Chapter Three
The stress every Friday before sunset is to Orthodox Jews what the zombie apocalypse is to conspiracy theorists.
Meaning, you need to be prepared. Because once those candles are lit, there are no backsies.
If you forget to turn on the crockpot for your cholent, guess what?
No cholent for you, buddy. If you neglect to switch off your bedroom light, you better have some sleeping pills lying around to get you through the night.
And if you fail to remember to set your oven to Shabbos mode, then cold chicken and knishes are on the menu.
In fact, there are so many ways to screw up the preparation of Shabbos that I still have the checklist my mother made taped onto our kitchen cabinet.
But should you make any of the above mistakes on a three-day holiday, then you better hope you’ve got a nice non-Jewish neighbor who enjoys playing guessing games.
Because you’re only allowed to have a non-Jew help you provided that you don’t ask them directly for what you need.
So instead of asking them to turn on a lamp, for example, you’d say, “Do you think it’s too dark in here?
” At which point, they’re supposed to realize to flip the light switch on.
And let’s not forget the stress that comes with having to make a three-course meal by sunset.
Anyway. The point is that you should avoid having a serious life crisis on a Friday because your anxiety levels are already sky high. But come Friday morning, I’m already a wreck from having spent much of the night tossing and turning, unable to stop worrying about Mrs. Schwartz.
My phone suddenly rings, and I glance at the time. What kind of sadist calls at six in the morning?
Ah. My brother.
“Hello?” I croak.
“Hi, so listen,” Zevi says, sounding breathless. “I know it’s early, but my plane is boarding and I need to tell you something.”
“Umph,” I moan, rubbing my eyelids.
“Are you sitting down?”
I bolt upright. Nothing wakes you up faster than someone asking if you’re sitting down. I clench the phone. “Who died?”
“Why do you always go straight to that?”
“Someone is missing, then?” I chew on my bottom lip as years’ worth of Dateline episodes regurgitate in my head. And as we viewers know, the first twenty-four hours are critical.
“No, Ash. No one is dead and no one is missing.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. What else could be a legitimate reason to wake someone up at six in the morning? “Does someone need bail money?”
“No offense, but you’re not the one I’d call if someone did,” he says, which is a fair point. “Now can I tell you or do we have to keep playing Twenty Questions?”
“Sorry, go ahead,” I say. In the background I hear the gate attendant making an announcement.
“Okay, so it’s not a big deal,” he says, “but there’s an Instagram post about you that people are talking about.”
“About me?” I squeal.
“Yeah.”
My stomach plummets. For once I was right to panic. “Any chance that this is a good type of post?” I say.
Zevi’s sigh lands midway through his chuckle. “I’m sorry, Ash.”
“Can you send it to me?”
“Promise not to freak out?”
“I won’t freak out.”
“Good,” he says. “Because it’s not a big deal.”
Which seems debatable.
“All right, hold on . . . Okay, sent.”
A moment later my phone pings. I tap on the message icon and clench my teeth as I wait for it to load.
The first thing I notice is that Mrs. Schwartz has tagged me in the post. So, that’s cute.
She’s taken a picture of my company logo and put a large red strikethrough on it, and the words ‘RISKY BUSINESS’. Beneath the image is the caption:
I had the most nightmarish experience with matchmaker Ashira Wernick @bluemoonbasherts.
She told ugly, outrageous lies to the man she was supposed to be setting my daughter up with—and even spoke lashon hara about me.
Have you ever been betrayed by a matchmaker or had a terrible experience?
Drop a comment below. #BlueMoonBashertsBackstabber #UnethicalMatchmaker #LashonHara
My hand flies to my mouth. It’s one thing to call me a backstabber, but desecrating my beautiful website design with a warning label?
Below. The. Belt.
I shake my head, trying to wrap my head around the fact that she’s being so public in her effort to destroy me. I figured she’d complain about me to her friends or the fish shop guy or the mailman or whoever else she might run into in the coming days. I never would’ve thought she’d go this far.
“I’m going to take her to Beis Din,” I declare. One of the Jewish court’s areas of expertise is to settle money disputes between Jews. There’s no question that the Beis Din will see that Mrs. Schwartz calling me out on a public forum is an attempt to ruin me financially.
“I think her husband sits on it,” Zevi says.
Of course he does.
“Then I’ll go to the one in Chicago,” I say.
“Or maybe it’s her uncle?” Zevi ponders.
I clutch the side of my head and start to pace. “What am I supposed to do exactly? Just lie back and take it?”
“No, of course not. We’ll figure something out.” A woman makes another announcement over the loudspeaker, and Zevi must be on the move because the background noise gets louder. “I’ve got to board now, but stay off social media, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’ll see you tonight,” he says, reminding me that we’re eating at Leah’s for the Friday night Shabbos meal.
“Okay,” I reply. “Have a safe flight.”
I stare at my phone after we hang up. My finger hovers over the Instagram app, but Zevi is right—it won’t do any good to check social media. I’ll just get upset and angry, and I don’t even have anyone to take it out on.
