Haimy

Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky said that a Shabbos Seuda should be at least an hour. My children are elementary aged kids. I would like them to happily remain at the Seuda for 20-25 minutes which often happens when I have a good story to tell.
I’m curious how other parents make their Seuda inspiring & interesting for kids. This has nothing to do with sushi or ptcha, the food is not the issue. Most of my kids aren’t interested in zemiros or in sitting longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Reward for doing mitzvos is not a segula, Chazal never permitted us to do mitzvos as a segula. We do mitzvos because Hashem commanded us to do them & it’s true that by some mitzvos we are promised a reward in this world.
Imagine telling a king that your fulfilling his will as a charm to get rich, would it go over well?
Call it a zechus, don’t call Toras Hashem’s a segula.

Let’s assume we all became shadchanim & managed to marry of every last frum boy aged 22-39 in the US. How many girls would be left single? Many hundreds if not thousands.
How does Redding a shiddach help the situation? If we get the girls in the market engaged now before the next 1000 girls enter the market they will have less candidates to compete with. As it stands, the market is flooded with excellent girls competing for an ever shrinking pool of boys.
This my friends is a disaster in the making.
We need a yom taanis utfilah to be mevatel this gezeira
an make the best hishtadlus to fix it.

Ubiquitin the problem starts when a boy lands in Lakewood & immediately (in many cases) has a long list of girls 19-24 to go out with. Of course the youngest, more chashuv, beautiful, wealthy, etc. girls move to the top of the list. The shadchanim focus on these easy shidduchim first because there’s a higher success rate with bigger shadchonus.
Meanwhile, the average excellent girls sit waiting for a date& growing older. Repeat this over & over & you have a crisis.
If the market was even, then boys wouldn’t have long lists of girls to reject & grow older.
I spoke to a successful shadchanim who told me she only deals in fresh crop of boys & girls because they are the easiest to get engaged, the rest aren’t worth her time.
I think this basically explains what’s going on.

There is no shidduch crisis for frum girls? Why does Lakewood shadchan Freddie Friedman have a list of 2000 girls over the age of 25 with a fraction of that number of available boys to redt?
If boys are rejecting girls for superficial reasons then where are all the single picky boys? The market of girls is so large, it’s much easier to reject a girl.
The boys are no longer frum? not enough to create a crisis, & plenty of girls aren’t frum either which evens it out.

I’d like to hear a rational explanation why so many girls are not finding a boy to marry.

This post has nothing to do with criticizing anyone, it’s about us frum yidden. Did you shudder upon learning that 40% of a public school of 3000 students are Jewish? Is this not a tragedy? It’s not about them, it’s about us & how complacent we have become about our fellow brothers. Chazal tell us gadol hamachtioh yoser min hahorgo. Spiritual death is a far greater tragedy. I personally was pained to read that so many precious Jewish children go to this school.

I’m sure Rebetzin Kanievsky tried to cook the tastiest Kugel for Shabbos & it probably tasted delicious. That doesn’t make her into a foodie, her intention was oneg Shabbos. A foodie seeks the pleasure of food as a goal in itself, not as an act of service to Hashem. This is a secular hedonistic expression which contradicts the mitzva of Kedoshim T’hiyue.

This is part of my question. At what point do we concede that the person has found a different lifestyle for themselves & we swe should not sacrifice our own standards for them. Are we deluding ourselves that by allowing chillul Shabbos amongst other severe issurim in a frum home will somehow bring them back? This was implied by the video posted by Rabbi Hoffman in his latest article.
I personally believe that a modicum of halachik observance be expected from a non observant family member. This was not the message I heard on the video.

The higher retention rate is no indication of a successful marriage, it mainly shows how difficult it is to get divorced in a community. Arranged marriages do work but if someone doesn’t feel comfortable, they should not be pressured to go over the line. If up to 10% of chareidi marriages fall apart, then there’s another 20% in trouble. Remaining married for the children’s sake (though admirable), is not a reason to celebrate our low divorce rate.

You are welcome to do the research, divorce among college educated people married over the age of 25 is much lower than the national average of 50%, closer to 25%.
The facts remain: frum divorces are rising while secular marriages are stabilizing.
We need to take a fresh look at our chinuch & dating system to see why this is happening, not just blame society at large for our problems.

If thousands of frum girls between the ages of 25-39 are single & desperately want to start a family but can’t find a suitable husband, that to me is a crisis. How do you define such a situation?
The majority of these girls are accomplished well adjusted people who are full capable of being fine wives & mother’s. Instead, they wait in loneliness while some callous individuals even question that there’s a crisis.
If it we’re your daughter I wonder if your tune would change.

Teens are going on drugs (& OTD) in the wealthiest progressive Modern Orthodox communities where the schools cater to every child’s talents & teams of social workers sooth their feelings. They live in opulent homes with few siblings to compete with.
Personal responsibility & maturity is what will stop a child from ruining their life, let’s be good role models & stop looking for whom to blame, it will not help our children.

Let’s be realistic, not every person can find their place in a super sheltered environment trying to live culturally in the 1800’s. If as a society the frum world can begin accepting those that want to be both fully shomer halacha & professional’s, this would help them remain frum. This was actually the objective of R’Sh’R’ Hisrch Ztz’l.
In some Chassidisher communities the situation is absurd. The girls are taught almost no in-depth hashkafa or Yahadus because they aren’t allowed to learn, then they go out to work at a young age & get exposed to the wide world completely unprepared. Why are we surprised when they go off?

Your solution might save the next generation but it’s too late for those disillusioned today. We can either ignore the problem & watch them drift away or we can try to find them a place within the frum community.

I admit that I can’t explain the nuances between a chat room & a forum, I’m also not condemning the general idea of a frum coffee room. But what difference does it make if people are publicly criticizing well known frum yidden or institutions? If there is a heter, please let me know of it. If there isn’t, why do we tolerate it? We are the Yeshiva world after all.

Are the regulars here just so used to it that no one sees a problem?
Sincerely, Haimy the newbie on YWN.

Relieving an incompetent Rebbi of his job is a very rare occurrence in the chareidi world we live in. It’s not just the financial distress, it’s his self-esteem as a member of a kehillah. After having a number of my own children go through the yeshiva system as well as having tutored within the system over several years I can say without a doubt that this is one of the biggest challenges of Chinuch for this generation. There is no exit door for the underqualified rebbi, he remains teaching unhappily & unappreciated with no respectable way to leave. Along the way, countless boys are needlessly hurt.

I went to PCS they said 90% of employers aren’t interested in hiring a 37 year old with no work experience & a large family to support. An entry level paying job leaves you poorer than beforehand due to increased childcare expenses & major reductions in social services benefits. The fine gentelman at PCS said I’m sorry, the yungeleit show up too late I can’t help many of them.