Someone passed around a manila envelope in class last week. You know, those envelopes with a sob story written on the side: “This money is being collected for a family of 12 orphans living in a cardboard box in Yerushalayim.” You have no way of knowing if it’s true or not, but you stick in a few quarters or a dollar because how can you not?
I mentioned to a friend, as she upended her change into the envelope, that passing one 
around might be a good way to pay the rent. You know, “This money is being collected for otherwise homeless singles [read: nebach cases] who can’t afford to put a roof over their head.” Or something like that. Do it in every class, assume everyone gives, on average, fifty cents, there are over 700 female students in Touro College… do the math. OK, it’s not the entire rent, but it’s a good start.
We ended up talking about begging in general. About how to forge a haskama-type letter that all door-to-door collectors seem to have, or the best strategy for street corners. We discussed the practical application of the Sherlock Holmes story “The Man with the Twisted Lip” and mused over whether, in fact, begging would yield more than our current salaries on a per diem basis. After concluding that it would probably come close, that it has more flexible hours, and that in the fall, spring and part of summer it might actually be enjoyable to be getting exercise in the fresh air, we began discussing the best way to get into the field.
“When I’m in graduate school I won’t be able to work at all,” my friend said. “But a few hours a day on 13th Avenue, a few hours a day on Avenue J – I won’t drown in debt.”
“Yes,” I begin to agree, when suddenly it occurs to me. “But you can’t beg where you might meet anyone who knows you! It would be terrible for shidduchim!”
She frowned. “Good point. That kind of ruins things, doesn’t it?”
It does. It really does. There are sooo many things we don’t do just because of how it would appear for shidduchim…
Seriously, there really are. There’s a sizable chunk of Touro College students who are attending because “Brooklyn College” looks awful on the ‘resume’. I crack up every time Dean Goldschmidt says something like, “We must be doing something right – we get more and more students every year!” Yah right. It has less to do with the administration and more to do with herd mentality.
And then there’s jobs. Everyone has to know what they’re “going for” from before they appear for freshman registration, because they need something to say for shidduch dating reasons. And heaven forbid it should be a job that doesn’t pay well.
At some point I was attempting to pull together a cross-country road trip. Incredibly enough, one of the objections people’s parents put forth was, “But what will people think?” (In the end I dumped it as too pricey and time consuming. But if anyone wants to attempt to hit the Mississippi, I’m open for this summer.)
As a whole, our society is incredibly self-conscious. In my humble opinion, we care altogether too much what “people will think.” Which brings me right along to the Bad4Shidduchim Club…
The key is to get into a business that requires travel occasionally. Then people can excuse it on the grounds that the job requires it. My daughter is a travel editor and gets lots of freebies all over. This has actually been used as a plus by some shadchanim who tell a boy that vacations will cost him a lot less. Go figure.
hold on a sec… if a cross-country road trip is bad 4 shiduchim… what is a cross-world trip?.. that’s it I’m doomed!
and Mississippi sounds good… but are you sure you don’t want to come with me to Spain & Gibraltar…
Well, we live in a world, so we kinda have to think about what people will think.
I try to not think about it too often, and do what i can within reason.
of course, if you think begging is a viable option…
Ahhh, life without looking over your shoulder..pure bliss!!
is this your mission statement?
Sorry for the second comment but this needs to be said. Apropos of the comment about Touro College, before there was a Touro College your choices would have been, since Brooklyn College is not acceptable, no college or no college. Yes, Touro did and is still doing something right–they are providing a choice where none existed before. And they are doing this while having to deal with Roshei Hayeshiva and balabatim that would far rather they folded up. And students, it must be said, who raise the “seh past nisht” and “it’s treif” cards everytime they run across something they don’t like or don’t want to do.
please fix the picture!! its blocking my view of the words!
