What a Match!
By virtually any measure, 29-year-old Joshua Rikon is a good catch — handsome, observant and a lawyer to boot. But then again, Rikon’s fiancee, Rebecca Benjamin, really didn’t need much guidance in such matters. As “director of matchmaker operations” for the Web sites SawYouAtSinai.com and JRetroMatch.com, she was well versed in the art of spotting good prospects when she met her intended last year.
But the story of the Rikon-Benjamin union is not simply one of a matchmaker finding love. Rather, it is a story of the coming together of two matchmaking dynasties.
Rikon’s sister, Shoshanna, is the founder of a matchmaking agency all her own, the eponymous Shoshanna’s Matches.
Needless to say, when the two women first met, there was plenty to talk about.
“It was yenta city,” Shoshanna told the Shmooze, recounting her first meeting with her brother’s fiancee.
Ironically enough, when the young couple first met, it was completely without a matchmaker’s aid. It was at a Jewish singles’ retreat in the Berkshires last August that the cupid paid his visit.
Before her brother met Benjamin, Shoshanna had fixed him up on some dates but never became too involved in his dating life. She is untroubled by the fact that her brother found his mate without a matchmaker’s help.
“I tell people it’s a numbers game,” she said, “You have to be out there as much as possible, use a matchmaker, go to singles events, have your friends set you up.”
In this instance, it seems it’s Joshua who has (perhaps unwittingly) taken a page from the matchmaker’s handbook, as his bride-to-be and his sister are now discussing a business partnership.
“It’s not a rivalry,” Benjamin said. “It’s camaraderie.” She stressed how her client pool is different from Shoshanna’s, with her customers leaning more toward the observant end of the spectrum while her future sister-in-law operates in a more secular realm.
But business is not really foremost on Benjamin’s mind right now. “I’ve got a wedding to plan,” she said.
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