Love, Marriage, And Divorce
Larry Gordon
On Wednesday night here in the Five Towns there was an Orthodox Jewish singles extravaganza that featured some of the most noteworthy and proficient shadchanim who have demonstrated the aptitude to get things going for young men and women looking for a suitable match, marriage, and the ability to move on with life.
I’ve said and written this for many years, and an abundance of people seem to agree–there is something terribly off-balance with this system that many in our community have been employing now for decades. That is not just here but in Orthodox communities around the world.
Sure, there are plenty of young people dating, and, thankfully, on a daily basis there are engagements and marriages. At the same time, however, too many of these young people are being left out of the loop, by the wayside, and missing opportunities because they are beholden to a system that has too many flaws and is not comprehensive enough.
Just take a glance in this publication at our weekly shidduch column by Baila Sebrow. Week after week, it features expressions of frustration, with those who write in saying repeatedly that they have older single children at home with no avenue or direction to pursue in order to go out and explore possibilities that may potentially lead to achieving the desired objective of marriage.
Some people will comment that the system is corrupt. They might insist that it is only young men and women from families of means who are getting the attention needed from the matchmakers with track records of success.
While that theory features some traces of truth in it, that way of thinking is too cynical and is just not helpful or productive. However, this matter has evolved over the years, and the result is that a generation or two of young people have surrendered control to whatever extent. Their social lives are now exclusively beholden to the time and magnanimity of people they hardly know, in most cases, if at all.
Over the last several years, as this aptly labeled “shidduch crisis” has intensified, there have been suggestions in some circles to loosen the social restrictions that have contributed to the devolvement of the matter into this sorry state. Good and fine young people with much to offer to a life partner have been reduced to sitting around waiting for the phone to ring with a dispassionate third party on the other end of the line hopefully there to make a shidduch suggestion that may or may not come to fruition.