Marriage is a key element of an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, but the process of finding a spouse can raise challenges for both individuals and the communities in which they live. To better understand the landscape, and add empirical data to the conversation, the OU’s Center for Communal Research (CCR) has conducted several studies to explore the process of finding a spouse in the Orthodox Jewish community.
In July of 2023, the CCR published a report describing how single, Orthodox men and women feel and what they want from their communities while looking for a spouse.
In December of 2024, we published a follow up to our first report, which describes what single men and women in the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States are looking for in a spouse, what systems they use to find potential matches, and what dynamics define these systems they engage with during the dating process.
The OU is committed to sharing this critical information with our Jewish community, major stakeholders, and lay leaders to advance solutions to the identified challenges. Our intent in this space is not to solve these challenges, but rather to educate, bring multiple perspectives together in dialogue and increase awareness of the insights we glean from the data. We ask the entire Jewish community to partner with us in this endeavor, and to use this research to develop innovative solutions to the challenges facing single, Orthodox men and women as they look for their bashert.
Read the reports on the Challenges of Singlehood:
Summer 2023
Winter 2024
Read the study methodology:
