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PAA, excellent question. I haven’t denied, per se, the possibility that society, rather than individuals, are at fault. I just haven’t heard a valid complaint.
The context shidduchim101 put it into is wrong. How can we possibly agree with the anger expressed by someone who has a totally different value system regarding marriage!
I reject your notion that wrxare at fault for not teaching women Gemara, because there are other, competing values, and I think we’re correct.
I would be more than happy to consider a valid critique against “society”, but I haven’t yet heard one. I haven’t seen any specific examples of how our values incorrectly manifest themselves.
Oh, and PAA, of course my reaction was way over the top (and I hope you took my comments in the humorous manner intended), but the subtle point I was making in sincerity was that it’s not for us to overhaul a system put in place by Chaza”l with eternal, everlasting values and truth at its core, but rather, to work as best within that system to the betterment of everyone.
Shidduchim101, thank you for responding and clarifying. I didn’t think you were aligning yourself with secular values. I just think that considering that the issue comes from the Torah’s value system, which places a high priority on marriage, the idea of anger is misplaced, and your supervisor’s reaction is irrelevant. What is important is education for us married folks as to what we can avoid which is demeaning, and what we can do which is more appropriately respectful.
Syag, who’s “we”?
PAA, there are plenty of opportunities for single women to accomplish great things without horving over a Rashb”a, and as I said, the impetus is not on society to shift its focus away from marriage.
Those who aren’t married should do as Syag did, and focus on their achievements and accomplishments. That’s not society’s job, that’s their job, and as I’ve said several times, individuals have to have the proper sensitivity towards everyone according to their needs, which, regarding singles, includes focusing on and celebrating who they are and what they accomplish rather than any other future accomplishments which are as of yet unfulfilled.
Syag,
The difference between you and shidduchim101 (welcome to the CR!) is the following statement from her:
You were able to be strong, and value yourself for who you were. Our society hasn’t done much to directly label what it means to be an older single, it’s an indirect product of the great value we place on marriage. It’s a tough thing to be excluded, but you were able to get along fine, as you say, you “didn’t mind”.
So is it about anger/blame towards frum society, or is it about the “older” single valuing herself and her important role, right now, to not feel an outcast?
PAA, I hope you’re leaving 10% of the girls’ schools open.
That’s it! You’ve done it! You’ve solved the shidduch crisis!
We should encourage 10% of BY girls to dedicate their lives to mastering the ever growing corpus of shas and poskim. No yeshiva guys will want to marry them, and they won’t need to get married anyhow, because they will be entirely fulfilled anyhow. The numbers of eligible boys and girls will be the same, and voila! No more shidduch crisis, and you can go back to discussing techeiles, and you can continue to spend lots of time delving deeply into the sugya of why we shouldn’t spend a lot of time delving deeply into sugyas.
Now can you please solve the tuition crises?
🙂
I think we should portray these values as very important, and I dont think we are over emphasizing them.
Pretty well summed up.
If someone were out of a job, would you think they “have a right” to blame society for valuing work?
If someone didn’t know how to learn, would he “have a right” to be angry at frum society for valuing talmud Torah?
I honestly think that had she thought it through and come to the same conclusions that we did, she would have written very differently.
Ben Levi, in case you haven’t been following the thread, the issue here is not what the woman should do, and not what beis din should do. It’s what the husband should do.
I may agree with you regarding his right to use the get as leverage to be given what is rightfully his (and Sam will likely still disagree), but Lior said nothing about custody arrangements in his case.
It seems to me that he’s avoiding the question, because he switched from “propriety, good behavior, righteousness and Gan Eden” to what a beis din would say.
I think that my conclusion (to what I admit was a wall of text) was that a lot of the issues that singles have are caused in some way by the family- and child-centric values and infrastructure of Judaism, which we can’t really do much about. All we can try to do is promote person-by-person awareness.
That’s pretty much* what I’m saying. My objection is to the anger and the blame.
*Except, rather than “which we can’t really do much about”, I would say, “which we are proud of” (the values and infrastructure, not ch”v the pain).
I’m not a dayan, and I don’t like to answer shailos about which I’m merely guessing. If I had to guess, probably ???? ?????, not ???? ?????.
What is your recommendation in such a case regarding “propriety, good behavior, righteousness and Gan Eden”? That is the topic of the OP, after all.
?????? ?????? is in fact saying that it comes from ????.
He seems to say (you suggested this) that they’re bad in different ways, and that the badness of ???? is the resulting ??????.
Lich’oira, influence moves a person’s nekudas habechirah. Thus, the effect of a certain influence might be that a person will not consider a particular choice, though he is still a free agent. Anyone?
