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My wife and I redd a shidduch to a girl, a really fine boy, from (we thought) a fine family. She called us back within 24 hours and told us that he seems like a fine bachur to please mention it to the boys family. We did. The boys mother was so insulted that we did not consult them 1st (“because, thats how its done”), that she simply refused to hear more!
If the rules of the game will remain the same, that one must go to the bachurs side first, then shadchonim should simply say “bachur, here is the name of a girl, call me back in 72 hours (want to quibble on the dealine, fine) otherwise I will set her up with another boy”. No playing the thousand questions that need to be answered game before I say yes or no. No wasting everyones time. Girls will have dates.
Some boys think NASI is an acronym for No Answer, Still Inquiring.
Mayan Davash- Please explain yourself better.
why would it be inefficient? Just do like jphone said- call me back within 2 days to let me know if it sounds like a good prospect. You do your preliminary search then. Once you call the shadchan back, both sides do their full research. Dont let the girl wait around for the boys to compare her to everyone they met. No double-timing (going with two girls at once). Get a name and do one at a time from start to finish. What is so hard about the guys telling the shadchan “I am in the middle of something now, if it doesnt work I will get back to you”. Girls are not peices of property to buy that you need to compare prices and quality to other items. No comparison shopping.
havesomeseichel
girls are not piecies of property! However mothers of boys feel powerfull when they know they have girls at their sons beck and call.Mothers of boys love shiduchim when they are in the drivers seat-ONLY BECAUSE WE ALLOW THEM TO BE!
A new rule: Call up boy’s mother:
Shadchan” I have a shidduch for your son”..
Mother of boy:”Who is she…”?
Shadchan:” I am sorry but I have to ask do -you have names of other girls or is your son busy with something.When your son has no names or stops being busy give me a call and then I will tell you the girls name”
ames LOL that is why you and I make such a good team as they say “Great minds think alike”
Lets pretend that changing the rules of the game would actually make a significant difference. What’s the single most effective way to take the ball out of the boys (and their mothers) court?
EVEN OUT THE NUMBERS
So long as the boys hold the hammer-due to the inequity of numbers that so greatly favors the boys-, even the YW CR won’t be able to change the rules of the game.
AZI.
You sum up the problem as follows. “You have 150 guys and 100 girls on an island, why does it matter who gets redt first?”.
It doesnt. I am suggesting that an additional 50 girls be invited to the island. Get them off the waiting list and give them reservations. Girls are not dating because the avg guy is tying up 3 or 4 at a time as they sit on their heiliger lists.
I usually don’t comment but I’m just going to put my two cents in since I am a single guy, 23 years old, in the “parsha”.
First there are the same amount of girls in the world, and Jewish society, as there are boys. The difference is, as mentioned in previous posts, that there is a four year dating gap between boys and girls. Therefore, girls have 4 times the amount of individuals in the “parsha” than boys do.
Second, to get guys to date girls, I am reiterating what others have been saying throughout the years, is to let the boys and girls meet each other through controlled single events.
I personally do not look at the shidduch resumes of the girls that I go out with, due to the fact that, most of the time, what is written and what the girl is looking for is two, I can’t say totally but can say it does range from minor to significant, different things.
As mentioned above these are “resumes”. And as anyone who is working knows that you need to use specific terminology for resumes. Also, girls try to put down on their resumes what they think the shaddchan and boy is lookin for, not what they actually want. I made the mistake of actually believing the resumes and shadchannan when I started dating. I quickly stopped. It is easier to go out with a girl with knowing the bare minimum about her and listen to her as to what she is really looking for. I also only go out now with people who really know me and the girl.
I propose to get rid of the the concept of the “shidduch resume” (I really would like to know how it came into effect in the first place because when my older brother was dating, who is five years older than me, there was no such thing as a resume). If a shadchan KNOWS a girl and a boy, and I mean really knows them not just “I met this girl once for 5 MINUTES and she is perfect for you”, then they should “redd” the shidduch.
The professional shadchan business is like shooting fish in a barrel; you keep on shooting and eventually you will hit enough times to make you seem like you know what you are doing.
Just my “two cents”.
Bas Yisroel- I am sorry you misunderstood me. I was actually trying to say that girls are NOT property and they shouldnt be treated that way. I am wondering how you see that I said that? I am so against girls being treated like a new couch.
HSS: boy and girl end a shidduch. Now they both have to get and research their next candidates. WASTE OF TIME!!
This way if boy and girl end a shidduch, 2 days later they can be seeing other people not researching.
;
“As mentioned above these are “resumes”.”
