Shidduchim – Meshugas or Acceptable

I am not surprised that people will reject a shidduch because of a sibling. There are schools that will reject a girl because of an older sibling. In both cases, the boy has lists….the schools have so many applicants. This is the reality.

The truth is that in the case that Yiddishekup 101 wrote about, would the family of the girl really want a family that has a problem with her brother? Clearly this is not her beshairt, leave it and move on.

Not surprising at all, but I bet if the girl had big bucks and the “learning” boy whose parents are looking to shakedown their future mechutinim might have been assured of 1) a house in Lakewood 2)years of support 3) a new hat/suit/cufflinks etc. every few months 4) a new car 5) vacations from learning during “bein hazmanim” 6) tuition for future children, and other eat bread and drink water sacrifices his parents would have reconsidered the shakedown.

I think its crazy however it (saying no because of siblings) happens all the time.

“Boys can say no for any reason and get away with it.

If it was the other way around it is much less likely the girl would say no.”

So you say but in reality girls say no to shidduchim for crazy reasons all the time (speaking from my own experience). I think it’s too simplistic to blame every shidduch problem on age gap.

youdontknowme:

Of coursse every shidduch is its own parsha. BUT boys (for the most part) can get away with saying no for any and all reasons and they will still get plenty of chances. If girls do it – they do it at their own risk. That’s just a direct derivative of the inequity of numbers

i dont remember who it was talking about, but there is a pasuk which says someone was the sister of someone. we learn from here that one should check out the brothers of a prospective wife.

that being said, rejection of a sibling of a prospective mate is subjective. what i may see as unacceptable may be prefectly ok to you, and vice versa. also, what may be unacceptable for one child in terms of siblings may not be for another. for example, for one child, having a prospective in law who is in college rather than in bais medrash might be fine, but for another child in the same family, only learning in laws are acceptable.

What if the wife HAS no brothers?

I do not refer to anybody specific!!!, rather to the idea “learning is not for me”

“Learning “isnt for him” so he doesn’t sit in a seder to learn”. TRY THIS, “shabbos is not for me”

as far as i am concerned learning is a mitzvah like any other, parnassah is a heter not to learn. anybody care to explain the heter , Learning “isnt for him”

now of course,if one takes the time needed to relax ,thats all for the sake of learning. also if chas v’shalom someone doesnt have a hand they cant do mitzvos that require the hands. but is mr. “learning not for him” unable to read the stories of t’nach or medrashim? maybe even some chumash and rashi.

Which reminds of a young lady I know. She is now happily married with a bunch of kids, but I knew her before that, in the days when she was looking.

She once told me she would never consider a BT. I replied, “Really? It’s a good thing your father didn’t feel that way.”

Devil’s Advocate, I don’t really agree with the idea that there is an equality between observance of Shabbos and sitting in BEsi MEdrash and learning (notwithstanding the fact that we DO say that Talmud Torah K’neged Kulam). The frum velt really needs to take off its blinders and recognize that sitting a learning Gemarah is NOT for everybody. Everyone has different intellectual strengths, temperaments, and patience, and not all guys are cut out for the type of learning that we usually think of when we say “Sitting and learning.” That is a far cry from saying, “not cut out for Shabbos.”

This young man clearly is committed to OBSERVANCE of the Torah, if not the actual formal learning of it. Maybe he goes to a Shabbos shiur (or would) or likes to go over the parsha with the help of Artscroll. Maybe he would enjoy reading English language books about Halacha or Hashkafa. These are all forms of learning. I know a lot of frum men who rarely open a sefer. But they keep Shabbos in every detail, they are kosher to the letter, their wives all go to the Mikveh, and they are raising a generation of kids who are all in Yeshivah.

We really need to stop stereotyping what is frum and what is not. NOT all guys are cut out to sit and learn, and they are honest enough to admit it, yet they are committed to Yiddishkeit. That says a lot to me. There are lots of guys doing little more than warming the bench in the Beis Medrash, who ought not be there. So are they more desirable as an asset to their sisters’ shidduchim?

I think everyone needs to do what works for them. Everyone has different standards based on the way they decided to live their life.

The issue I have is that they initially said yes, and since checking out the other family is a priority to them, then they did not do a good job—that probably raises a whole slew of other issues.

If a person wants to be a certain way, and has given it genuine thought, and has da’as Torah backing them up, then be that way–but be consistant, and do it with yashrus.

“She once told me she would never consider a BT. I replied, “Really? It’s a good thing your father didn’t feel that way.”

