Quote of the Week: Damsel in Distress

At a wedding last night (again! After Tisha B’Av they come as thick as mosquitoes at dusk). Got one of those sweet “Imyitza Hashem by you” (an oxymoron, if ever there was one. Duh – if Hashem wants it’s going to happen. You aren’t hastening it along by saying so. But I digress) from the mother of the bride, a woman I respect, in general. But, to my great amusement, she added to the general well wishing, “In the blink of an eye!”

Now, for those of you who don’t recognize it, “In the blink of an eye” is direct reference to a chazal “Yeshuas Hashem Kiheref Ayin” – the salvation of God comes in the blink of an eye.

Salvation, eh? I’m in need of rescue. Like a damsel in distress. And the only one who can save me from the dragon of spinsterhood is a knight in shining armor.

So where is the fellow? Doesn’t he realize I’ve been hanging out with this dragon since seminary? If he doesn’t come rescue me soon, I might start to Stockholm.

Tales Out of Shidduch-ville

Girls will do the most bizarre things to affect their chances at marriage. They lose weight, change their hairdos, choose their careers, and start chatting up strangers on the off chance that any of the above will make them more marry-able.

The girls of Shidduch-ville (name changed to protect the guilty) are the nutsiest of the nutsy when it comes to marrying themselves off. You’d think there was no life before the chupah from the way they pursue matrimony. And they have even stranger ideas of how to go about achieving connubial bliss.

They all know they have to lose weight. Being fat is a no-no (see “Essential Shidduch Statistics” below). Being anything above a size 4 would mean spinsterhood and doom forever. (Because plump people never get married, didn’t you know?) So a group of them decided to take up swimming.

Well, they had to decide when to go swimming. It would have to be a few times a week – times convenient to them all. Meaning, times convenient to all their hair.

See, they all have their hair routines. Shower on day one, blow dry hair. Sleep on hair, no shower next day, iron out any kinks. Shower next day, blow dry, repeat. And so on. It’s an orderly system, and it ensures that they look like they’ve stepped off the cover of “Available” magazine every day.

When I said the swimming days had to be convenient to all of them, I meant (duh) that the swimming would have to happen on a day when they would shower. This way, the swimming wouldn’t disrupt their routine and cause undue hair-blowing.

Problem: They all had different hair routines. One girl showered Sundays, another on Mondays. What to do?

To their credit, they didn’t cat fight over it. Much. Someone selflessly rearranged her schedule, and the swimming proceeded, with only minimal angst.

Well, minimal if you consider the conundrum “how do I get home from the pool with wet, bedraggled hair without any of the local yentas seeing me” to be minimal.

Sympathy – to a Limit

Did you watch the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation Tisha B’Av event? It was preceded by a short intro by R’ Kaminetzky. He spoke about empathizing with others, and brought three examples of people whose pain we should share.

The first was Jonathan Pollard. Pollard is currently serving a life sentence without parole for a crime that usually receives a four-year sentence. He was tricked into cooperating with investigation with a promise of leniency, which he didn’t receive. The situation is truly tragic. Imagine: a life lost, potential squandered, a man sitting in prison passing his days doing… (I don’t know, what do they do in prison?) And then there’s the breach of trust involved, the “should’ve-could’ve-would’ve” self-flagellation, the invasion of privacy and restriction of freedoms. Our sympathy would be well placed.

The second were the soldiers captured in the Lebanese war. They are in an even worse situation. Not only are they likely imprisoned for life, but their lives are going to be short and brutal ones. Pollard at least has the comfort of a white-collar prison; the treatment these soldiers are receiving at the hands of hate-filled terrorists doesn’t bear thinking about—unless you want to cry. They truly need our prayers.

The third were people having trouble with shidduchim. I admit I was affronted. With all due respect, there are other Jews in worse situations: like the Iranian prisoners, for example. Someone who is not married (yet) doesn’t compare to someone locked away forever in an unfriendly dungeon. If someone never marries forever, they still have a life. They can still interact with people as equals. They can contribute to the community and the world. Yes, they don’t have children, but they can have other “babies”.

