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The religious issue would be “Baanu MiKidusha Chamurah LiKidusha Kala”, Chazal were concerned that frumkeit shouldn’t come across as a kulah.
Ooomis – This is oen reason among many, that I oppose dates being made through the shadchan, as opposed to the boy and girl talking on the phone or (dare I say it????) on-line and setting up a date themselves.
I have been wondering about why dates are set-up by shadchan (as of the last decade or so). I assumed it was to avoid the boy and girl remaining friendly afterwords. Is that correct?
Siman 220 is about Taanis Chalom. Did you mean 240?, or were you hinting at something else?
I am a Divorced Guy in his early 40’s and I am constantly set-up (by Shadchanim) with women 8-10 years younger than me. I will tell you that 19 out of 20 women in their early 30’s will not go out with me because of an 8 (or more) year age-gap. In my experience decisions about age-gap are almost never affected by how many guys are or aren’t available. Women are just not comfortable with the age-gap and they would prefer to continue to wait for a guy with a gap of less than 8 years. In my experience every single shidduch that I accepted with a closer age-gap, the girl agreed to go out with me. So the logical conclusion is that the age-gap is HUGE for Bais Yaakov girls. Someone posted about a non-jew. In those situations people meet and date without thinking about marriage necessarily so age gaps can proceed naturally. Large age-gaps are much, much more common in the non-jewish world. I know of many of them through work. They develop naturally. In the shidduch system, however, age is one of the most important factors.
I think the sites are great. Save a lot of time!
Oomis – re-read your post. Your are totally comfortable with your daughters desire to be able to wear heels with her husband, but imply that guy’s who don’t find heavy women attractive have something wrong with them. Talk about a double standard. Aint nothing a guy can do about his height, but men and women can work-out and diet to improve their figure and weight.
My qualifications to opine are: Yeshiva guy, scored in 170s on LSAT, was accepted to Columbia with a BTL and attended a lower tier school for the full scholarship. Made Law Review and graduated in top 2% of my class. Worked in BIGLAW for a decade and am now unemployed.
In my experience. Knowing how to learn helps a lot for your usual exams, contracts, con law, etc. Professors don’t care about style hey want concise analysis arguing both sides. If you know how to learn you will excel. Also, you will get the hang of writing the exams before everyone else, which will help your GPA. Not having writing skills will hurt you for legal writing, but you will sweat it and do ok.
The market is horrible now. Read the recent New York Times articles on this. Think very carefully before spending big bucks on lawschool. This may not correct for a decade.
Hatslocha!
1. Telling myself I can do whatever it is I want to do tomorrow. I.e., trying to convince myself to wait a day.
2. Learning Torah (paga bicha menuval zeh moshchehu libeis hamidrash)
3. Vigorous Exercise
4. Repeat
I am so impressed by the erudition of the various posters. Yasher Koach!
Hatslocha!!! This is very exciting. I hope it works!! 🙂
Depends on how old they are and their community. Why don’t you just ask your friend to ask the boy whether it should go to him or the parents.
The cheese is a bigger issue than the pepperoni. The pepperoni is “reicha” or “vapor”, since you don’t know that there was pepperoni in the oven at the same time I don’t believe there is any bosar bichalav. However, there might be lard in the dough and there certainly is gvinas akum, which is ossur.
I’m also shocked! I have never hear of this in a black-hat community. It’s even unusual in MO world and only occurs with far-left MO.
1. Call the Boy or the Boy’s parents. Tell them about the girl. If they say yes you call the Girl or the Girl’s parents.
2. If you are closer to the girl or believe the boy will definitely say yes, but that the girl might not want you might consider suggesting it to the girl first.
3. The goal is to avoid making anyone feel bad and if someone has to feel bad it’s better if the guy feels bad.
Don’t know. Read something nice about Tu B’shvat from R. Avigdor Miller. It is like Gan Eden because we eat fruit that are available without b’zeias apecha toachal lechem.
Hi BY Girl :),
I am inherently a softie (emotionally), but after many years of introspection I hope I will get it right next time around.
