Over the past few months I’ve started going to a shidduch club. Eshewing the traditional matchmaker model, our club essentially conducts a good natured swap meet for humans, each of us describing one or several singles we know, in the hope that someone listening will come forward with their beshert.
Aside from our fastitidous attention to the laws of proper speech—all singles are described anonymously with a contact person’s phone number to locate them, what I like best about our club is its openness. We handle anyone—and I really mean anyone. Ashkenazi, Sefardi. Litvish, Chassidic, national religious, young, old, short , tall, healthy people and people challenged by physical or mental handicap, even fat people (whom have the hardest time of all) . We like to think that everyone deserves to find his or her beshert and no one is ever turned away.
It is a heady undertaking. When the meeting ends—it takes about two hours in total, I’ve got a notebook full of descriptions of eligibles and strains of Oh Yishama running through my brain.
But then I phone up the Mom’s of singles that I know to “redt†someone I heard about at the meeting and the music in my head abruptly switches off. No one seems to buy what I am trying The answers go something like this:
“No, he’s hassidish (or sefardi or litvish or too young or too old) … Or he/she is too short, small or (worst of all) too heavy. As I put the phone back into the cradle I feel like yelling.. What is going on here??. I feel like yelling. Doesn’t my friend realize that her daughter is thirty five years old.What is she expecting will happen??
Look I’m not naïve. I know that today the Jewish people is a tapestry of diverse groups each with its own subculture, but c’mon….
It isn’t forbidden for an ashkenzi to marry a sefardi or a litvak a hassid or a tall girl to marry a short boy or anyone to marry anyone fat—and unlike ethnicity, weight can be changed.
Iâ€d venture to say that a change in our shidduch mentality would probably promote better health overall. If we readjusted our concept of beauty to include the fuller figure, eating disorders would quickly disappear just as if more ethnic intermarriage would minimize the incidences of Tay Sachs, Guachers and other Ashkenazi genetic scourges.
People who don’t share a common ethnicity( or body type or body size) aren’t necessarily high risk for divorce. Of course, couples need to be attracted and to communicate but people have many different points of contact. A couple may share a love of music or hiking and we all share a common legacy the Torah which provides more than enough to talk about.
This kind is the fuel thinking (he’s too litvish, she’s too fat) is the fuel behind the current much touted shidduch crisis. I know several no longer young women who have been waiting for Mr. ethnically and religiously “right†for so long that they have probably lost their chance to become mothers.
It is especially infuriating to watching my BT friends following their FFB mentors in adapting this narrow minded and self destructive mindset, even more so when one considers that our secular brethren hook up with people from any ethnic or religious background.( although they too are prejudiced against the scale challenged) .
If we want to insure our survival and by that I mean, giving the maximum number of our people a chance to procreate we are going to have to rethink our shidduch choices. Who knows what that may create. Ashkesfards, chassido-litvaks, a new appreciation for the Rubens figure and other interesting developments .Vive la revolution.
Anxious Ima has started a blog at A Thin Thread of Faith.
I’m not sure I agree with the math of these shidduch crisis articles. Older boys looking for younger girls does not mean a smaller pool of males even though there are many more Orthodox Jewish births every year, simply because we’re also talking about potential husbands who are much older. To give an example: It’s said there’s a shidduch crisis because there are 150 eligible girls aged 19 compared to only 75 eligible boys aged 23. But this math ignores the fact that these girls could also select boys who are 24, 25…even 32, 33 and so on. They’re not restricted to 23-year-old boys, and 23-year-old boys are not restricted to 19-year-old girls. Even though men tend to marry younger women, there is a pool of older males available going all the way up in age (think about the fiftysomething men who marry thirtysomething women). The women who really have the shidduch problem are those past 50 who have a much more limited selection of decent available men, especially since those men may be looking for women under 50.
I would tend to agree with Chanania Weissman’s organization End the Madness that men and women should be allowed to meet each other directly. The problem is that some people are excellent con men and con women, and the prospective spouse doesn’t find out about the gambling addiction or the untreated mental illness or the five prior divorces until after getting legally hitched. That’s what all this background checking is supposed to be about, so there are no big surprises after the chupah.
