It is a shame that it is considered taboo for girls and guys to talk directly to each other without an appointed intermediary these days in the frum community. This is a reform cultural invention that did not exist hundreds of years ago. The gemara writes about how girls used to out on certain days of the year dressed in white and mingle with guys to meet on their own. Look at how our avos and imahos met. The new reliance on shidduchim and rabbis to officiate the process is reform. It is oft-forgotten that the legislated dictum ‘”Lo tasur min hadavar asher yagidu lecha yamin u’smol” warns both against taking away laws and adding laws. Sometimes I feel like the shidduch system tries to impose new demands on young men and women without any source in Halacha. Perhaps this has (or had) good reason behind it, but it’s saddening when people act like its part of Halacha to get set up by a shadchan and go out for x amount of dates and make superficial demands. I feel bad for girls and guys of this generation because this is the system and they are in many ways forced to work within it, or told that they must as doing otherwise would be deemed scandalous or sacrilegious, while the system creates a crisis for them. I daven that the youth of next generations will be able to meet in the natural manner that Chazal intended, and the ascetic barriers and superficialities that have emerged in recent years will be recognized as what they truly are. Hadesh yamenu k’kedem!
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