Inside the Toronto Shidduch Initiative
In every Jewish community, few things are as emotionally charged, complex, and deeply cherished as helping our children find their bashert. But behind every engagement lies an intricate network of effort — parents, mentors, shadchanim, friends, teachers, and of course Divine Assistance. But in Toronto, where most young men leave the city for yeshiva and rarely return to date locally, the path to building Jewish homes has often been steep.
Enter the Toronto Shidduch Initiative (TSI) — an organization that has quietly, methodically, and lovingly transformed the shidduch landscape for Toronto families. Built on the vision of its founders and the tireless work of its coordinator, Laura Leitman, and its dedicated group of shadchanim, including the exceptional Evelyn Grubner, TSI has become a source of hope, dignity, and forward momentum for hundreds of families.
As Pesach approaches — a time when Jewish homes become the center of our identity — it is fitting to shine a light on an organization whose sole mission is precisely that: to help build Jewish homes.
The birth of a bold idea
The seeds of the Toronto Shidduch Initiative were planted long before the organization had a name. For years, Toronto mother Goldie Hauer navigated the shidduch world on behalf of her own children. Like so many parents, she collected phone numbers, met shadchanim, flew in and out of New York and New Jersey, and watched up close how complex, draining, and emotionally fraught the process could be.
Along the way, Mrs. Hauer built relationships with shadchanim and roshei yeshiva, and gained a broad, realistic perspective on the challenges facing out-of-town families. When her last child married, she did something unusual. Instead of filing away the notes and closing that chapter of her life, she looked around at the Toronto community and asked a simple but powerful question: how can I use all of this to help everyone else?
Together with partners Moshe Sigler and Bentzion Berkovits, Mrs. Hauer transformed that question into action. The three became the driving force behind what would become the Toronto Shidduch Initiative — an organization designed not only to help individual families, but to strengthen the entire Toronto shidduch ecosystem. What began with Mrs. Hauer hosting visiting shadchanim in her living room has grown into a citywide operation with systems, strategy, and serious infrastructure.
“It’s really about helping our community navigate a challenging, emotionally heavy process in a way that feels supported and respectful,” explains Laura. “No family should feel alone.”
“No family should feel alone in the shidduch parsha.” — Laura Leitman
The Toronto challenge: out-of-town and across the border
To understand TSI’s mission, you first have to understand Toronto’s unique shidduch reality. Unlike Lakewood, Baltimore, or other large American centers, Toronto does not have major yeshivas filled with marriageable bochurim. As soon as Toronto’s young men graduate high school, the overwhelming majority head south of the border for yeshiva — and that is where most of them stay through the dating period.
Practically speaking, that means that even a so-called “Toronto–Toronto” match often ends up dating in Lakewood, Monsey, or Brooklyn, because that’s where the boys are. For Toronto’s daughters, that shift has far-reaching consequences. They have to travel frequently for first dates. American families may not know much about Toronto. And in a world where shadchanim are flooded with resumes from New York and New Jersey, pointing someone’s attention north of the border can sometimes feel like swimming upstream.
On top of that, the broader structural dynamics of the shidduch system do not always favour girls. Boys, particularly in the yeshivish world, tend to begin dating later and can be suggested to a wide age range of girls. Girls, by contrast, enter the system earlier and often find their pool narrowing as they get older. Layer “out-of-town” and “across the border” onto that equation, and you begin to see the picture.
“Girls here can wait for a while before getting a date,” says Laura. “Meanwhile, boys are inundated with suggestions. We needed a way to level the playing field — not by changing who our girls are, but by changing the support around them.”
Evelyn Grubner, who has been active in shidduchim for decades, puts it more simply. “If I were a mother in New York with a wonderful boy,” she says, “I wouldn’t automatically think of Toronto either. They don’t know our girls. They don’t see their warmth, their sincerity, their out-of-town qualities. But once the boys actually meet them, it’s a different story.”
“Toronto girls are truly exceptional. People just don’t know them yet.” — Evelyn Grubner
Supporting the shadchanim: the heart of the system
From the very beginning, TSI’s founders understood that if they wanted to meaningfully change outcomes, they had to start by supporting the people on the front lines: the shadchanim. For years, shadchanim in every community have quietly poured tens of hours into each idea — researching families, calling references, following up with parents, coaching nervous boys and girls, and then repeating that process all over again — often without any compensation at all unless a couple became engaged.
TSI recognized that this model was a recipe for burnout. Talented, dedicated shadchanim were investing enormous amounts of time and emotional energy, only to feel empty-handed if a shidduch did not work out. Eventually, even the most altruistic people can become drained.
To address this, TSI introduced a series of tangible supports designed to validate and sustain shadchanim. When a Toronto girl is set up, the shadchan receives a stipend for the first date. If the shidduch progresses to a third date, there is an additional payment. And if the couple becomes engaged, TSI guarantees a minimum shadchanus amount from the girl’s side by topping up the family’s contribution to a predetermined level.
