Sara Nissanian and Rivky Herman
Sara Nissanian and Rivky Herman
Sara Nissanian and Rivky Herman
Sara Nissanian, Toby Blau, Rivky Weiner, and Aliza Blau
Sara Nissanian, Toby Blau, Rivky Weiner, and Aliza Blau
Mother and daughter Beth  and Rivky Herman
Mother and daughter Beth
and Rivky Herman
Left, front to back: Goldy Krantz, Aviva Bondar, Riva Preil, and Chana Hoch. Right, front to back: Sorah (Cherie) Strauss, Michal Ungar, Leora Tanzman, Yocheved Weiner, and Allison Katz
Left, front to back: Goldy Krantz, Aviva Bondar, Riva Preil, and Chana Hoch. Right, front to back: Sorah (Cherie) Strauss, Michal Ungar, Leora Tanzman, Yocheved Weiner, and Allison Katz

By Larry Gordon

The question needs to be posed from a sociological standpoint: Why is there a shidduch crisis? Why are there so many–literally thousands–of young men and women in their twenties and thirties, and even some in their forties, who want to meet their bashert but are instead forced to deal with obstacles that create the impression that it is just not possible.

The best response to this query that I have come across is this–there is no answer. That is painfully frustrating, but for some reason we accept things as they are. From time to time, someone emerges with an idea that generates hope combined with faith that it can make a difference.

So it is that last week while on an Amtrak train to Washington, DC, to join up with NORPAC to lobby Congress on behalf of Israel, I received a call from a father in Queens wondering if I was interested in reporting on a project being organized by his daughter. Let me say that we receive a considerable number of requests for publicity from organizations, universities, schools, and others to provide coverage of events. Frankly, the way our media-frenzied society works today, what you do is only as important or as good as the media says it is.

On the other hand there are wonderful things taking place out there that, because of the lack of media coverage, virtually no one in society at large knows about. This is a story about one such project.

“My daughter is 29, talented, beautiful, and in the parshah” (meaning she is a candidate for a shidduch), the father said over the phone as our train was pulling out of Philadelphia speeding towards the capital. This was Monday evening, and taking into consideration that the event he was talking about was not scheduled to take place until Thursday evening, it was far enough away for me to say that I would think about it and be in touch with him on Thursday.

It was a tiring week, but on Thursday evening, I had a burst of energy and said to my wife, Esta, that maybe we should take a ride over to Queens to see what was going on at this event.

Maybe it was the unassuming manner in which Dr. Sandy Herman of Hillcrest, Queens, said he didn’t know if I would be interested in such a thing but he was going out on a limb here. His daughter Rivky had undertaken a beautiful project which serves as testament to a situation that has not been effectively addressed.

In a nutshell, Rivky Herman, through a series of friends, had arranged a get-together for 36 young women in need of shidduchim. The women ranged in age from 26 to 35. They are all educated and gainfully employed, they are all from good frum homes, and are at a loss to understand their status as singles and were willing to try tapping into their faith and into the heavens for Divine assistance in this matter.

About a week prior, Rivky decided that they should all be called together to collectively partake in one of the mitzvos that the mishnah says is the domain of women. In this case, the young ladies were going to bake challah for Shabbos as a z’chus to help facilitate them finding a marriage partner–a shidduch.

We stayed for about an hour, heard one of the rabbis address the gathering with words of inspiration, and then watched the women as they began to prepare the bowls of dough and water before they would take them and baked as challahs.

Rivky Herman is a speech therapist at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, where she works with what she calls “fragile children.” She is well liked and popular amongst her colleagues and enjoys her work immensely.

I don’t know the Herman family or Rivky and only managed to chat briefly with a few of the women present. There were two long tables dotted with orange bowls with sacks of flour and sugar and an urn of hot water ready to begin the preparatory process. It had all the trappings of a well-prepared and impressive event, but this was the heart and soul of the frequently mentioned but rarely acted-upon shidduch crisis.

In society at large, there has been for many years a de‑emphasis on tradition, the roles in a family, and the priority of endeavoring to find a partner to marry and raise a family with. This social shift has had limited impact on the Orthodox Jewish community, though some of those outside influences have seeped in and are impacting on the fabric of the traditional Torah way of life.

That might just be a plausible sociological explanation for this phenomenon of the increasing number of older singles in our community. We might be troubled by the matter and even feel bad for the people who might be stuck in the social quagmire.

As to the matter of assigning liability for this situation, it is hard to say who is to blame. Things have changed in the younger generations’ social circles over the last two or so decades. That a large segment of young people have become complacent and are at peace to some extent to be sitting around waiting for someone to think about a shidduch for them has to be–to a large extent–something they are liable for.

Is it the parents or the yeshivas that have just about ruled out any kind of socialization between the sexes as off-limits? Well, it might be a combination of these factors as well. But at the end of the day, the people who are looked to as prodigious shadchanim are able to close their windows and lock their doors at night, enjoy a quiet Shabbos, and go on vacation while the number of singles continues to proliferate.

But then there is the vital and most beautiful and admirable factor–faith in Hashem. There is a method to what looks to us like some kind of madness, and a little more emunah and bitachon will make all the difference.

And that is precisely what we observed so magnificently on display at the Herman home in Queens last week. We saw and absorbed a deep and abiding faith that the women gathered there are reaching out and placing their fate in Hashem’s hands with full confidence that they will be meeting or will be introduced to their bashert at any time now. One could see that there was little doubt.

But still, the system is the system–and a significantly flawed one at that. One of the speakers who I met for the first time at the gathering was Goldy Krantz (a pseudonym). Goldy was a frequent contributor to the 5TJT and is the author of The Best of My Worst, a chronicle of her dating escapades over a ten-year period. Goldy got married two years ago, resides in Queens, and has a child. The book tells the tale of a good many of the almost 200 men she went out with before meeting her husband.

“It was a wonderful event,” she said the other day, a few days after the challah bake. “A lot of networking was done and some dates for the girls will result from all the interaction,” she said. She added, “We need some out-of-the-box ideas for how to get singles married, because the present system is just not working well enough.” She followed up with an e‑mail to say, “I also wanted to add that my heart broke for some of the girls at the event.”

A few girls came over to tell me of their own experiences with dates and shadchanim. One told me that she was told by a shadchan that a few fellows don’t like the way her résumé was formatted–they found it hard to read–and so they didn’t want to go out with her. I couldn’t believe it. Instead of telling the fully grown men to get over the format of the résumé and go out with the girl, the girl was told to reformat her résumé. Another girl told me that she has only been out on three dates in the last four years. Yet another told me that she had gone out with someone for six months and thought she had met her bashert, but he ended up terminating the relationship by telling her, “I really don’t know what I want.” I can tell you more stories, but I think you understand my point.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these girls. They are “normal” in every sense of the word. So what is wrong with the system? A lot. The girls feel that the system is flawed. But what is the solution? We must brainstorm about finding new solutions, because our current practices aren’t working.

So who knows–maybe this article will begin to shake things up. And perhaps the 36 women who came together in Queens last week will start a revolution in the dating world, a revolution that is apparently long overdue. v

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

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