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Video-Dating For the Frum Set

It’s like Skype, but rabbinically-approved

by
Hadara Graubart
February 12, 2010

Alone on Valentine’s Day? The caring folks at the Make-a-Shidduch Foundation (a shidduch is a match between potential marriage partners, the unfortunate sound of the word notwithstanding) have a new project that could help you find your soul mate, particularly if he or she lives too far away to travel for a blind date.

Shidduch Vision is a video conferencing program in which “studios” are set up in the homes of pre-screened “hosts” so that Orthodox singles who have been fixed up by a shadchan (matchmaker) can have video “dates.” There are currently studios in Chicago, Baltimore, and Lakewood, New Jersey, with more on the way. At $18 per 50-minute session, it’s more kosher than Skype, which Shidduch Vision creator Jeff Cohn says puts daters in dangerous online territory, where “you can look at any www site that you want.” It’s more flattering, too (Cohn told Tablet Magazine that a cosmetician in Baltimore has offered to do girls’ pre-date makeup for free).

One problem? As commenter A. Nuran on the site Frum Satire points out: “One of the ways we unconsciously maximize our chance of having healthy children is to smell if they are good candidates for breeding with us. This isn’t much of a concern in the general population. In small ones which don’t have a lot of genetic diversity it has significant health implications. Video shidduch dating throws that all out the window.” For some, then, Shidduch Vision just doesn’t the smell test.

Related: Hard to Match [Tablet]

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.