Dear Lakewood Scoop:
I’ve been watching the letters fly back and forth on the topic of Shidduchim. (I’ve even been falsely accused of writing these letters 🙂
So I figured it’s high time that I chime in. I feel especially qualified to comment, as I have many children in Shidduchim (too many to mention here).
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is high time for Action NOW! Although we do appreciate all the tefilos at every Rebbe’s kever and we appreciate all the kind remarks (sometimes not so kind!) NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION! No more meetings, logos, full color ads and campaigns . The time for action has come. This is the number one crisis in Klal Yisrael today. And that action is very simple. Just pickup up the phone and mention a shidduch. If the person doesn’t want? That’s their choice, but you did your job! Worried you’ll feel like a fool? That feeling will go away after a few days. Recently, a mother of a daughter 23, whom just got engaged stated,” I feel like a holocaust survivor “! That’s what’s happening now! Thousands of girls are being left behind like Almonos. And the worst part about it, is the absolute silence. The silence is deafening. The feeling that no one cares. That everyone is in it for themselves, to grab the best they can, to get the best “Deal” that they can get.
And to those going through it , well the only way to adequately describe it, it feels like a holocaust ממש with no end in sight.
Let’s stop having these empty conversations back and forth and get to work!
Let each shul appoint a gabbay Shidduchim, stop the kvetching and blaming and start working today!
How bout right now?
Sincerely,
Your neighbor
TLS welcomes your letters by submitting them to [email protected]
i want to say that a big percentage of older singles are due to saying no for no reasons, fort example many times after 5 or 6 dates and everything went well one side will drop it because they dont feel a conection and many coaches will even tell a girl to drop it but the thruth is that pretty much all gedolay yisroel have said that this is no reason to drop a shidduch as many times a connection wont be felt till after marriage and by doing so one might be saying no to their own zivvug and there for in such a situation one shall not rely on a coach rather a daas torah who is also a baki in shidduchim.
another thing is that a rad flag doesnt mean no it means to investigate and find out, and just like people dont give a yes based on guess cuz its a life long decision so to is giving a no a life long decision.
How do you know the reason, Maybe they keep getting rejected. Are 50 older singles in one person? There are many reasons behind the situation. Another major problem that older girls have is that guys all of a sudden start being concerned about their mitzvah of Pru urevu. Thus even though they are in their mid 40’s, they won’t listen to shidduch over maybe 35. Ticking clock. These so called Bnei Torah all of a sudden are clear kofrim. It’s always the girls fault. As a guy who got married older then the norm, I feel confident blaming the guys. They are much pickier then the girls. Just ask the shaddchanim.
There is a true AGE GAP. You mention how it is important to listen to Daas Torah. Read the letter the last letter to TLS. All the Gedolim including Rav Elyashiv, Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman, Rav Shmuel Auerbach and Rav Chaim Kanievsky implored American Jewry to send the Bochurim younger to Israel, start Shidduchim earlier and eliminate freezer policies for Bochurim. They made it clear that there is no Shidduch crises by the Chassidim in America or the Litvish-Yeshivish or Chasidish community in Israel. Besides it being Daas Torah. They are saying basic facts which have to be rectified.
If this is the case then the EY yeshivias should not except boys that are older then 19.
If the reason is that boys go to EY to old the EY yeshivias should do there part and not take them in.
and also people have said no cuz the boy was to quit on the first date well girls listen up i surely hope that the boy will uncomfortable at the begining speaking with random girls as hopefully he is not used to it so give him another shot, and i know people who said no for absolute shtussim for example he has a face beard or no connection etc…
and i know people who said no simply because it was their first well its not a multiple choice and your not going back and forth so dont drop it for nothing.
i would advise anyone who has dropped a shidduch for any of these ”no reasons to say no” to find out if that boy or girl is still available and speak to a daas torah who is also a baki in shidduchim for hadrach.
I would like to hear other peoples opinion on my 2 comments.
See above. Also, in this note you mention appearances. Well I’m sorry to disappoint you but guys reject girls on looks based on pictures. All day every day. How about her nose tilts to the left slightly. Etc.
Silliest comments – both of them.
