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NYPD Officer Makes a Shidduch

NY Daily News

Police Officer Albert Mammon, 32, played ‘Shadchan’ on the Coney Island Boardwalk earlier this summer — and this month, two of the young Jews he introduced got engaged.

It started as a quiet night in Coney Island on May 23, and though it wasn’t still springtime, a young officer’s fancy turned to love.

Mammon said he spotted a trio of long-skirted young women celebrating their last college final and another group of men further down the historic plankway.

Mammon advised the yarmulke-wearing men to approach the women. “I was doing it more for safety,” said Mammon.

Initially, the women were not impressed. “[The men] asked where we were from. We said, ‘Brooklyn — now bye,’ ” recalled Chava Dan, 20. But Mammon would not be deterred, ordering everyone to “be a little nicer.” “You can’t let things like that just go,” he remembered.

In the end, the group hit it off, especially Dan, a psychology student at Touro College, and Mordy Steinmetz, 23, a retail store worker. The two began a dating routine, which culminated in a candlelit dinner proposal on a Park Slope rooftop.
“It was just perfect,” Dan said.

Her friends, Rutty Gottlieb, 20, and Chevie Boland, 19, wanted to share the good news with the cop, who they discovered worked out of the Coney Island stationhouse.

To their surprise, Mammon’s colleagues immediately knew who they were talking about — once they explained he frequently used comical Yiddish phrases.

The bachelor cop plans to attend the Sept. 2 wedding.

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27 Comments

  • exchr

    if the eibershter wants to put two people together git er zich an eitzeh… he’ll figure it out already

  • show picture

    why dont you post the full picture as shown on daily news website so we can see how modern orthodox people actually dress
    in a modest fashion. not like the so called modern chabad who dress basicly not religious.

    HALACHA IS HALACHA no difference from 2 inches above the knee to 5 inches above the knee, Both not tznius

  • to #6

    Why don’t you move to Coney Island?
    If your sooooo unhappy here and full of complaints.
    I feel bad for your spouse (if your married).

  • pinny

    FOR ALL THE BOYS AND GIRLS IN THE AGE OF SHIDUCHIM THE SOLUTION IS BY CONEY ISLAND BOARDWALK
    OPEN- CONEYISLANDSHIDDUCH.COM

  • waterever

    Maybe that why there’s a shidduch crisis. How many people go to the beach?

  • smiling

    Can we not just smile and say Mazal Tov to the couple – and to the ‘Shadchan’ and thank you to Hashem for yet another example of Hashgacha Pratis in unexpected ways…? A beautiful story.

  • chayaf

    It really is a nice story, in a world of such pain and heartache. Thank you CHI, and can please everyone stop being so nasty all the time.

  • to #8

    I know the truth hurts and you want to be accepted for the reformed version of chabad. I challenge you to dress more modest
    and if you friends won’t accept you there are plenty of true chabad people who will.

    and yes my spouse has the same values and wants to have the same community we moved into 25 years ago. This Modernism is a sickness infecting our entire community FFB,Bt etc. and needs to be cured one way or another!

  • Chana Rivka

    Thank you so much for publishing this news! It is the first time I’ve really smiled all day about something!

  • Her Classmate

    BTW she (the Kallah) is NOT Modern Orthodox she went to Bais Yakkov Chicago. BH she grew up in a FRUM small ‘out-a-town’ Jewish Community. Mazel Tov on the Shiduch, but I do not suggest dating any guy you see on the boardwalk. It is quite an extraordinary situation.

  • Zalman

    To #20:

    It is no extra-ordinary situation.
    It’s an attitude like that which the police officer had to get rid of for this to happen.
    You’re only making it hard for Hashem to make a shidduch happen for you with such an attitude, and spreading it to others to justify your mistake.

    Not only is your comment judgmental, but shows a lack of common decency.
    You are no longer in high school, you don’t need to rationalize why you are unable to respond warmly when a guy approaches you out of the blue.

    Like the police officer said, the girls just brushed the guys off, not because there was something wrong with the guys, but because they are still in a high school mentality and don’t know how to respond maturely when someone comes over and expresses any interest.

    Girls use words like creep and pervert (you cleverly avoided any actual terms, but sent the same message) to cover up on their own inability to maturely treat another person with respect who also puts themself in a vulnerable position with respect. YOU are the one that is low class.

    I might add, while people may rely on friends, family or schadchanim to fix them up, there is no reason that a guy can’t just walk up to a nice girl and say hi, and there is no reason for a girl, no matter what kind of guy he is to disrespectfully blow him off.

    I was at the mall in NYC, was looking for someone trustworthy to ask for directions (so i don’t get sent in the wrong direction), i saw a frum girl and politely said “excuse me”, and she immediately walked away without a word (not because of me, but because of her).

