First we had the kids at risk crisis, then the bugs in the water crisis, then there were bugs in everything healthy, green and leafy crisis, the Indian hair sheitle crisis, the shidduch crisis, the visiting day crisis, the yeshiva tuition crisis and so on. It seems that every issue facing the frum community becomes a crisis – that is if those issues are interesting enough to gripe about at the shabbos table – what will the next frum crisis be?
The Divorce Crisis: Already on the rise, young couples are getting divorces more than ever, it’s not talked about much, but many couples rush into marriage fearing that they will never get married and therefore settling to communal pressure to settle and hoping that love will eventually form between the two of you. Frum leaders fear the divorce crisis so much that they cover it up, because for so long the “shidduch” system has worked and frum couples had a lower divorce rate than everyone else. This may also be called the ridiculously short marriage crisis.
The Chumra Crisis: Chumras are getting out of hand writes one reader on Hashkafa.com and suddenly the Coffee Room, Imamother and the readers write column in the Yated are filled with stories of people never actually finding bugs in strawberries and just peeling them because everyone else was doing it. Double Glatt meat is hard to find, heimishe cholov yisroel milk is super expensive after all the back round checks that go into finding really frum and heimishe cow milkers and shuls that allow women into them at all are blacklisted by many shidduch investigation companies.
The Tznius Crisis: The internet couldn’t be banned and suddenly the frum community finds itself in a dizzying fall from its pre-internet days. Women are suddenly wearing red, denim and other colors so untznius that the rabbonom never thought to ban such pritzus in the first place.
The Out of Town Crisis: Fed up with New York attitude, frum families are leaving New York in droves for places like Texas, Florida and California creating a massive brain drain, Lakewood finally loses its status as Ir Hakodesh as the new Lakewood branch in Montana is going strong due to its off the grid location far from the pritzus filled beaches of New Jersey. Monsey is empty and even Brooklyn seems a little less holy as all the holy people have left for greener pastures and cheaper rent. How will we retain a frum learned population in New York when no one who’s actually frum and learned can afford to live there?
The Gay Shidduch Crisis: With a new found openness in the frum community, the frum gay community is thriving, but unfortunately as with the hetero community there is a shidduch crisis. It appears that there are too many bears and not enough femmes to go around. Short, fat balding Jewish men are said to be in high supply, but their feminine metrosexual counterparts are usually not as frum and thus the gay shidduch crisis is on.
The OU Hechsher Crisis: One day someone over at KAJ wakes up and realizes that really frum so called heimishe people are aiding and supporting the modern orthodox movement. Not only are we frummies supporting chillul Hashems like Young Israel type shuls with low mechitzas and mixed kiddushim, but we are also going against halacha by supporting NCSY which allows coed events, women singing and pritzus in the name of Kiruv. Small frum hechsherim with barely legible Yiddish on their very small emblems rise up and boycott the OU and suddenly really frum people ask questions like “do you eat OU” similar to the way they would ask if you “keep shabbos” or not. The OU hires Lipa Schmeltzer to make a music video showing how frum their mashgichim are.
Mishpacha already tackled the gay shidduch crisis in it’s purim issue:
mishpacha.com/Browse/Article/68/Back-Issues
Also, I forgot which chassidishe hechsher it was, but I remember seeing one that said the rav’s name and then zt”l. Technically that should be good enough for me, bec I have no idea who these guys are anyhow, yet i still eat anything with miniscule Hebrew print in a semi-circle pattern
great post!
bears vs femmes . genius!
My first attempt went to the censor, so I will try this. Or maybe I am on some sort of watch list? Apologies to all.
There is a gai shidduch crisis. First there is the issue of closeted frum guys who still date girls but will never marry or accept that they are gai. Second, with the limited number of frum gai guys looking to settle down in a same-$ex partnership, it can be hard to find a compatible partner. And, as with hetero couples, there are questions of frumkeit, economics, and location. Unlike ridiculous comments like Mr. Yankel, in the name of Reb Heshie, it is very rarely an issue of stereotypical $exual compatibility. B”H I have been zocheh to make a few gai shidduchim in the past and hope to do more.
Shidduch crisis – every time I hear or read those words, my blood boils. There has ALWAYS been a shidduch crisis; its just that now there is a catchy name for it. When I was dating from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s, I faced the same issues then as male singles face now – the wanton pickiness of the girls, their indecision and inability to commit, their shallowness (only wealthy guys need apply) and their overall willingness to pass me up to “wait for someone better”. Three girls that I dated fairly seriously (meaning for several months) about 20 years ago who ended up breaking up with me because they just didn’t feel right are all still single today, and all of them are 45 and older. Serves them right.
“Serves them right,” you say. But are you married?
Yes, b”h, for 16 years now and with 4 kids. My wife is not perfect and neither am I – far from it. But we got married because both felt that we liked each another enough to make it work – there were enough things we liked about each other. Marriage is not an easy thing, as anyone can tell you – you have to be ready to make sacrifices, to not have everything you want, to compromise. I agree that there are men and women out there who have been unlucky (my wife has a good friend who is 40 and single; one guy she was seeing seriously was nebach killed in a car accident and another guy suddenly decided to make aliyah) but others, in my experience are single now because they were snobby and picky and wanted one kind of guy or girl and refused to compromise.
If the cause is really because they were picky snobs, it does serve them right.
The issue is often somewhat more complicated, but I hear you on this.
Well, I should qualify my statement a little. They were picky snobs at the time I dated them. I can’ t speak as to what happened to them later on. All I know is that some of what is causing the “shidduch crisis” is self-inflicted.
I will give you an example of the snobbery I faced.
Back in late 1993, I decided to lease a new car, thinking that a new car, like a new suit, would make me more marketable in the shidduch marketplace. I was still at my first job then and making only a little money. I decided to lease a new Nissan Altima, which then was a brand new model. I was very excited, as this would be my first new car. I was set up with this Flatbush girl and I took her out for dinner somewhere in the city. She was pretty good looking, IIRC. During dinner, I casually mentioned that I was going to lease a new car. She immediately perked up. “Oh really? Are you getting a Lexus or an Infiniti? My father has two Volvos.” I told her I was going to lease a Nissan Altima and – I will never forget this – her face literally fell and she was as dead as a doorknob for the rest of the date. Naturally, I didn’t get a second date from her.
That was 18 years ago and I can still see her face falling.
Now I am fairly sure this golddigger eventually found some poor, rich shmuck to marry but its this kind of snobbery that causes girls to remain single.
The problem is on both sides (though I would guess more on the girls side than the guys because a guy will screw anything after a while). But many guys will turn down a girl strictly on not having idealized looks. There’s a lot of fantasy that’s holding up the process on both sides.
So then its not a crisis. These people need a reality check and a reassessment of their values, and those things must be supplied by the parents. Its not a society-wide issue.
how bout the getting married way to freakin early crisis
Never quite understood what precisely was at risk here. The vast majority hang out with other kids like themselves, go to Israel, come back “cured” , & marry. Then they live normal/boring oj lives. Where’s the risk?