfect partnerships

 

 

By Reuvain Borchardt

 

 

 

It’s just weeks into a cold winter, but Lakewood is about to enter a deep thaw.

 

It’s the annual Tu B’Shevat ritual of the opening of the BMG freezer door as a new crop of bnei Torah enter the shidduch market for the first time.

 

The buzz is palpable as over 500 young men debut on the dating scene. Phones ring, calendars fill, and car-rental companies, dry cleaaners , and hotel bars gear up for a surge of business.

 

For the bachurim, the end of the freezer means anticipation and excitement. For the young women, it often means anxi-ety. “Will the boy give a yes? He’s probably gotten a hundred résumés already. I hope I’m not the last of my friends to get a date …”

 

 

Rabbi Shlomo Lewenstein has been working toward this moment for nearly a year. One of Lakewood’s leading shadchanim, he visited Eretz Yisrael twice last year to meet the bachurim headed to BMG this winter. And through the opening months of this zman, he’s gone out of his way to meet boys daily while fielding calls from mothers and interviewing their daughters.

 

By the time the freezer ends, Shloimy, as he’s referred to around town (he’s also known as “Lewie”), will have spoken to just about every BMG first-year bachur and have suggested matches for many. And that’s on top of the thousands of boys and girls he’s working on in their second, third, fourth, or fifth year of shidduchim.

 

I meet with Shloimy on a windy January afternoon in the large study of his home on New Central Avenue. It’s in this window-lined room with ample natural light, sparsely decorated but for two paintings and a book-case-lined wall, with an oversized desk cluttered with résumés, wedding invitations, and thank-you cards, that some three dozen successful shidduchim are redt every year.

 

For one of the busiest men in Lakewood with a schedule that hardly allows for a moment for breathing, Shloimy is remarkably calm and soft-spoken, wearing a constant, unruffled smile.

 

He pulls his ever-present AirPods out of his ears, sets his always-buzzing phone to silent, sits down with the third of seven coffees he’ll have today, and speaks with me about the shidduch world; the phone calls and the dates and the résumés and the pictures and the problems and the joys of what it’s like to be one of the yeshivah world’s most sought-after matchmakers who has made close to 800 shidduchim.

 

Misconceptions About Shadchanim

 

 

“What are the biggest misconceptions about shadchanim?” I ask, going for a juicy bite right at the top.

 

“The biggest misconception,” he replies with a smile, appearing relieved that the question has been asked, “is that because they’re not answering your call, shadchanim have bad middos, are not menschen, are ignoring you, and aren’t thinking about your daughter.”

 

“Shadchanim also have their own life — they have a family, they have sedarim, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. And when they’re not answering your call, it doesn’t mean you’re being ignored. A shadchan doesn’t notify the girl’s mother every time he redts her to a boy. If the shadchan called back every person every time, he wouldn’t be making any shidduchim.”

 

Shloimy tries to call parents back to notify them when he’s redt a shidduch, but he maintains that if he didn’t, he’d be more efficient and make more shidduchim.

 

“I feel guilty. Like, this person is really trying to get through to me, and I know it hurts very much. But what’s the shadchan supposed to do? We’re each a one-man show. Everybody wants the shadchan to have a chance to think about them. Well, if we’re re-turning calls all day, I’m not going to have a chance to think.”

 

Parents have yelled at him for not returning calls or allegedly not working hard enough for their child, but he asks people to simply remember this: “The number-one reason shadchanim do what they do is to help people. Yes, it’s a parnassah, but that’s not what drives anyone to spend their life doing this.”

 

A Day in the Life of a Shadchan

 

Shloimy’s mornings begin at 6:30 with a 35-minute run on the treadmill—the only quiet personal time he’ll have all day. When I ask if he multitasks with shidduchim calls while he’s running, the trim 53-year-old quips, “I can’t; I run too fast.”

 

For Shacharis, he goes to a BMG beis medrash or one of the surrounding shuls where bachurim daven; that gives him the opportunity to look for boys he hasn’t met yet and chat with them after davening. These post-Shacharis meetings are the main way he gets to know the first-year BMG guys.