    There is a virus in the FRUM community where most girls conduct themselves as if it’s ossur or inappropriate for a single guy to talk to a single girl casually. Not only is this not the case, but it is ossur to treat the guy in a way that would embarrass him, and as the police officer described what happened, that’s what took place, and if not for him intervening the girls would have likely just laughed the guys off.

    Frum girls, it’s time you have more respect for EVERYONE, especially your fellow Jews, and especially other singles who are taking every opportunity to help Hashem link them with their bashert!

    FYI, every decent guy I know goes to the boardwalk.

    May our community rid itself of this baseless holier-than-thou virus.

    Kudos to the police officer for doing his part to break the trend, and to the news outlets who publish the story.

    Most importantly, Mazel Tov to the happy couple. Besuros Tovos

  • to #6/17, from #8

    Times change.
    If you don’t agree, then get real:
    Are you wearing the same clothes you wore 25 years ago?
    Do you still use a typewriter? Rotary phone? Record player?
    Still drive the same car??
    I guess you don’t use a cell phone, computer.
    Maybe you still pay 50 cents for a subway ride??!!
    Get with the times.
    Live and let live.
    Live your own life and let others live theirs.
    You want to raise the level of Tznius/frumkeit in CH?
    Then do it by living that way and by positive actions/deeds,
    not by bashing others and your negative/critical complaints.
    And your spouse has my sympathy…..
    I guess she is used to your pity parties by now.

  • to #8 /#22

    Times change ,Yes
    But the TORAH and Halacha do not! ( yes there are some Laws that may vary based on new technology). You sound like the Greeks and Romans, Be modern like them and learn Torah as a philosophy
    G_D Forbid! That’s why we had Chanukah to fight assimilation and not be like goyim.
    Respect is a two way street. I have to respect you, but you don’t have respect for the people who want to raise their children in a frum environmen tand have sacrificed to be here.
    and yes I wear a hat and a nice suite according to the chabad custom.
    kingston Ave is still kingston Ave and has not changed, yes more modern stores but still Kosher
    why does being modern translate into dressing like a goy? or worse
    The root of the problem is simply lack of yera shamayim!!!!!

  • To #23

    Torah and Halacha doesn’t change? Boy are you ignorant. We perform about 16% of the original mitzvos. Our way of life was influenced by the Babylonians and Persians–learning demonology and astrology from them–from the Greeks we’ve learned logic and philosophy– the logic you see in the Talmud, and the philosophy you see elements of in Chassidus. As well as by countless other peoples that Jewish culture had contact with.

  • to #24

    Our way of life has always been influenced by where we have lived.
    the yiddish language etc. Even as slaves in Egypt we did not change are clothing to the Egyptian attire.

    Logic was around way before the greeks, you read in the chumash all the time. Just read the parsha about Yakov Aveinu and levan and the dealings with the live stock

  • #20

    # 21 Go read Some Shulchan Aruch on how men and woman should act to one another. Then write your comment again.

  • Zalman #21

    To #20/26

    My apologies for not having “read” Shulchan Aruch.
    I learnt Shulchan Aruch, which I highly doubt you have, given your “social customs” have no basis in Shulchan Aruch or Halacha.

    I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that halachos which are discussing how to act towards someone who is married you are applying to the general (single) population.

    You have made it abundantly clear that the VIRUS in the Frum community is running so deep, that when someone who has reviewed the sources in Halacha points out the problem, you without any research will claim (blindly so) that Shulchan Aruch says otherwise, based on nothing but your own foolish ideas.

    I have no need to justify how I may or may not have courted women, as I am willing and able to accept what is wrong as wrong. My previous post was SOLELY to do a little to clarify the reality of the matter to facilitate more young men and women meeting their counterpart sooner, and obviate unnecessary and wrong impositions on the community as a whole, incorrectly based on Halachos that don’t exist.

    That you, a Beis Yaakov ‘girl’ is (wrongfully and broadly) citing simanim in Shulchan Aruch I would be hard pressed to believe you learnt, to a ben Torah demonstrates even further a misplaced holier than thou attitude lacking substance to back it up, and an over-all disregard for Torah scholarship, subjecting it to your own social understandings.

    I will concede that the summer boardwalk is not the best place for a Frum young man (and possibly the one and only issue that may be contrary to Shulchan Aruch), however, if one is found there (as many nice Jewish boys, the aforementioned for example, are) that is the only issue. I’ll go on the assumption you wouldn’t refuse a shidduch if after the engagement you found out he had been to the boardwalk.

    I therefore reiterate everything I said in my previous post, and follow with a final statement:
    That you obviously feel the need to justify these social customs as (wrongly) based on Halacha and Shulchan Aruch leads me to conclude that you too sense that they really are not, but feel the need to justify what you have been duped into, rather than to realign your perspective, if only because of the social pressures that so many like you react to the same way to prevent themselves from having to face who duped they’ve been, and at what cost.

    Sincerely,
    your Jewish Brother.

    P.S. How old are you? Who knows…!?! :)