“We’re not paying shadchanim what their hours are actually worth,” Laura is quick to point out. “That would be impossible. But we are sending a clear message: your time is valuable, your effort is appreciated, and you are not alone in this avodah.”
Beyond finances, TSI has built a structure of support and community for the shadchanim themselves. Weekly meetings give them a chance to share information, compare notes, and network on behalf of Toronto families. Organized trips to the U.S. allow them to meet boys face-to-face, so that when they later call a mother, they can say, “I met your son. I know who he is.” Conferences and training sessions help them refine their skills and stay energized.
For Evelyn, the difference is night and day. “Before TSI, I used to burn out regularly,” she admits. “I would throw myself into setting up a shidduch, calling mothers, arranging logistics, coaching both sides, and after a few dates it would fall apart. I’d be left exhausted and feeling like I had nothing to show for it. Now, even when something doesn’t work out, I feel that my time was valued. It gives me the strength to keep going.”
“Your time is valuable, your effort is appreciated, and you are not alone in this avodah.” — TSI message to shadchanim
The logistics machine: cars, housing, phones, and more
If the shadchanim are the heart of TSI, then its logistics operation is the circulatory system, constantly moving in the background to keep everything functioning smoothly. One of the most striking aspects of TSI’s work is how much thought and effort goes into the practical side of getting boys to Toronto to date local girls with dignity and ease.
TSI maintains a dedicated car that is almost constantly in use by visiting bochurim. On busy weekends, when multiple boys are coming in, they arrange additional vehicles by borrowing from generous community members. They coordinate housing with carefully chosen host families. For boys whose U.S. phone plans do not work in Canada, TSI offers a kosher, TAG-filtered phone they can borrow while they are here.
They even help with the little things that are not so little: suggesting appropriate dating locations, familiarizing boys with the community, and ensuring they feel oriented rather than lost. When there is genuine financial need and the difference between “yes” and “no” comes down to airfare, TSI can step in and subsidize part of a ticket so that the shidduch has a chance to proceed.
Laura recalls one particularly busy Shabbos when seven boys were scheduled to come in from out of town to date Toronto girls. “We ended up arranging four cars,” she says. “Goldie took the main car to the car wash, filled the tank, checked everything. Every detail mattered. We wanted them to feel that coming to Toronto was simple, respectful, and worthwhile.”
Evelyn laughs as she remembers crowded meals and full guest rooms. “I once had eight boys in my home for Shabbos — all dating different girls,” she says. “It was like running a small yeshiva. But that’s what it takes sometimes. And once they come and actually meet our girls? Very often, it just takes off.”
“Every detail matters. We want them to feel that coming to Toronto is simple, respectful, and worthwhile.” — Laura Leitman
A day in the life of a shadchan
Listening to Evelyn describe her schedule is like peeking behind the curtain of the shidduch world. Her day might include meeting bochurim in Lakewood, Baltimore, or New York; taking careful notes about their personalities, families, and aspirations; flying back to Toronto and calling mothers; fielding texts from anxious girls; and quietly arranging the details that make a first date possible.
She tells of a boy who arrived without a proper belt, and how she quietly lent him her husband’s. She speaks of bochurim who struggle with conversation, for whom she sends a new joke or ice-breaker before each date so they have something light to say when the nerves kick in. She describes late-night phone calls with mothers who need reassurance, and long conversations with girls who are working through disappointment.
“People see the engagement photos,” Evelyn says, “but they don’t see what comes before that — the hours and hours of phone calls, the logistics, the coaching, the tears, the tefillos. That’s all part of it.”
Before TSI, all of that effort often ended in silence: a shidduch would fizzle out, and Evelyn would be left feeling depleted. Now, with institutional backing, she feels that even when a particular match does not work, the time and heart she invested are acknowledged.
“When someone tells you, in a very real way, ‘What you did matters,’ it changes everything,” she says. “You have the koach to pick up the phone again, to suggest another idea, to keep believing in the next shidduch.”
“People see the engagement photos, but they don’t see the tears, the tefillos, and the hours that come before.” — Evelyn Grubner
Why they keep going
It would be easy to assume that shadchanim and coordinators keep going out of duty alone. But speak to Laura or Evelyn for even a few minutes, and a different picture emerges. They are animated by something deeper: a profound sense that helping another Jew build a bayis ne’eman is holy work.
“We see miracles,” Evelyn says simply. “We see hashgachah pratis all the time — in who calls when, in how trips line up, in who happens to be in town for a simchah. You can’t always explain it, but you feel it.”
That sense of partnership with Hashem — of doing everything in the realm of effort while knowing that the final result is not in human hands — gives TSI its unique tone. There is professionalism and planning, yes. But there is also humility, and a deep awareness that every resume and every first date represents a whole world.