Don’t forget that people nowadays are very scared of divorce. There are all those horror stories out there, not fiction but unfortunate true narratives, of big expensive weddings followed weeks or months later by costly hurtful divorces. Or the young bride who winds up being physically abused by her new husband and only finds the courage to leave him after five years and three children.
It was never easy to bring men and women together and make matches. The Aggadita brings down the story of a wealthy Roman matron who decided to match up all of her slaves: she made a big mass wedding and all of the male slaves married all of the female slaves. The next morning, her entire slave population gathered to complain to Madame that they couldn’t stand their new spouses.
Hi, I really love your blog, and this post is spot on. Oddly enough I’m not even Jewish, but I’m a girl from Miami Beach who converted to Islam (gasp!). I have a few Jewish friends who I’ve grown up with who simply cant find a shidduch for those very reasons you mentioned. Frankly, in the Muslim community the exact problem exists. Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times? But I do believe that if you find a person who loves and fears Him and you can see yourself loving him/her, go for it. It seems that lots of people are looking not to please themselves and avoid the forbidden, but instead to please and impress others. But what do I know, I’m 29 years old and single myself… It could just be that the pickings are, in fact, quite slim. ((Shrug)) Salaam and Shalom :)
This week (6/11/2010) the Jewish Press (page 55) had an interesting comment in IM YIRTZEH HASHEM BY YOU. It said:
How many girls told their friends that so-and-so is such a nerd, or so-and-so is a weirdo?
We have been trying to get the message out,
over and over, that even the dumbest comments can torpedo a shidduch or a person’s whole dating career.
Or if we aren’t!
Since we are BT’s, all our proposals should be modest, even if they are not too swift.
Yeah, Baruch — that’s why we should eat the person who wrote it!
The only thing more cringe inducing to people with secular cultural backgrounds than naming an (apparently) non satiric piece “A Modest Proposal” is explicitly referencing Jonathan Swift while doing so.
There is a considerable range of options between no parental involvement and excessive involvement. The matter cannnot be dismissed so cavalierly or with so many generalizations.
I’ve been asked by other posters how my “just meet the person” approach jibes with the role parents play in FFB shidduchim.
A large part of the shidduch crisis comes from just this issue – the increased involvement of parents and teachers.
Marriage-aged religious people are increasingly infantilized as part of the culture of economic dependence that is part of the frum world’s general turning away from modern society.
In previous generations a young man had to demonstrably prepare for economic independence before anyone would consider him a “good shidduch”. There was no thought of being supported for years on end by in-laws and other “real adults”. The economic realities caused many young women to also give this thought, even if they intended to stay home while their children were young.
Being married to a Torah scholar was understood to come with a life of frugality and hard work – rather than with Italian furniture and human-hair wigs purchased by “mommy and daddy”.
Now the majority of FFB men and women are encouraged to take what was once the minority road of Torah study and insolvency – and the burdens of that life are hidden from them.
They are raised this way as part of the Chumra society’s rejection of modernity and academic/professional training. The increased involvement of mechanchim and parents with frumkeit-masquerading-as-status considerations also are evidence of the Chumra society’s regimentation and intolerance.
You reap what you sow.
What does marriage mean when the most basic adult responsibilities are gutted from the arrangement?
Here, too – BT’s have some healthy things to teach the frum community, and should not be striving to “go along” with such a system.
Steve, what we have is anecdotal evidence that some communities have a crisis. If you want an in-depth study, you may have to do it!
let me just ask more straightforwardly; is there anyone here who does agree that we are in a shidduch crisis? If so, i’d appreciate it if you could please post something here to indicate that. thanks.