I would say it differently; it can make the same choice easier, but it’s still within the realm of bechirah chofshis.
I think where R’ Dessler’s nekudas habechirah is not universally accepted is in his denial of bechirah in certain cases, but I don’t think anyone disagrees that some choices are more difficult than others, and that the level of difficulty changes.
He was saying that the non-frum take their cues from us about what we treat as really important, and then they do only that.
So if a jew in vilna is mezalzel shabbos but still doesn’t do melacha, then the jew in paris does melacha.
Nothing mystical.
Sure, it’s mystical. It’s based on the yesod that what we do here influences the upper spheres, which then influences the lower spheres, which is why there is no geographical limitation.
What you’re saying is true, but if was limited to that, the example would not have been Vilna/Paris.
What a dolt.
WS, I assume that was addressed to me, not GAW, and it wasn’t a Freudian slip, I can assure you that I do value singles.
You are confusing what I addressed to PAA and what I am showing displeasure at in this young lady’s letter. I think it’s good that frum society values marriage, and we might agree that this causes hurt to singles, but that shouldn’t cause us to look negatively at frum society or its values. Yet, this is what she’s done.
Gelilah is a rather big kibud. It is questionable why it is often given to children rather than to adults.
Yes, and popa’s misunderstood point in that thread (he can correct me if I’m mistaken) was that regardless of the origin, the fact that it is in fact usually given to children makes it an insult when it’s given to an adult for the reason of his being unmarried.
Here’ a link to that thread:
I don’t see where I implied that it eases the pain. That was not my point. My point was that her blame for that pain is misdirected.
I think they are all forms of or result from ????.
The fact is older singles are sometimes made to feel like second class citizens, whether intentionally or not
I agree, and I addressed that. My issue is her agreeing to her secular supervisor that it is frum society which is to blame, rather than directing her grievance to individuals who may say or do insensitive things.
I missed HaLeiVi’s mazel tov until tonight (????”?), so I missed the shalom zachor. Maybe you can post some leftover beer and arbis.
Mazel Tov, may you be zoche ????? ?????, ?????, ??????? ?????.
Note that I’m NOT negating the value of marriage, especially in a Torah society, but rather noting that even those who are NOT currently married are still capable of living happy lives full of meaning and value, without crying at the approach of each birthday or shrieking every time the phone rings.
I fully agree. I am merely taking this writer to task for blaming and being angry at frum culture for her very understandable feelings. She should indeed try to live a life full of meaning and value, and recognize that at this point in her life, Hashem has a tafkid for her other than raising a family.
At the same time, I am recognizing that I, and others who through chasdei Hashem have been blessed with our own families, should do our best to make singles feel like important, valued members of klal Yisroel.
In fact, just today, I showed how much I value an older bachur by giving him the tremendous kibud of gelilah. 🙂
And your father didn’t object?
You are correct, though; I shouldn’t have called her heartfelt letter a response, because it didn’t really address what Mr. Rechnitz wrote.
Sure popa, irrelevant to you, because you’re such a sensitive guy. For me, though, I want to know what people are feeling, because I might otherwise make them feel bad (in this case by pitying them).
The (ir)relevant passage:
Here’s my issue. Are we, the frum community, really so horrible that we degrade and devalue singles, while the secular world, that bastion of proper middos, has got it right? Of course not!
What’s going on here is that we’ve set the bar high for ourselves, according to the Torah’s values. We strive to live a life of meaning. We value our connection to Hashem and his Torah, and part of our job is to share this with others. We value tremendously the contributions of all, but HKB”H wants us to share our beautiful heritage with future generations.
If our lives consisted merely of working to earn money to eat to have strength to work, with some partying thrown in, why wouldn’t a twenty five year old with her whole life ahead of her be the envy of others? This same “value” system has them discarding the elderly, r”l.
We, on the other hand, who place value primarily (we hope) on the eternal, place great importance on raising a family. This in no say diminishes the accomplishments of the not yet married, but the fact remains that they share our values and want to contribute to klal Yisroel in SS meaningful way as possible. All humans have an innate desire to bring future generations, but we, as frum Yidden, on a different plane. Inevitably, someone who hasn’t yet married and had children feels “left out”. This is also why many childless couples in our community are in such acute pain.
Our values are not ch”v so messed up that we value people less than our counterparts in secular society; it’s the precise opposite.
I think the author of that piece should reassess her feelings toward our “culture” and not so readily agree to her well meaning but shallow thinking boss.
BTW, popa, I’m not being sarcastic. I similarly value the insight gleaned from your hagbah thread. It was an angle I hadn’t considered much, certainly not enough.
