On my own (terms)

“You have to come.” 

Naomi Cherny had planned to skip Shabbat dinner. She was tired after a day down the coast, but her friend insisted. Someone had been invited especially for her. 

“He’s alternative,” she was told. “He’s in a band.” 

The man did play in a band: a wedding band. 

He later explained that he had not known it was a set-up either. They laughed about it and are now friendly. Cherny understood her friend’s intention: marriage and family had enlarged his life, and he wanted that happiness for her. But afterwards, she made one request. 

“Please don’t ever do that again,” she told him. “Maybe just ask me what it is that I’m looking for.” 

Cherny, an early childhood educator, would like a partner and children. The problem was not the possibility of an introduction, but the assumption that someone else knew what her life required. 

Marriage in Jewish life is rarely only private. The 2026 Census has brought questions of continuity back into focus. JCA’s analysis of 2021 Census data put Australia’s Jewish population at 116,967, less than half a per cent of the country. It found the population had plateaued around 2016 before beginning a slow decline. The figures help explain the community’s concern about its future. However, for individuals, that concern can turn marriage from a personal choice into a communal expectation. A private decision can start to feel as though it reflects on the person, their family and the community.