There, you have an opinion
Literally I have no idea what you are saying. amazingly insensitive to older singles to suggest the reason they are not married is because YOU think they are picky. Every person has their right to choose, their right to get advice and their right to make the best decision for them.
You probably wrote this letter . . .
Does this sound like something a bar daas should do? Not use their seichal at all? Just start calling people and making absolutely random suggestions. So I should just call someone I know and suggest that someone who is on life support and will be most likely be dead within a few weeks for their daughter? I mean I made a suggestion? I should suggest a non religious person or someone on death row? I did my job, I made a suggestion. This whole family only wants a son in law who will learn in kolell… and I should suggest someone who never even went to a religious day school let alone a yeshiva? This makes sense. Using your idea… I should just pull out a phone book and just pull our random names and suggest such and such to such and such knowing absolutely nothing about either side. All we need is just the principal from beis yaakov and a rosh mesivta to release their enrollment lists from 5 years ago and throw darts at them and match up that way and if some are married or dead… then we cross them off and save their matches for the next list. Now we are really using our brains. Best of all our neighbors will feel really cared about because we used so much seichal in arranging potential matches for their children.
Why would you write this? Nowhere in the letter written was what you are saying even a suggestion.
The letter writer is 100% correct. The solution is to make suggestions. Not stupid suggestions or random suggestions. Real suggestions. Think about single boys and single girls you know and if you feel there may be a good idea then make the call. It’s really that easy.
That’s a huge chisurei mechsera. Read it again. Thr letter says just pickup a phone and make a suggestion. What you are talking about isn’t really a good idea either. Do you think that nobody thought of this nice girl for this nice boy? I know 100 people with nice boys and 100 with nice girls, if I called them up and suggested them to each other they would just laugh at me. I would be wasting my time and their time as well. They know the other family, they live 2 blocks away from them. For no less than 100 reasons they don’t think it’s a match. My little naive suggestion is only an insult, don’t I think they thought of this, they have know each other for 20 years, what exactly am I adding in by just throwing out a name? If however I have an inside track, I know that one side is interested, I know a family that thr other side doesn’t know, I know someone who could be in the parsha of what they are looking for, then fine. I have done that personally on many occasions almost always never goes anywhere, I couldn’t care less about making a fool of myself as the letter bavorns. I’m just not going to waste my time or other people’s time with ideas that are out of left field or that everyone in the community already knows as they have been neighbors for 25 years… that’s just stupid. It also becomes tiresome and draining for everyone assuming people don’t get insulted or offended, like suggesting a homeless person to a gadol hador’s daughter…The letter writer said just pickup the phone and make a suggestion well without using lots of daas and seichal that becomes counterproductive and draining and can lead to hurt feelings even.
He doesn’t mean to literally just read a shidduch, here’s a skirt here’s a pair of pants. As to the people that laughed at you for reading a shidduch, well I had that as well. I blessed the father that his children should should find shidduchim quickly despite having an imbecile for a father. Because that’s what such people are. They are the shidduch crisis.
This is the most ridiculous conversation ever. Being In Shidduchim for 10 years myself I see clearly that the ppl writing this are coming from judgement not care. No one should say yes if there isn’t a connection. The one thing worse than being single at 30 is getting married and divorced because there’s no connection there. Think with your head. Only suggest things that make sense and only say yes to someone you feel you can build a life with. To those ppl that are just calling in random suggestions you are wasting ppls precious time, only suggest things that make sense as you may very well be hurting another person with your ridiculous suggestions. Think twice before saying these kind of things.
Sincerely your older single that has had way too many stupid dates.
Yes, a person should make sure there’s more to the shidduch than a pair of pants and a skirt. However more often than not their just doing the same thing the shadchan themselves do. Family a is a nice family with a girl. Family b is a nice family with a boy. If you think the shadchanim have time to thoroughly compare every detail about the boy and girl, plus their families, I got a bridge I can sell you. But a little thought definitely is extremely important.
The Shidduch crisis it the greatest issue in the litvish community. There is no lager issue. Boys need to marry 19-20 years of age.
Start redding the shidduchim to the girls first and then to the boys. This will solve alot of the problems with the boys having lists of girls to look into. This will surely have more girls going out more often.
