Online Jewish dating helps singles tie knot

SHEILA WILENSKY
AJP Assistant Editor

Jacob Kosoff and Ilene Harris

A new online Jewish dating site — JRetroMatch.com — is supposedly approved by Jewish mothers, or so announces an ad on the back of a New York City bus. Jewish mothers’ approval or not, it worked for 26-year-olds Jacob Kosoff of Burlington, N.J., and Ilene Harris of Pittsburgh, Pa., whose wedding will take place on Dec. 22.

Kosoff says he became “more observant” as an undergraduate at Penn State than he had been growing up. He first tried frumster.com and sawyouatsinai.com to meet his beshert, but says the JRetroMatch Web site appealed to him because it had a similar Orthodox format with an actual matchmaking component. According to JRetroMatch.com, over 280 matchmakers “screen and select quality matches from thousands of profiles to satisfy each member’s needs,” which “provides a human touch to online dating.” If both people are interested in a possible match, they receive phone numbers and e-mail addresses to contact each other.

Although Kosoff was raised in a secular environment, the popular Jdate.com was too secular for him; “I wanted to be able to enjoy a traditional life,” he says, “but was unsure of how observant I wanted to be.”

Kosoff, an economist, started online dating in June 2006 while working in South Africa. He and Harris e-mailed often, he says; in fact, she turned out to be his online “first and last date.” Kosoff called her as soon as he returned to the United States on July 26. “It was amazing how much we had in common,” he says.  “We don’t want pets. We both loved cycling. We have similar views on politics and religion. I have no TV; hers is in the closet. I never met anyone with such similar views to mine as her.”

The couple talked by phone a lot before they met in person on Aug. 21 in New York City, where Harris was an elementary school teacher before moving to Arlington, Va., where her fiance now works. “I felt like I knew her when we met,” says Kosoff, adding that Harris would probably say it was “love at first sight.”

“We had such a strong connection in person,” agrees Harris. “I never had such a strong connection with anyone. I called my mother at 11 p.m. and told her I was so excited I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

Harris says she had been hopeful after emailing and talking on the phone to other men, but upon meeting they “didn’t quite click. With Jacob,” she says, “everything I hoped he might be was true.”

For Kosoff, “online dating is like using the card catalogue” at a library; there are so many more choices than just looking around at a bar for the prettiest date.

“Ilene is brilliant,” says Kosoff, “she’s so much smarter than me.” As an economist, he sometimes tells her how rational she is, recognizing that she may not take that as a compliment. Harris says she does, adding that “as a unit we’re very well-rounded. If we were on a game show, Jacob would answer all the religion and history questions, and I would answer all the science and popular culture questions.”

But the key to their match, according to Kosoff, is all the e-mailing and talking they did before actually meeting, when social graces could supersede getting to know each other. And although at first he was looking for someone more Orthodox, Kosoff and Harris agree that a traditional Conservative lifestyle suits them both.

Harris will be a “terrific mother for our children, a wonderful life partner,” Kosoff says. “She’s my best friend.”