Tuvia, you’d probably check the background of a prospective employee or boss to see if he/she is a person of good character and you’d work well together. Is this any less important?
tuvia – i don’t understand why you feel that “if ethnicity is an issue, what we are really saying is: that guy’s jewish soul is somehow less than mine.” is every soul, no matter whether less or more than mine, the right oen for me? if so, there is no right one, they all are the right one, as long as they are jewish and a soul.
the point is, it’s not a judgment of someone, or a determination that they are “less” – just that they may not be appropriate for me because we may not share things that are very much part of my cultural set.
you know, non-frum people also understand this idea. it’s not something exclusive to a religious lifestyle, nor is it bigotry. while you may be very open and feel comfortable that way, this is not the reality for many others. and that is neither right nor wrong, it just IS.
shidduchs should be simple — men should be pushed to date and date and date. forego the background checks. both sides should be pushed — and to date across ethnic lines. if ethnicity is an issue, what we are really saying is: that guy’s jewish soul is somehow less than mine.
ok. I didn’t really expect that anyone here would be willing to admit that there is a crisis. So I appreciate your replies. thanks.
It has been shown mathematically that the custom of having the chasan be older, even years older, than the kallah, combined with the rapidly increasing Orthodox population, leads to a manufactured “shortage” of chasanim. There have been some recent initiatives to try to end or weaken this custom. Once the “shortage” is undone, much of the “crisis” goes away.
listen, the fact is that shidduchim touch on every insecurity a person ever had. if we are messed up to some degree (and we all are, because we are in galus and as such klall yisrael is running on a compromised operating system in terms of our relationship to Hashem), it follows logically that we may act messed up in this area, too.
things are tough now because we are all scared. scared of what?…what not?!? the world has gotten so big and scary, with our world now including crazy stories from not only my block or shtetl but also half way round the world, so it can be overwhelming.
but as much as to some degree we are crisising through it, and crisising through shidduchim, too, i feel that too much has been made of this shidduch crisis thing. it’s almost as if we think it’s all up to us. like, if i don’t find someone for her, NO ONE will and she will remain single FOREVER – or, if we can’t crack down and make some sort of community-wide rule that girls can’t go out until they are 21 (so that boys will have to consider older girls because they have fewer younger choices) – if we can’t do this, then, forget it, it’s over.
i think we overeact in this way to lots of other things, too. as if my opinion or my vote or my hishtadlus is a make-it-or-break-it because (chas v’shalom) Hashem just can’t do it alone…and that just has a false ring to it, doesn’t it? it’s all about acheiving that gentle balance between enough hishtadlus and too much hishtadlus…
Hashem has a plan, and all we can hope to do is do our best in every situation in which we find ourselves. it’s as simple as that.
sorry ’bout all the typos above, it’s not my forte, just the way we communicate on this board.
As a parent rapudly approaching this next stage of life, I find much merit in both ben David and DY’s comments. From people I know who are active in shidduchim, they’re biggest grudge is mothers of sons. That no one is ever good enough for the son. In other words, they assur a lot of girls before their sons ever even have a chance to decide on their own. Believe me, I’m taking notes, as my oldest son is getting older every day. I also believe that people shouldn’t have to run a check through the IRS, CIA, FBI etc. to just meet for a cup of coffee (for example). If I ran the world, it wouldn’t take upwards of 4 months to check someone out to the point where you’re willing to meet, and second dates would be mandatory except where clearly the two didn’t care for one another. First dates can be nerve wracking, and we’re often not really ourselves.
Unfortunately, I don’t run the world, and can’t fight cityhall.
hi folks. are we sure there is a shidduch crisis?
do we know what it entails?
if so, i would really aprpeciate it if those with the data on this could post it here.
the fact is, i9’m sure there is a shidduch crisis. it’s just that i don’t know how to state it in terms which others would find accurate or acceptable. so could a few folks olease provide some clarifications of this? i really appreciate it. thanks.
