Global Shluchim Unite to Bring Their Singles to the Chuppah
On August 25, thousands of young Jewish singles from Chabad Houses around the world will log on and maybe, unknowingly, sit across the screen from their soulmate. It will be the largest synchronized Jewish dating event ever held, and the culmination of years of shluchim guiding, preparing, and supporting their singles in communities worldwide.
It’s the moment every shliach’s ongoing work in their own community comes together. For the past 3 years, each shliach has been guiding, teaching, and supporting their singles locally; Met@Chabad is facilitating a platform to unite them.
Met@Chabad is scaling the classic local suggestion into a borderless, rabbi and rebbetzin-approved, and deeply personal platform, blending Jewish values, tech, and trust into an ongoing shluchim-led dating framework, with August 25 as one of its flagship activations.
At a CYP Kinus 4 years ago, Met @ Chabad was born in response to a wave of Shluchim from around the world, from Morocco to Moscow, asking the same question: “Where do I send them to date?”
It has grown into a foundation present in every Chabad House community worldwide. The August 25 event is the culmination of that groundwork, an opportunity for every local effort to connect into a single, global moment.
“We’ve been building out this initiative for the past three years to lead up to this day,” said Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, executive director of Merkos 302. “From education to algorithms to training, every step has been about supporting Shluchim in their selfless care for each individual by giving shluchim the tools to help their people meet, date, and build Jewish homes.”
They were seeing young Jews turn to their local Shliach for everything: Shabbos meals, holiday events, career guidance, even emotional support, but when it came to dating, there was no shared Chabad system to guide them to the chuppah.
“In the old shtetl, the matchmaker knew you, your family, your values,” said Rabbi Beryl Frankel, director of Chabad Young Professionals International at Merkos 302. “Today, Shluchim give that same personal touch, coupled with the reach of the global network and today’s technology.”
The difference is scale, the power of the network. More than 1,000 Shluchim are part of the initiative. Over 10,000 singles have been halachically approved to date. That approval is personal: each participant is verified by a Shliach who knows them and can vouch for who they are. No bots. No ghost profiles. Real people, dating intentionally.
“Since Met@Chabad began, we’ve had the merit to support, guide, and follow the journeys of hundreds of couples, and baruch Hashem, 23 have already gotten engaged or married,” said Dassi Gansburg, Met@Chabad coordinator. “Every one of those matches was long-distance, a testament to the incredible power of Shluchim to connect souls across continents, and proof that when we work together, borders fade and possibilities grow.”
“It proves what we’ve been saying all along,” said Frankel. “Take off those filters. Open your horizon. Your bashert might be across the globe or just across the state line.”
But Met@Chabad isn’t just an event, it’s the heart of a full shluchim-led dating system. The approach is multi-pronged: it starts with Jewish education and mindset-building, leads into values-based dating, and continues with hands-on guidance from Shluchim who are trained to coach and support.
The upcoming August 25 Rosh Chodesh Elul virtual speed-dating event will be an unprecedented gathering, aiming to bring together 8,500 to 10,000 participants, all at the same time, in multiple languages, across continents.
The format blends tech with Torah’s guidance. A short program at the start helps participants enter with the right mindset. Each person is then matched for five nine-minute dates. Prompts between rounds guide them to reflect. Afterward, a simple survey allows them to indicate interest. When there’s a mutual “yes,” the next step is arranged inside the system with the participant’s shliach involved.
Chodesh Elul, the time of Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li, focuses on renewing the Jewish people’s marriage to Hashem. This year, it is also becoming the time when thousands of Jews will go on their first date.
Shluchim can access design resources for their communities here: http://tiny.cc/allspeeddatingresources