No, they are not resumes, they are “personal bios”. It is a piece of paper with basic information that anyone would want to know about a potential shidduch. The piece of paper should not try to SELL anyone, nor should anyone try to sell themselves via a piece of paper. Once you start quibling what and how to write things, the piece of paper loses its worth. Want to know what someone is about? Read their bio, ask a few questions and either go out with them, or tell the shadchan you are not interested quickly and let the process start with someone else.
Jphone:
But that is not what they have become. They have become resumes to rival any I have seen in the business world (and in these days I have seen a lot). When was the last time you looked at a girls resume and it didn’t contain superflous data?
My mother just showed me a girls resume that was exalting everything she did, every honor and prize she had won, from second grade. This is not the only one I have seen, just the last one. I personally refused to go out with that girl because I did not want to go out with a girl who was vain enough to place such information down (or allowed her mother to place that information on her resume, as I eventually found out from the shadchan).
If it is only a bio, then it should contain the girls name, her immediate family (not grandparents, uncles second cousins twice removed, etc….), where she went to school (college, seminary, high school, and elementary (but I think that is too much), two or three sentences describing the girl and another two or three in what type of boy she is looking for.
On the bottom it should contain two or three references and THATS IT!
It should not say what the parents do, the life story of all her siblings, her “yichus” going back 6 generations and detailing each persons life, every minuscule detail of her life. You are dating the GIRL, not her family. If you want toi find out all this information this is what we call dating.
At the very least it would give the daters something to talk about and find interesting. Instead they go on dates knowing everything about each other before the two daters even get to talk or see each other. This, by the way, is a great BUSINESS tactic, to know everything about the customer before they walk through the door. However, from my personal point of view, it is NOT a good personal/relationship tactic to have.
i think another major issue with this whole parsha is that everyone is just toooo picky. I tried to redd a shiduch to a single friend of mine. I mentioned the boys name and she immediately asked me what his “type” was. I elaborated, but off the bat, she said no. She didnt bother looking into the shidduch. If every boy and every girl gave every single option on their “lists” a chance, there would be less singles in the world.
Jphone:
The reason there are 50 fewer girls on the island is because of population growth not because of boys tying up lists. I you want to even out the numbers on the island you have two choices
1. Either get boys on the island a bit younger
2. Or girls should first come on to the island a bit older.
all else is playing musical chairs without enough chairs…..
MayanDavash- If you are looking into the next shidduch before finishing this one, aren’t you saying that you arent sure that this one can work? So why go on with it? End it so the girl can do the next one. How would you feel if you heard the girl has “a list”? and you were just one of the people she was looking into? Be real and sincere. Only look at one at a time, and tell the shadchan that “I am busy right now but I will let you know if this one doesnt work out”. I know people who were researching one guy, and then heard “he is seeing someone”. Wait- why should a shadchan be setting him up with another girl if he is in the middle of something? Shadchanim should make sure that each side is available BEFORE giving the next name.
AZ: There is, I believe, a 3rd option. Kick some boys off the island. Perhaps start with those who keep girls on the waiting list for months at a time instead of offering invitations to the island. Every year that goes by with some girls not invited onto the island, creates the unbalanced situation that we are in today.
“But that is not what they have become. They have become resumes to rival any I have seen in the business world”
And that is part of the problem. the future of Klal Yisroel has become a commodities market. The commodities market is in a deep recession much like our economy. and much like our economy where the government has put billions of stimulus dollars into the economy, groups like NASI have injected money to stimulate the “shidduch market”.
“When was the last time you looked at a girls resume and it didn’t contain superflous data?”
Last night.
“My mother just showed me a girls resume that was exalting everything she did,”
That is the purpose of a resume. To sell a person. Is that what we want? I agree that it should contain the info you state and nothing more. Everything else IS nonesense, in my opinion.
Jphone –
Your idea of “girls having a list” is most likely already in play. True, every boy in BMG is walking around with a top 40 wish list, but the sad fact is, only top boys will ever get a date with the top girls. So while the remaining 400 or so “average” boys walk around kidding themselves about what their true marketablity is, the “arverage” girls are forced to wait until bocher’l wakes up and smells the coffee.
But ultimatly, EVERY boy marries a girl. It just seems to take longer, but in the end, boy and girl get married at the same time.
As far as the island analogy goes, at some point, the 50 oldest boys swim to another island, becuase the new competetion makes them look old and tired. Its just done with less fanfare
Jphone you write:
“There is, I believe, a 3rd option. Kick some boys off the island.”
Island (in my terminology) refers to people trying to date whether or not they are getting dates.
If (and to me it’s obvious that this is the case) the problem is not having enough men on the island relative to the number of women; Please explain how by kicking some boys off the island would help.
