Nominally, Netflix’s new series is about romance within Jewish culture. In practice, it’s a lesson in how you need a no-nonsense mother to pick your partner – even if you think you don’t
I cannot do justice to the best scene in Jewish Matchmaking with only the paltry resource of the written word at my disposal, but as it encapsulates the entire series in one perfect moment, it is incumbent on me to try.
Matchmaker Aleeza Ben Shalom is talking to her 30-year-old client Ori about the date she sent him on with a gorgeous, vivacious, intelligent, brown-eyed, brunette Israeli Jewish actor who spoke Hebrew. How did it go? Meh, says Ori. She wasn’t the gorgeous, vivacious, intelligent, blue-eyed, blond Israeli Jewish woman who spoke Hebrew that he’d requested, was she? Imagine, if you will, the spirit of all middle-aged mothers gathering in the soul of one, fixing him with a gimlet eye and producing a single sound that speaks for them all. On paper you might represent it as “Eeeugch”. In reality, it is a noise that makes even the hitherto impregnably confident Ori shrink visibly before her. And while I cannot begin to describe Aleeza’s accompanying facial expression, I can say this – it matches the audio.
Jewish Matchmaking is on Netflix.