 

He also tries to go to the BMG dining room for at least one meal a day to meet boys there.

 

“It’s not easy,” he says, “because no one’s really walking over to me.”

 

In this shidduch-crisis world, the boys don’t reach out to shadchanim. It’s the girls who run after the shadchanim, and the shadchanim have to run after the boys.

 

When he returns home, Shloimy begins taking care of the previous night’s dates and redting new shidduchim.

 

He also spends time fundraising for a tzedakah he founded to help chassanim in need of financial assistance to make their wedding. It’s called Zichron Matel, named after his mother, and has an annual budget of $2.5 million.

 

He also tries to help some other organizations: one focuses on shidduchim for singles who are 25+; in another, called Kesher, shadchanim like Shloimy who know lots of boys speak to shadchanim, primarily women, who mostly know girls, to try to work on matches.

 

Part of his day is spent meeting personally with the girls to whom he’s redting shidduchim. Each meeting is just 5-10 minutes long, but it’s important for him to get to know the girl’s personality, rather than to just hear, “She’s looking for a long-term learner.”

 

Otherwise, besides davening and learning several sedarim of 30–60 minutes each, he’s on the phone with shidduchim all day.

 

Virtually every night, he attends vorts or weddings, many of them his own shidduchim. One of the added bonuses of going to so many simchos is — you guessed it — meeting boys.

 

And wherever he goes, he’s relentlessly sought after. At weddings, at the supermarket, or walking down the street, anywhere and everywhere, he’s stopped by people asking, “Maybe you have a shid-duch for my daughter?” “I spoke to you about my girl a month ago — did you find anything for her?” “Remember my niece?” “What’s with my neighbor—anything yet? She’s really wonderful!”

 

While it’s difficult to be hounded at all times of day and night, Shloimy doesn’t resent it. Sometimes people are intrusive and bother him in inappropriate situations and places, but he always tries to remain polite and waves them off only if they walk over to him while he’s learning.

 

“My drive to be in shidduchim is to help people. I understand them. I feel for everybody. But it’s hard,” he sighs, “because every time you meet someone you tell yourself, ‘Okay, I’m going to help them.’ And then some-one else walks over a minute later, and you say, ‘Okay, I’m going to help them.’ By that time it’s not easy to re-member the first person anymore.’”

 

After returning from the simchos, it’s back on the phone, all night long until 1:00 a.m., when he turns in for a few hours of shut-eye before his alarm rings at 6:30 a.m.

 

The Making of a Shadchan

 

 

Shloimy came to be a shadchan because he got married young.

 

He was just 21, learning in Brisk and not looking for a shidduch. But when a match was suggested with the daughter of Rav Elimelech Bluth, the preeminent talmid of Rav Moshe Feinstein, Shloimy jumped at it.

 

The couple lived in Eretz Yisrael for a year-and-a-half and then moved to Lakewood. As his own oilam in their first year at BMG were not yet married, Shloimy started redting them to his wife’s friends and other girls he’d heard about.

 

He made his first shidduch when he was 24.

 

“I was sitting in beis medrash,” he recalls, “and someone mentioned a girl. I thought of a boy, and baruch Hashem, it worked out.”

 

One successful shidduch led to another, and before long, the calls started increasing. Rav Kalman Krohn was his neighbor at the time, and he too used to reach out to Shloimy for shidduchim for his kids. (One of the two paintings on the wall of his study today is Rav Kalman; the other is a young Rav Bluth walking with Rav Moshe.)

 

The marriages began piling up, and by the early 2000s, Shloimy was known as one of the top matchmakers in Lakewood.

 

“It wasn’t like today when there are many shadchanim around. It was a whole different world,” he says. “A smaller world. Back then there were maybe five shadchanim in all of Lakewood.”

 

Many shadchanim have a niche within which they operate; for Shloimy, it’s mainly young BMG bachurim or yeshivish working boys.

 

He typically leaves the boys and girls who haven’t found a shidduch within their first five or so years of dating to shadchanim who specialize in those age groups.