In the secular world, having children has gone out of fashion. People sublimate their need to leave something behind by getting involved in a cause. People who say, “She/he runs the entire chesed organization single-handedly, but nebach, she’s not married,” should think about what they’re saying a moment. If she/he were married, would she/he be able to run an entire chesed organization single-handedly? Would she/he want to? Being a parent is important; community service is important. If you can’t do one, do the other. Why is it a tragedy to do so?

 Being single is not the worst tragedy in the world. It doesn’t cut a person off from the essence of human potential. Single people can be—and are—highly productive. Yes, marriage is more desirable in our community, but must we get melodramatic about it?

An ad in the Hamodia encouraging people to gather together to make shidduchim, quoted another rav as saying that making shidduchim is a matter of “pikuach nefoshos.” This comment seems based in the same belief: that not being married is somehow equivalent to being the walking dead. I’ve seen many older singles. None of them are zombies. They are quite alive and active. They are interesting and engaging. And they’re dedicated and undistracted.

If I assume that men are included in these dire descriptions of the shidduch scene, it raises the “tragedy” count just a drop, but not much. I still can’t bring myself to view spinsters and bachelors as matters of pikuach nefesh. We’re very comfortable in our modern galus, and may have lost a concept of what true pikuach nefesh is, but bachelorhood isn’t it. Let’s not lessen our conceptions of true tragedy by comparing it to something that is merely unpleasant.

For the singles themselves who want the sympathy: I feel for you. Not on the same level as I do for the soldiers in Lebanon, but I understand your pain. At the same time, I urge you to look at what you do have. You have life and liberty. You are not imprisoned for life; you are not in enemy hands; you are not being physically tortured; all the mental torture is your own. LIVE!

Essential Shidduch Statistics: Fat Potential

In the mental health supplement of the Jewish Press there was, of course, an article about shidduchim. That alone is enough to garner comment. Shidduchim is now a matter of mental health? Meaning, attempting to get married can drive someone around the loop? Aren’t we taking this just a drop too seriously?

The columnist wrote that it’s a multi-level problem. Since men can pick and choose what girls to date while the girls are all uniformly desperate, the men develop shallow criteria to weed out the applicants. This leads to women developing eating disorders.

OK, it’s sad. But I couldn’t help but laugh at the following. He said that men sometimes request photographs of the girl’s mother and even grandmother to calculate the girl’s “fat potential.” The “fat potential” of a girl is an estimation of how much weight she’ll gain after pregnancy.

The very idea is ridiculous. I know girls with rake-thin mothers who have gained 70 pounds post-pregnancy. And there are girls with overweight moms who look thinner after birth than they did before. But I decided to calculate my own “fat potential” (FP).

I examined my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother on one side of the family. Then I switched to the other and examined them. I tried to use pictures of my grandmothers from their middle age, since weight gain is part of the aging process (you eat less, sleep less, and weigh more.) Then I checked out my aunts on both sides of the family.

I decided to be scientific about it, and I rated them all on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being quite corpulent, and 1 being so thin they don’t cast a shadow.

Using statistical analysis, the range of my fat potential was considerable. My great grandmother was rather corpulent, and my grandmother was always plump. I have a couple of chubby aunts as well. On the other hand, I have aunts who never gained a pound despite having five or six children. My mother is no earthshaker herself; she sometimes fits into my clothes.

Calculating the mean, median, and mode is more complicated, since one of my aunts recently lost a large percentage of her weight, so perhaps that lowers my FP. On the other hand, while there are fewer fat relatives, they have numbers further from the mean than the thin relatives, which raises my “fat potential”.

Sum total though, on a scale of 1-5, my FP = 2.6. I wonder how that affects my shidduch desirability? Should I list it on my resume? Maybe I should set up a website that calculates fat potentials for all young, single girls – we can establish an international standard. No more will young men have to embarrass themselves by asking for photos of a girl’s relatives; the FP number will tell all.

I’ve always wanted to contribute something significant to the world.

 

Unfortunately, based on my own numbers, I suspect that fat potential has little scientific basis. Yes, people tend to weigh about the same as their parents, but that probably has more to do with the fact that they eat the same foods and have the same exercising habits.

