NEW YORK (Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin / VINnews) — There are many angles and dimensions to the Shidduch Crisis within the American Yeshiva world.
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There is a consensus that there are more girls than boys in the dating pool and various suggestions have been offered to reduce the gap between the numbers of young men who are dating and the young women available to date them.
One mostly unspoken and perhaps unnoticed aspect is the attitudes in the American yeshiva world towards those young yeshiva educated men who have decided to leave the world of full-time learning in yeshiva and have chosen to start a life in the working world. Sometimes they are called “earner-learners” who are kovea ittim meaning they “fix a set time” to learn Torah but they dedicate the bulk of their time to working and earning money on their own.
Perhaps they have gone into their parents’ businesses or gotten jobs in wholesale or retail stores, or doing something in real estate or working in the lucrative nursing home business, or maybe working in sales or construction or making money from a technology or an Internet business or many other potential areas of employment.
WATCH RABBI RUDOMIN DISCUSS THE SHIDDUCH CRISIS ON THE VIN PODCAST:
Then there are those who have taken the step to go to college, such as to Touro College that has separate classes for yeshiva educated males and females with campuses in Brooklyn and Queens and a few other places. Perhaps they eventually plan on becoming accountants, computer programmers, or obtain degrees in business management, marketing or some area of finance.
These working boys are generally not the initial prime candidates for many of the American Litvish yeshiva world’s girls who have spent their lives in great Bais Yaakov-type schools in Brooklyn or Lakewood for example and then to top it off have spent a year in post-high school seminaries in Jerusalem where they are intensively educated to seek Kollel full time learning boys to marry.
The girls then return to America and live at home mostly in yeshivish communities where they prepare to date and look primarily for full-time learning boys. These are the girls who eventually mount up in numbers in the American yeshiva communities and many remain single well into their twenties and some even longer as they cling to the hope and dream and ideal of marrying a full time learning boy.
Sometimes, as the time passes and they remain single, these girls land up becoming big earners themselves or getting degrees and become professionals but they still cling to the dream of marrying a potential Kollel yungerman.
As reality would have it, a lot of the learning boys are looking for very pretty girls and wealthy father in laws and families of girls who can support them in full time Kollel learning plus also looking for other additional benefits like cars and houses in many cases. Obviously this aspiration for good looking girls and a higher standard of living that not many can provide or support and sustain in families with many children is not doable for many frum yeshivish middle-class and lower-class families, so they land up with single daughters at home pining for a good shidduch for a long time, hence the so-called Shidduch Crisis.
Many outstanding daughters of long-term Kollel families and of Rebbeim, the idealistic teachers and in yeshivas and girls schools who lack financial means to support full-time Kollel sons in law see their daughters wait and wait in vain for the right outstanding male yeshiva boy candidate to fulfil their own and their families’ dreams of a Kollel life.
At this point in time some serious cheshbon hanefesh “soul searching” should be the order of the day. If after a number of years of trying without success a girl and her family see that they are not getting what they want in terms of a suitable full-time Kollel learner, they should not have a mental block and personal prejudice to thinking or putting into action other plans and options such as considering an ehrliche working or even a frum college boy who might be ready to date such a girl if he was given the right chance and opportunity.
This requires compromise and a change of attitude because those boys who have gone into the working world and have not spent additional years in bais medrash full time will not be the equals of bochurim (young men) who follow the path of aspirant Toraso Umnaso (Torah study as a full-time career). They have the advantage however of making the commitment to marry a good Bas Yisroel and make a good living and support her and their family that they will build together to create a Bayis Ne’eman BeYisroel (a true Jewish home).
There have arisen quite a few exemplary communities of thousands of such couples where the young yeshiva educated husbands have full time jobs in all sorts of fields and support their wives and growing families and then send their young children to great yeshivas and Bais Yaakovs in turn continuing Torah life and many of them even support the full time Kollel yeshivas where they have family members and friends.
It is time for those who are suffering from the Shidduch Crisis from the point of view of having single daughters at home to consider broader options and help avoid the delay of their daughters to not only want full time Kollel learners, the valued Yissachers who uphold Limmud HaTorah (Torah learning), but to think of welcoming into their midst working boys who are worthy of being the true Zevuluns who practice Torah, Avoda, U’Gemilas Chasadim (Torah, service and loving kindness)!
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim’s Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988–1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994–1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995–2015. He is also a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York.
He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy.
Contact Rabbi Rudomin at [email protected]
The article started with a great premise and then took a left turn. The author puts the onus on the single girl who was unable to find her ideal husband after a number of years to shift her views, instead of putting the onus on the educators to refrain from sending off their girls with unreasonable and statistically impossible expectations. Nobody should have to suffer for a few years first before finding out that they must undertake a major change to their belief system. Even then, will they really believe that they are not still “settling?”
Part of the issue is evident in the terminology in this article. Why is it a “comprise” for a girl to marry someone who takes his Kesuba obligations (v’ana eflach, v’eizin, v’uki, v’afarnes kminhag gavein yehuda’in) seriously, especially if he’s also kove’a itim l’Torah?
Wow. Working boy like me ended up marrying a girl whos father couldnt support. Which is ok because i supported myself. Win-win!
It’s about time someone said this
Sounds like you are saying every community should look like Baltimore & I whole heartedly agree.
It also helps with relationships involving the outside world. When the Frum expand to new areas & the Non-Frum see the parents are educated professionals with good jobs (just like them) for some reason there is no opposition to them moving in. I wonder why…..
