We've all heard of people like Yente the Matchmaker who seemed to play a strong role in deciding the romantic fates of youth in the old country. How realistic was this?
Was matchmaking a formal profession that families would turn to or were they just the village busy bodies? Were they paid or tipped for their service?
The role of matchmaker/marriage broker or “shadchen” in Yiddish was, and indeed in many Orthodox and Hasidic communities still is, very much a real job! The shadchen’s job was to work with parents of marriage age children (generally late teens to early 20s would be when the shidduch dating process began, today it would typically be 18-25, in the past it may have been slightly younger) to create a suitable match. This generally took into account a family’s yichus or heritage. This could mean things like the family’s job or economic status but often it referred to a religious pedigree. For a young man looking for a bride this would include any religious study he had done, such as if he had attended cheder (religious primary school) or yeshiva (essentially religious secondary school though it could be attended past say 18). By the 18th and 19th century it might include if a family followed a Hasidic dynasty or not, and if so which Hasidic movement they followed. It could also take into account a family’s tied to major rabbis or their tribal heritage in the case of Cohens or Levites, who were members of priestly families.
Being a shadchen may be a full time job, or it can be something supplemental, often done by an older, well respected member of the community. However by the late 19th century, particularly in shtetls like the one Fiddler is set in, it was very often a profession, and a well respected one at that. The job is often associated with women, both historically and in modern times, but particularly prior to the mid-20th century it was not uncommon for men to also work as shadchens.
In fact in the early 20th century male shadchens were often the butt of similar matchmaker jokes to those attributed to Yente in Fiddler, as is illustrated in a 1938 New Yorker article about “the bearded Cupid,” shadchen Louis Rubin written by Jewish author Meyer Berger, or “Sugarman the shadchen” in Israel Zangwill’s 1896 short story “A Rose of the Ghetto” who tries to get a young man to consider marrying a woman who “has a hump.” Sugarman retorts that Moses Mendelssohn also had a hump but he still had good yichus (breeding or heritage).” In fact, the Yente of the stage production of Fiddler finds her predecessors in these stories, from this particular literary movement. Though many in late 19th century Yiddish literature such as Sholem Aleichem (whose short story "Tevye the Dairyman" is the basis for "Fiddler on the Roof") wrote about rural, religious Jewish life, many did so while simultaneously moving away from such lives themselves and even encouraging the wider community to move away from what was seen as old-fashioned, superstitious, and provincial ways. The wish by Jewish immigrants to the US to characterize the shadchen as a vestige of the old world, as a busybody, or as dishonest had much of it's roots in the movement towards assimilation, which is a subject that deserves more space than I can give it here.
The idea of a shadchen goes back to the Jewish holy books. Gd is described as having been the shadchen for Adam and Chava (Eve). The first shadchen is often considered to be Eliazer, who is described in the Torah as having made the match between Abraham’s son Isaac, and Rebecca.
To understand the shadchen one must know a bit about Ashkenazi Jewish conceptions of love, modesty, dating, and marriage. A shadchen creates a shidduch or match, which, if it is a good match, is believed to be the person’s bashert or predestined true love. In Jewish tradition it is believed that one soul has been pulled apart, and the holders of each part of the soul are predestined for each other by Gd. The shadchen is meant to be the one who can see the ways two people fit together well, and bring them together.
While technically anyone who makes a match for marriage is acting as a shadchen, professional shadchens have been part of Jewish tradition for at least centuries though possibly millennia, and are still around to this day. I myself know people who have married after consulting a shadchen. Though the history can be slightly fuzzy, it is widely agreed that by the late Middle Ages Ashkenazi Jews saw acting as a shadchen as it's own profession, separate from the work of a rabbi. Prior to this time, it seems it was more common for a Rabbi to act as a shadchen as part of his duties.
Though in stories like Fiddler the matchmaker is the butt of a joke, they have historically been considered deeply valued members of the community because they are literally seen as rejoining two souls once split apart, thus rabbinic responsa often describe the money earned by shadchens as money ethically earned. Many poskim or other rabbinic commentators have emphasized the importance of paying the shadchen, thus treating their services as vital, professional, and meaningful. The reasons given are often centered around essentially starting the marriage on "the right foot" so to speak, and to show how important the joining of souls is to the community. Given how important a shadchen was in making matches, both within influential and more poor families, the profession, and paying for a shadchen’s services became quite important, particularly in Eastern Europe. It was considered a skilled job, and one vital to the morals of a community and indeed the souls of young people, particularly those whose immediate social circle had failed to suggest a proper match.