Making Shidduchim Is A Chesed Like Any Other

As we arrived at the hospital, one Hatzalah EMT looked down at the patient and noted gently, “You know, we wouldn’t be here if you weren’t a smoker.” He tapped the patient kindly on the shoulder and handed him the ambulance bill.

Of course, this would never happen. But these practices exist in the context of shidduchim. In the context of every chesed—for infertility, mental health, foster care—we never criticize or charge the people in need. Not so with shidduchim. Why should shidduchim be any different?

Canopy Shidduchim is a new shidduch website that aims to bring the culture of chesed back to shidduchim. It emphasizes four key features: privacy, autonomy, efficiency, and balance.

To sign up, daters join in pairs, one man and one woman. Each dater completes an anonymous profile that includes certain basic information, like age and location, along with a very specific description of who they are and what they’re looking for. It’s designed to be the sort of pitch a good reference would give about you.

Assume Avi is a dater, vetted by a matcher and approved to join. Avi will receive—via an algorithm—one anonymized profile per day, based on filters he sets and depending on availability. If Avi isn’t interested, he can decline and receive a new suggestion the next day. If he is interested, he can have his anonymous profile sent to her for review. If she declines, Avi is notified, but neither one of them knows who the other person is. Alternatively, if she is interested, she can accept. Then each dater receives the other’s full shidduch résumé with identifying information and a matcher is assigned to coordinate. It’s the regular shidduch system from that point on—you can research, decline to date, etc.

Canopy is brand new and currently onboarding daters and matchers in the mainstream torahdig / modern yeshivish / right-wing machmir categories. And you don’t need to be a professional shadchan to become a matcher; we’re simply looking for kind and sensitive people who want to do chesed. Once we reach a critical mass, we plan to begin matching.

Wondering how men and women can join in pairs? Want to know who we ask our halachic shailos to? Much more information can be found at canopyshidduchim.com.

Canopy was born out of love and profound sympathy for daters. We operate on a fully volunteer basis; it is pure chesed, no profit. Through our website, we put daters in the driver’s seat with respect to choosing who to date, while maintaining their privacy to the fullest extent possible. Canopy is not an open database—neither daters nor matchers can search for you. We also make the shadchan’s role significantly easier, by shifting most of their work to an algorithm and daters. And finally, we are very aware of the phenomenon that many more women tend to enroll in shidduch websites than men and so we’ve built in a method for recruiting men, so we can make the most shidduchim possible.

The issue of shidduchim impacts every frum family. You can be part of the solution, and we hope you will partner us in pursuing this great chesed.