Posted on 09/30/2018 5:49:35 PM PDT by NRx
SCHATCHENS FIND BUSINESS BAD AND DEPLORE THE UNHAPPINESS SURE TO FOLLOW-
This has been a hard year for the cupids of the ghetto, as the matrimonial agents of the Jewish quarter might be called. To the Jews he is known as the schatchen, but unless the marriage business picks up the broker is going to drop out of sight. Already he is branching out into other ways of making a living. He writes letters for the illiterate, acts as interpreter in business transactions or does odd jobs around the synagogue. Marriage brokerage used to be one of the best paying businesses on the East Side, but that day has passed and the schatchens think it will never return.
When the Jews began to come to this city in large numbers and to crowd the Germans out of the East Side district they brought the marriage broker with them. They had always been accustomed to having a professional matchmaker arrange their marriages, and at the time they did not know how to get along without it. The young men were bashful and were more than willing to give up 10 percent of the girl's dowry if someone else would put the question. Besides, they made sure of getting a wife in this way. They would go to the broker, or schatchen, and outline their ideal of a wife, not forgetting to mention the amount of dowry they expected. The schatchen would take note of all the young man's advantages- personal appearance, education and money making ability. Then he would go among the young women of his extended acquaintance, and speedily find someone who was willing to wed on the terms the broker had to offer.
The schatchen's fee was paid as soon as the engagement was announced. It usually amounted to 10 percent of the dowry, but in some cases a stipulated fee was charged where the girls was very pretty and her people unable to give a large marriage portion. Sometimes the schatchen had trouble collecting his fee, and in these cases he even things up by breaking off the match. There were many ways of doing this. If the man were at fault the schatchen would get the girl a more desirable match, and as love had not entered into the first engagement it was speedily broken, leaving the man sadder but wiser. If the schatchen discovered that girl objected to paying the fee, he found a prettier girl for the man.
This is the way it used to be done. Let the oldest schatchen in the colony tell why it is that his services are no longer in great demand. He is to be found in Hester St., and the sign outside his door asserts that he writes letters, makes translations and teaches Hebrew or English.
"I would starve to death in a month if I depended on matchmaking for a living," he said bitterly. "Once I lived on the fat of the land and most of the marriageable young men and women in the quarter depended on me to make them happy for life. Now they believe in love and all that rot. They are making their own marriages and many of them will be unhappy. Several things combined to bring about this change. In the first place there are too many girls in the Jewish quarter. There are six or seven girls for every man. This makes the young fellows hard to deal with. They can marry into almost any family on the block just for the asking. Some of the women still come to me but it is hard to find mates for them."
[Read the rest at the linked page.]
This is from 1900. By the time 1905 comes around even the Matchmakers in Russia were losing business. I saw that in “Fiddler on the Roof”.
“’I would starve to death in a month if I depended on matchmaking for a living,’ he said bitterly. ‘Once I lived on the fat of the land and most of the marriageable young men and women in the quarter depended on me to make them happy for life. Now they believe in love and all that rot.’”
Hilarious.
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