Rivkah Leah

User Biography

My first shidduch was in 1986 for a relative.. At the time I had 3 small children. Jump to 2004 and my oldest was 22 and I didn't how we could get him married. I wasn't alone.Towards the fall of 2004, a group of about 10 woman got together and work on our children's shidduchim. We thought we were going to share resumes. That Never happened. We reached for seforim . We read out loud advice about shidduchim. At first the engagements were coming in slow using the advice from Rabbi's. We pooled together some money and brought in speakers from out of town and local.We took the advice and made "to do" lists. Other advice was more spiritual. Some of us put those pieces of advice on 'post it" notes put them in key places around our environment. In early 2005 my son got engaged, 2006 my 2nd son got engaged 2007 my oldest daughter got engaged. At her L'Chaim in Chicago, change happened. Another 15 or 20 women joined the group. People wanted to know "what where we doing". If whatever we were doing worked for Chana )( she was a bit different), they wanted in. By then we had a method. The group by then had maybe 25 engagements. We continued learning and bringing in speakers. We averaging 8 or 9 engagements a year. In 2010 , we had a speaker that gave us a big boost. From fall of 2010 to fall of 2011, we have 25 engagements. You may. be. able access these on Col.live , My 2nd daughter was part of that group. I would wake up on some mornings and tell my husband " I had this great dream, "everyone in the group had an engagement". It became surreal. We had to have a calendar ,so we wouldn't have 2 simcha's on the same day. Bythe fall of 2011 . we had together made 119 Shidduchs. My 3 youngest children were 19,18 and 16 year old boys. I took a break from the group and went on to coach about a dozen Livish girls ages 32 to 50.Most never married. I learned the most from them..