Before Touro, there was a middle group who could go to Brooklyn College because college was a necessity and it was “sha’as hadchak”. But once Touro appeared as a kosher option, Brooklyn was no longer viable…
There are still some who go to Brooklyn because they can’t afford Touro. And they’re generally made out to be a more “modern” bunch because of it. That doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?
Mickey Mouse: Spain sounds good. When do we leave?
Hehe. Funny, in that “other” world, Touro is a strike on the resume.
Mickey Mouse,
Just keep in mind that there is no kosher milk nor milk products available in Spain–none. The country allows pigs milk to be mixed in without any indication that this has been done. Bring a jar of powdered creamer.
I wouldn’t worry about Mickey Mouse – she managed in Denmark somehow.
I’m all up for Mississippi, or someplace equally remote (can we go to the public diamond mine in Arkansas?). I love highway driving!
Can’t afford Spain, though–the airfare would be a couple of months’ rent for me.
It’s interesting what you said about going to Brooklyn College making one “more modern”. I’ll have to tell that to my yeshivish friend who’s going there because she can’t afford Touro…
b4s is right! I’ve managed in countries with a lot less than Spain- but thanx for the info!
I’ve learned to stop worrying about what everyones thinking some time ago. If it hurts my shidduch chances to be myself then so be it. In all honesty I really don’t want someone (or their parents) who takes issue with every little thing so I look at it as helping me weed them out (this saves me from some very boring dates). And can someone please tell me why people are so offended when single girls take nice vacations (honestly I think their just jealous) when my sister went on vacation to Europe my parents were overwhelmed with snide comments about what bad parents they are to let their 20 year old daughter travel with friends. (thank goodness their still letting me go to Italy). If there was ever a time it is now, I’m getting to do something I always dreamed of and once I get married probably won’t get a chance to do again.
Says it like it is- the name suits you actually! and I totally agree with you on this one! and enjoy Italy I’ve been there 3 times… and it’s one of the coolest places on earth… (there’s kosher food almost everywhere there)
and about single girls taking nice vacations my parents must be really bad parents… for letting me travel… but I really don’t get parents who don’t like you said “getting to do something I always dreamed of and once I get married probably won’t get a chance to do again.”
though there are some places I wish I could go (Croatia, India…) and my parents, are well just being parents!
It is funny how often things don’t happen (or do) because of ‘what other people will think’ (read: will my actions prevent me from finding the perfect shidduch due to someone misunderstanding me.) It’d be so nice not to have to worry about any of that.
Is introduction by a total stranger your only way of getting a date?
:-/ Not really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shidduch
I love the idea of begging for rent money. It may not actually hurt one’s shidduch chances depending on how one couches the activity in question. After begging for rent money, it can be said that one has a tenacious ability to generate funds to meet the basic needs of the financially challenged; so mush so, that one was driven to collect money on the streets of NY from passersby. If one leaves out that fact that the one in need was the fund raiser her or himself, the middos and selflessness of such an individual would be beyond reproach. The shidduch choices of such a baal/baalas middos could potentially increase dramatically.
As for single women taking vacations affecting shidduch chances, what about a single man living on a Caribbean island? While my Rebbe told me, that keeping mitzvos in a place of unadulterated gashmius and pritzus (i.e. the local Rav describes the island we live on as Galus Mitzarim) definitely shows my inner strength and sincerity to be an aved HaShem. Nonetheless, I’m certain many will say that I don’t take Yiddishkeit seriously and what kind of learner could I possibly be? Well with the latter point they are correct as I’m not really into Gemara. Call me strange, but hey….
BTW ladies, my career requires me to move to different locations every four years or so. If you want the opportunity to live in the Caribbean and then the US west coast, Singapore or Europe let me know. It’s a shameless plug, but you can’t blame for trying.
Yea, I like Touro! They get special treatment in my store
Road Trips! Yes!
Mr and the boyz did so many, maybe about 8 over the years.
Major rule tho, no women on ‘trips. Gotta keep it simple.