Not a bad idea. Just one problem, did you ever lose a watch and have the watch post signs saying I’m lost help me find my owner. Chazal say, men are looking for what they lost, thus they need to go hunting. The guys today are not realizing that they themselves are the ones that are supposed to be looking, not the girls. There’s a major lack of chinuch in this regard as well.
Recently, a mother of a daughter 23, whom just got enaged stated, “I feel like a holocaust survivor!”
One shidduch survivor I know spent several grueling and torturous months in the notorious ice cold “Freezer”, where he was cut off from the world, and where he lived in sub-freezing, inhumane conditions, under the watchful eye of the notorious “Freezer Patrol”.
“You’ll never get out of here,” a sadistical Freezer guard would warn him on a daily basis.
But with the words of Abaye and Rava at his side, this survivor managed to endure those unspeakable conditions.
Eventually, he was finally liberated from the Freezer. However, life in that awful freezer took its toll on him, and made it extremely difficult for him to readapt himself to society.
The shadchanim he spoke to, refused to redt him a shidduch.
“Sorry, ” they would tell him, “but you endured way too much pain in the Freezer, and no girl we know wants to relive the nightmares of your past experience in the Freezer.”
“The girls we talk to,” the shadchanim would tell him, “are seeking easy-going, happy-go-lucky partners in life, who won’t wake up in a huge sweat in the middle of the night screaming, “Help! Please liberate me from this horrifying, awful freezer before I become emotionally frostbitten!”
Nevertheless, despite all the rejections from the shadchanim, this particular freezer survivor managed to find his mate without the help of a shadchan.
It seems that the woman he ultimately married once locked herself in a storage freezer overnight while working in a restaurant. She managed to survive, and to tell over her harrowing tale.
It was her freezer experience that led her to believe that her true zivug would be someone who endured the same identical pain as her, in an ice cold freezer.
Now, the two freezer survivors are a married couple living in Lakewood with 6 children and 13 grandchildren.
Due to the couple’s harrowing experience in their respective freezers, the thermostat in their home is never set below 87 degrees.
“I was raised in an extremely warm and caring home,” said Chaim, the couple’s eldest child.
“And when I say ‘extremly warm home’, I mean EXTREMELY warm!” he added.
Chaim told reporters that his father once forbade him from geting anywhere near a freezer.
“The yeshiva you learn in will have absolutely no freezers and no refrigerators,” his father told him before helping his son choose a yeshiva. “You’ll be eating take-out food, canned food and vaccum-packed food – but no freezers, ice boxes or fridges in your yeshiva, do you understand me?!” his father told him at the time.
Chaim’s father, the freezer survivor, currently runs a successful business purchasing old freezer units, disassembling them, and selling the parts to the manufacturers of heating units.
“Nothing makes my father happier than to refurbish the motors of those used freezers and to sell them to the manufacturers of heating units, where the motors are eventually used to warm up the freezing homes of every day Americans,” Chaim said.
“My father is an obsessively warm person,” Chaim noted, “and every moment in his life is devoted to making sure no one will ever be forced to live like a sub-human popsicle again.”
“The words ‘Never Again!’ and ‘Next Year in the Sunshine State!’ has never left my father’s lips since the day he was liberated from that awful freezer,” Chaim said.
This is no joking matter. Currently there are over 550 Bochurim not being allowed to date because of the Freezer. It was instituted less than 30 years ago and BH there is SERIOUS MOVEMENT now within Yeshivah to cut it in half or eliminate it completely. We have to make sure that we move this from discussion to actions and change this policy ASAP.
Only 550. I believe it’s at least 30 years ago.
I applaud you for suggesting that more people get involved in redding Shidduchim and you are 100% correct. However if you have been following along you should have noticed that this will not solve the real problem here at all. The core of the problem is due to the gap in the ages that boys and girls begin dating there are different amounts of them. Hence unfortunately even if everyone in Klal Yisroel became a Shadchan they still can’t match up uneven numbers of people.
If we don’t make changes to the Litvish Shidduch system quickly there will be a lot more Karbanos. Currently there are a few thousand Litvish girls who Al pi derech hateva will have a difficult time. The Gedolim begged the Litvish community to make changes. But as a community Ashamim Anachnu. We are spilling innocent blood and causing such anguish by not making changes.