But my real answer to men who worry that their wives will get fat after they have children? Don’t ask your wives to have children. Maybe have them yourself. Or don’t get married. Instead, maybe get a life.

Drumroll, please

A bunch of us were sitting around yattering about dating when I got sick of it all. I asked if we could please proceed to have a conversation that had nothing to do with shidduchim.

I look around the group. One friend is looking wide-eyed and scared, like I asked her to chop off her right arm. Another is looking startled, like I’d just asked her to stop breathing. Another raised an eyebrow and said, “What else is there to talk about?”

“The weather,” I said. “It’s always changing, for a reason. So we can talk about it.”

“It’s usually a bad sign if you’re talking about the weather,” another friend put in.

Well guess what – we started discussing that, and we managed to pull off another hour without ever once mentioning shidduchim.

So it can be done. Congrats and many more.

Out of Town

Attended another out of town wedding last night. Smallish but nice affair—the bartender couldn’t mix me a Shirley Temple. Talk about provincial! They had the audacity to start relatively on time, and us New Yorkers were a black blot upon the company. People were wearing pink, yellow, green dresses and even white suits! The nerve—where did they think they were, out of town?

Question of the Week:

You can’t even take your mind off shidduchim when you go to the bathroom.

In the ladies’ room at a wedding, a second cousin once removed accosts me with the question:

“What are you looking for?”

Confused, I answered, “What are you talking about? I haven’t lost anything.”

Should They Tell?

Letter to Rebbetzin Yungreis this past week in the Jewish Press: A woman writes in that her son developed/showed signs of bipolar when he was 19. The parents kept it so hushed up that even his siblings don’t know. They got him medicated, and now nobody would guess he wasn’t 100% healthy. Question: are they required to release the information for shidduch purposes? The letter writer says yes, it’s only right. Her husband says absolutely not: it will shoot holes in their son’s chances of  ever getting married. They don’t know what to do.

Seeing myself as a potential date of such a young man – after all, how do I know what my date is hiding? – how do I feel about the subject? Well personally, I wouldn’t consider bipolar disorder to be a huge strike against someone. It’s not like it’s chronic depression or diabetes or a family history of cardiac arrest by age 35. However, it is something I’d appreciate knowing before the engagement. Not necessarily before the first date, but certainly by around the 4th or 5th.

There was a recent incident of a local woman whose husband never told her that he was on medication for depression. Even after they were married, he kept it secret. (How he expected a marriage with such a huge lie in the foundation to last, I have no idea.) Anyway, after a year, he suddenly decided that he didn’t need to take his meds anymore. And he relapses and became terribly depressed and the marriage ended in divorce, with her in custody of an infant.

That is a very messy end, but it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise. When someone hides such a fundamental piece of information from you, how do you know that you can ever trust them again?

Getting “Married”

Do I want to get married? What does that mean? Take on someone else’s name? Live in someone’s basement for rent that’s more than I earn a month? Scrounge pennies to buy the supper someone else likes? Pick up someone’s socks? No, not at all.

I like my last name. It’s quite a good one. It’s only downhill from here, actually. My room is a comfortable size and I really don’t look forward to moving into a full apartment with the same dimensions. Besides, I’d need a full-time job just to pay the rent, let alone serve dinner. And let’s not go into the socks.

Before anyone starts howling at me, that doesn’t mean I would never do any of the above. I simply don’t want it for its own sake. When people say, “Do you want to get married” that’s what comes to mind. There’s no “significant other” in the picture. It’s just marriage.

If the question was “would you like to meet and marry a young bochur that you admire so much that you’d be willing to take his last name, live in a basement, scrounge pennies to be able to make the suppers he likes, and pick up his socks?” I would answer, “Sure. Except I’d prefer if he’d pick up his own socks.”

Question of the Week:

Someone recently asked me:

“Would you go out with a boy who took his hat off on the first date?”

Me: “Well gee, I don’t know. I might have already!”