It seems like you are from the chevra who don’t believe that age gap is creating the inequity of numbers problem…….
BP Totty:
You are correct that boys don’t get everything on their wish list.
However
Since you used BMG as an example- Please note regarding the boys in BMG:
within 3 yrs of arriving they are almost all married.
After 5 yrs (aprox 27.5 yrs old) there are less than 2% left.
As for the girls that started dating at that same time as those boys……….
Let me get this straight, the girls put themselves on the list of who they consider to be “top boys”, they don’t go on dates because they are now on this list and waiting, and they blame the boys.
Both the boys and the girls are equally selective and equally at fault. There are plenty of guys without lists and without dates as well.
The age gap is not an issue. Stop trying to artificially create a mirage of a problem, for the sake of becoming the savior with the solution. Let people go out when they are ready (regardless of age) and to whom they feel will be a good match for them.
If you really want to help the situation, encourage more people to become part time shadchanim. Educate them as to how to do it properly (not just, he is a guy and you are a girl, so go out).
Also, please cut this trash about an island. Your theory begins with the fact that all are cut from the same cloth, following the same patterns in their life. The reality could not be further from the truth.
BP Torry- You said “But ultimatly, EVERY boy marries a girl. It just seems to take longer, but in the end, boy and girl get married at the same time.”
But what about the girls? In your statement, you said one thing that excludes the other. You said that every boy has a girl to marry, but that excludes the statement that every girl has a boy to marry. We are worried about the girls not finding boys, not the fact that the boys dont have someone to marry. That is what is meant by the shidduch crises. More boys than girls, boys marrying younger girls…. that all adds up to boys all finding someone to marry but many girls not finding someone. The oldest 50 boys leaving the island doesnt help. That makes more older girls without shidduchim.
AZ –
My point is, that even afer the 5 years, those 27 year old boys will marry older girls (it just takes them time to realize they don’t have the wow factor to get dates with 19-20 year olds (though why they would even want to is beyond me). At 25+, boys should feel comfortable with girls that are 23+
Seichel –
Once the dust settles, you will see that for every boy, there is a girl and vice versa. What I meant by “50 oldest boys leaving” is they start working in a new arena,one that is not as glitzy, and with less fanfare, but one that has girls their own age. The problem is, the boys have not taken the steps to be seen as serious adults (something unfortunatly not expected of a 23 year old boy)so while there are loads of highly accomplished women in their mid 20’s there are “no boys available”. Of course there are boys… they’re just unprepared to match up with thier female counterparts.
But in the end, all find their match, it just takes awhile.
(Tongue firmly planted in cheek)Perhaps we can solve the crises by implementing an extra year of schooling for girls. This way, they finish high school and seminary a year later so we’ll have less girls trying to swim over to the island and the number of boys and girls will be more balanced. Worried about paying for another year of high school? It definitely does not cost as much as supporting a couple for a year.
In my occupation, efficiencies of systems is a major issue for me. SO if there is a boy who is going out with someone and is approached about another prospect, why not do some basic research, tell the shadchan looks like a yes / no, but now I’m busy.
Asking for, and revealing personal information is not allowed…80
jphone:
I’m not sure why your tongue is firmly planted in cheek.
Adding a year to high school for girls would have an unbelievable positive impact on the shidduch crisis. (although It will not likely happen anytime soon, but maybe just maybe……)
BP Totty:
The problem is not those handul of 27 year olds. The problem is that the 98% who get married well before they turn 27 are marrying girls considerably younger than them thus ensuring many many girls remain single
AZ and jphone- Maybe that is why girls should be “in the freezer” and have to spend another year in school. If there is a takana that girls should not get married to a full year after seminary, then girls will go to school, get a job, ect. I’m all for the freezer. We cant make high school an extra year, because there are those who may want to go to a career-school/college ect. But just requiring that no girl gets married until 2 years after the normal 4 years of high school is not extreme. There is a lot that many girls want to do but are too busy “being on the market” or are afraid to start in case they get married and have to move ect. Give the men time to grow up and the women an extra year.
Also, why cant we make it so that the boys be more mature? Why are the girls so much more mature?
Just curious. How many girls between the age 20 and 23 do you know, that can not get a date at all?
Sure, adding a year of high school for girls might help the “shidduch crisis”, but it would be completely unfair for parents, teachers, and girls. How would the curriculum be decided? Why should girls stay in school for a thirteenth grade and still get the same diploma as the boys who graduate a year earlier? Why should we unnecessarily make the teachers and students work harder and the parents pay more money?