The Crisis

 

Shloimy bemoans that even a shadchan as prolific as he doesn’t have enough girls willing to say yes to a working ben Torah. It can be quite difficult for ehrliche working boys to be redt girls on their frumkeit level, and these boys often have a hard time getting dates.

 

Shloimy says that if a girl is looking for a short-term learner who will go to work in a few years, it’s silly for her not to even consider someone who’s already working.

 

“If a boy has proven that despite going out to work he still carries him-self as a ben Torah and learns every day, he might to turn out to be a better shidduch than the guy who’s going to learn for a few years but then you don’t know what’ll happen when he goes out to work. If a girl wants a guy who will start working in a few years, they should think about taking guys already working and holding themselves strong.”

 

Of course, that’s just a minor crisis compared to “The Shidduch Crisis,” also known as the disparate ratio of girls to boys in the overall shidduch market.

 

There have been various initiatives to get boys to start dating earlier and to agree to date girls of similar age or even older, but these have met with only limited success.

 

Shloimy believes the ultimate fix would have to be a drastic one.

 

“I think we shouldn’t have boys go to Eretz Yisrael at all,” he says. “They should learn for two years in beis medrash, then go to BMG or another beis medrash at 21 and start dating.” The benefits, he believes, wouldn’t only be for shidduchim, as he feels some boys regress in Eretz Yisrael.

 

He ticks off the usual objections to his proposal. “People like the idea of learning in Eretz Yisrael?

 

Yes, it’s great to do that. So go after you’re married.” “You think boys aren’t mature enough at 21? Well, Israeli bachurim get married at 21. Chassidim get mar-ried even younger. I don’t see them getting divorced. Are they more mature than us?”

 

“Boys just aren’t ready for marriage at that age? Actually, I think they’re more pure at 21. I got married at 21. I wasn’t either ready for shidduchim. It just happened. I learned on the job. I always tried to be nice to my friends, to be a good friend. So when I went out and then got married, I tried to be nice to my wife and be a good husband.”

 

“That’s my view of the ideal fix.” He shrugs. “But I know it’s never going to happen. What we might be able to do realistically is slice things down a bit. Maybe have boys go to Eretz Yisrael for just one year and start dating at 22.”

 

The Money and the Attention

 

Of all the shidduchim he’s made, Shloimy has never officially charged a price or even answered the question when someone asks, “How much should I pay you?” or “What do most people pay?” but accepts whatever is given.

 

He maintains that he pays no more attention and devotes no more time to wealthier prospects who will likely give more shadchanus, though he concedes, “I know no one’s going to believe me on that.”

 

However, there are two ways in which someone can catch Shloimy’s attention and get him to focus on their daughter—and they do involve spending some money.

 

One relates to his tzedakah fund. “Look, if someone has just given a large donation to Zichron Matel—and of course the big donors are usually wealthier people — I can’t not reciprocate and give them attention when they ask for shidduchim for their daughter, though I kind of feel terrible about that.”

 

The second way requires spending far less.

 

While shadchanim are typically paid only when a shidduch results in engagement, there are people who, during the course of the redting and dating process, show appreciation by giving a small tip or sending a candy platter to the Lewenstein home for Shabbos.

 

“I don’t eat candy.” He smiles (unintentionally revealing strong, clean white teeth). “But the fact that they show hakaras hatov makes me have a warmer feeling to them. It’s not that I need more money or more candy, just that when you send something, I feel like it’s a two-way street, and now I can’t not call you back.”

 

(When I assure him that he’s certain to receive many outsized candy platters the Shabbos after this profile is published, he drops his head. “Oh no, I don’t need my kids to have more dentist visits.”)

 

I’d love to go on all day with Shloimy, but I do feel a little bad about the dozens of calls he’s ig-nored during our 90 minutes together and decide it’s time to let him get back to his avodas hakodesh.

The AirPods go back into his ears. He has calls to make, and texts and voice notes to catch up on. There are résumés to review, girls to meet, parents to reassure, and time to sit and think. Lots of work ahead.

The work of building bateine’emanb’Yisrael.

 

***

Here are some questions we asked Shloimy about shidduchim and dating:

 

 

 

You meet thousands of girls, and many of their interests, values and attributes are similar. What can someone do to stand out?

