Some Thoughts on Shiduchim and Marriage

Some Thoughts on Shiduchim and Marriage

Happiness comes from living which for a Jew means living a proper Jewish life. It doesn't come from getting things. Happiness doesn't come from without. It comes from within. It comes from a soul that is engaged in the proper activities of life, mitzvot. It comes from living, accomplishing, striving for the right things.

For a proper Jewish life, a person needs a spouse (with rare exception). Anybody in the ballpark will do. God sends us such people, but we always want more. We pass up golden opportunities and then feel sorry for ourselves all our lives. We explain it in benign terms. "It wasn't for me." But what that usually means really is 'not good enough.'

The Talmud says "Take a step down and get married." The Stanislover Rebbe explained this to me in the name of his father as follows: People have inflated views of themselves. Therefore, marry somebody who seems beneath you so that you can marry your equal.

There's a tendency today for people to see themselves as being very frum. Generally, this means we are so proud of our alleged interest in one or two mitzvos while we are weak in hundreds of others. We might not even do those two mitzvos with any particular intensity; we just value them from our arm chairs. So if the other person isn't specializing in those same two, we look down on them.

It's the same for many other attributes and interests. I witness so many shiduchim where both sides fail to appreciate each other, all they are bringing to the table, all their accomplishments as Torah observant Jews in these challenging times. One is shocked to see these shiduchim end. The shadchan  just can't believe it. This is what you asked for. I brought you what you asked for.

It's close but not quite what I wanted, we'll hear.

People want instantaneous feelings of affection. They want emotional certainty. But life doesn't work like that. Feelings for people come with time and come with giving, our giving. They don't come from taking. The posuk tells us,"she became his wife and he loved her." (Bereishis 24:67 Chayye Sarah) Notice the order of events. Marriage, then love. This makes complete sense. Love comes from living with a person and from giving to the person. It doesn't come after meeting a person twice. It doesn't come from sitting at a restaurant table. It is not served up along with the pasta.

Orthodox Jewish dating is not particularly conducive to developing feelings. You sit for two hours in a suit at a noisy restaurant table. You never met before. It's not exactly a relaxing situation. You worry that you'll never see this person again. Yet you are trying to look for the elusive "clicking" that the goyim get by hanging out together for years possibly in a group of friends, possibly in school, possibly in the office. Then of course most of those relationships end, those relationships that starting with clicking.

Some people are looking for a copy of themselves or at least a same-sex buddy. The girls want someone they can relate to as they do their girlfriends. The boys want a chavrusah. This is understandable as such relationships are all they know. They have been shielded from the 'opposite sex' so they don't grasp that shiduchim is a matter of joining up with an opposite. You will not be the same. There will be vast differences. That's part of the challenge of life, getting along with people not exactly like you; appreciating people not exactly like you; benefiting from the differences. That includes your spouse. But today we are very demanding, very spoiled. We don't want to bridge the gap. That is too hard, too much work.

It's a good thing that God doesn't allow us to pick our children. He hands us little people and we love them intensely. Imagine if parenthood worked like shiduchim. The children would be grown before the adults ever made a choice. "Not for me," we'd hear over and over again. She’s very cute, but I was looking for something different.

The writer Kurt Vonnegut said "Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous." This is useful advice for shiduchim, no? By ‘find it’ he means where you stumble upon it, as it is sent to you. Appreciate the one God sends you and don't go on a twenty year search.

The Torah wants us married at 18. "Shemoneh esrei l'chupah" - at 18 to the wedding canopy (Pirkei Avos5:21). The Gemorah says, “Until (a man) reaches twenty years of age, The Holy One, blessed be He, sits and waits (and asks) ‘When will he be married?’ When he reaches the age of twenty and is still unmarried, (the Holy one) says ‘Blasted be his bones.’” (Kiddushin 29b.) The Chofetz Chaim says, “It is a commandment of the Sages to marry off ones sons and daughters close to their age of maturity." (Sefer HaMitzvos HaKatzar, M’A 110)  Every year after that you pay a price with your kedushah. Males and females both get very damaged being single. You lose your innocence, your simplicity, your flexibility. In your loneliness you learn to long for strangers. Dating becomes a kind of promiscuity. You get married finally at 30, or 40, or 50 and your head is full of so many faces, your heart has been pulled in some many directions that your marriage suffers. "Shemoneh esrei' l'chupah." Therefore it can't be that the matter is so complicated. If God wants us married at 18, then the process must be straight-forward. You meet a few people, you pick one and you get going with your life.

Maybe you even marry the first one. I once went shopping for a couch. I walked into Macy's and saw by the door a beautiful, comfy couch. I liked it, but I thought, we'll let me see what else is out there. So I went to six more stores and tried out couch after couch. Guess which one I bought. The green one! I wasted so much time.

God sends us opportunities in life but only a few. You get a few career opportunities. You get a few educational ones. I have observed that the most successful people are the ones that seized their opportunities. And if you examine the stories you'll see that the opportunities were not glaringly obvious. People go with hunches, with a sense that there's something good here. Many people who fail in life are those who demand that a completed story be handed to them on day one. They want certainty. They pass up their opportunities waiting for it. It never comes. Their opportunities get used up. God tries to help you, but if you refuse that help you are on your own. Life becomes infinitely harder.

I know so many sad stories. Single people now in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Still complaining. Still finding fault in everyone they meet.

This is a much bigger problem in affluent countries. In poor countries the women say, I just want a decent man. The men say, I just want a good woman. If they see a person like that, they grab 'em. They don't waste a minute. They don't worry about clicking and microscopic alignment of hashkafas and interests. That a good hard working person stands before them is clicking enough. Unfortunately, Jews today live generally in affluent countries. This is one of the pitfalls of affluence. We want everything just so.

My grandfather who was born in a shtetl in the Ukraine and lived through the Great Depression in Brownsville, Brooklyn once asked me, "Are you working?" "Yes," I said. "Good," he said. The exact job title didn't matter to him. Working in general mattered. He was concerned with putting food on the table and being productive. He wasn't caught up in the romance of career and all the highfalutin fantasy that surrounds it in this country. The main thing was simply to work. The same applies to dating and marriage.

It's a tragedy. People make life so complicated. God sent you what you needed, but you waited for what you thought you wanted if you even knew what that was.

Sometimes people say to me, my friend waited till she was 35 but she found the right guy and now she's happy.

I say, she's happy because she is married. As the Midrash says, “A woman does not find rest except in the home of her husband.” (Rus Rabbah 2:15) She could have been happy fifteen years ago too, with children who are now preparing for shiduchim of their own. She might even have been happier having married before she damaged herself. As the Gemara says, "R. Hisda said: The reason that I am superior to my colleagues is that I married at sixteen. And had I married at fourteen, I would have said to the Satan, 'An arrow in your eye.'" (Kiddushin 29b-30a). What was he getting it? I'm sure there are many aspects to it. I have seen it in all kinds of people, men and women from all kinds of countries and backgrounds. Waiting is damaging in all kinds of ways. If God made the world such that we should marry young then the process can't be as complicated as many people make it. Find a decent person and go enjoy your life.

That's the way our ancestors did it.

But let me add that you should like the person you marry. You may not love him or her, but there needs to be a liking. If the dating is full of discord or dislike, then it's not a good idea to proceed. If it's not your kind of person, then forget it. But if it is your kind, but not everything is perfect, then don't toss it away. Keep going.