High school girls do not go out on shidduch dates. Adding a thirteenth grade would delay girls dating for a year. Instead, why don’t we let them graduate after twelfth grade and simply not date for another year? They don’t have to be in high school; they can be in seminary or college or have a job. Whatever they’re doing, they just won’t be dating.
More high school is not a solution.
“But just requiring that no girl gets married until 2 years after the normal 4 years of high school is not extreme.”
If that would be at all possible to implement GO FOR IT. Speak to school principals, rabbonim etc. I’ll be your biggest fan.
(but it won’t be easy!!)
jphone:
There are SO many girls 21-22 who have almost never dated. Try speaking to shadchanim mothers of girls etc. and see for yourself what is doing out there……
Since Dr. Pepper is the in-house math wiz, I’d like his professional opinion (although anyone else is also welcome to comment) about the mathematical veracity of the age gap theory.
If we make the following assumptions:
1) Every year an equal number of boys and girls are born.
2) No one dies before age 80.
3) All boys are married by age 29.
4) Every boy marries a girl born one calendar year after himself.
5) Every year 20 more babies are born than the previous year (half boys; half girls).
6) This scenario goes on exactly as described above for the past 500 years.
Question: In the past 200 years are there any girls over age 35 who is not married? Are there any girls who never married in the past 200 years (aside from the current crop of young ones – i.e. under 35)?
I’d like to see the mathematical conclusions with the proofs/equations if possible.
without doing any equations if we follow your hypothetical assumptions obviously 10 girls every year wouldn’t get married.
simply because
#4 Every boy marries a girl born one calendar year after himself.
#5 Every year 20 more babies are born than the previous year (half boys; half girls).
problem is, assumptions 1, 2,3,4,and 5 are all incorrect.
(not sure what 6 meant)
AZ: Considering that there are is the exact same number of boys and girls of every age, and every single boy got married, how is it possible that some girls did not get married? (Using the aforementioned assumptions.)
(I’d still like to see Dr. Pepper’s input.)
AZ: Remember we are taking any girl under 35 out of the equation. I want to know how (for example) between 100 and 200 years ago (in our scenario) every single guy got married by age 29, yet you are saying that some girls did not ever get married — even though there were exactly the same number of guys and girls in that time period.
Mezonos Maven-
1) Every year an equal number of boys and girls are born.
2) No one dies before age 80.
3) All boys are married by age 29.
4) Every boy marries a girl born one calendar year after himself.
5) Every year 20 more babies are born than the previous year (half boys; half girls).
6) This scenario goes on exactly as described above for the past 500 years.
b) Blue marbles (boys) go into a blue bucket, red marbles (girls) in a red bucket.
d) We start with empty buckets.
f) Round 2: 110 blue and 110 red marbles are placed in the appropriate buckets. The 100 blues from the first round are matched vs. 100 of the reds from the second round. This leaves 110 blues (all from the second round) and 110 reds (100 from round 1, 10 from round 2).
g) Round 3: 120 blue and 120 red marbles are placed in the appropriate buckets. The 110 blues from the second round are matched vs. 110 of the reds from the third round. This leaves 120 blues (all from the third round) and 120 reds (100 from round 1, 10 from round 2 and 10 from round 3).
Bottom line:
Whether or not this relates to shiduchim is another story.
Perhaps the reason that there is a disparity in the number of marriageable young men and women in the frum community lies in the different rates the two groups diverge over time.
Suppose about an equal number of boys and girls are born in a community in the year 1989.
By 2009 the numbers may no longer be equal for these 20 year olds.
It appears that there are more girls than boys in a given age group.
Perhaps fewer boys than girls survive to a given age due to accidents or illness.
Perhaps a greater number of boys than girls have mental health problems that make them unsuitable for Shidduchs at that time.
Perhaps a greater number of boys than girls “drop out’ of the yeshiva world and are thus no longer in the pool of shidduch candidates.
Perhaps if we know why there is an inequality we can take steps to remedy the problem.
ICOT- thanks for putting it into a math problem… i guess this proves that high school math is important for the real world (for all of those out there who deny this)
yitzy99- good points. this gives real reasons (besides for the math in ICOT’s post) for why there is such a disparaging difference between numbers of girls and boys. I was wondering if the number of boys going off the derech/not staying yeshivish/dropping out of yeshiva or high school is that much greater than the number of girls doing the same. It seems that boys are more prone to sports/driving accidents. boys are likelier to participate in riskier behavior.. and they do smoke which puts them at a higher risk for certain illnesses…
ICOT:
Thanks for the detailed explanation. The result is there are 10 additional girls every year who never get married (using our imaginary scenario). So if this scenario happened from the year 1500 to present (2009), you would have 10 girls each and every year who never get married (in every single year), while every boy can and does get married. (The first year this setup starts is not part of my concern for this excersize, nor is the latest years.)