An inspirational story: kindness that came full circle
Near the end of our conversation, Evelyn shared a story that seemed to crystallize everything TSI stands for: kindness, dignity, and the quiet ways in which Hashem weaves threads together.
Years ago, Evelyn’s mother passed away, leaving her father alone in his large home. It was an emotional time, and Evelyn knew her father needed someone in the home with him so she marched down to the local yeshiva to see if there were any boys who would be willing to live in the home with her father instead of living in the yeshiva dorms. Surprisingly, Evelyn found a gentle, thoughtful yeshiva bochur. He was not a close relative. He was not being paid. He was simply there — offering help, speaking respectfully, and giving her father and the family a sense of comfort and kavod at a time when it was needed most.
“He treated my father like royalty,” Evelyn recalls.
Almost instinctively, Evelyn’s thoughts turned to her niece, a refined, exceptional girl whose middos and values seemed perfectly matched to the quiet kindness she witnessed in him.
The first date went beautifully. The second was even better. By the third, everyone sensed that something special was unfolding.
Not long after, they were engaged.
“I was thrilled,” Evelyn relates, “But I was also conflicted. Who would live with my father? Sure enough, the young couple decided to continue living at home with my father.” Evelyn continues, “the kindness the boy showed came back to him in the most beautiful way, in the form of a bayis ne’eman built with my niece.”
It is a story that captures the essence of what TSI is trying to do for the entire community: create the conditions in which hidden kindness can bear fruit, in which quiet efforts can lead to beautiful, lasting Jewish homes.
“The kindness he showed my father came back to him in the form of his own bayis ne’eman.” — Evelyn Grubner
Helping build the next Jewish home
As Toronto continues to grow and its children enter shidduchim year after year, the work of the Toronto Shidduch Initiative becomes ever more vital. Their work — often quiet, often unseen — represents some of the best of what a Jewish community can be. They support families in moments of vulnerability. They support the shadchanim whose efforts too often go unrecognized. They create pathways for our children to meet, connect, and, with Hashem’s help, build homes of their own. ∎
Kashruth Council of Canada | www.cor.ca — 2026-5786 Passover Guide, pp. 84–87
COR, the Kashruth Council of Canada, is one of the world’s largest kosher certification agencies, certifying thousands of products, restaurants, and facilities. Learn more at cor.ca, or read about our certification services at corkosher.com.
COMING HOME
On Seder night, Jews around the world look around the table and quietly count: Who’s here? Who’s missing?
Last year, many Jewish homes added a new, painful question: Who is still in captivity? An empty chair, a yellow ribbon, a name whispered in Tehillim—all became part of the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, our going out from Egypt.
This year some of those chairs are no longer empty. Some of our brothers and sisters have walked through hospital doors and front gates, crossed thresholds and kissed mezuzot, announcing: Ani babayit. I’m home.
This is a story about some of those homecomings: about the darkness they emerged from, the strength that kept them alive, and the way their return has deepened the emunah of the Jewish people.
Faith in the tunnels
When released hostage Bar Kupershtein, 23, stepped for the first time into his family’s new apartment in Holon, reporters saw a young man pale and thin, but very much alive. He had spent over two years in cramped Hamas tunnels in Gaza, with no sunlight, little food, and regular beatings. He says he survived by holding onto one simple conviction: that he was never really in the hands of his captors at all.
Kupershtein describes tiny pockets of resistance and connection in that hellish space. Six hostages together in a “room” barely bigger than a mattress, learning Arabic, absorbing abuse, and then clinging to each other. “We were there for each other, we supported each other… we will not let them defeat us,” he recalled.
Every Friday night, they insisted on reciting the blessings of Kiddush and singing Lecha Dodi — sometimes without wine, sometimes whispering so as not to be heard, but always stubbornly creating a Shabbat of some sort in the tunnel.
On one terrifying day, a guard threatened the hostages. Kupershtein remembers only one response: tefillah. “I just remember praying to G-d, begging Him, saying ‘save me, I’m in Your hands now,'” he said.
Much later, he discovered that his mother, on a phone call with one of his captors, had used almost the same words. She told the terrorist, “My son is not in your hands, he is in the hands of G-d.” That sentence became the family’s motto, now engraved on a bracelet Kupershtein wears: “Always in the Hands of G-d.”
Their story is one of many.
Sapir Cohen, held for 55 days in Gaza, later spoke about a moment of startling clarity. She recounts that she remembered thinking, in the middle of the horror: “I think one of the biggest miracles I felt was maybe I’m supposed to be in this place.”
It wasn’t a surrender to evil. It was the opposite: a sense that even here, in a place of cruelty, Hashem had not lost track of her for even a second. She began to thank G-d for the strength to withstand what she was facing, and later described her time in captivity as the beginning of a deeper relationship with Him.