I try to drive places with Da Wife but she freaks out when we get lost. She’s gotten better, thank G-d.
“your choices would be no college or no college”
YU/Stern anyone?
nut rayleh!
Bad4,
It appears my comment is no longer available. Was it considered to be inappropriate. If so, please let me know how?
It wasn’t, Adam. But every comment is queued for moderation, and if I’m asleep or baking pecan pies for Thanksgiving, they don’t get put up.
Now I’m curious about your job. Are you a Chabad shaliach or a military chaplain?
#25…I’m really on the ball here.
Personally, I wouldn’t go against my principles for shidduchim. But if it’s some kind of shtick that I just wouldn’t bother with otherwise, hey, if you can’t beat ‘em…
Seriously, though, I’m not going to make myself crazy. (That’s my mother’s job;)) (too late, anyway)
Look, whatever you do can be viewed as either positive or negative depending on what the person’s looking for. So just go on with life and trust that your intended mother-in-law is not one of those who goes around wagging her finger at everything.
I’m not a rav, although the Chabad shaliach loves having me around to help ensure minyan and to learn with the gerim (they are the only permanent frum residents other than the shaliach and his family). I work as a process engineer in biotechnology manufacturing. It is really great work except that it not normally found near large, frum communities.
Bad4, can you send some pies my way?
Process engineer? Is that a type of chemical engineer?
Overnight is quite pricy, and I’m not sure how pies keep in the mail. Otherwise I really would.
Hear that, everyone? She’s stingy. Or economical. See what I mean? Everything is bad for shidduchim. Or good.
In any case, save me a slice. (You don’t want to eat too much, anyway — what’s the cutoff size now for in-demands?)
me thinks that girls taking trips is because they are terrified that they’ll take advantage of the lack of frum observers to talk to boys. (which factualy many intown girls do, I can attest to this personaly.)
funny thing is, out of town girls don’t seem to have these hang ups, plus out of town girls seem to always be so much more tznius.
With the intown girls, the moment they’re free of the yentas, half the time anything goes. (not all the time though.)
its disturbing really. I tend to avoid kiddush at shul because of it. They don’t even care what type of boy it is, just as long as its a boy.
Why yes, it is. Actually, a process engineer is the very best kind of comic…I mean, chemical engineer.
I specialize in prokaryotic & eukaryotic cell separation from fermentation/cell culture media, protein extraction & concentration, buffer exchange, as well as freeze & thaw of process protein intermediates. Whew, that was a mouthful! It was a field, I stumbled upon rather than chose directly. Based upon my master’s degree, during which I studied pulsatile, non-Newtonian fluid dynamics through small diameter vessels (i.e. blood flow) and its impact on the initiation & modulation of vascular disease, I should have found work in the heart valve/by-pass graft industry. To my chagrin, after receiving my masters degree, I discovered that heart valve/by-pass graft manufacturers hire exclusively mechanical engineers. I wish someone would have told me this little pertinent fact when I chose my research project.
I really appreciate your sincerity with regard to pie delivery. I was, nonetheless, not serious. I have to watch my girlish figure as becoming overweight would significantly hurt my shidduch opportunities. Well as long as I’m in the Caribbean and no woman frum with a pulse has seriously considered a tropical shana rishona, I guess one slice wouldn’t hurt.
Cheap. Let’s call a spade a spade. And a cheapo a cheapo. I look at slices of pizza and see percentages of college textbooks. When I buy a skirt I calculate how many would add up to tuition.
Yoni, you need a new shul. Most of the females I know will speak when spoken too, but won’t go out of their way looking for males at a kiddush. Possibly they know better than to get between a man and his chulent.
Adam, anywhere I can email you? I’m curious about your job, and I suspect there are better ways to discuss it.