Shadchanim Revisited

Not all girls have bad experiences with shadchanim. One friend tells me, “They were so nice they made me nervous, you know?” Of course, one of them did say, “My goodness you’re short!” and the other said, “What was your cousin thinking! He’s way too frum for you!” And of course, a third never called her back. She too has brushed her hands of shadchanim, citing them as a waste of time and an invasion of personal space.

Shadchanim

I haven’t yet been to a shadchan. I’ve heard too much about them from friends. About calling and calling back, leaving messages, leaving more messages, scheduling appointments, and having them cancelled. Repeatedly. About showing up to an interview and after a long talk hearing, “I don’t know anyone in your age range” or “I have too many girls and not enough boys” or simply, “Well I’ll put you down, but I doubt I can help you.” About having to call back again and again to remind them that you exist, that you’re still single, that you’re hoping they’ve found someone who might match you.

It is beyond me why any self-respecting would put herself through that. Hashem created us too, even if we’re “girls” and a dime a dozen. We deserve to be treated with dignity. Shadchanim: if you can’t respect your customers, get out of the business.

But no—they can’t get out of the business! We need them. Isn’t the “Shidduch crisis” caused by a dearth of people willing to set up other people? Who cares if they treat us like dirt? If it gets us married in the end, we’ll take it.

That’s the earnest answer I’ve heard from so many friends. It makes me sick. Are we that desperate?

“…I told my boss I wasn’t coming in to work that day. I canceled a doctor’s appointment. I was in my car, about to make the hour-and-a-half drive to the shadchan when she called and rescheduled for next week. I had to show up to work and reschedule my appointment. I was annoyed, let me tell you. And she did that more than once. But she found me my husband! There are some things you just have to do, you know? Dealing with shadchanim is one of them. It’s a pain, but that’s life.”

I know, I know. Intellectually, I know. But emotionally, I just can’t handle it. I had one run-in with a shadchan that I remember. My parents had spoken to her over the phone several times, and she was very vague and non-committal. She didn’t even ask for any information—they had to shove it at her. Finally they suggested a face-to-face appointment, to which she agreed. We discussed timing, and she said how about Sunday morning, at 9:15 am? I agreed and hung up. Then I noticed that Sunday was erev Yom Kippur. Who on earth would make an appointment for 9:15 the morning before Yom Kippur?

Her “shadchan” hours were between 8 am and 10:30 am, so I decided to call the morning of the appointment before going, to ascertain that all was in order. Well, I called and called, and she didn’t pick up. Duh—it was erev Yom Kippur. She was probably busy preparing two seudos and shlagging kaparos. No time for shidduch hours. I had done my hair, dressed up, even put on a dab of makeup, and I sat there on my bed, ringing phone in hand, frustrated, shamed, and angry. She’d chosen the time—hadn’t she realized it was erev Yom Kippur? Couldn’t she have called to reschedule it when she did realize? Did she even make a note of the appointment at all, or was she expecting to be reminded when I showed up on her doorstep, all dressed up?

I could imagine the scene if I would. Her daughter would open the door and ask who I was. I’d give my name and she’d look at me blankly. I’d explain my purpose and her eyes would go wide. She’d tell me to wait here and go running into the house, “Mooommy! Someone’s here for you for a shidduch!” The shadchan would come out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, looking annoyed. “What’s your name? Oh yes… I didn’t realize the date when I gave you the time. Let me just get your information down really quickly so you didn’t come out here for nothing.” Then she’d ask a few sketchy and unhelpful questions, and I’d be out on her doorstep.

I left a cold message thanking her for confirming her appointment for erev Yom Kippur and asking that she please call me back about a rain check. She never did. And despite my parents’ urging, I refused to call her either. I didn’t see how or why I could trust someone like that to ret me a shidduch.

“What’s traumatized you so much?” my father marvels at me when I refuse to visit a shadchan over vacation.

“It must have been the shadchan who insisted on meeting her at a distant family friend’s vort, and when she showed up, the woman just said ‘Hello, so nice to meet you,’ and refused to even take her ‘shidduch resume’,” my mother suggests.

I hadn’t even remembered that horrible incident. Suppression defense mechanism, doubtless.

