Dr. Pepper

modche1-

Dr pepper I have to tell you that what nasi is doing at the matzev that it is right now the only thing that will help is for more people to get into shadchanis,ofcourse if you take it apart people can feel bad and insulted but i think more good will come out of this.There is no perfect solution but something has to get done asap

Don’t get me wrong- I do respect your opinion- but I disagree with you here.

We don’t need more shadchanim per se, we need more competent shadchanim and shadchanim who are more competent.

In my personal opinion, one major part of this crisis is that many good guys don’t want to deal with shadchanim. If they can have friends or neighbors suggest a shidduch for them why would they want to deal with professional shadchanim and have to put up with their despicable practices?

The ones who get hurt the most are the OOT girls who rely on professional shadchanim as a lifeline.

modche1-

I’m sorry if I offended you.

You seem to be from the .1% of shadchanim that are involved for the correct reasons and are a mentch.

May you have much hatzlacha and may all shadchanim follow your footsteps.

P.S. WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I NEEDED YOU!

modche1-

After one shidduch that you made ,you are now entitled to voice your opinion on shadchanim.

I never made a shidduch but I feel that as a victim of too many shadchanim I am entitled to voice my opinion.

After you set them up and they start going out get ready to become a therapist .

That is part of the problem right there! A shadchan is not a therapist- a shadchan is a go between or an agent. A shadchan has no business doing research or asking for details as to why one of the parties is ending the relationship. Leave that to a Rov or some other professional.

In my opinion it is extremely unfair for the other party to discuss anything with the shadchan as a shadchan can- and will- hold anything against them to the fullest extent. Keep in mind that one may get the wrong impression of another person after meeting them for a few hours and a shadchan will hold it against them for eternity.

From a personal experience- what should have been a 4 hour drive for one date turned into an 8 hour drive due to an accident with numerous fatalities. What should have been a 30 minute drive to the location I was taking her to, turned into a 2 hour drive, also due to the traffic. I asked her if we could go out to eat since I hadn’t eaten in 12 hours but she refused saying that she ate already. (I was asking from a humanitarian point of view, not a social point of view.)

Anyway- she told the shadchan that I’m slow, rude (for yawning too much and for suggesting that we go to eat so late at night) and some other “compliments” to show her gratitude for wasting 36 hours and $150+ on her.

The shadchan never called back with any other suggestions (no big loss). Don’t you think a more appropriate approach would have been to call my Rebbe or family Rav to see if I’m always like this, or maybe I just wasn’t myself due to the circumstances?

To end on a positive note-

At my brothers Aufroff someone brought up an old story that my parents never knew about. He also went into extreme detail and grossly exaggerated the whole incident. (The story itself, while nothing to brag about, was a mistake anyone could make- but my brother did an excellent job at hiding it for years. The exaggerated story made him look like a fool in front of his family and future family.)

My parents were very annoyed and although the whole place was laughing- my father who was sitting next to my brother said he had this look on his face like he couldn’t wait until the guy would finish.

So yes, it does happen but hopefully not that often.

modche1-

I feel bad saying this but the reputation and treatment that professional shadchanim live with is both earned and deserved.

A shadchan is supposed to set two people up and be a go between. A shadchan is not supposed to do the research, lie, stalk, twist arms, threaten and be a psychologist. (I’ll stop there in order to not give any ideas to any shadchanim who may be reading this.)

onTheList-

How did you get on the list? AZ said he didn’t take a single cent yet?

I actually remember waking up to that on the news 21 years ago.

yehudayona-

If the member is at work and got a ride there or took public transportation, his car should still be near his house so that if he has to go on a call when he comes home he doesn’t have to go searching for his car. His wife should park it there when she is done shopping.

She should not use it while visiting friends or while shopping.

I hope this addresses your concerns.

November 4th-

Yitzchok Rabin made his last public speech.

gavra_at_work-

I think you may be getting at one of the roots of the shidduch crisis.

gavra_at_work-

I would hope that once one reaches twenty they realize that they are not a youngster anymore and that they have to mature.

If not then I agree with you 100% that if at 22 (or 40 for that matter) they are still on the same maturity level of a teenager then they should not even be thinking about getting married.

Jam-

Thanks for disagreeing in a respectful way. Please keep in mind that my opinions are … opinions. If you can convince me that I’m wrong, I’ll side with you. Unfortunately your post has not convinced me for a number of reasons:

1. We’re not talking about other people/ communities, we’re referring to ourselves and our own communities. For better or for worse, the yeshiva structure was designed so that talmidim have minimal responsibilities so they can devote their full energy towards their learning. Marriage is an enormous responsibility.

2. I don’t know of any other communities that have a higher rate of successful marriages than ours. I may be wrong but I’m not trying to open a can of worms here.

3. Even if on the outside it looks like a couple is happily married- you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

4. Check out the Shalom Bayis area of imamother.com. You’ll see many, many cases where people who were too young to get married got married. (Please be aware that their moderators are not as good as ours, if you know what I mean:))

In any event- consider the supply and demand graphs from economics. Vendors try to come up with the perfect price for a product- too high and not enough people will buy it and the vendor will be left with a surplus, too low and the vendor won’t have enough to meet the demand of society.

