OkCupid.com, a free online dating site, might be doing more for Jewish continuity this Hanukkah than all the American JCC’s and Federations combined. Yesterday, the site launched its Eight Days of Matches project… and they aren’t talking about the matches you use to kindle your hanukkiah or menorah.

Each day of the Chag, Chris Coyne, the site’s co-founder, will email the site’s Jewish members (members that have identified themselves as Jewish or Jew-ish) a Jewish match, either male or female, depending on the registrants’ orientations, and coax members to contact their matches. Will the be offended to be matched with another Jewish person? Coyne preempts complaints by asking recipients to spend their time matching and contacting rather than kvetching.

Coyne, a co-founder of SparkNotes.com and Harvard grad is not of the tribe, but he has a good Yiddische Kopf and came up with this idea. Sam Yagan, another co-founder and the current CEO of OkCupid, is of the Halabi branch of the tribe. Yagan, who is married to his childhood sweetheart, noticed that registration in dating web sites increases dramatically during the holiday season. Dramatically!

Maybe it is cuz parents prod their kids about whether or not they are dating? Maybe it is the result of mistletoe, mistle-woes, office parties, or the secret mixture of oil, potatoes and onions that are found in latkas. (Latkas are aphrodisiacs, no?). Or it is just some “holiday effect” that needs more research.

Check back here in a week, I will try to let you know if their matching project was deemed successful.

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