The Matchmaker’s Answer

“For every Jewish man, there’s a Jewish woman.” “Well. Unless he’s gay."

— Jeff Baron, Visiting Mr. Green (paraphrased)

In an effort to expose my mother to as much post-Soviet Jewry as possible during her three-week stay in Almaty, on Monday, 9 April, we attended a lecture by a Jewish matchmaker (שַׁדְּכָן‎ [shadḥan] in Hebrew, сваха [svakha] in Russian) named Miryam. Billed on the event’s flyer as a “specialist of familial relations,” I was excited to hear what she would say.

The event started at 7:00, so naturally, in line with local custom, everyone started showing up around 7:30. The rabbis had contracted a chef to prepare sushi in their kosher kitchen, and a local Jewish restaurant owner donated a good chunk of his restaurant for us to use as the venue. The cost of entry per person was 3,000₸ ($7.91), a relatively steep price for an informal dinner lecture, given that the monthly salary for the average person in Kazakhstan reportedly hovers somewhere around 60-80,000₸. I can only assume that the fact that so many showed up reflected the societal pressure, both in the Jewish community as well as in wider Kazakhstan, to get married and start building a family and a home as soon as possible. In attendance were approximately six younger guys, eight or so young women, and over a dozen older women who almost definitely were not in the husband search. It was interesting, though not surprising, to see no older men in attendance at this lecture given by a woman advertised as a household and family specialist entitled, “Was King David a good husband?” (Хорошим ли мужем был царь Давид?)

Putting on tefillin before the lecture starts. Selfie courtesy of Rabbi Mordeḥai Cohen

In the wake of Soviet-mandated assimilation and state-sponsored atheism, one Jewish organization reigns in today’s Almaty, a city of over 1.5 million people: Chabad-Lubavitch. The rabbis are personable, hospitable, and fantastic, like every Lubavitcher I’ve ever met. But because of their strict interpretation of the Torah, there are two options for Almatians of Jewish descent: Either participate in assimilated predominantly secular society or commit fully to an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. After living here for ten months, I see no other active organizations able to provide other options.

Somewhere around eight, Miryam began speaking. She spoke confidently and charismatically as she retold the story of her Jewish upbringing in Moscow – how she was made fun of by her classmates and, as a result, renounced her Jewishness. One day, she stumbled across the thriving (albeit very underground and illegal) Moscow Jewish community. She retold the story of her secret Jewish Moscow wedding, explaining how over time, she started following more and more Jewish laws and traditions. In 1985, after being refuseniks for five years, she and her husband received the call that they could leave the Soviet Union. Some powerful person “with connections” who lived in the apartment under them was having a wedding and requested the upstairs apartment to be vacant. Thus, Miryam and her husband emigrated to Israel well before most other Soviet Jews could. Her story almost exactly echoed my mom’s experience of being refuseniks for ten years before emigrating to Minnesota in 1988.

Miryam holds the rapt attention of the crowd

In Israel and with nine children, Miryam’s husband divorced her. But that didn’t stand in the way of her current matchmaking success! She told us how she had made 71 successful “Jewish homes” to date. We all applauded. She cited the Jewish belief that G-d creates two souls as one and then separates the two and places them with different parents, to find each other later. And she didn’t let us forget that if a Jewish person married anyone other than a Jew [of the opposite sex], they were as good as dead.

The kind of language Miryam used – Jewish families as “homes” or “worlds” – parallels the oft-quoted Talmudic passage that goes something like “Whoever destroys a soul [of Israel], it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life of Israel, it is considered as if he saved an entire world” (appearing also by the way in the Quran 5:32). And her two-hour long talk got me thinking about what kind of suggestions she’d give me to build a Jewish family. So I formulated a question.

Right after the lecture, a spirited, handsome young man received the first spot for consultation. He and Miryam talked for over half an hour. I waited. As soon as I saw him get up, I strode over to Miryam, introduced myself, and said, “I have a quick question for you.”

Before I could ask it, though, a gorgeous girl in heels and lipstick plopped down in the chair right across from Miryam. I retreated back to the other guys, where I actually managed to have a normal conversation with them (!), something that in all my experiences at Jewish events in Almaty had almost never happened. After a while, I was happily taken by surprise to see Miryam mosey over to me, ready to listen to my question.

