Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match

By Rachele Kanigel and Claudia Carlin

On a chilly Sunday afternoon Anna Aronovich picks up the phone from the kitchen of her Brooklyn home and dials. "Hi, it's Anna," she says. "So how did it go?"

The kitchen is quiet for a moment as Aronovich listens to the details of a disappointing first date. She utters a sympathetic uhm-hmm and nods.

PHOTO: Rachele Kanigel

Anna Aronovich uses an old-fashioned filing system to match lonely singles.

"Yeah, it's very hard out there," she says. "But I have someone else for you. She's another real quality person.... How would I describe her? Well, she's very pretty. I think you might like her. Are you interested?... Let me call her and see what's happening, OK?"

By day, Aronovich, 46, is a psychologist at an inner-city high school in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. But evenings, weekends, vacations, anytime she has a free moment, the Orthodox Jewish woman is an old-fashioned matchmaker, joining lonely singles together to make happy couples.

"For me, this is really a greater calling," says Aronovich, who gladly accepts gifts but doesn't require payment for her services. "It's Godly work. God created the world and the rest of the time he's creating matches. I'm just trying to help."

If you think Aronovich is part of a dying breed, think again. She estimates there are hundreds of matchmakers like herself working in New York's Orthodox Jewish community. And countless more are making matches in other ethnic enclaves, particularly among Chinese, Russian and South Asian immigrants.

Scan the ads in ethnic newspapers like the Chinese-language World Journal or stop into some of the businesses along 40th Road in Flushing Queens or East Broadway in Chinatown and it's clear old-fashioned matchmaking is alive and well.

With so many options -- newspaper personal ads, sophisticated Internet sites, niche social clubs and video dating agencies -- why would anyone go to a traditional matchmaker?

For many, nothing beats the human touch a personal matchmaker can provide.

"I didn't try any dating services," says Lynn, a Brooklyn woman who got married six weeks after meeting her bashert (Yiddish for soulmate) through Aronovich. "In the Orthodox community there are so many matchmakers I really didn't feel a need for Internet or other dating services. I feel much more comfortable with this approach. With an intermediary you can find out a lot of information before you even go on your first date."

While many traditional matchmakers work exclusively in their own ethnic communities, a few have branched out to a wider clientele.

Polish immigrant Irving Field started Field Matrimonial Service in Manhattan in the 1920s to help Jewish immigrants find a mate. The business was an extension of the matchmaking Field's father, a rabbi, had done in the old country.

PHOTO: Rachele Kanigel

Dan Field is a third-generation match-maker.

But now, says Field's nephew Dan, who inherited the business, "We deal with all races, all religions, all ages."

Indeed, one wall of Field's tiny Midtown office is covered with snapshots of blacks, whites and Asians, all active clients looking for a match.

On another wall is a collection of thank-you notes to Field and his grandson, Joseph Speyer, who joined the family business 11 years ago to become a fourth-generation matchmaker.

In a letter dated 1990, one satisfied client writes, "Dear Mr. Field, Thank you so much for all your help. John is a perfect match for me…. You did a fine job with matchmaking magic."

Asked how many matches he's made, Field says, "Thousands and thousands of people who tell me and thousands and thousands of people who don't tell me."

He's similarly vague about his fee structure, noting only that it ranges from $50 to $1,000. He won't say whether the fee is determined by time or the number of dates.

Field tells a tale of one of his highest-paying customers, a man who demanded 250 referrals.

"We gave him more and more," Field says, his voice still carrying a Polish accent though he immigrated to the United States as a boy in the 1930s. "He ended up marrying the first one."

Like Field, Aronovich doesn't need a computer to help her keep track of her clients. She jots down phone numbers in a tattered telephone directory, seemingly unconcerned that the pages are falling out. Notes and photographs are stuffed in large accordian files on her dining room floor. But most of the important information she keeps in her head.

Aronovich has never advertised; all her clients come by word of mouth. In a typical week, she meets with a dozen or more Orthodox Jews, some of them from other parts of the country or even abroad. "Rabbis all over the world have my name," she says. "I've had people come to me from Canada, Israel, England."

Aronovich doesn't see her job ending when a man and a woman begin to hit it off. Often, she says, she needs to intervene as the relationship develops and the couple has to work through misunderstandings and differences

"I do a lot of coaching," she says. "Sometimes the man will call me up and say she's too reserved and the woman will say, he's too talkative. So I'll say to him, 'You don't have to talk all the time.' And I'll say to her, 'Open up. Talk a little more.'"

A bit superstitious, Aronovich doesn't brag about her successes. She'll admit only to having made "quite a few shidduchs, " (Yiddish for matches).

Lately, she admits, she's been going through a dry spell. "I'm puzzled. A lot of my relationships aren't working. I do have one that's looking promising but I don't want to talk about it. You know, the evil eye."

NEXT: Love matches and arranged marriages

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