 

Some girls have told me interesting things. Like one girl said, “I’m going to walk out of here and you’re going to meet a lot more people after me. How are you going to remember me?” That caught my ears and I’ve never forgotten her.”

 

How can individuals go about redting shidduchim?

 

Anybody can be good at it. You just need to have common sense and listen out for what the people want.

 

Sometimes people try to redt shidduchim just because they are desperate to get a particular boy or girl married. That’s not what makes a shidduch happen.  If you want to redt shidduchim, you can’t make it your agenda to just try to get a particular person married. You have to hear what they want.

 

Are there any common reasons people say no to a shidduch that you think are dumb?

 

Absolutely.

 

You often hear people say, “The family is not our type; I’m not comfortable with them.” Well there are different levels of “not our type.” If it’s totally out of left field, I understand. But when there is a great shidduch idea and the boy says no just because the girl didn’t grow up exactly they way he did, like just because his father is a balebus and hers is a rebbe, that’s silly.

 

Also, it’s very difficult for children of divorced parents to get shidduchim. This is an unjustified stigma.

 

My parents were divorced, and Baruch Hashem I’m still functioning, and have a happy marriage and family. I feel terribly for people who can’t get a date just because their parents are divorced.

 

Some people’s apprehension about kids from a divorced home is simply a worry over their own image – they want to be seen as having done a shidduch with a “good” family, and stress over what people in shul will think. Concerns like that are absolutely ridiculous.

 

Yes, it’s true that children of divorced parents might be more likely to have certain issues than are others. But it’s not the case across the board.

 

In fact, people often grow from adversity – there are kids who go through a divorce and come out stronger, tougher, more mature, and better able to meet life’s challenges.

 

Look into the individual. Find about him. If he is great in yeshiva, successful, a masmid, emotionally healthy, and well-liked, give him a shot! He could make a great husband and father.

 

What are some Do’s and Don’t when writing a resume?

 

DO: It’s always good to give as much information as possible – like family background, who the grandparents are, and siblings. Be clear, like, “She’s number three of eight. Her older brother is doing this. Her sister is married to so and so …” The clearer the resume is, the easier it’ll be for the other side to do research.

 

DON’T: Don’t write too many important people as references. Like when people list Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky  – often he doesn’t really know you, it’s not going to impress them that he says you’re good, and all it shows them is that you’re trying to show off.

 

What are some Do’s and Don’ts on a date?

 

Come across as a positive person. If you start talking negatively – “I hate my job; I don’t like yeshiva; these people annoy me …” that’s never an impressive thing. No one wants to marry someone who’s unhappy about life. Always be warm and open and complimenting. Show the other person that you care about their needs and interests.

 

 

Typically, engagements happen after seven or eight dates, which is about 30 hours of dating. These hours are spent in lounges, taking a walk, in a restaurant, etc. You’re not living with the other person. How can you figure out from these settings if the other person will be a good spouse and parent?

 

It’s more than the actual date; you have to do your own research. If a girl says, “I see on the date that he’s very caring,” well, that doesn’t necessarily mean he is a nice guy. A guy can be nice on a date because he wants you to like him; it doesn’t mean he is nice in real life.

 

You have to do a lot of research – mainly on the middos. And you have to ask people who really know him, like his roommates and friends.

 

The reason for dating is to find out if your hashkafos more or less line up, and it’s also a tool to develop some sort of connection to the other person. But if a girl thinks that because he holds the door for her on a date that means he is a nice guy in real life, she’s wrong. It’s the guy who doesn’t open the door who you’ve learned something about

 

People typically list friends and others close to them on the resume as references. How valuable is it to call these references – they’re the person’s friends and will obviously just say good things about them.

 

Look at the references and try to see if there is someone you know. Or someone who knows someone you know.

 

But sometimes, even from speaking to someone on the resume, you could smell the enthusiasm and the way they answer the question. You may be able to pick up on some things, like if they’re hesitating. For example, if you ask “Is he a nice guy?” and the response is, “Well … There’s nothing not nice about him,” that’s very different than if they exclaim, “Oh, he’s the nicest person in the world!”

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