“Oh, I thought it was the woman I made her go talk to, who after a half hour of grilling said that she didn’t actually know any boys, and recommended visiting a different shadchan,” my father says.

I’d forgotten that one too, but never underestimate unconscious motivation.

My parents claim I’m being too vulnerable. If I had a healthy sense of self, I wouldn’t mind being treated like a lower order of life, because I’d know that I wasn’t one. Other girls manage it, right?

Not really. Other girls shut down their feelings in the name of a higher goal—getting married. Maybe I can’t shut down my feelings. Or maybe I’m just not desperate enough to get married.

I have an excellent sense of self: I think I’m wonderful. And I think a wonderful person like me deserves to be treated like a wonderful person. Not like a doormat. Not like a second-class citizen. And not like a beggar.

Life of the Party

Out of town weddings are something else. Sometimes it seems like they don’t even try to compete with good ol’ New York. Not that they should, but since we set the standard, you’d think they’d abide by it. But no—I’ve been to some pretty low key weddings out there. Think, a shmorg that fits onto my night table. A one-piece band. Plastic silverware. (The heavy-duty silver kind, but plastic nonetheless.) I remember sitting there with my plastic fork and eating off a heavy plastic plate in a dressed-up auditorium and thinking, “In Brooklyn, this would be a birthday party.” But who cared? We weren’t there to eat. We weren’t there to pick up catering techniques. We weren’t even there for the experience. We were there for the bride. She had a grand time, and so did we.

I started writing this because I just got back from another out of town wedding. It wasn’t a birthday party—it was quite nice. Maybe that’s why the guests were so dead—they were busy enjoying the elegant china and cleverly designed food. Here we had a girl (young lady, woman? Why is it that we’re all “girls” until we get married? But there’s a topic for a different entry.) who is the life-of-the-party type, and her guests are slogging around in a circle like they’re wading through molasses. I felt like I was pulling and pushing at the same time just to move at a speed slightly above walking. What did they think this was, the last half mile of the Boston Marathon?

The bride noticed too. She commented to someone that I was so lively. Now, I’m not very lively. Definitely not the life-of-the-party type. So when someone comments that I’m the life of the party, you know that the party is dead. In other words, the fact that I was noticeable bodes ill for everyone else there. So here’s a message to all wedding guests, no matter how unwilling, and no matter how diverting the décor is: be excited! This is the most important night of someone’s life. The least you can do is act excited.

Reasonable Hishtadlus?

I should visit The Baltimore Shadchan. A friend of mine insists on this. She did it herself, dedicating an entire day to the 8-hour round trip, not including the interview. She is currently engaged, but not to any boy from Baltimore, and not through that shadchan, but still. I should go. She’s not like other shadchanim. She’s nice. She’s kind. She keeps her appointments. She isn’t arrogant or overbearing, doesn’t think she’s G-d, doesn’t act like she’s doing you a humongous favor, just because you’re female. It sounds perfect, but Baltimore is just too far away for a casual visit. Somehow, spending an entire day in the car just for the possibility that maybe I’ll be ret to a Baltimore boy doesn’t strike me as logical or efficient.

 

My friend points out that I’ll think nothing of traveling all day to an out-of-town wedding; why is this different? It’s fundamentally different. When I go to a wedding, especially when it’s 8 hours out of New York, I know I’m contributing significantly to someone’s simcha. I know with 100% certainty that I’m accomplishing my goal of being misameyach the kallah. When I travel to a shadchan (hypothetically speaking), I don’t have any certainty at all that I’m accomplishing anything. I may never hear from her again. Or I might hear from her, but not about the right person. Or I might hear from her and be ret to my significant other. It’s only one option of three, and it’s difficult to peg the probability.

 

There is no activity I enjoy so much that I’d spend eight hours in a car with a parent to do it. Don’t get me wrong—I love my parents dearly. But they’re parents, not friends. We have different politics, different music preferences, different views on life, different ideas about radio talk shows (ugh). There’s no way I could handle four hours of straight inactivity, with nothing to do except talk to one of them. And there’s no way either of them could handle four hours straight of me driving. We’d all arrive in Baltimore grumpy; we’d return to New York glowering.