Once again, I got more out of reading everyone else’s posts than I did from the article
ben david – it seems that you may not understand the role often played by parents in shidduchim and that you object to the distance their presence seems to add in the shidduch equation. i don’t object to it but i, too, feel that some small adjustment should be made to the way some people deal with shidduchim in this regard.
ben david, to understand what value parental help plays here, you must understand the mindset of the people whose parents are involved in order to get it fully. bts are often very different from their parents and would not want their parents running interference or getting involved in things like shidduchim, which they certainly don’t understand, for their frum child, who they most likely also don’t understand. but there is a different reality for an FFB kid. yes, they are just as uniquely individual as nf or bt’s, and yes, they should have a choice, and yes, they should be involved in making sure this particular suggestion makes sense for them and not just for their parents – BUT they are products of a chinuch which to some degree made them into what their parents wanted for them. as such, the parent usually doesn’t have much of a disconnect between what they want for their child and would find appropriate, and what their kid wants.
the main role parents play here is to conserve the energy of the child so they don’t have to invest hope and lots of time doing research, etc, if the suggestion is totally off. this includes saving them time as well as significant pain, should the other party not dream of being interested in them, their family situation, etc. and since interaction between teh genders is not something we want to get real involved with unless it is aimed straight at marriage, parental involvement also serves as a protection from the person tehmselves getting involved with things that might just be a bit random rather than tachlis.
to be honest, i know that when i was a young bt i resented the fact that others had their parents doing this for them (not, g-d forbid, that i would have wanted MY parents to do it for me…but it would have been so cozy to have loving parents on my page who COULD have done so that i found myself denigrating the protective role other parents played for my friends, just because i craved having it so much myself that i therefore devalued it in my mind to console myself).
today b”h i am a mother with married kids and a shadchan and i am also the researcher-in-lieu-of appropriate-parent for a young bt. now i am free to admit how valuable i feel this parental thing is and to do it to the best of my ability. things have changed, too, in the twenty seven years since i dated. the world is a rougher place and there’s more need for a protective shield against what is going on out there.
that being said, i do feel that ben david hit upon something by saying that we’ve got to get back to normal human interaction. when i was in shidduchim, things were more free-form and i got to ask my questions, myself, straight at the man whgo was to become my husband, rather than having someone else ask it of the shadchan. this would never happen today, but here’s how it went back then:
-(me) so, what could you see yourself doing in five years?
-(him) well, learning, i hope.
-(me) and if not? if you had to go to work? what would you do?
-(him) maybe electronics, computers…
-(me, trying harder now, because this wasn’t the answer i wanted to hear) …you wouldn’t go into chinuch?
-(him) no.
-(me, perplexed by that concrete answer which still wans’t what i wanted to hear…) why not?
-(him) i don’t have enough patience.
so, i understood that if i were to marry him, i would not get what i wanted – someone who would go into chinuch. but hearing the answer straight from him provided me with a clarity i would not otherwise have had about how he felt or why. had a shadchan or clueless neighbor been asked this question, they would have answered what THEY think he wants, etc. and his own answer showed me that although he was not someone who planned to go into chinuch, he is someone who knows himself, and is honest, and isn’t afraid to admit to it.
today we seem to be busy filling out this form where all the prefabricated answers must be 100% computer-compatible before anyone will agree to meet, and the human part – like asking the person themselves, and considering that an answer you hadn’t wanted may actually show some commendable things too – doesn’t even make it to being an afterthought.
thsi doesn’t mean i think research is bad or silly. on the contrary, i think it’s vital. but like everything else, while doing research, ya gotta use your sechel too.
Ben-David, where (if at all) do the prospects’ parents fit into your scheme?
It is a heady undertaking. When the meeting ends—it takes about two hours in total, I’ve got a notebook full of descriptions of eligibles and strains of Oh Yishama running through my brain.
But then I phone up the Mom’s of singles that I know to “redt†someone I heard about at the meeting
– – – – – – – – –
THAT is the problem.
Why are you calling someone else – instead of calling the person who seems worth dating on paper DIRECTLY?
Why are you clouding your perceptions – and foreclosing your dating prospects – with secondhand opinions?
Meet.
It’s just one evening.
It need not be expensive (just wait till you G-d willing have little ones to feed and diaper – you will laugh at how inexpensive dating was).
You are looking to find someone to share your whole life with, yes?
You are appalled at the negative “meat market” environment of the shidduch world, yes?
