Jeff and Rachel Jacobson — playing with their year-old son, Sam — met through JDate, an online dating service. Jeff said it's "a great idea" that a local rabbi is buying JDate for singles at his temple.

Jeffry Scott / Arizona Daily Star

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Matchmaking has long been considered a vital role of synagogues, but one Tucson rabbi is taking it to a new level.

Rabbi Robert Eisen of the Conservative Congregation Anshei Israel in Midtown is a Jewish Cupid with a 21st-century twist.

Eisen is offering his congregants free subscriptions to JDate — an Internet dating service for Jewish singles. He's tapping into his own bank account to fund the endeavor.

"I hope I go broke," said Eisen, whose synagogue has more than 2,000 members.

Eisen is following a trend that began late last year when a New Jersey rabbi, Donald Weber, called JDate and asked about buying bulk memberships at a discount rate. Since then, at least three other rabbis across the country, including Eisen, have followed Weber's lead.

The regular rate for a six-month subscription is $149.99.

An impetus for the rabbis who are stepping up their matchmaking roles is the high rate of Jews marrying outside their faith, combined with a low birthrate among Jewish couples and an aging Jewish population.

Eisen said his major motivator is simply helping people to find love that will endure.

"We live in a post-global society where everyone is in their own little places, in their homes, in front of a computer screen. . . . A lot of people are lonely," Eisen said.

"We're a fractured society. I want to encourage people to take a look at the big picture and give them a chance to meet people with the same values, same approach to life."

Eisen is a proponent of marriages between two people of the same religion, saying they have a much lower divorce rate than couples who marry outside their faith.

"Marriage is hard enough. If you start with a common vocabulary and values, it's easier to maintain that marriage," Eisen said. "It's the Jewish mother coming out in me."

Eisen does urge the usual cautions for people meeting through the Internet — when meeting in person, do so in a public place, and be aware that some people misrepresent themselves.

When he was a subscriber on the site in 2004, Tucsonan Michael J. Fox found some of the women on the site were not Jewish. Rather, they were women trying to find nice Jewish boyfriends and husbands.

Fox, a retired teacher in his 60s, didn't mind, though he believed that in the long run a Jewish mate would work best. Fox is divorced, and his ex-wife is Jewish. Through JDate, he ended up meeting Barbara, a retired medical administrator, also divorced, who at the time was living in New York City. They married in 2006 and live in Tucson.

The Foxes, who are Reform Jews, attend the Reform Jewish Temple Emanu-El in Midtown. They said JDate is a good way for Jews who want to find mates within their own Jewish traditions, whether it's Reform, Conservative or Orthodox.

The Foxes said don't know too many of their contemporaries who met through JDate.

But as someone who performs weddings, Eisen said it's definitely a popular way that local Jewish couples are using to meet. It's just that not everyone likes to acknowledge it.

"I can't tell you how many weddings I've done that began with JDate," he said. "A couple of years ago, one fall, I had five in a row. But it's like the elephant in the room. Some feel a little embarrassed about the way they met and they say, 'Please don't tell anyone.'

"Yet really it's an alternative that is safe and often more accessible than the traditional places people would meet, like in bars or at work."

Local attorney Jeff Jacobson met his wife, Rachel, a pharmacist, seven years ago on JDate. The couple, in their 30s, now have a year-old son and attend Reform Congregation Or Chadash.

"Life is hard enough without adding the extra burden of deciding how to raise your children if you are from another faith, those kinds of things," Jacobson said. "Being Jewish is a huge part of my identity. It was important to me to share that."

The Jacobsons met in Tucson, where the Jewish population hovers at around 3 percent of Southern Arizonans. Nationally, Jews make up just under 2 percent of the population.

Those numbers can make finding other Jews to date problematic, Jacobson said. He tells his single Jewish friends who are moving to new cities to try two avenues for meeting women: synagogues and JDate.

Jacobson said he probably never would have met Rachel if it hadn't been for JDate.

"What the rabbi is doing is a great idea," Jacobson said. "To have someone you look up to like a rabbi affirming JDate as a way to meet, that might remove some of the stigma."

JDate, based in Los Angeles, was started by two Israeli entrepreneurs in 1997 and now has 650,000 subscribers located around the world.

Though it's tough to track its success rate, JDate spokeswoman Gail Laguna said that when asked why they were removing their profile from the site, at least 20,000 people have said it's because they found their soul mates on JDate.

She said JDate officials have fielded inquiries for bulk subscriptions from about 30 rabbis in recent months.

Eisen is sending out a notice about his offer in the April newsletter for his synagogue, which is at 5550 E. Fifth St..

He's extending the offer to any single member of his congregation who is over the age of 21, and also to his congregants' single children, as long as they are living in Tucson and aren't affiliated with another house of worship. After that, he doesn't ask questions.

"I may anger some people. They may think it's inappropriate," Eisen said. "But I want to see if we can help people. We have innumerable superficial relationships. It's not so easy these days to develop strong relationships."