 

I just can’t see that it’s worth it.

Now, if a friend would get married in Baltimore, that would be a different story…

The Male Attitude Revisited

In last post I wrote: “If they tell bochurim it’s OK to insist on full support, the bochurim will go forth with complete faith that it is the correct thing to do.”

This implies that roshei yeshiva, if they thought about it, would conclude that it is not correct to do so. But maybe they don’t. When I think about it, I can’t recall too many of the big roshei yeshiva worrying overmuch about shidduchim. Maybe they don’t have a problem, because their daughters have yichus. But the fact is, that most of the howling comes from the Jewish Press and individual (anonymous) writers in various other publications.

So do they even care?

Where Does the Male Attitude Come From?

A “Let’s Schmooze” letter to Country Yossi magazine detailed what happened when a man tried to withdraw his son from yeshiva to attend college. The rosh yeshiva explained that parnassa is min hashamayim, and college wouldn’t help. The man countered that his own rebbe, Rav Pam, zt”l, said everyone has to do their hishtadlus. The rosh yeshiva then suggested his version of hishtadlus: marry rich. The writer has a moment of epiphany: the self-serving attitude of modern yeshiva bochurim in shidduchim is the product of the attitude of their rabbeim.

 

Good morning, Anonymous (of course he’s anonymous. Giving his name would just shoot his son’s chances…) And kudos for taking the time to write about it in one of the few publications that would have the guts to print it. Can you see the Yated or Hamodia printing a letter that accuses roshei yeshiva of causing the “Shidduch Crisis”? And yet, the fact is that bochurim think they have the right to demand dowries (because lets call a spade a spade). And the fact is, that this attitude doesn’t rise in a vacuum.

 

I knew about this before Mr. Anonymous, because my brother recently entered shidduchim out of a very large and prestigious yeshiva. He explained that when boys enter shidduchim they go to their rosh yeshiva for advice.

 

What do you suppose the roshei yeshiva advise? Doubtless things like “Middos are the most important,” or “Understand that marriage is a compromise,” right? Wrong. They simply provide the bochur with his lowest bidding price. “$25,000 and a car,” or “$20,000 and an apartment,” or “Minimum 7 years of full support.”

 

“So what are you worth?” I asked my brother. Turns out he didn’t go get his asking price. He wants to marry an eishes chayil, not her father’s bankroll. Sometimes I’m proud of my siblings.

 

Now, I’m not lambasting roshei yeshiva. Torah study is essential – so the basis of their advice is sound. But bochurim very carefully follow the dictum “asei lichah rav.” They take their rosh yeshiva’s words as the word of G-d on high. And this puts the rosh yeshiva in a position of great responsibility. If they tell bochurim it’s OK to insist on full support, the bochurim will go forth with complete faith that it is the correct thing to do.

 

 But step out of the ivory tower for five minutes and tell me that someone who chooses a lifestyle of “pas bimelach tochal” deserves a car and seven years of complete support, worry free. Tell me that any given bochur is such an incredible masmid that his father-in-law should go in debt for him. Tell me that it is appropriate for bochurim to enter shidduchim convinced that they are G-d’s gift to the world (worth $30 grand for five years and a car!) and should filter their applications by income.  Tell me that it is proper and good to marginalize girls who are ba’alei middos, who appreciate Torah, who are n’shei chayil waiting to be proven, and who will make excellent, dedicated wives, simply because they don’t have the income of a venture capitalist.

 

Let’s not devalue our Jewish girls, showing them that their contribution to their bayis ne’eman is only equal to their husband’s if they come with $25,000 and an apartment. (As if earning the income, raising the kids, and doing all the housework isn’t enough for a single mortal. The wives these coddled bochurim get are worth $50k plus a weekly box of chocolate!)

 

Yes, Torah study is important. But let natural selection take its course. Bochurim who truly treasure their learning will marry girls who feel the same way—and are willing to support them in it, whatever it takes. And bochurim will learn to make sacrifices for their learning, living in the gashmiyus-deprived conditions that have fostered Torah giants for generations.