At a Chabad center in San Antonio, former hostage Moran Stella Yanai described to a room full of women how she endured 54 days of hunger, injury and constant threats. She spoke of food poisoning, fractures, lice, and violence. Yet she summed up her inner stance in one astonishing sentence: “No matter the fear or anxiety, I was full of hope.”
Sometimes she was alone, sometimes with other captives, but she kept telling herself to be strong, to lean on faith, to remember that as long as she was breathing, her story wasn’t over.
As difficult as these stories are, the similarities are telling — released hostages speak about emunah not as a spiritual luxury, but as oxygen, the one thing that kept them from drowning in the darkness.
“Dad, I came home alive”
If the tunnels were a kind of personal Mitzrayim, then the moment of release is their Kriyat Yam Suf, their sea splitting.
For Romi Gonen, that moment carried a sentence her father had been praying to hear for 470 days. Throughout her captivity, he had spoken to her through cameras and microphones, begging her to stay alive, to hold on, to come home. When she finally crossed the border during a hostage–prisoner exchange on January 19, 2025, her first words to him were: “Dad, I came home alive.”
“Every single story of survival, of mental strength in captivity, rests on a conviction that no enemy can break—we are always in Hashem’s hands”
In another extraordinary reunion, six hostages — including Omer Shem Tov — were released after 505 days of captivity. When his brother Amit saw him in the hospital, he told Ynet: “Omer was reborn today. He’s home, in good condition and we’re so relieved it’s finally over.”
He spoke of hugging Omer, telling him how much he loved him, and calling that simple embrace “the best moment” of his life. Meanwhile their father marveled at Omer’s concern not for himself, but for his family — his first message was that he was just happy they were safe.
The father of Eitan Mor, kidnapped from security duty at the Nova festival, wrote that “Our Eitan is coming back to life in Israel, coming back to life with his family.”
In medical centers across Israel, nurses and doctors describe the same scene on repeat: a door opens, and there is a collision of bodies — parents, children, siblings, spouses — forming a tight ball of sobbing, laughter, disbelief. Tiny, ordinary details take on spiritual weight: the taste of hospital bourekas, the beeping of machines, the first time a returned hostage asks for a coffee the way they like it.
These are not just emotional reunions. They are scenes of personal geulah.
When the Jewish home becomes a lifeline
Many testimonies from freed hostages speak about habits and memories carried from home that became lifelines in captivity.
Kupershtein and his fellow abductees insisted on saying Shabbat blessings each Friday night, even when all they had was water and stale bread. For them, Shabbat wasn’t a date on the calendar; it was oxygen they needed to breathe.
Another former hostage, Sapir Cohen, described feeling that she was held in G-d’s embrace even in a Gaza basement, and later began sharing that faith story worldwide.
Eli Sharabi was held as a hostage for 16 months after his kibbutz, Be’eri, was attacked on October 7. He promised his British wife, Lianne, and their daughters that he would return — but when he was eventually freed, he learned they had all been murdered on that first day.
Sharabi could have turned inward in bitterness. Instead, he has chosen to speak, to bear witness. A moving profile described his prayers during captivity as creating “a bridge between worlds,” connecting the deepest darkness of the tunnels with the highest heavens.
For him, “coming home” is unimaginably complex: his physical body is back in Israel, but his immediate family is gone. Yet he insists that Am Yisroel is his extended family now, and he uses his voice around the world to share his experience and testify about the power of prayer that carried him through.
In his brokenness, he teaches us that the Jewish home is not only the house where you sleep. It is the people who daven for you, advocate for you, leave a chair for you, and refuse to forget your name.
Pesach, Yetziat Mitzrayim, and the hostages’ return
The Haggadah tells us that in every generation, a person must see themselves as if they personally left Egypt. This year, that sentence lands differently.
When we read “Avadim hayinu le-Pharaoh b’Mitzrayim” – we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt – it will be hard not to picture young Jews chained in tunnels, blindfolded, under the authority of guards who could decide whether they ate, stood, slept.
When we say “Vayotzienu Hashem Elokeinu mi’sham b’yad chazakah” – Hashem took us out from there with a strong hand – we may think of helicopters, armored vehicles, and white buses carrying hostages toward home, surrounded by IDF soldiers and doctors. But beneath all of that, we’ll remember something deeper: that every single story of survival, of mental strength in captivity, rests on a conviction that no enemy can break—we are always in Hashem’s hands. ∎
Kashruth Council of Canada | www.cor.ca — 2026-5786 Passover Guide, pp. 88–89
COR, the Kashruth Council of Canada, is one of the world’s largest kosher certification agencies, certifying thousands of products, restaurants, and facilities. Learn more at cor.ca, or read about our certification services at corkosher.com.