This obviously works on pen and paper using simple math. But the mental hangup that is causing me indigestion that I cannot seem to swallow, is how is it mathematically possible that if there are EXACTLY the same number of boys and girls… EVERY boy can get married, while some girls cannot (due to a lack of boys.) I must be missing something here.
BTW I discounted other factors, such as differences in the gender ratio, survival rates, OTD ratio between genders, etc. since I
a) want to see if/how the age gap issue is mathematically possible
b) these other factors are statistically unknown in the frum community and
c) the ONLY solution for a numerical plurality of girls vs. boys is reinstitution of polygamy. There is simply no other way to insure the marriage of all girls, if there are more marriageable girls than boys.
havesomeseichel-
The math used in this case is elementary, Watson 🙂
(Ironically, I had to self-learn HS math to help the junior “Trys” with school work, despite the difficulty yours truly had back in the day).
“Perhaps a greater number of boys than girls “drop out’ of the yeshiva world and are thus no longer in the pool of shidduch candidates.”
Put another way – perhaps a greater number of girls want “learning boys” than there are “learning boys” (or however you want to descrive those boys that are so desirable to girls)?
Jphone, I think the emphasis for the girls has been, look for a learning boy, vs. look for a true ben Torah (which one can be even if not in full time learning) with whom you can build a bayis neeman. This has put tremendous pressure on the boys.
icot or dr pepper, any explanation of how when starting with exactly the same numbers one gender can all get married, whilst the other has some every single year who can never marry, would be appreciated. (I saw it work as you showed above with mathematical formulas, but still don’t chap the logic.)
logic is that in your hypothetical scheme every there are 10 more girls entering the dating pool than boys ….. it’s NOT rocket science
The more this gets discussed the more I am leaning towards accepting the fact that there are simply not as many “best boys in the yeshiva who are/will sit and learn full time for the next 20 years” as there are girls that come back from seminary, looking for just such a boy.
jphone: here’s a questions for you
who do the “not” best boys marry? because by all accounts they are getting married
AZ: They marry the girls smart enough not to wade into “the best” pool.
Jphone:
According to your theory there shouldn”t be enough girls around in the “not best” pool for all the boys. after all you write there are more girls in the “best pool” than there are boys”. Which should mean there are more boys in the “not best” pool than girls.
Yet even the boys in the “not best” pool all seem to get married??
Please explain how you answer this obvious problem with your theory (otherwise known as the “there are more good girls than good boys” theory)
AZ, maybe you can come up with something better than “there are more good girls than good boys” for this aspect of the “crisis”. If you persist in calling it that, you are contributing to the problem of labeling boys who aim for anything less than Rosh Yeshiva of the world, super long term learning, etc. NOT good boys. And this is is terribly, terribly wrong.
Besides the learning gap issue, there is the issue of boys going OTD, much more serious.
I feel that all this must be addressed as seriously and energetically as the demographics.
There are lots of boys in the “best” pool because they are put there by themselves, their parents or by virtue of the fact that they are in a “top flight” yeshiva.
There is a “crisis” because way more girls return from seminary on a high, looking to marry someone who will sit and learn for a long time. Realisticly, how many such guys who really can (not who say they want to) exist. The pool of girls wanting “x” is way bigger than the available pool of “x”. More girls looking for “x” get added to the mix year after year, but proportionately not as many “x men” get added to the mix leaving an imbalance.
Often overlooked is the rather large group of older guys who find themselves in a pool where there are not enough girls. Those fine bachurim who are honest enough with themselvs, and everyone else and are not saying “ill sit and learn for 10 years” because they cant. They are kovea ittim 2-3 or more hours every day, wonderful ballei middos but they are not “learners”.
They are the ones who usually end up marrying the 23+ girls who change their outlook from “learner” to a “ben torah”.
JPhone: if you believe that total number of dating boys and girls are equl than your
theory doesn’t make any sense. How could there be so many more single girls than single guys.
if there are not enought x men for the x girls. Than there should be not enough y girls for the y men. WHERE are all these y men???? THEY ARE MARRIED as well
it is really NOT doctorate level math
Tzippy: it is not I who have labeled “good” boys not “good boys”. Frankly that not part of my terminology as my whole interest is figuring how to give ALL girls an opportunity to get married. The present inequity of numbers doesn”t allow that. You see I don’t really care what label the unfourunate leftover girls are given. In my book it is all tragic and gong forward it is clearly AVOIDABLE, if we only pay attention…..
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