Chart from Mishpacha Magazine
I’ve just read yet another article about the tragic shidduch crisis plaguing the charedi community. In Mishpacha Magazine, Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz laments that out of one 2011 bais yakov graduating class:
“seventy-two shining faces, and today, out of all of them — ranging in age from 21 to 22 — only 13 replaced those caps with sheitels. No, that wasn’t a typo! Only 13 out of 72 girls are engaged or married!”
He goes on to cry:
“..every day, more bnos Yisrael become destined to remain single. Single forever! No husband, no children… ever! Is this a life worth living? “What is my purpose on this world?” “There must be something terribly wrong with me…” These sentiments are reborn with them every morning from the moment they awaken. This is not something a girl can get used to. How can their parents possibly watch this consistently, without falling apart mentally and physically, feeling they failed in their innate responsibility to protect their children? How many girls cry themselves to sleep every night? How many girls get to the point where only therapy or other means can get them through the day, as they live in a depression, losing all self-worth and confidence, when in fact it’s the current system we have in place that is defunct?”
Hold your horses! I have absolutely no doubt that in a world where girls are told that their only tafkid in life is to be a wife and mother, being single is a tragedy. I have no doubt that there are girls who cry themselves to sleep every night because they thought that they would have traded in their graduation caps for sheitels shortly upon completing their educations.
HOWEVER –
Part of this so-called shidduch crisis is by design. Not by the design of evil shadchans, not by the design of the age gap between boys and the younger girls they choose to marry, and not by the design of a community who doesn’t organize round-the-clock tehillim sessions until this problem is resolved.
Women are taking themselves out of the shidduch parsha post high school. That’s right, although they realize that they are taking a risk of not finding a partner when they finally are ready to focus on dating and marriage, more charedi women are putting an emphasis on education and self-actualization before settling down into marriage.
Sorry, but the age gap explanation only goes so far. What is a crisis to some, isn’t a crisis to all. Women are starting to wait later for marriage, and taking time for independent self-improvement and self-discovery before they get married. This is scaring the daylights out of charedi orthodox leaders who fear that women who put off marriage for education, travel, or working and living independently, will leave the orthodox fold. So instead of admitting that some girls are deciding to put off marriage, they are fanning the flames of the shidduch crisis propaganda – citing girls who cry themselves to sleep every night and parents who do the same because their daughters remain “spinsters.”
The reality is that these spinsters are living out their youth with a freedom that their charedi predecessors never had. Unburdened by husbands, pregnancies, and babies, these women are free to travel the world, try out new communities, live on their own or with other young single roommates, go to college anywhere they choose and also pursue advanced degrees, etc. This does not bode well for the future of charedi Judaism. Therefore, the image of the sad, pathetic, and in-need-of-therapy single woman is the image that is being portrayed. In fact, single women are told that this should be their natural response to their lone status – any other response, is quite frankly, unnatural.
I think those studying the shidduch crisis need to take another look at their statistics. It isn’t a crisis if the players involved want to stay single.