Ofcourse – 20 years ago when Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation started I thought to myself. What a gimmick. Everyone knows L’H is ossur, but now I will be the first one to admit that they have made a big impact in the frum world. The same can be done with shidduchim. Maybe I should start working on this. I don’t have much money and I am single, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to start.
I agree with apushatayid, if we can educate people that the actual act of working on a shidduch is a mitzva like visiting a sick person, nichum aveilim, learning torah, etc. they will engage without looking necessarily to results. I think that is the key.
Peru & Priah
The stack of Hundreds. I heard the story about Jackie O. She was asked how she married Onassis who was much shorter than her. To which she replied “he’s not shorter when he stands on his money.”
AZ- my suggestion is that people should look at it as a chesed just like people visit the sick, etc. Nothing personal, but I don’t think paying people for dates is the key to motivating them. Teach them that its a chesed. Let’s have a “Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation” focused on teaching people to work on shidduchim. Let’s have a “Machsom LiPI” focused on spending time making shidduchim. The way to crack this nut is to inspire people with great mitzva. Paying for dates is a good idea for high school teachers of others in chinuch, but for the hamon am it should be about being insipred to do a chessed.
Brooklyn Yenta – would you be open to sharing your approximate age. I am wondering whether your comments on every divorce being based on a very good reason and your earlier comments about the hefker behavior of your female divorced friends is because they are in a certain age bracket. I.e., are younger people more mushpa by secular society and more likely to get divorced and more likely to lead a hefker life?
According to my sister who is an active, litvish, shadchan in Lakewood, this was how it was 15-20 years ago (i.e., going without shadchan after 4-5 dates), but now the frum litvish use a shadchan all the way and engagement is discussed through the shadchan as well.
I am referring to below:
“I was wondering the same thing….you can keep the shadchan as a back up support for real issues that do come up…but normally you drop the shadchan and he makes the dates after the 4th (around)
unless you do the 5 dates and engaged…don’t see him during engagement and a year later you get married thing..you never know..I guess to each his own..”
My ex-wife proposed, she said to me. “I think you are more ready than you think”? Unfortunately she was wrong.
SAC – In my experience every shadchan I have ever met is very helpful, the problem is that they are not capable of handling he work-load especially given the inefficiencies in the system. IMO the necessary hishtadlus involves raising community awareness so that each married person in klal yisroel donates maaser of their free time to making shidduchim. A powerful grass roots effort is the way to address this issue. As many posters have noted, in today’s velt families don’t socialize with other families so boys don’t know their sister’s friends and girls don’t know their brother’s friends. This leads to a tremendous limitation in friends redding shidduchim. We have to involve a flood of new people redding shidduchim.
We should start a movement to get married people to give “maasar” of their free time to work on shidduchim.
Professional – In your opinion how much should a single defer to shadchan. If Single says I don’t see it, but shadchan says I do, should single just go out?
Shadchanim by far and in my experience their suggestions are always on point. I sometimes wish they would push the envelope and redt me to women whom they think would say no, as in… what’s the harm in trying, but they usually won’t. They usually only redt a shidduch when they think the girl will probably say yes. That’s my experience.
Of course at the end of the day the boy and girl make the decision, however, we are all influenced by people around us and shadchanim have profound influence on people. If shadchanim keep suggesting certain types of matches we start to listen. Which is why I believe that part of being a good shadchan is pushing the envelope.
I know many fine men who have excellent social skills and vice versa many women who don’t. It’s hard to generalize about these things.
Hi Wolf – I just started posting on these forums and so far the one post they rejected was IMO perfectly kosher and they rejected it out of hand without editing. The only think I could find potentially objectionable is a reference to the stage in life when I woman cannot have children anymore. In the torah this is called “Chadal LiHiyos La Orach KaNashim”, I used the secular term. Hopefully next time they will edit instead of reject out of hand.
A second reason why older guys often want to date younger women is because they want to try and have children with their future wife. I put this in a second post because I figured the mods might delete it for being Politically Incorrect.