“I am interested in learning how to build a proper Jewish family,” I said. “But I know I’m going to marry a man. What suggestions do you have?”

“That’s not possible,” she responded. “For each male soul, G-d has made a female counterpart.”

I explained that it wasn’t my choice to be gay, that this was an internal feeling I had (perhaps mistakenly using the Russian чувство, which can also be translated as ‘sensation’ or ‘emotion’). Miryam latched onto this and started delineating between animalistic urges (feelings) and human rational thought. “You in America with your freedom, freedom, freedom. There can be too much freedom, you know, and it causes us to stray from the laws mandated for us. G-d created animals before humans, and in doing so designated a certain order to his creation. He bestowed humans with soul/spirit/mind (дух) precisely so they could overcome their primal instincts. To overcome this, you will need daily Torah study with the rabbi and to see a therapist.”

She spoke with the assurance and wisdom of a professional psychiatrist. Her voice bubbled with effervescent energy.

“Telling me you know you’ll marry a man is the same thing as telling me ‘I see a deep, dark pit in my way in front of me. But instead of walking around it, I’m going to walk right into it and be trapped down there forever.’” She continued. “You know, there’s a thread between you and G-d. If you marry anyone other than a Jewish woman, that thread is cut.”

I flashed back to two days prior. That night, my mother and I had gone with my Russian tutor Elena Mikhaelovna to see a play called “Visiting Mr. Green” performed in Russian (Визиты к Мистеру Грин) by Kazakhstan’s top dramatic actors. The story revolves around Mr. Green, an 86-year-old widower who gets hit by the car of a young man named Ross. As punishment, Ross is sentenced to six months of community service in the form of weekly meetings to Mr. Green. During the first visits, Mr. Green is distrustful of Ross and dismisses his help. But when Ross reveals that he is also Jewish, their relationship immediately changes: Mr. Green hugs Ross and embraces him almost as his grandson. Their conversation inevitably turns to marriage and finding a nice Jewish girl for Ross, at which point the words with which I opened this post are uttered by Mr. Green: “For every Jewish man, there’s a Jewish woman.” The first act ends with Ross’s suspenseful response: “Well. Unless he’s gay."

It’s not hard to imagine Mr. Green's displeasure with this revelation. In the second act it comes out that he himself has a daughter who has married a non-Jew. Mr. Green considered her deceased for not following this basic tenant of his expression of Judaism and cut off all contact with her, failing to inform her even of the passing of her own mother. Ross convinces Mr. Green to resume contact with his daughter and her family and the play ends with her knocking at Mr. Green’s New York City apartment. The performance was hands-down the best thing I have witnessed on any stage here in Kazakhstan, and one of the most poignant, relatable, well-done productions I’d ever seen.

My experience at this play combined with my conversation with Miryam called to mind some questions. As strong as our belief may be, all we know for certain is that we’re here, right now, on Earth. Is it worth cutting off our loved ones for the rest of our lives because they don’t or can’t follow the rules that we live by? This has already caused immeasurable heartache for many and will continue to do so.

Regarding assimilation: It’s a miracle of history (also a result of halachic laws that mandate endogamy) that the Jewish people have survived for 5,000 years. But if in a thousand years from now, we were but a historical relic because we’d all assimilated into our prevailing cultures, how bad would that really be? Is the survival of our people worth the constant subjugation of women, LGBTQ people, and other groups? For some people, the answer is absolutely. For me, I know it is not.

Adoption has been a point of considerable controversy in Orthodox communities. In my research on Bukharian Jews, I stumbled across an interesting anecdote in Alanna Cooper’s book Bukharian Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism. It concerns a Bukharian Jewish couple struggling with infertility and thinking about adoption. Cooper writes that the only acceptable adoption in the mind of some in that community is one where the adopted baby is itself a Bukharian Jew by birth, and preferably somehow related to its adopted parents.

The conversation I had with the shadḥan made me realize how grateful I am to make my permanent home in America. Baruch Hashem that I live in this country of “freedom, freedom, freedom” to make my own choices about what Judaism means to me and choose the traditions I want to follow. Baruch Hashem that I live in a country with many different Jewish organizations that provide support to all different kinds of people. May Kazakhstan and the rest of the post-Soviet space also be granted the resources to be able to provide the same for their citizens.