If one takes a supply and demand graph that is in perfect equilibrium and raises the price- I won’t be able to say who won’t buy the product anymore but I will be able to say around how many people will stop buying it.

So too, we don’t want people getting married too young while they are not mature enough, or too old when they are set in their ways. Assuming that the graph- age at marriage and divorce rate- is in perfect equilibrium now (which I’m not saying it is), if we shift the age graph to the left by three years you will see a steep spike in the divorce rate. And yes- we will be blaming ourselves for the divorce crisis that will be created.

apushatayid-

Anyone that’s been here long enough and read the shidduchim threads knows that AZ is the head of NASI. When he writes things like “I’m told the full detailed explaination will appear in various newspapers.” we lose respect for NASI and some may write thing that we otherwise would not.

Furthermore, as you can see from my post above- AZ agrees with my list but for some reason he doesn’t want to enforce it on shadchanim before letting them have the list. Makes you wonder…

I’m no expert in shidduchim, the list above is a sampling from the abuse I suffered at the hands of too many ruthless shadchanim, but if everyone would offer their ideas and some experts could see which ones have substance- maybe we could get somewhere.

areivim pulled that off…

So did Volvie, it didn’t get him too far though.

But to answer your question- he difinitely lead an interesting life in yeshiva (you had to see his room). He’s married now so he may have settled down.

charlie brown & Englishman-

The stories that I wrote about myself are true. The stories that I wrote about others I assume are true. If there was any reason to doubt the story I usually mentioned that.

These two are for the old timers:

“Sometimes A Bit Over The Right”

“talmid”

I may have done it once or twice (OK maybe a few more times).

In cases where I only went out with the girl to get the shadchan to stop harrassing me, my friends, my Rabbeim and my family I would sometimes try to get them to say “no”.

The reason for this is that if I would say “no” the shadchan would say that I didn’t give it a fair chance, that I already made up my mind from before. (She also wouldn’t be able to twist my hand and say “give it one more try”.)

charlie brown-

Very good! You get extra credit for that one.

Do you know the person or do you remember the other time it came up?

Either way- thanks for cracking me up.

AZ-

Do they get back the $500?

Nat-

I’m going to respectfully disagree with your opinion.

Offering an enormous reward for something that has in the past only commanded a modest compensation will lead to professional shadchanim getting nastier in the techniques that they have become famous for.

I shudder at the thought of all the lying, tricking, hand twisting and you name it that a shdachan will go through while drooling over a potential $13,000.

When I was dating I would have sooner brushed off a professional shdachan (while I was still taking names from them) if I knew they were in it solely for the money.

As I’ve mentioned in older threads, I think the first thing any organization that seriously wants to end the crisis should do is to crack down on the shadchanim. Have a committee of Rabonnim that creates a list of rules that all shadchanim who want to be certified by them must follow. If a shadchan suggests a shidduch, either side can verify that the shadchan is in compliance with the accepted rules. When a shadchan goes against the rules it should immediately be reported to the committee and investigated. Punishments should range from (but not limited to) warnings, financial disciplines, suspension of certification and permanent revocation.

Giving these large payouts is rewarding terrorism.

Here’s my issue with this new idea.

(I can’t stress enough that I represent no one besides myself and my opinions are strictly my own.)

As I have mentioned in the past- NASI is an organization that hides behind a cloak of anonymity- did anyone notice a single name mentioned in the add or just a place where to send a couple thousand dollars? They have made claims of outstanding success but one reading their flyers has no way of verifying the results.

Even if this idea does have a minimal amount of success, which I highly doubt it will, it still does not get to the root of the problem.

bpt- As I was passing by the Gehry Building (8 Spruce St.) this morning I also noticed the scaffolding around the Park Row Building including the two cupolas. I was wondering if they are making the cupolas up to current fire code standards so that we can move in (I’ll let you have the one close to the Brooklyn Bridge).

Wouldn’t it be great to be the first ones to know when Squeaks “wagons” are in town?

2scents

There was another poster whose name was Joseph that was impersonated by the “fake” Joseph. From what I remember (this goes back some time) the original Joseph had his account and all his posts deleted.

If he is who I think he is, his name is not Joseph.

I can only try-

My sister once showed me some math mix ups that actually work. For example:

19/95 => cross out the 9 from the numerator and denominator => 1/5.

Can you think of any others? (I don’t know of any off hand.)

I was once sitting next to someone on the train who was doing his homework and he was solving for x.

He had 2x = 24. So he crossed out the 2 from both sides and circled x = 4. I was in so much pain so I asked him if I could help, I told him I liked math in school.

“Sir”, he replied, “this isn’t regular math, it’s college level algebra, it’s not as easy as it looks. I don’t think you’ll be able to help me.”

aries2756-

Yikes, I never thought of that. Things definitely changed over the past 20 to 25 years. Once the person gives the kid a dollar the giver is buying trust.

As with any program or idea- there are pros and cons.

Parents and educators should explain what the rules (i.e. no collecting after it gets dark, during davening…) are and they have to be followed, or they won’t be allowed to volunteer.

One organization I volunteered for (as a 13 year old) had a rule that if someone demands the money- no matter how small the perpetrator is and no matter how much money we collected- we have to give them everything.