Q: A twenty-five-year-old man, a friend of mine, turned down a girl he was dating because she was too fat. What do you say?
A: Now the question is: This man, how many other people did he turn down? It’s a tragedy, this business of being choosy. I’ll explain to you.
There was a fine young man. I asked him, “What’s the matter? You’re getting older and older.”
He said he couldn’t find the right one yet.
“How many did you see?”
“A hundred girls.”
A hundred girls?! I would have married at least seventy of those hundred girls myself. And this finicky fellow turned down a hundred girls.
What happened at the end? At the end he married an old girl with a moon face and too old to have any children. Tragedy of tragedies. He’s punished by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Don’t be a fool! You have to marry when you’re young. You have to have children.
What is marriage for? For romance?
Of course, you have to look for good character. You have to find a girl who likes to be homebound, who will concentrate on the family, who has traditional concepts, a real Torah trained girl. Certainly. Once you find her, if she’s healthy physically and mentally, so that’s all!
All the other things are imaginary. How long do good looks remain?
I knew a girl when I was a little boy. I remember she was a neighbor, a pretty little girl. I saw her picture seventy years later. I said, “Baruch Hashem, I didn’t marry her.” I was a little boy then; she lived on my block.
They change. All of them change. The beauty is only for the purpose of catching a man. If the man is caught, then you start having children and beauty disappears almost automatically. And therefore, it’s a tragedy. People should be practical about marriage.
In the good old days, you didn’t marry on your own. The family chose a girl for you. They got together, the aunts, the grandmothers, they got together and they discussed things with the grandmothers of the other family. Women were active in this. They discussed things and finally they came up and chose somebody for you.
And they gave you the privilege of letting you take a look at her. Alright. You have to take a look at her, the Gemara says. If she’s loathsome, then don’t marry her. But if she’s passable, then don’t wait. If she’s healthy, physically and mentally, if she’s frum and she wants to be a homemaker and other qualities that are necessary—a good character is very important if possible. Not all people have good character. But if you can find good character too, why not? But to wait for romance? Ah, a tragedy.
There was a rabbi, a big rosh yeshiva, he had a son in America. And the son was a rabbi and the son was getting older and older. I once met the son here on Kings Highway. I said to him, “Nu? You’re not married yet.”
He said, “I’m waiting till something clicks inside of me. Es hut noch nit geglikt,” he said. He died unmarried. He had no one to say kaddish for him. He didn’t accomplish anything in the world. A wasted life.
And therefore, I say to these people who are picking and picking, “Who cares if she has big feet? What about it? So she’s a fat girl?”
I know a case of a man who married a fat girl and she turned out to be a big diamond. And the bigger the diamond is, the better it is.
