There’s no question that things were easier in Talmudic times as far as getting married was concerned. Once a year, on Tu B’Av, the unattached girls would dress in white dresses borrowed from their friends and dance in the vineyards. The bachelors would come and choose a bride and they would dance into the sunset together. Or something like that. Today it’s much harder, perhaps because there’s so much more choice, and so many more boxes to check.

Shagririm BaLev (Ambassadors of the Heart) is a successful Israeli dating site that has recently gone international. It was developed by students of Machon Lev who felt that the current shidduch system was failing them; they decided to take responsibility for each other and start setting each other up.

The nonprofit has been active in Israel for four-and-a-half years and has made 293 weddings so far (many of them within the last year and one of them my son and daughter-in-law).

Oriel Lax, the nonprofit’s CEO, also found his bashert through Shagririm. His bride, Menucha, is half British and half South African. Not only did Lax find his soulmate at Shagririm, but both his brother and sister did, too.

The Ambassadors website works with, well, ambassadors. You sign up as an ambassador and must sign up at least three of your friends as candidates for a match. You then scan the database, and if you find someone you think might be a good match for one of your candidates, you contact their ambassador and you both facilitate the match.

This system has proved successful not only in the number of matches it’s made but also by reducing the number of dates people have in order to find their match. The date-to-marriage averages 3.5 fewer dates than any other shidduch initiative, because the ambassadors know their candidates personally and are accompanying them throughout the process. Furthermore, since the day Shagririm was founded, 25% of the candidates who joined got married through this initiative. An impressive statistic.

Aside from the website, Ambassadors offers many other opportunities to meet—lectures, dating events and also trips. That’s how my son and daughter-in-law met, through the Chol Hamoed Sukkot trip, which neither had been planning to attend, and because they both signed up at the last minute, they became the leaders and well, the rest is history.

“According to research released in Israel, 60% of the Orthodox community meet their spouses through friends and family setting them up,” said Ayelet Glatt, international coordinator of Ambassadors of the Heart. “Ambassadors allows us, the friends and family, to expand our network and take responsibility for matching up our friends by actively trying to set them up.”

The ambassadors can be single, married, young or old, and singles who become ambassadors can simultaneously sign up as candidates, and automatically don’t see their own membership cards. Because you’re working through people you already know, it’s very discreet. So the whole thing is a sophisticated and supportive network. Now there is an Ambassadors’ wedding every couple of days. My daughter-in-law has so far made one match herself.

The project is also overseen by Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon, rosh yeshiva of Machon Lev, rabbi of Gush Etzion and president of the World Mizrachi Organization and Ambassadors of the Heart.

We know how difficult it is to find your soulmate. To date there are 2,700 ambassadors for 12,000 people searching for their bashert, so your ambassador is working with only a handful of people, which means you get more individual attention. The service is for all segments of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Two months ago, Ambassadors of the Heart began operating internationally, in the USA, Australia and South Africa. They translated their website into English and found hundreds of ambassadors via the OU. Every day, new ambassadors are signing up and recruiting their friends.

And it’s very inexpensive. There is a one-time fee of about $60. At the moment it’s less in English-speaking countries but it will eventually go up. The purpose of the fee is to weed out people who aren’t really committed. The ambassadors work as volunteers, and only pay if they are seeking a shidduch as well.

“Shagririm lets people meet each other who otherwise would never have met,” said Lax. He gives as an example a girl from Kiryat Arba, who was one of the singles he was working with, who married a convert from Atlanta, Georgia who had made aliyah and was living in the singles community of Givat Shmuel (near Bnei Brak).

Ambassadors of the Heart has the advantage of being incredibly technologically sophisticated, while still maintaining a very personal connection, both between the singles and their ambassadors and between the ambassadors as well.

If you’d like to become an ambassador or sign up to look for a shidduch, this is their website: https://en.shagririm.org.il/. Email: [email protected]

Rosally Saltsman is a freelance writer, originally from Montreal, who lives in Israel. Come join her!