If it is true that more boys than girls leave Yiddishkeit, I actually see potential to turn the shidduch crisis into a win-win situation. We need to make out daughters know that a man who is a shomer torah u’mitzvos and works hard to support his family, even at a blue-collar job, is worthy of great respect. We then need to tell our boys that are not so matzliach in learning that it is perfectly l’chatchila for them to find a job, and is in fact a very dignified thing to do. And we need to ensure them that they will still have plenty of good shidduchim options even after leaving yeshiva. These working boys may be very good candidates for getting married young, to women of the same age or older. A) They have jobs, B) if they were struggling in yeshiva or with yiddishkeit generally, it could well be that the promise of marital intimacy soon on the horizon can help them stay strong.

I think one way of helping the shidduch crisis is that every person should get involved. Each of us probably knows of at least one single person and should make it a personal project to try to marry him or her off. Many people are afraid of involve ment in Shidduchim because they feel there is such big responsibility involved. All I am asking is asking that people make suggestions : the people involved can make their own investigations and I beg of all of you — just work on making one shidduch. This will help a great deal.

Even if nothing comes out of your efforts and you feel a lot of effort and time is involved, the people you are helping will have a good feeling that others are concerned for them and want to help.

We are supposed to emulate Hashem and follow in his ways . The midrash says that after Hashem created the world what does He now do all day . The midrash says that He makes shidduchim. Someone replied to this: W hy, that’s not difficult, I can do the same , and tries. And the midrash then describes what happens. We all know that “Matches are made in Heaven” but we all must do our part to make them happen.

I practice what I preach. I was helpful in a number of shidduchim , and was actually the shadchen for 2 couples.

On that note, I know a number of singles and I would like to help them find their Zivug (life mate) (no charge involved!). S ome are here in Israel and some are in the US.

For further detail please contact me at

sonofnathan@gmail.com

Sincerely,

Joshua Nathan

On a (slightly) more serious note….One other poster mentioned something about mainstream frum society getting over a stigma regarding Ba’alei T’shuva as prospective marriage candidates.

On one hand (and as a BT who “started” around the age of 20) considering we’re talking about an age group of 23 and under, we might have to assume that 90-something % of BTs in that age range, even amongst the most seasoned are not yet ready for marriage for various reasons. I’m not a kiruv pro and that’s only based on observations and perhaps first-hand experience.

However, of course should option should not be ruled out. And it’s the role of our leaders to address the issue of the BT stigma especially if the prospective kallahs find themselves single in their late 20s, 30s etc.

This is my anecdotal experience also. I would estimate that around half my friends in high school (beis yaakov, 1980s) married over age 21, and these were the brighter and more mature girls.

I am surprised that no one else has mentioned one other distubring part of the post. Yes being a wife and mother is extremely important - but how about NOT teaching women that this is the only thing they can contribute to the world, and that they can utilize whatever length of time they are single to contribute as human beings to the Jewish world.

Granted our children aren’t yet born (we’ve got twins in utero— and we’re starting our family at the ANCIENT age of 32 because THIS is when we’re ready), but in 18 years or so we’re going to be encouraging them both, no matter what sex(es) they are, to find ways to SUPPORT themselves. Once they are self supporting, marriage is a logical next step. Why should someone living off mommy and daddy be considered mature enough to get married?

Then, as a couple, they can make a decision who will support them both and who will raise the children. Or maybe they’d both like to work and put off starting a family for a while.

Full time learning is great— if you’ve been in the workforce for a while and can live off savings for a year, or if mommy and daddy WANT to support you for a year at 18 or something— but these boys who are considering themselves ready to be married at 23 when they’ve been sitting in yeshiva on daddy’s dollar since 18— it just doesn’t make sense to me.

How about a different model, not unlike a hesder yeshiva, call it “hesder kollel” where there is a work/kollel model and the guy spends from 7am to noon at shul/kollel and after 1pm is apprenticed in chinuch or some form of business-based employment where he could earn health insurance benefits and “hit the ground, running” for when he needs to support his family.

I was 23 when I got married to a 29-year-old woman. “She was young enough and old enough” to have a family with. Keyn ayin hara, we have six children.

