OyBay - Company Business and Marketing

Industry Standard, The, Sept 11, 2000 by Lessley Anderson

One Web site's effort tries to do the impossible: Make it easy to find a nice Jewish boy or girl.

WHEN CHARLIE SIMON NOTICED that a female co-worker had received two bunches of red roses in as many weeks, he asked who the smitten guy was. She informed him that it was, in fact, two guys. And she'd met them both on JDate.com -- an Internet-dating site for Jewish singles.

At her prompting, Simon decided to give JDate a whirl. On the site, he built a profile that included answers to questions about his Jewish affiliation (Reform), if he keeps kosher (no) and how often he goes to temple (on the High Holidays). Later, he submitted a photo of himself to post on the site. Almost immediately, women began to send him e-mails, routed through the JDate servers.

One message from someone named Dan read "I'm not this person! I'm his sister, and I'm just trying out JDate" and linked Simon to Sheila Pitchenik's homepage and photo -- a sweet-looking girl wearing a straw hat over her corkscrew curls. Simon hit Reply.

Like many JDate clients, Pitchenik, a tech consultant in New York, was goaded into using the service by another member -- in this case, her brother, a JDate veteran, with a push from her father, too. "My dad thinks anything having to do with Judaism or technology is completely good," says Pitchenik, 26.

Pitchenik and Simon began to flirt over e-mail -- poking fun at themselves by prefacing everything with the letter "J." When Pitchenik got a "let's be friends" follow-up call from a man she'd met on JDate, Simon teased her that she'd been "JDumped!" After a few more weeks of online cat and mouse, the two met in person, and found that their physical attraction was as mutual as their online one and their sense of humor. There was only one problem.

"We were like, 'Oh no, now we have to break this news to our friends and family!'" says Pitchenik. They anticipated a lot of hazing when they told people they'd met on the Internet.

Fortunately for Simon and Pitchenik, the reaction wasn't as bad as they expected -- if you're single, Jewish, have an Internet connection and live in the United States, chances are good you've heard of JDate. You may have even whimsically filled out the lengthy questionnaire to get a free trial membership, answering questions like, "What did you learn from your last relationship?" You may have told your single Jewish friends about the service, who in turn told their friends. Hence the JDate phenomenon, which so far has resulted in more than 2,000 marriages and thousands more couplings -- a cyber-victory for yentaism.

JDate is the high-tech evolution of a long tradition of Jewish singles events and services. Parties, dances and personal ads in Jewish newspapers comprise a subculture of their own. In recent years, Jewish matchmaking has gotten creative. Speed Dating, which originated in New York City, seats single men and women across the table from each other and gives them eight minutes to get to know one another before they have to switch seats. An Internet version is in the works, but its creator, educational foundation Aish HaTorab, won't elaborate.

But despite creative new forms like this, for many young urban Jews, offline matchmaking is tainted by old-fashioned schmaltz. "JDate has alleviated some of the stigma attached to those singles events, because it's kitschy and you can say someone put your profile up as a joke if worse comes to worst," says "Yael," a 30-year-old Internet marketer in Los Angeles who asked that her real name not be printed. "It's allowed for the age-old meeting Jews thing, but through a protective veil." On a recent Friday evening, Yael eschewed the offline singles scene to stay home, drink wine and troll JDate profiles with a friend.

Founded by two Jewish Los Angelenos, JDate has attracted 150,000 love-seekers and is growing by 300 new members a day. Over a third of its users like what they see during the free trial and pay the $19.95 monthly fee. By comparison, Match.com, which was recently acquired by Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch, claims it has registered 32,000 Jewish singles. Apart from a banner ad placed on Jewish portal Maven, JDate has not advertised, relying instead on word of mouth.

That's worked so well that cofounder Joe Shapira can't escape the site, even while on vacation. In Virginia Beach, Va., a group of girls he and his wife met started telling the couple about JDate. Shapira says, "They didn't know I owned it!"

"My cousin had success on it, my brother had success on it," says one 34-year-old who works at a nonprofit in San Francisco and goes by the JDate screen name "Ruby." She'd resisted the service until her 65-year-old mother found herself a boyfriend through JDate. Ruby's mother bought her daughter a laptop so she, too, could reap the benefits of the site.

When Ruby first logged on, she saw a humble-looking site -- amateurish graphics and clunky, frame-filled pages. But JDaters don't visit the site for its aesthetics. The draw, like a hip new bar, is its clientele: Most are between the ages of 30 and 50, and 70 percent are professionals with graduate degrees making an average of $60,000 a year. They also look, says one former skeptic, "surprisingly normal."