Gavra, if you think homeschooling is an option, than I suppose you wouldn’t have an issue we with a kid being expelled for minor misbehavior which the school is too lazy to deal with, or, for that matter, for a school to discriminate based on narrow differences in “frumkeit”.
You’re in the small minority, and I suppose I’m not talking to you. Shalom al Yisroel.
MAILBAG: A Single’s Perspective – An Open Response To Article By Reb Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz
A well written, heartrending response. I have one issue with which I disagree with the writer; I’ll try bl”n to post later or on motzaei Shabbos.
I looked at a CH website. I’ll tell you what happened so far; they had a day or two off.
Let me know when hundreds of girls flood the public school system. It didn’t happen yet, and won’t happen.
Gavra, “we” would be the gedolei Yisroel who tell menahalim that they can’t expel a student for poor behavior; kol shekein for lack of funds. And no, a school cannot expel an existing student and push it off to other schools.
ZD, conceptually, it doesn’t matter (if the administrator of St. Vincent’s had turned down a patient bleeding to death, he’s a rasha even if the hospital closes) and, tell me please, did those girls end up in public school?
You don’t need an exorcist, you can just buy a treadmill.
Does this mean HaLeiVi gets a mazel tov?
I thought you weren’t cynical.
ZD and Gavra, I agree that bills need to be paid, the question is only how. All I am saying is that if we view throwing a child out of school as pikuach nefesh, it’s simply not on the table, and solutions must be found elsewhere. It makes no difference who is at fault and who should put their money where their mouth is, it’s a non-starter (to borrow a term from Hakatan. Don’t worry, I’ll give it back by the next Zionism thread 🙂 ).
Gavra, a thought for you:
How would your analogy go if someone without insurance was brought into an emergency room with a life threatening condition and the hospital administrator refused to treat him? Would you compare him with Yankel the grocer?
We know that when principals want to expel a student for behavior issues, they are told to dan it as pikuch nefashos. Does it suddenly become less of a pikuach nefesh issue if the reason is financial?
They have mussar seder, and they give vaadim for chassanim. There are also usually rebbeim who are excellent baalei eitzah, and more importantly, role models.
Goq, you’re on fire.
I just checked it out (pun intended), and the tablet promotion is still on, but for business checking.
For personal checking, they’re offering up to $150 back, based on the transactions you make.
You can buy a toaster with the money if you’d like.
Lol, his didn’t need K9.
Nowadays they give out tablets. Flushing Bank recently had such a promo, but I don’t know what’s current.
She shouldn’t do it only to expect him to reciprocate. Anybody in a relationship needs to appreciate the other unconditionally.
I do agree with you that she should be open with him, but if she demands appreciation and he feels confronted by her, it may backfire. I think she needs to try my idea first, and if she is sincere about it but he still doesn’t get it, at that point, she may need to be more direct.
The question you need to ask yourself is if you are physically overwhelmed, or emotionally overwhelmed (the answer might be that it’s a combination).
If you simply don’t have enough time to do all you need to do, you might need to hire some (more?) cleaning help. However, it’s likely that you’re mostly emotionally overwhelmed. If this is the case, it might just be that you’re feeling underappreciated. Don’t blame your husband for it; we guys just don’t get how difficult it is to run a home and take care of a baby. If he were asking, I would tell him to make sure he lets you know how much he appreciates all of your hard work and to help out more, but he’s not the one asking.
So here’s my advice, and it’s good advice even if I’ve misdiagnosed the issue: make sure you let him know how much you appreciate what he does. He works hard to bring home a paycheck, and still has the good sense and decency to pitch in at home. It’s important that you mean it, too. If you make the effort to show your appreciation for him, you’ll feel better about things. And who knows? Maybe he’ll reciprocate and show his appreciation for your hard work and efforts as well.
Hatzlochah, and much nachas from the baby.
Old man, your excesssive usse of esssess makesss your possst not ssso eassy to underssstand.
This latest mareh makom isn’t against iyun, it’s against fake iyun to show off.
I feel bad for your married sister, jewishfrumgirl. Nebach, a guy dumped her after ten dates, plus, her sister is going through a hard time as well.
I was definitely joking, but if you don’t mind, no comment about whether there was any truth to it.
Popa, why are you reading imamother? I thought you need to be a woman to use imamother.
Oh, right. Never mind.
You are looking for a cheap way out, and I don’t mean financially. You need to daven, and on a different level, someone who understands you with whom you can speak. That might be a former teacher, a rebbetzin, a rov, or, likely, a therapist. I wish you much hatzlochah, but I reiterate that you’re approaching your issue(s) the wrong way.
What in the world is with these threads?
She’s looking for a mekubal.
That’ll be $180.
I’ll answer your questions for $180 each.