Ultra-Orthodox Matchmakers Will Get $4,000 For Pairing ‘Damaged Goods’ Over 21
A bride and her grandfather dance at an ultra-Orthodox wedding in Jerusalem in 2012. Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman August 10, 2017
The grand rabbi, or “rebbe,” of the Boyan sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews is offering $4,000 to anyone who suggests a successful match between “older singles” in their community, the Israeli news site Arutz Sheva reported Wednesday.
The “older” designation applies to single men over the age of 23 and single women over the age of 21. Arutz Sheva noted that Hasidic Jews who do not marry before 23 are often derogatorily referred to as “damaged goods.”
The rebbe of the Belz Hasidic sect, which numbers over 7,000 families across the world, recently adopted a $1,000 finder’s fee for matches of “older singles” as well. The Skver sect, in the U.S., gives $3,000 for similar matches.
The Boyan rebbe, Rabbi Nachum Dov Brayer, announced the new fee at a meeting with the community’s matchmakers in Jerusalem on Monday.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