Back to “Being Seen”

I got lost on a tangent several posts ago. I started mentioning how embarrassing it is to be at a wedding for purely shidduch reasons. Everyone figures it out pretty quickly, because you’re being dragged around by a parent or doting relative, who keeps introducing you as the sum of your accomplishments.

 

“Have you met my daughter [name]? She’s at Touro finishing a degree in Business Finance. She’s interning at CitiCorp this summer! If they like her work, they may hire her after she graduates.”

You resist the temptation to add “And I do dishes too!” and stand there politely, trying not to look as embarrassed as you feel.

The subject nods politely, trying not to look too “And I could care less because why?”

Then your doting relative continues, “She’s very bright and very frum.”

Suddenly the purpose of the conversation becomes clear to the subject. He or she looks you up and down like a cow at a cattle auction, and you almost ask if they want to examine your teeth and hooves. And then they ask, “So, you’re looking to get married? What are you looking for?”

Your cheeks burn at how mercenary the proceedings are, and you mumble something about how a nice, intelligent, and frum guy would be just up your alley.

“She’s very nice, isn’t she?” the subject asks your doting relative. “I can see it, good middos. I’ll keep my eyes open.”

The subject moves on, and you know you’ll never hear from her again. But it doesn’t matter, because your doting relative is yanking you along to the next subject.

“Have you met my daughter? She’s at Touro…”

 

I hate selling myself as much as I hate being “noticed.” I have this perverse belief that whoever finds me my soul mate will have to know who I am as a person, and not just what my specs are. But what else is there to say? I can’t exactly be introduced as “Have you met my daughter? She is thoughtful and generous and has a wry sense of humor, but teases her younger brothers too much.” So off we go, letting the world know about my promising future career and innate ability.

Is it necessary, I wonder. Does anything ever come of these brief introductions? This “being seen?” This “reminding people that you exist?” This “getting noticed?” This “selling yourself?”

I’m thinking of my four most recently engaged friends. One was set up by her seminary dorm counselor’s sister. One was set up by a professional shadchan. One was set up by a neighbor. One was set up by an aunt. Nope—not a single one was married off by a distant relative met at a wedding or a roving shadchan who “saw” her. ‘Nuff said? I think so.

 

Do ‘they’ matter?

For a while I didn’t even believe in these roving shadchanim at weddings. I’d go to a wedding dressed to please only myself—can you imagine? Despite urgings that I “be noticed,” I always preferred being modestly unnoticed.

I’ve never understood how we get told our entire school life that attracting overt attention is not for a bas Yisroel. The mantra “go out and be noticed” would have brought gasps from the assembly at the tznius Yom Iyun. And then as soon as we hit shidduchim we’re expected to go everywhere and shove ourselves under everyone’s noses in the name of being noticed.

 

Anyway, I finally saw one of these roving shadchanim. It was at a best friend’s wedding, where I was distinctly noticeable. I mean, I was running the shtick and had a few unusual tricks up my sleeve. I was very distinctly there. Hey, simchas kallah. What don’t we do for our friends?

Well, I was packing away some shtick off on the side when one of those roving shadchanim buttonholed a non-noticeable friend of mine and started grilling her. I heard the interview because they were howling at each other over the music. So I took a good look—I mean, it was the first roving shadchan I’d ever seen. She looked just like every other overweight middle-aged woman there. The same chin-length layered sheitel. The same unremarkable black suit. The same strap-backed pumps. And no, she never even asked my name, let alone what I was looking for. So much for the “be noticed” advice. If it’s not a sure-fire method, then I don’t want to deal with it.

 

Quite frankly, I don’t believe “being noticed” is the route to go. It’s one thing to do your hishtadlus: write your “profile,” go to weddings, look presentable, concoct a glib response to “what are you looking for,” make good impressions on people—all very fine and well. But to go against your nature or against your values for the sake of getting married? Let’s get real. Hashem will get you married when He feels the time is right. Yes, you have to do your part, but there’s a limit.

How many people have actually gotten married to people ‘ret’ to them by roving wedding shadchanim? Show me the numbers. Until someone can produce them, I’ll stay unnoticed, thank you very much.