It’s just past 8pm and I’m headed to a party in my adolescent stomping ground: the punky, boozer-filled, weed-scented streets of Camden Town. It wasn’t my usual kind of party (i.e. a techno-adjacent rave in a warehouse somewhere South of the river or an industrial estate in Canning Town.) No, it was a type of party that my mother had dreamed I’d spend my twenties frequenting: mingling with other eligible young Jews (who might be lawyers or doctors or bankers) at the London launch party of an exclusive Jewish dating app.
Lox Club, which has been described by Vogue as the ‘Jewish Raya’, is the brainchild of Austin Kevitch, a Philadelphia-born 33-year-old, who was sick of (and cringed out by) the “sterile and awkward and forced” quality of mainstream dating apps.
Kevitch wanted Lox Club to feel like a 1920’s deli (“culturally Jewish, but anyone can enjoy it”), inspired by the third spaces that his grandparents’ generation would hang out in “where serendipity used to happen.” He launched Lox Club in the US in 2020, then, in April 2025, expanded to UK users.
Today, the membership-based app has hundreds of thousands of members (according to Kevitch), with seven full time employees and fifteen in-house match makers. It costs between $2.50 and $4.25 to be a member (depending on how long you sign up for), which gives you access to Lox Club’s in-person events (gay Shabbat dinners, magic shows, pasta making classes and so on), offering an alternative place for ‘Jew-ish’ people to find potential romantic partners.
Kevitch was hosting tonight’s party at Cafe KOKO, the slightly more demure neighbor of KOKO, a venue well-known among North West London Jews for its Christmas Eve parties, where the most eclectic and unexpected pairings of Jewish high schoolers would get drunk and get off (happy holidays!). I can’t say it was my usual scene, but I was intrigued by what type of people I’d find at a party exclusively for people “with ridiculously high standards” (my mother had repeatedly told me to “be open-minded” in the days running up to the event).
I was intrigued by what type of people I’d find at a party exclusively for people “with ridiculously high standards“
Inside the speakeasy-style joint, I’m given a token for a glass of prosecco and make a beeline for the free pizza, wading through a sea of women dressed in silk shirts and shiny pumps. But I’m stopped in my tracks, catching eyes with a boy from my Orthodox Jewish high school, who I haven’t seen for about a decade.
We catch up in broad strokes about the past ten years (he now works in film) and I ask him what he makes of Lox Club. “You don't have that decision paralysis,” he remarks, noting that the app limits the number of people you’re shown each day as potential matches (the app has a similar profile swiping function to the likes of Hinge), which makes conversations feel “a bit more purposeful.”
My ex schoolmate reckons that the limited swiping function reduces “the standard tedium of having the same conversation with 10 people.” And while he isn’t religious himself, he thinks that finding a Jewish wife would “keep the parents happy.”
Unlike my ex-classmate, I was less inclined to do things to keep my parents happy, but I had (on more than one occasion) been summoned downstairs to find a single Jewish family friend sitting at the kitchen table or been berated by my mother for being “so closed-minded to dating Jewish men.”
I excuse myself from the conversation (gagging for the free pizza) and finally get my hands on a hot and oily slice which I proceed to eat, messily, alone in the corner.
With splodges of tomato sauce definitely still on my face, I strike up a conversation with a 26-year old woman, who tells me that she’s on the hunt for a Jewish man who matches her height. While some Lox Club members I spoke with had complained that they were being shown Jews who lived in the US as potential matches (not ideal when trying to settle down with their dream Jewish husband/wife/partner in West Hampstead), this single Jewish woman enjoyed the app’s cosmopolitan slant.
“I quite like that transatlantic connection,” she said, adding that she liked that if she were visiting New York City, she’d have a Shabbat dinner she could join. “It’s something that grounds me.”
By the end of the evening, I’m feeling queasy, spotting various Jewish family friends and acquaintances who I avoid eye contact with. I take the train back to south London, opening up the Lox Club app (they’ve kindly given me a membership trial, with access to the matchmaking service). I’m surprised by some of the initial questions, like needing to input my career ambitions and how much money I make ($100,000 or less was the lowest bracket).
When I asked Sam Karshenboym, who runs the matchmaking service, why they wanted to know my salary, he told me (over email) that it’s part of Lox Club’s “holistic matchmaking approach.” He said that while participants do not have to share their salary and that there is no minimum salary requirement, “many of our clients have specifically expressed preferences” around factors relating to “lifestyle, career and educational background” and that “understanding them upfront allows us to share highly personalised matches that align with their priorities and expectations, ultimately leading to more compatible connections.”
While the data would be useful for those looking for a man in finance (6’5, trust fund, blue eyes), I did wonder whether it could make those of us who make nowhere near $100,000 feel somewhat out of place.
Having said that, I did enjoy the playful, nostalgic quality of the app (you have to read a fictional story about a 1920’s deli called ‘Spielman’s Delicatessen’ before entering) and answer a series of Jewish-themed Q&A prompts (“The best thing about being Jewish? Challah.” “The most neurotic thing about me? Everything”).
I want Lox Club members to feel like they just entered a time machine. It's kind of like you're hopping on a Disney ride. It makes it less awkward to meet people
Unlike being on Hinge, where self-loathing and self-referential despair is palpable (“Typical Sunday? Scrolling on this app. “This Year I really want to? Delete this app”), Lox Club feels lighter, sillier and, at least for now, less depressing.
“I want [Lox Club members] to feel like they just entered a time machine,” Kevitch told me when we caught up on the phone at 3.30pm the next day (he’d just woken up and was feeling jet-lagged and delirious). “It's kind of like you're hopping on a Disney ride. It makes it less awkward to meet people.”
I feel inclined to interrogate Kevitch about the elements of the app that feel jarring to me, such as its corporate-sounding focus on professional goals. “We don't care about how many followers you have or status,” he insists, “as much as like: are you interesting? Do you have good values? Are you someone that we would let our cousins date or siblings date?”
Kevitch tells me that they have everyone from celebrities to interns on the app, and they’re intentional about asking members about their ambitions rather than their day-to-day roles. “I think it's so interesting to know what people's dreams are,” he said. “Even more so than what their actual job is.”
Maybe it’s Kevitch’s charm, but I find myself swayed on Lox Club’s emphasis on career goals. Yet as the app debuts in a UK market, I wonder how it will hold up among us earnestness-fearing Brits or whether we’re all a bit too sarcastic and self-deprecating to take ourselves that seriously.