How will appointing a Shul Gabbai help?? I commend you for wanting to take action. It’s long overdue for Lakewood and Klal Yisrael. But seriously there are many more girls on Shidduchim than boys. You write you have several children in Shidduchim. I’m sure you realize that when you have a boy the phone rings off the hook with Shidduch suggestions. When there are girls as great as they are you can go months without Shidduch suggestions. If we don’t deal with the root of the problem which is starting Bochurim younger in Shidduchim and cutting the freezer at least in half hiring a minyan of Shul Gabbais won’t change anything
As painful as this is, and I’m very familiar, please don’t compare things to the Holocaust. My grandparents went through the camps and trust me, you have no idea what the Holocaust was if you can even think of making such a comparison. The anti semites compare things to the Holocaust and we rightfully get upset. Don’t be like them. Something can be very painful but millions aren’t dying, nobody is being mutilated and experimented upon, and the list goes on.
Please don’t be insensitive to the horrors the survivors endured and to the memories of the 6 million kiddoshim in the same breath as asking others to be sensitive to the plight of older singles.
What is the Shidduchim Gabbay supposed to do exactly?
From where is he supposed to find the guys if there aren’t any ?
Single guy
True story.
I had a friend who was a BOCHOR; he must have been about 26 years old. I knew his older brother very well and learned in the same Yeshiva with him.
One Thursday night, I walked into Bais Medresh, and his older brother was sitting there. I told him that we must find his 26-year-old brother a shidduch now, so he looked and me and said let’s go. We sat in silence for some time, and then I told him that I had a cousin that was older and not married, and maybe it would be good for his brother. Well, guess what? They got engaged and married and have a beautiful family now.
The letter writer is correct.
I recently asked the mother of a electrician if her son would go out with a young lady who was going for her P.H.D.The mother replied,” I don’t see why not. His older brother,also an electrician, is married to an medical doctor. The people involved were modern orthodox. My point is you can marry someone below your level of” X” and find happiness. ( I changed a minor fact to protect their privacy.)
The holocaust survivor comment and comparison is callous. The daughter got married sooo late at 23. No one lost every relative. This isn’t minimizing the shidduch crisis, but the holocaust was a different league that bezras hashem we should never be able to comprehend.
Listen to me, I’ve gone thru this problem, got married at 34. I absolutely hated being called picky, even though I may have been, but there was a reason why. People used to berate me in public, may Hashem have rachmonus on them. When I was 32, I finally got in touch with a professional frum dating coach that was recommended by a well known big Rav and I followed his advice through each date. It was a matter of developing trust and relationship so that you can be able to make that increasingly hard decision of getting married to someone for the rest of your life. I was able to do it , together with the hand holding of my Rebbe. My message to all the well meaning commenters is not to judge the older singles that seem too picky- they are going through a very difficult time, and you have no idea what it is like if you havent been through it. My message to older singles is to get a Rebbe or someone that you can trust that has Torah Hashkafos, AND a professional dating coach who can show you how to get to the point of being able to make that decision. You will not regret it, take it from me.
I don’t think anything should ever be compared to the holocaust. gas chambers, starvation, death camps, unspeakable tortures, watching your children being murdered in front of your eyes etc..
while living as an older single can be horrendously lonely and painful its not living in a block in Auschwitz with no food and battling typhus and SS guards
The problem is sometimes I feel like I’m wasting my time when I just “pick up the phone”. I recently thought of a good idea for a boy and girl who aren’t young, but I don’t know enough about them to say with certainty it’s a good idea. The problem is neither side wants to even give me a resume until they get from the other side, or I thoroughly convince them it’s a good idea -which I can’t do until I have a resume, because im not sure myself. I feel like I can’t even get to first base because of the stubbornness of these parents, I feel bad, but I don’t feel like fighting if they don’t want to pursue their own shidduchim
Bochurim from all over come to Lakewood to learn. But girls from all over that want learning boys don’t usually come to Lakewood. So that makes that there are not enough learning boys in many places. So maybe Lakewood should not accept out of town bochurim. Maybe the out of town bochurim should realize on their own to not come to Lakewood. Maybe some Lakewood born and raised bochurim should do a mitzvah and learn somewhere else. Maybe. But for girls from out of town that want learning boys to have to come live in Lakewood is just not very practical.