Someone said: “if they can be ok with it later, let them be ok now”… Life doesn’t work like that. Initial attraction is critical to starting the process of building intimacy and then once their is a strong emotional intimacy the bond will withstand physical changes. That is why Hkb’h made younger people (guys and girls) more attractive than older people. This is one of the challenges for older singles (divorced and never married). Our heads are still looking for what we found attractive 20 years ago while the available options for dating are 20 years older. This is one of the reasons (albeit a shallow one, there are others as well) why older guys often try to date younger women. Additional reasons in next post.
Should shadchanim suggest shidduchim with an age gap? Let’s say a shadchan has resumes from 30 divorced women. 10 younger than 29, 10 between 29 and 34 and 10 older than 34. A divorced guy walks in the door who is 42. The shadchan suggests the 10 older women. The guy insists that he has been dating for a while and he only wants to go out with the women who are 34 or younger. Should the shadchan suggest him to the younger women? Yes or no? Does it change if she has not had a suggestion for the younger women in 2 weeks? Is it the shadchan’s role to encourage people to be more open-minded?
Should I shadchan make her own decisions or present many options and let the singles decide?
R. Mattisyahu’s actual words were along the lines of the “straight way”, as opposed to someone who deviates. The family language was attempt at explanation. Of course what is the “straight way” fr each person is affected by their family, but by other factors as well. He was trying to explain why Eliezer had to check the middos of Rivka even after Avroham had a nevuah that Rivka, Yitzchok’s “bas zug” was born. He mentioned this in passing so I don’t have much more to say to explain his views.
According to R. Mattisyahu Salomon if a person goes “biderech hayashor” and basically follows their family chinuch they get their Zivug Rishon. IF someone chooses their own path then often they get a Zivug Sheini “lifi maasav”, according to their level of yiddishkeit.
Proposal re redding shidduchim. The Gedolim should encourage every married person to spend one hour a month working on shidduchim for non-relatives. Remember the famous story with R. Yisroel Salanter where someone told him he only has 15 minutes a day to learn and R. Yisroel told him to learn mussar. So he will find more time to learn. I believe that if every married man and women in klal yisroel would spend one hour a month on shidduchim for non-relatives people would find much more time and this problem will be alleviated.
Ofcourse — tell your friends to start redding shidduchim to other people, before they know it those people will return the favor. I know a Rov who was having a hard time with shidduchim for his kids. He decided to start redding for other people and b’h his kids are now married. We all need to devote time to redding for others and this matzav can be improved.
I posted a response, but the mods nixed it. I guess it was not politically correct.
hi Ooomis, I believe I recognize you from CalmKallahs?, or somewhere else. Let me respond to your post.
“Divorced guy – if you are 36, I sincerely hope you are not trying to date girls in their early-mid twenties. And just to let you know, many girls, aged 25-28, whom I know personally, who go to Singles events, DETEST it when divorced guys in the 36-40 group hit on them. They are too polite to say, “go away and pick on someone your own age,” but that is exactly what they are thinking. It totally creeps them out that a guy that much older than they, is trying to get their number.”
I happen to be a very perceptive guy and I never ask a girl out directly if there is a significant age gap unless I am fairly sure she will say yes. In fact, many of those girls who are “eeiked out” often confide in me that they feel that way because they don’t perceive me to be interested in them. I will only ask a girl out if I am fairly sure she will say yes, so I don’t usually go out with the women you describe. I stick to shadchanim for the most part, or to asking someone out who has already indicated their interest to me. And it does happen, most women I date are 9+ years younger than me.
Now getting back to those women who are “eeiked out”…. In my opinion they are making a very, very big mistake and will regret it when they are older and more mature. Frankly, I just don’t get it. They are in their early 30s and have a very limited time to find someone to marry if they want to have children. Added to that the paucity of decent guys out there. I am not judging them, I just think that practically speaking it makes absolutely no sense for them not to consider us older guys.
I am not judging them and I hope they will Be’ezras Hashem find their zivug when Hashem sends him. However, I for one constantly re-think my approach to dating and constantly challenge my presumptions. I wonder if those women who can’t stand it when an older guy approaches them are doing the same.
“Tav LiMeitav Tan Du”
Not enough shidduchim being redt. People assuming that an older single wouldn’t be open to an “out of the box” shidduch.