I decide to check my inbox instead, and immediately wish I hadn’t. I frown as I click onto an email from a client of mine with the subject line: Apologies.
Hi Ashira.
This isn’t easy for me to write, but I’ve decided to terminate our contract. You’ll hear from my lawyer before the end of next week. I hope you take some time in the coming days to reflect on the damage that speaking lashon hara can incur, and hopefully through prayer and meditation, find peace.
I fall against my bed and groan. There’s no peace if I have no money to pay my bills. Some of us actually like our electricity and hot water.
Unlike some matchmakers who have day jobs and only get paid after a match is made, my three-month, six-month, and annual contracts are there to provide steady income regardless of my success.
My heart starts to race. I imagine living on the streets in the dead of winter, shivering and hungry. I picture myself clutching an empty tin can while a crowd claps along to a guy’s harmonica performance across the street. His talent is mediocre, but no one except me seems to realize it.
And because I have no panhandling skills, I soon wind up dead in an abandoned, dimly lit alley. I finally get my fifteen minutes of fame when Dateline does an episode on me titled: The Matchmaker Meets Her Maker.
I do my best to resist checking Instagram, but I eventually crack when the notification alert reaches over a hundred.
I’m shocked at how much attention this post is getting.
People I’ve never met before are sharing Mrs. Schwartz’s post—people who aren’t even Jewish.
The more it gets shared, the more traction it gets.
I had no idea that there was so much pent-up anger towards matchmakers in the world, but reading through the comment section is definitely changing that.
By noon, the nightmare is in full swing. My phone is blowing up with a flurry of texts and calls from concerned friends, and emails from clients who no longer want to work with me.
Suddenly, anyone who’s ever been wronged by a matchmaker—which seems to be just about everyone and their mom—has come out of the woodwork, and within a matter of hours, I’m the ambassador for unethical matchmakers across the globe.
My name itself has become a hashtag, positioned between others such as: #Conniving #Untrustworthy #Immoral #Bluemoonbasherts
On a conference call with Miri and Sissel, I simultaneously reassure my two best friends that I’m perfectly fine and completely unaffected, and uncork a wine bottle and pour myself a tall glass.
Between sips and listening to them rant against Mrs. Schwartz, I continue reading posts.
I’m torn between righteous indignation and fascination.
I’ve never stopped to think about the other cultures around the world with a rich history of matchmaking before.
Like this woman in India, for example. Her parents paid six thousand dollars up front for an auntie matchmaker who suddenly left her husband and ran away with the client’s boyfriend. The post ended with #Conartist #Bluemoonbasherts #Manstealer #Overpaidmatchmakers and #OverpaidPimps.
I blink. At least no one has called me an #OverpaidPimp.
Then there’s the dude in Kenya who’s holding a grudge against his esigani who gave a false report about his bride’s character to his parents.
#Bluemoonbasherts. A young woman in Beijing said she had been conned by her Y ue L ao into marrying an older, poor rural man.
#Bluemoonbasherts. Then a man from Canada claimed that a widowed Amish matchmaker seduced his son who then left the community and became a Mennonite.
#Bluemoonbasherts #Unethical. Which I find highly suspicious because I don’t think the Amish use electricity—much less the internet— like my community on Shabbos.
Within a few hours, I’ve lost everything. All of my clients have withdrawn from their contracts, probably because they know I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to sue them anyway.
I glance at my watch and feel myself blanch.
Shabbos is starting in an hour and a half and I haven’t showered or gotten dressed yet.
Normally I enjoy the process of getting fancied up for Shabbos, but at the moment, movement doesn’t seem like a viable option.
My limbs are dead weights, and my brain is a paralyzed mush of despair.
So I continue to lie on my bed and gaze up at the ceiling, surrounded by a scattering of used tissues, and feeling very much like part of a Shakespearean tragedy.
Everything I’ve feared most is coming true, isn’t it? My clients are gone, and with Mrs. Schwartz as my enemy, I don’t have much hope of recouping my business. Losing it feels just like how I thought it would, like I’m losing my mother all over again.
Mrs. Schwartz wins, I lose. Game over.
Or, you could come back swinging. You could fight back, you could refuse to lie down and take it.
Yeah, in theory. It was so much easier to think that last night before I saw how much damage this woman could cause. I’m like the David to her Goliath, except I don’t even have a slingshot.
But then my eyes fall on the framed photo resting on my nightstand.
It’s one of my favorite memories of my mother and me.
She had been feeling good that day so we’d gone out to eat, and someone offered to take our picture when he saw me struggling to get the right selfie angle.
The sunshine highlights the backs of our heads like a halo, and we’re both beaming at the camera.
I pick up the picture and run my fingers over it, and hear my mother’s voice in my head: The hardest things in life are worth fighting for. At the time, she’d been referring to my lack of ambition when it came to school, but the principle applies here too.
My sadness lifts and I’m invigorated by my newfound determination. I jump out of bed, energized and feeling fierce, like a Viking woman warrior ready to face battle. I don’t know how I’m going to save Blue Moon Basherts, but I will. Because quitting is, to put it simply, not an option.