News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) A Ukraine Jewish community online marriage service, set up to prevent assimilation, has resulted in a tripling of the number of Jewish weddings. The service was set up in the city of  Dnepropetrovsk, where 30 Jewish weddings took place compared with only 10 the previous year. Operators of the marriage service verify through documents that the marriage partners are Jewish according to Jewish law. The service also teaches the new couples about Jewish laws and customs.

Yitzchak Karshenbaum, who works with the rabbinical court, said that the service also stores information about the weddings to preserve them as "living history" and also to use them in case a marriage contract [ketubah] is lost.

The service may be extended to other communities in the former Soviet bloc, according to Chabad Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky.