Israeli director Erez Tadmor takes ‘Matchmaking 3’ to New York - and reveals its unlikely secret

The Matchmaking crowd is back in a new movie, Matchmaking 3, which opened in theaters throughout Israel on Thursday.

This time, director Erez Tadmor has taken his heroes to the Big Apple, where they try to find a groom for the daughter of an American haredi (ultra-Orthodox) billionaire, played by Michael Rapaport.

The first two movies were among the most popular in Israeli history, selling millions of tickets during the pandemic and the war, and bringing together secular and observant audiences who laughed and cried together with the protagonists.

“The audience chose a second and a third film by loving these characters,” said Tadmor in an interview just ahead of the new movie’s opening.

“Audiences wanted to know what happened to Baruch [the hero of the series, played by Maor Schwietzer], so we wrote a third film about how he is trying to pay for a wedding to Ruth [Niv Sultan, Schwietzer’s real-life wife] and build a home with her.”

Matchmaking fans have high expectations for the third installment in this trilogy, and they won’t be disappointed.

New York setting proves to be a highlight of new movie

The New York scenes at the core of the movie are the highlight, and feature the funniest urban mugging sequence in decades, with the young matchmaker Baruch and his mentor and sometimes frenemy, Malki (Irit Kaplan), trying to talk their way out of the situation with their Israeli-accented English.

“Malki understands money and bargaining, and her English is better. When a mugger appears, of course she negotiates. The idea came from a producer who was robbed in New York by a man dressed as Spider-Man,” said Tadmor.

“The costumed characters in Times Square can feel like figures out of a fairy tale suddenly turning hostile.”

As viewers will recall, Baruch, who is not considered a catch by the standards of haredi society because he is not a star yeshiva student, has no money, and doesn’t come from a prestigious family, is engaged to Ruth (Niv Sultan), a pastry chef who is also not seen as top drawer because she has a brother (the gifted young actor Eliyahu Shaki) with Down Syndrome.

Now that it’s time for them to get married, they don’t have the money for the kind of wedding Baruch wants.

Then he learns that Michael Gerstel (Rapaport, who gives a relaxed and completely authentic performance) is looking for a groom for his daughter, Rivka (Naya Bienstock), and is offering $100,000 to anyone who can find the right guy.

Sensing his chance, Baruch sets off with Malki in tow and tries to fix up Gerstel’s daughter with learned yeshiva students. But there’s a twist: Gerstel is a different kind of father than Baruch is used to dealing with.

“Gerstel wants a son-in-law who can eventually take over his business,” said Tadmor. “He sees talent in Baruch, who has had to survive without many advantages. Baruch is street-smart, but he’s not corrupt or fixated on doing anything to make money; he has principles. … He sees the man he once was in Baruch.”

AS IN ANY good romantic dramedy, the couple is torn apart for a time. For a while, it seems that Baruch might be the perfect match for Gerstel’s daughter, while Ruth is courted by a young man she once dated (played by Yadin Gellman), who has a sister with Down Syndrome, whom Ruth’s brother falls for.

So, there is some real suspense among the laughs. “It moves against the expected romantic-comedy pattern. I love a story that can be serious and suddenly funny,” said Tadmor.

Tadmor collaborated with Hava Divon, Yaki Reisner on new movie

The director, who is secular, developed the movie with Hava Divon, one of the creators of the beloved television series about national-religious young people, Srugim, and Yaki Reisner, a producer/writer/businessman from a Litvak ultra-Orthodox family in Bnei Brak who plays Malki’s husband.

Tadmor wrote the screenplay with Divon, Sarel Piterman, and Sharon Maymon.

He admitted that the huge success of the first Matchmaking film took him by surprise.

“People wondered who would see a movie about haredim, whether secular audiences would be interested, and whether religious audiences would go to a movie theater,” he said.

“But secular people were curious, and religious viewers also came. The film ran for months; some people saw it over and over, both religious and secular moviegoers.”

Tadmor's prolific career

Tadmor is one of Israel’s most acclaimed and prolific directors.

In addition to the Matchmaking trilogy, he has made diverse films such as Strangers, about a romance between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man in Europe, co-directed by Guy Nattiv; A Matter of Size, co-directed by Sharon Maymon, about Israelis who become sumo wrestlers; and Soda, a drama about Holocaust survivors starring Lior Raz and Rotem Sela that was based on his grandfather’s life.

Unlike many Israeli directors who struggle to get their movies made, he releases a film just about every year.

Through working on the Matchmaking trilogy, he has become far more knowledgeable about ultra-Orthodox life, and his affection for his characters shines through all three movies.

But he comes to this community with an outsider’s eye and looks at its problems as well as its positive sides.

The first film focused on Moti (Amit Rahav), an Ashkenazi groom courting a Mizrahi bride, while his buddy Baruch came to the forefront in the second movie.

Audiences sympathized with his struggle to prove himself, and the second movie introduced Ruth, who is resigned to never getting married because having a brother with an intellectual disability made her undesirable in the eyes of haredi society.

“Our films each have criticisms of the world they portray,” he said, although he emphasized that he admires the way haredim support each other. He did not think the current controversy over drafting haredim into the military would affect ticket sales for the movie.

While he is excited about the film’s release, he is also working on several upcoming movies: some he can talk about, such as a documentary about Iranian women, and some he can’t.

“I make movies all the time. I have to keep making movies; it’s what I do,” he shared. And while he wouldn’t give any details, he did make one promise that will please Matchmaking fans: there is a fourth movie in the works.