Aishes Chayil, YOUR shockingly nasty post is the pathetic one. By your screen name, it appears you are married, so thank Hashem for that and try to be a bit more sympathetic and sensitive to that who have not yet found their spouse, regardless whether you think they are doing it to themselves or not—they are STILL to be pitied!
I, for one, thought he made a very good point. It is a well known fact that people just don’t have time and matchmaking is a thankless, often frustrating job. If people were paid for their time, like a lawyer, etc, there would be many more people in the field. Also, we can train them and have mentors, in case the inexperienced shadchan runs into difficulty.
“When something is bashert it’s gona happen regardless of who the shadchan is,,,,,” That line is so childish, that it makes me wonder where you come from. Have you ever heard of the concept called “hishtadlus”?? If meeting your bashert will happen anyway because its bashert, why bother dating alltogether? Did you meet your husband in the street or did a shadchan take time to set you up? If everything is bashert, why are the rabbonim and askonim getting involved in various different shadchan networks, each having their on original approach?
Back to the oP’s point, we see from what the star-k did in Baltimore, which I understand was largely successful, that people need incentives.
Thank you to Joe shmoe for your sensitivity in raising this subject and for your thinking along the lines of solutions rather than denial.
To those who counter that this is not a novel idea, since there are already “proffesional shadchanim”, consider this: If you compare the ratio of young people out there looking for their shidduchim to the amount of full-time shadchanim, you would find that there is a serious shortage of full-time shadchanim. If you want to buy a house, you contact a real estate broker, who takes your needs seriously and shows you what’s available. So why should you not be able to contact a shadchan who has a full database of availabilities, according to your needs, to set you up? because there sre not enough of such people!
I, myself spend quite a bit of time on a regular basis working on shidduchim, as a side thing. In my experience over the last few years, I feel the parents ARE doing their hishtadlus. The young people for the most part are too. It is the community that has to step in and help out, by creating a more workable situation.
As I see it, the problem of older singles can be adrressed from many angles, and one can try to lay the blame on the singles, their parents, expectations, the shadchan or the Rabbonim. What I think is needed is a WHOLE approach. Let me give you an analogy.
You have a man who is sick. He goes to the doctor and complains that his stomache hurts. The doctor gives him pain killers. He goes back to the doctor because his head hurts. Then his eyes hurt, and then he feels weak. An astute doctor will look at all the symptoms together and be able to diagnose a condition, and treat the condition, which is the root of all the symptoms.
Yes, in shidduchim, sometimes the parents, sometimes the girls and sometimes the boys are a problem. money, yichus, frumkeit level, all play a role in the larger picture.
What I think is needed is EDUCATION. Before beginning the process of dating, most young people are clueless, having garnered their ideas of marriage from sources that have no basis in reality. Even if they have friends in shidduchim, one really has no clue until they actually live with their spouse. Any married person will attest to that.
So how can we expect young people to know what they want? How can we send a young girl or boy out on his first date without having any clue what is expected of him/her? Would we hire any worker without experince? How can we expect parents to know what they’re doing in the confusing world of trying to get information? They are usually only trying to protect their kid! Whenever I give a name over to a parent to research, my heart goes out to them for the task that lies ahead of them. And often after all their checking, it all comes to nothing.
Of course, for the most part, people get married. young people fare okay even without education, and so do the parents. But the amount of agmas nefesh that is created in the current system can probably be alleviated with a community wide attempt at education: For parents, singles AND Shadchanim.