We need to challenge the hashkafos of the boys (and their parents and rebbes) who tell boys to marry a girl right out of high school or seminary.

Or… maybe we need to have a male version of the word “golddigger” for the kind of boy who seeks to marry a girl whose family will support his choice of lifestyle. Way too many boys are being treated as superstar gedolim-to-be and hardly measure up.

Does the haredi world really need more rabbis or would it benefit from a generation of emphasizing serious Zevulunism and allow no more than a tenth of the current crop to work and act as community leaders.

Physically, emotionally, psychologically, and experientially the years between 18 and 21 involve more change than the 10 or 20 years that follow. While most 18- and 19-year-olds consider themselves adults, the truly mature ones know that they are not yet fully adult. It follows that before they are best able to make a choice that will affect the rest of their life, they should first be mature enough to do so.

Divorce rates among couples where one or both are younger than 21 are several times higher than among those who wait a mere few years to marry. And since young marriages often involve women who have neither a college degree nor other post-high-school training, women who marry young are not only more likely to end up divorced, they are more likely to end up impoverished and with no reasonable means of supporting themselves (and their children).

No matter how much babysitting a girl has done, few have the emotional capability at 19 or 20 to be a mother. Fortunately, many have the support of their mothers and other female relatives, but wouldn’t it be better if they married and had their first child a few years later (hopefully still with the same support)?

Anecdotally, among all my high school classmates, the ones with the marriages that seem happiest and most stable all got married after they were 22. And I speak from personal experience as well. I got married at 18. And divorced at 28.

Among the Lubavitch, the average age at which girls get married is older, and girls are expected to work for a year or two between seminary and getting married. While there are exceptions, 21 or older is the norm.

So it can be done. The question is how.

Ask the people in the know in the Baltimore community and they will tell you this. There is no room for compromise; each girl is looking for the Gadol Hador, and has been told to expect to find him!

When I was a kid and dating (a million years or so ago) I looked at marriage as a gamble at best, and hoped to find the guy with whom it seemed worthwhile to take the risk. B”H it came my way. These girls are looking for the “perfect” situation.

How many of these problems would be solved if learning after marriage was reserved for an elite of Jews, as it has been for Jews for all history, and women, um, raised a family? Has the world gone mad?

1. Is it possible having guys marry earlier might exasperate certain problems, financial, emotional, etc?

2. Is it possible that this population difference is because certain men are considered undesirable because they are working instead of learning, go off the derech in greater numbers (?), don’t have desirable jobs, etc?

3. And, lastly, is it possible that the expectation that the girls and the girl’s families should provide the money for the married couple (taking responsibility from the guy) exasperate the problem as girls with less means get relegated to second class?

I think it is far too simple to declare this a game of numbers. We certainly should encourage guys to date the same age or older. But, I don’t know if a guy who hasn’t stepped out of Yeshiva will feel like a man compared to a girl who is out in the world already.

I’ll stop now. Happy Channukah.

Wouldn’t some old-time accessories like, oh….work and income help alleviate the financial vacuums that now force frum women to work double-time as the family’s breadwinner? The prescient statistical analysis above, aiming to foresee, forewarn and alleviate a looming problem (“eize’hu chacham? Ha’roeh es ha’nolad” ) is applied astutely to shidduch figures, yet is barely even acknowledged at all in confronting the economic and financial crises that are already at a painful level in the frum world and are poised to become simply rampant within the next 10-20 years.

I suspect it’s because there really is a welfare culture, and lifestyle is difficult to change. The dream equation of Eternal Kollel + Eternal Welfare = Bright Future is going to have to be squarely reevaluated at some point. Why can’t it be confronted as matter-of-factly as the shidduch problem is above? i.e. We have a system of doing things; That system is unsustainable; ergo, We must change the system. Such simple logic….

The hard landing of Israel’s long-overdue tax reforms these last few years will be gentle compared to the crash-and-burner that’s inevitably ahead. It doesn’t even take chochma to see that. It’s right in front of us every day.

I thought the article made it clear that this was just a number pulled out of thin air. Unless the community is decreasing or staying at zero, the logic works just the same (although, paradoxically, a higher rate of increase would cause this problem to be bigger, too).