So the answer is to restore basic respect for other people – and a sense of reality – by taking the time to meet and interact with them. And give each of you the opportunity to present yourselves.
Yes, that’s right – it means taking a chance that a few hours may be “wasted” in meeting someone who may not be your bashert.
There are no shortcuts.
Dating must be brought back into the framework of direct, normal human interaction.
Thank you for your intelligent and thoughtful comments. I just see too many girls left out in the cold and my heart bleeds for them and I wondered if a paradigm shift in the way we make matches might not help them out but I can hear what you are saying. BTW my blog address (for more wild and outrageous stuff) is http://athinthreadoffaith.blogspot.com/
sorry for any confusion. I’m pretty new to blogging and my opinions tend to run strong. This is 100 proof stuff.
I think you have to respect the personality of the prospects in suggesting a match where the couple are from different backgrounds. Some people are more adventurous and might welcome it. Others will be very uncomfortable and may never get over it, causing potential sholom bayis problems if they proceed. My husband and I are from very different backgrounds. Because we both welcome novelty and challenges, we have succeeded. However, some of my children have been very uncomfortable when dating someone with a slightly different mindset or background. Things that might seem minor to me are very important to them. Since they are the ones who have to live with it, I have to respect their decisions.
Some problems of vetting shidduch prospects prior to meetings/dates:
1. Use of unrealistically rigid and detailed checklists.
2. Over-generic or inaccurate resumes and verbal descriptions (including those made to please or to conceal).
3. The inherent difficulty of describing another person in words.
Once the dating process is in motion, other difficulties crop up, such as:
4. Travel expenses connected with dating, especially long-range.
5. One or both of those involved may have real problems with decision-making.
6. Hidden agendas and unstated assumptions.
7. Dating customs may be too stylized or formalized to let the participants get past appearances, be at ease with each other, and understand each other.
Also, a shadchan (pro or amateur) can be so invested in making a particular match that he/she ignores basic incompatibilities—this wastes everyone’s time.
there’s lots to think about when stressing over shidduchim. this is a very complex topic, touching as it does on every insecurity a person has…bad communication with your kids, a disconnect on what they really want and need vs. what mom and dad want, etc, all provide for a brew which can be quite toxic.
i myself (b”h have made three successful shidduchim recently) spoke just last week with a mother who has not one but five children waiting for the right one…and i am all too aware of the mom’s-holding-out problem. (i’m trying to do something for this woman, btw, by telling her in an indirect but potent way that she is part of the problem herself…wish me luck, i am going where no shadchan has gone before and i hope it won’t be a suicide mission!)
BUT i would temper anxious ima’s widescale labeling of all such objections as ridiculous. the woman i spoke to mentioned above doesn’t realize it, but she is actually looking for any excuse whatsoever to keep her precious fledglings under her protective wings so any of the objections AI cited would have been reason enough for her to nix a suggestion (and that is, of course, what in fact happened when we spoke).
however, there are b”h still people around who are not that paralyzed and are being sincere when they find some of those issues mentioned above as reasonsthat a shidduch is inappropriate for their child. i’ve come to realize that, while it may appear quite ridiculous to me that such things should matter, those isses actually are relevant to them and it does indeed make a difference.
a wise shadchan i know once said that she has come to respect people’s mishugasen, she now understands that sometimes they are Hashem’s way of directing people to the one they need. i can hear that. of course, this doesn’t mean the pathological stuff like the woman i spoke to presented.
BTs are by nature sometimes more open, less rigid than others – and also, dare i say, sometimes less in the know, too, about subtle cultural associations which explain why this might go and that never would. there often IS some rhyme and reason to it, there is a reality, and it’s not just across the board bigotry. (which is why as a shadchan i try to stay within the millieu i understand best, rather than venturing too far afield in any direction – why make a total fool out of myself and risk hurting people, too?!)
yes, this is all frustrating to watch from the sidelines, but just remember: Hashem has a plan, and though we must try mightily, it isn’t all up to us. that’s reassuring.
Corrected
Anyone else having trouble accessing her blog?