MoDate: The Next Big Jewish Dating Site?

MoDate is a dating site for Modern Orthodox Jews, and it looks to provide a middle ground between fun modernity without comprising religious devotion. The platform works through a mutual-friend system, trying to mimic the experience of making new connections naturally.

MoDate’s creator Evan Harris, who has a Modern Orthodox background himself, found that traditional matchmakers known as “shadchan” were a bit too old-fashioned. Meanwhile dating apps didn’t capture the marriage-minded perspective of young people in the community, he told Jewish Link. 

The platform started off on Google Sheets, gathering up to 1000 users. It is now a web platform, with 850 singles looking for Modern Orthodox partners. 

The site lets users sign up as a ‘dater’ or a ‘connector’, with the latter needed to verify a dater’s profile. An important feature on the platform is that once two daters agree on a date, their profiles will become inactive until they’re ready to start searching again.

Harris is looking for MoDate to become a ““top player in the Jewish dating industry”, and expand the “MoVerse”, which could see the site host dating events and mixers.