Italy’s first all-Jewish marriage bureau is celebrating its first year of operation this month with a gala weekend in Florence that organizers hope will draw Jewish singles from all over Europe.
“It’s our first experience in staging a big party like this, and we hope it will be a success,” said Davide dello Strologo, founder and director of the Milan-based Armonia agency.
Dello Strologo founded Armonia — “harmony” in Italian — in September 1992.
He said he wanted to create a serious matchmaking bureau for Jewish singles, widows, widowers and divorced people, and said “making people happy” rather than making money is his goal.
He said he consulted psychologists, as well as software companies in Israel and in the United States, before creating his own matchmaking software.
The program’s compatibility test is composed of 35 questions.
Candidates for Armonia’s services fill out an 18-page questionnaire and also have a personal interview.
Each candidate also must provide a rabbinical certificate or other written proof of being Jewish.
Results from the questionnaire and interviews are coded and loaded into a computer, which selects potential partners according to estimated compatibility.
Only people whose compatibility is estimated at more than 65 percent are introduced, and fees are taken only if there is a successful match.
Only one match has been made since the agency was started.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