Although I do think this was a good answer, I can tell you from experience that marrying a BT can be a huge challenge, and I would NOT bedavka seek out that shidduch for my children. I am married to a phenomenal man, a truly ehrliche frum man, whose middos of chessed clearly derived directly from Avraham Avinu. He became frum in his 20s, at least 5 years before we met. His parents were wonderful people and I dearly loved them (no in-law jokes in my household). BUT, there is no question that it took a lot of work to make it work, and I was very fortunate. My in-laws had GREAT respect for my husband’s decision to be frum, and were very supportive of him.

Many parents of BT view the change as a rejection of their own values, and they do not emotionally support the decision of their child to be religious. If the child is young, they don’t want to hear about Yeshivas and tuition, or kashrus, or no tv on Shabbos. In some cases, they actively seek to discourage the religious forays that their child is making, or put down frumkeit.

And what happens when there is a (non-kosher and R”L non-JEWISH) celebration in the family? As loving and supportive as my in-laws were, when a very close relative married a non-Jew, they were VERY hurt that we did not go to what they viewed as a family simcha. There was great machlokess for almost a year, where the family member did not forgive us, until there was a death in the family, and it became less important to them to continue a grudge.

And what happens when the grandchildren can’t eat (without great preparation in advance)in the treif home, or don’t understand why Grandma and Grandpa (as opposed to Bubby and Zeidy) really have no interest in attending their siddur party? That was very hard on my kids, even with my in-laws being so wonderful. My shver, who was a real tzaddik bein odom l’chaveiro, did not attend the 8th grade graduation ceremony when my son received the highest Talmud award (and my parents O”H were long gone, unfortunately), because he was also invited to his great-granddaughter’s first birthday party. He did not “get” how important it was to my son for his only living grandparent to see him receive this award, and watch him graduate. Had he been Valedictorian, he would have attended.

It is not so “glatt” to say go out with a BT. If you do, it has to be with eyes wide open, and anticipating the possible pitfalls, i.e., people who flip in and flip out or people who put too much emphasis on the tafeil, and not enough on the ikkar. It is not for us to decide if someone should marry a BT. Only each person on an individual basis can make that determination. Knowing what I know, though I would not STOP such a shidduch, I would not deliberately look for it.

I understand the problems. I never said she should seek it out. I just felt she shouldn’t dismiss someone JUST BECAUSE he is a BT.

If she had had a bad experience with her grandparents I could understand her attitude. But in her case, she did not have those problems with her non-frum grandparents. They were very supportive and attended all the siddur parties and chumash parties, and all other simchas. They were thrilled to have so many grandchildren (and it was a huge family) and wanted to celebrate with them.

Only one of my five children shares a trait in common with one of my brothers – his love of chazzonus. A brother and sister can be very different types of people. If they are both raised with yoshrus in a loving home, the fact that the boy is not a “learner” at age 19 does not mean the sister’s children will be that way unless SHE raises them that way. I think Chazal should have looked more closely at the GIRL, who will do most if not all of the child-rearing, and be concerned with HER hashkafa towards support of learning, both her future husband’s and her children’s.

We should consider ALL members of a family and how they interact with one another, in assessing a potential shidduch – not just look at the brothers.

WADR to Joseph, do you think you hampered your sisters in any way? Or could you have at any point? (or maybe you didn’t fall under the rov category so they were safe….)

I’m not blaming or judging anyone. I’m explaining part of the logic of what Chazal say as explained by Meforshim. No piece of information guarantees anything. It is all in the hands of Hashem and we must do our hishtadlus.

Looking at the middos of the brothers is an important piece of information.

I must have missed something.

Did any poster here say that you should ONLY look at a girl’s brothers and ignore her middos and values, the rest of her family and all other information?

And what if she is a Baal Chesed but occasionally gets angry? What if her mother is wonderful, but not her father?

Obviously like in everything else one must take all known factors into consideration and use SEICHEL, that’s why we were given it.

No one said to look only at the brothers!

This thread is full of arguments against no one.

lol thats what we do best here 80…argue 😀 thats what makes the CR fun 😀

by the way:

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I guess I really am an outsider to the yeshiva world. In the modern orthodox world of which I am a part, BTs and gerim are pretty much indistinguishable from the FFBs and I don’t know anyone who would turn down a shidduch on that basis. And for the most part only men who want to be rabbis, or women who want to be Jewish educators, learn full time after about age 20. I think the shidduch crisis in the MO world (and there is one) has other causes.

Re- the comment about Avraham Avinu being Mishadech with Besual.

It says that when Eliezer(avraham’s servant)went to see Rifkah, he had ‘Kvitzas Haderech’.

The wind blew him straight to where Rifkah was. Otherwise, under normal circumstances, he would have lodged on the way and the innkeeper would have probably asked him questions.

If he would have said that he is going to check out Besuel’s daughter for Yitzchock , the inkeeper would have talked him out of it……

So , if not here , then where can we learn that bad information can stop a good girl from getting ahead??