BH I trained my daughters not to look for a learning boy. They are entering shidduchchim and BH, lots of options!
The learner earner, if he’s a professional, is the most sought after boy. The ones that are not professional and not full time learners have a harder time.
The entire premise of his calculation, “that girls take themselves out of the Shidduch market for 4 years” is incorrect.
Girls who go to seminary typically go at age 18 and come back when they are 19. I would areguethe reason that girls who do not begin going out until they are 20 or 21, is because they are trying to earn money, or learn a profession, in order to help support their future husbands in kollel. Most families do not earn enough money to support multiple families. That said, I have observed that often young ladies will say they want a learning boy and 6 months or a year after they get married their husbands are working. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, but were those sincerely the plans or were they just what our society seems to deem an appropriate way of life?
The bottom line is, as long as young men who work and are koveiah ittim and live a life of a Ben Torah are viewed as “lesser than” full time learners. There will be a ” Shidduch Crisis”. Yeshivos are not producing as well developed young men at the same rate as Bais Yaakovs are producing well developed young women. That creates a tremendous imbalance and much insecurity amount young men and much disappointment in the young women in Shidduchim.
I don’t think It’s appropriate to blame HKB”H for our society’s self developed crisis.
Good point. Except he’s right. Speak to shadchanim and you’ll hear that he said it right….
The MOTHERS are looking for ” pretty girls”…. as if that will make a good marriage.
How many of these marriage-challenged girls would seriously consider marrying a Baal Teshuvah or a Sephardic Jew?
If we believe , and we do,that every shidduch is preordained, what is this uproar about figuring out the crisis!? If this is what Hashem wants then this is what happens. Our only recourse is teshuva tefilla and tzedakah. And of course , be realistic as to what you really need,
or what your children really need, in a shidduch .
Unfortunately another nonpractical solution to the age-gap source of the problem. The sucessfully working boys have plenty of girls to date & there’s no shortage of girls willing to marry them. The problem is that there are 100’s if not thousands more single girls of marriagable age than single boys for them to marry. If we married off every single learning & working boy we’d still be left with a huge number of single girls unmarried. How are you fixing that?
I see you haven’t had daughters in shidduchim.
When did they move Jerusalem to the Mediterranean coast?
(1) A big problem is the simple demographic “Mathematics”: each year there are more children born overall and when boys defer dating and marriage until age 23-24 and then look for girls ages 18-20 already there will be girls left out of the musical chairs – like matchmaking. For example, let’s say there are 100 boys born in 2001 and 100 girls born that same year. Let’s say there are 105 boys born in 2006 and 105 girls born in 2006. If the boys born in 2001 predominantly marry girls born in 2006, automatically there will be about 5 girls who isn’t get married. This “excess” of girls will steadily increase. (2) There is as a result of outside influences in dating younger and prettier girls from well- off families a narrow “shelf life” for girls, much narrower in many ways than for boys. (3) Unless we go back to polygamy, or some other such unrealistic solution, there will always be a glut of girls and the problem will only continue to worsen over time. (4) One possible solution is for boys to start dating when they’re younger. Why shouldn’t a boy age 22 date a girl of similar age? (5) Another solution is for batei medrash and yeshivas to be more selective, and/ or to encourage boys who are clearly not cut-out for learning for 3-5 years post- mesivta to seek a parnosa and/ or start dating. I don’t understand why it is de riguer for boys to be expected to learn (on the parents’ financial account) for so many years before they even start dating, and then to look to learn indefinitely, having the “ bitachon” ‘made fun of in Alei Shiur, ie that their wives (or her parents) will support them indefinitely.
Folks – everything said her is admirable and certainly people should be more honest with themselves and many working boys are wonderful but unfortunately 98% of the people have no concept of the cause of this crisis hence they say things that unfortunately do nothing to address the cause – hence any solution. The cause is a simple mathematical unevenness caused by boys marring into essentially a different generation of girls (4 years or more later) that mathematically have more of them due to significant population growth. Hence the only solution is to make the dating age even between the genders. Any other suggestion will not solve the problem at all. On the other hand doing this will cause an even playing field and equal supply and demand which will therefore solve all the other problems automatically as no one can make ridiculous demands, no one has to do things to get ahead, everyone automatically has to compromise or lose out, etc…. because there are even amounts of both genders. In order to solve a problem one must understand clearly the cause and address that issue only. Other solutions just move the problem around and sound wonderful emotionally but do not solve the core issue unfortunately at all.
You are right that it’s certainly wrong to claim this of all bnei torah.
Anecdotally, I know of bnei Torah with yichus, learned in Brisk and all the rest, and this slander is not at all what I observed.
The gmara says a talmid chochom should marry someone beautiful
HE NEEDS TO KEEP THE BASICS
MINYAN (MOST OF THE TIME)(SHABBOS COMES BEFORE BORCHU)
TORAH STUDY (ONE HOUOR A WEEK)
BASIC SHMIRAS HAMITZVOS
AND TO FOLLOW THE HALACHIK RULINGS THAT ARE ACCEPTED IN HIS COMMUNITY
Very simple way to end the shiduch crisis. Get your kids married at 18. Stop thinking that you’re smarter than the Gemara, and that your kids are not smart enough to raise a family.
In general a working boys hashkafa is not on par with a girl looking for a serious learning boy. A girl looking for a short term learner might be open to a working boy or part time working boy. To say every girl who isn’t married say by 3 years after sem should start marrying working boys is a little far fetched.