Three Matches is a Jewish matchmaking service that serves Jewish singles in Montreal, Jewish singles in New York, Jewish singles in Miami, Jewish singles in Boston, Jewish singles in Toronto, Jewish singles in Vancouver Jewish singles in Philadelphia, Jewish singles worldwide. We are proud to serve. Matchmaker Lesley Silver-Winick is originally from Montreal, but lives in Toronto, so she works with both cities’ versions of the site. She uses her background in social services and education, as well as personal experience, to help connect users in each city, sometimes pairing up people from both cities’ databases if they’re interested.
Yocheved Lerner-Miller is a matchmaker for Orthodox Jews who come from unorthodox backgrounds.
“Look, the perfect boy from the top yeshiva and the perfect girl from the best seminary probably don’t need me,” she said, sitting inside Choco Latte, a kosher coffee shop in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. “I deal with divorced people. I deal with older singles who are already in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond. Sometimes they’re just people who somehow missed the boat, or they’re converts.”
Even though Ms. Lerner-Miller, 55, lives in Kensington, she jokingly referred to the section of Crown Heights south of Eastern Parkway around Kingston Avenue as her shtetl. For Lubavitch Jews, members of the Orthodox movement she belongs to, it’s an area “where everybody somehow ends up at some point.”
Ms. Lerner-Miller has earned a reputation in the community for pairing up oddballs and outliers — words she uses affectionately and with which she identifies.
Born Jill Lerner into a nonpracticing Jewish family in Brooklyn, she was always drawn to religion.
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“I would say, ‘My friend down the street goes to Hebrew school every week. Can’t I go?’” she said. “My grandmother would say to me, ‘You’re Jewish. That’s enough.’” On family vacations Jill would remove the Bible from her motel room bedside table and hide in the bathroom, memorizing its pages.
The road to religion was hardly a straight path. When Ms. Lerner-Miller was a teenager, she moved with her family to Florida. She stayed in the Miami area for college, first studying at University of Miami and then at Barry University, where she earned a degree in systematic theology. Later, at SUNY New Paltz, Ms. Lerner-Miller got a master’s degree in educational administration.
She worked as an E.M.T., and, as a classically trained pianist, became a music teacher in public schools. She also was, briefly, a practicing Catholic after becoming friends with a group of missionaries.
“I did what every other secular person did: I did my own thing, because there were no rules,” Ms. Lerner-Miller said. “The belief that the world is all yours is not very healthy or smart, and it doesn’t lead to more happiness. It leads to confusion in a lot of cases. I certainly did things that I’m not so proud of. I didn’t do anything illegal, but I was just kind of free floating through the world.”
It was just over 20 years ago that Ms. Lerner-Miller began exploring her Jewish identity. Her fascination was prompted in part by a three-year struggle with fertility.
“I said finally to myself, to God, as it may be, ‘Listen, God, I’m kind of lost here. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve been through Christianity. I’m looking into Judaism. I’m already in my 30s. If I can just have one child, I’d be very happy. And in order to prove it, I will make my house kosher.’”
Soon after, she was pregnant with her daughter, Chana Lerner, now 21; the father is not involved and Ms. Lerner-Miller declined to speak about him. She kept kosher and raised her daughter as a single mother. When she was in her late 40s, a friend thought it was time for her to find a husband. (Ms. Lerner-Miller also thought it was time for me to find a husband: After learning I was 40 and single, she said, “Well, what are you waiting for?”)
Her friend told her to “‘Go start looking.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Ms. Lerner-Miller recalled. “She said there were matchmakers, and to go find one. And that was a pretty tall order. Are they hidden? Do they advertise in the Yellow Pages? I just started to go ask people, looked online, looked at anything I could find in the Jewish bookstores.”
In consulting various sources, Ms. Lerner-Miller found that she did not fit the profile of an ideal Orthodox wife.
“One matchmaker, when I entered his office, said to me, ‘What can I do for you?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’d like a match.’ And he looks me up and down and he says, ‘When you lose 50 pounds, come back and see me,’” she said. “But who said fat old ladies with teenage daughters aren’t marriage material?”
She met Nechemia Miller, 51, who also didn’t grow up religious and now considers himself Orthodox but not Lubavitch, through an over-the-phone matchmaker. The couple went to pick out an engagement ring on their ninth date, which is considered a long courtship in Orthodox circles. “Feisty and American and independent isn’t all there is,” Ms. Lerner-Miller said.
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And then she became a matchmaker. “My way of saying thank you to God was to try to help others be as happy as he made me,” she said.
Her role, she said, is often misunderstood; she blames depictions in “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Yentl.” Today’s matchmaker is trying to combine ideas of agency and freedom with deep religious traditions. “I’m trying to encourage you to go with one person or the other,” she said. “One of the things that’s a misconception about the matchmaking process is that you’re assigned a match. You have freedom to say no.”
But she is trying to help the process along, especially in a community that frowns upon the modern concept of dating. She thinks about degree of religious practice, family background, if they want to go to foreign countries — Lubavitchers often travel to promulgate the religion — and personality.
She also prides herself in knowing which requests to politely ignore. One client was a 6-foot-2 man and only wanted to meet women taller than 5-foot-5. Ms. Lerner-Miller had a woman in mind who was a full foot shorter than the man, but shared deeper qualities with him than height compatibility.
“They had minimal religion growing up. They knew about the same amount, they were very committed to growing and learning more,” she said. “They both were college educated. They both had professions. They both had the same kind of family structure. And at that point to me, height was just like, well, not really crucial.” She instructed the woman to wear her highest heels on their first date. They’re married now and have one child.
Ms. Lerner-Miller doesn’t have a going rate, though most clients pay her $1,000 for a match. Ultimately, she’s not in it for the money.
“I feel a great sense of awe every time a match happens, because look at the amount of people in this world,” she said. “How in the world am I supposed to know that you go with you?”
The secret to finding love and maintaining a happy marriage? Ms. Lerner-Miller says it’s more complicated than a single aphorism.
“There has to be something — a tugging of a heart. Something has to say, hey, you’re good for me and I’m good for you,” she said. “It’s not just, I’m here to have a great old time, me, me, me, me. It’s you, you, us. And that’s the whole secret to it. It takes you out of yourself, it gives you the reason to feel and deal with the needs of another person and, hopefully, children will be wonderful, and to put you out into the community at large. There’s a dignity to it.”
Just then her daughter came into the coffee shop to say hi. At 21, she is beginning to think about finding a matchmaker of her own. “My mom is not going to do it for me,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “It would be a little bit too awkward for my mom to pick my spouse.”