New Dating Site Helps LGBTQ Jews Find Love Online
The dating site, Saw You At Stonewall, looks to find matches online for LGBTQ Jews as options can be limited for the population.
It is getting ready for its full launch soon, with no date confirmed.
Founder of the site, Joanna Halpern, is a woman who was frustrated with the limited online dating options for LGBTQ Jewish people.
“It’s really difficult,” says Halpern, “You go on JSwipe, you swipe twice and you’re done.”
The site’s name is a combination of population Jewish dating site, Saw You at Sinai and Stonewall Inn/riots.
“I think it’s such a niche market,” she says, but “this niche really wants it badly because it’s so small.”
She also added: “The intersectionality of Judaism and queerness is a really tough space,
“Because a lot of queer circles are also very radical politically and that makes a lot of Jews feel excluded.”
The dating site uses an algorithm to divide the users into groups based on factors such a age, location, gender, as well as their romantic attraction to men and women.
When designing the site, Halpern also addresses a lot of issues which LGBTQ Jews can face.
For example, LGBTQ Jews are often misunderstood, as straight Jews have previously been accused of ethnocentrism racism for wanting to date people of the same sexuality.
Halpern also wanted to focus on the privacy of the site and has created a feature that will result in users being unable to see other users, until they have matched with them.
The site will also include a religious and identity checklist with options including Shabbat, denominations, kashrut, to emphasise the importance of certain practices over others and for users to find it easier to meet various identities in the LGBTQ community.
The beta version of the website ran for about two weeks last month, but the official launch is yet to be announced.
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