NADINE WOJAKOVSKI

IN ISRAEL, next Wednesday is Tu b’Av — the Jewish version of Valentine’s Day. The 15th day of Av, according to the Talmud, was when the “daughters of Jerusalem would go dance in the vineyards” and “whoever did not have a wife would go there” to find himself a bride. This year, thanks to the global pandemic, it has been hard to find a partner. But, some love stories have blossomed in lockdown, thanks to some extraordinary matchmaking efforts made in quarantine.

Stuck in bed with suspected Covid-19 back in March, Shereen Salem came up with the idea of setting up a matchmaking group. Five months later it has almost 9,000 members (including married people looking to help single friends) with some saying they are on the brink of getting engaged.

Salem, who was born in LA and now lives in London, had long wanted to help couples find love but life got in the way. She married in her thirties and then had four children in quick succession. While recovering from the virus, she read Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, which tells the story of two French sisters who resist the occupying Nazis by hiding Jewish children. “I was so moved by the story. It made me ask myself: ‘What have I done to help humanity, to help society, to help people?’” She asked herself how single people were going to meet and find their b’sheret, in Covid-19 times. And so she set up the Facebook group RJ-Shidduch-IM, the R,J,I,M being the initials of her four young children.

“I was married in my thirties, which seemed like an eternity and I didn’t like being lonely,” she says. “I met my husband through an introduction. People facilitated my journey, everything was very serendipitous.”

She believes introductions are the best way to meet people, so her group encourages a friend or family member to promote the single