THE DATING SERVICE CONCEPT MEETS THE TALMUD:

Ancient Rabbi Becomes a Modern Israeli Matchmaker (New York Times)
By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: June 22, 2004

MUKA, Israel, June 15 � In these days of matchmaker.com and television's "Bachelorette," there are thousands of men and women in this country who look for love in a decidedly old-fashioned way: they pray at the tomb of a rabbi who has been dead for 2,000 years.

The rabbi, Yonatan ben Uziel, was a disciple of Hillel, the revered Talmudic sage of the first century B.C. Rabbi Yonatan was said to study Torah with such burning passion that any bird flying overhead would instantly be incinerated.

Like too many people fanatical about their work, he died a bachelor, or so the folk legend has it. Yet there has evolved around him an unshakable belief that he can intercede for those desperate to find love.

That is why every year, on the yahrzeit or anniversary of his death in the Hebrew calendar, thousands of pilgrims in buses and cars � young Hasidic men with peach-fuzz cheeks, women in tight jeans and aviator glasses, grizzled parents frantic to find a spouse for sons and daughters who have reached the ripe age of 25 � descend on this gorge of cedars and olive trees in the northern Galilee to recite Psalms at Rabbi Yonatan's grave.

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Yoram Bilu, a professor of anthropology and psychology at Hebrew University, said there was a growing veneration of saints in Judaism, paralleling that in Christianity and Islam, as demonstrated by the growing populist reverence for the Talmudic sages whose putative graves are sprinkled throughout Galilee.

He said forces like the turmoil set off by the Palestinian uprising and disillusionment with once popular movements like socialism had led many ordinary Israelis to latch on to a folk mysticism and New Age spirituality.

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