Ask away at:
adaminshidduchim at yahoo
to be fair none of the girls are local, they’re always ones who are passing through. (i live in a very out of town community).
and for the record I neither like chullent nor does my shul serve chullent at kiddush. just some fish and various kinds of cake or danish.
perhaps this explains it?
(give me cheesecake over chullent any day!)
For a community who claims to believe that ones bashert is destined by HaShem arba’im yom kodem l’vlad you sure do worry about the actions of man. If HaShem says so how can mere man get in the way?
Funny you chose this post and not the one about how people should marry people closer to their age to solve the shidduch crisis. Surely nobody would deny us the label “hypocrites”.
That’s it – no chulent, no inhibition. Why don’t you ask the shul to serve chulent? Or at least cheesecake. Mm. Definitely better than chulent.
I think the statistical questions are pretty silly – if you want to know if people are getting married or not do a survey (not to mention they don’t account for divorces, widows, people becoming ba’alei t’shuva or R”L the opposite)… But your posts on changing ones behavior to find favor in the eyes of the ever-present yet ambiguous ‘other’ are fascinating (though in my opinion this attitude is revolting)… The worst thing is that I spent plenty of time in what’s called the yeshiva world so I know that what you write is true…
And it’s the name and subject of this blog, mostly. “Shidduchim” is an institution for ‘yeshiva’ women. And it can either get tear-jerking or entertaining, depending on the perspective. I prefer to find it entertaining.
It’s fascinating how you see Touro. People in the YU/Stern world tend to see Touro as “not real college” and sort of the way yeshivish people cheat the system to get a paper degree without actually learning anything. Many of my friends think twice before dating a Touro girl because they think it might mean she’s not very intelligent.
Grrrrr, the sound of teeth gnashing. Having been to Stern as a student, having siblings and cousins who graduated from there and being a full time instructor at Touro, I can see one huge difference. YU does not have to contend with the yeshivishe roshei hayeshiva. Since they have already been deemed as “treif” by that world they can go ahead and be a “real college” with no one breathing down their neck. Touro has full Middle States Accreditation. They have a mix of PhDs and MA/MS’s teaching just as most colleges have. They do not have every major available at every site because their clientele doesn’t want every major.(You know, some of the majors are “bad for shidduchim.”) I have also taught/teach at CUNY and at St. Johns. Touro students are every bit as bright or not bright as the students at other colleges. Their reason for picking Touro usually has very little to do with the quality of the school or the instructors. It has to do with what the yeshivishe velt allows them.
And yes, at Touro, as at other colleges, there are students there who don’t belong in college. Some are there because it is “good for shidduchim,” some are there because that is where their friends go and what would they do with themselves if they weren’t in college, and some are trying to delay having to go out to work no matter what it takes.
Is Touro Harvard? No. But then neither is YU, or NYU or Fordham or CUNY or any other of the hundreds of colleges that are the mainstay of college education here in this country. And you know what? The Ivies aren’t all they are cracked up to be either. Our President’s father “bought” his son into Yale, and I’m sure Yale must be cringing every time he opens his mouth and misspeaks, he of the “gentlemen’s C.”
I am reading this a bit late, so I’m probably writing this to noone but the moderater, but man, you are seriously bigoted when it comes to Touro. As profk wrote above, it provides more or less the same quality of education as most other colleges (YU certainly being no exception) with the exception of its accounting division which has received NATIONAL recognition for having the highest pass rate on the CPA exam in the NATION.
Of course Touro ranks high on the CPA exam. Its students are good yeshiva students who are saturated with the need to excel, and they rise to the challenge. The problem is that “those students who don’t belong in college” are a larger minority in Touro than anywhere else, and they are in the habit of dragging the challenge down instead of rising to it.
I was once privileged to be in a class given by a new professor. She entered all gung-ho and excited to teach. Within a month and a half of “don’t give us too much homework we don’t have time” “no professor dismisses on times” “do we have to have a midterm?” “we’re just taking this class because it’s required” “that’s sooo hard” and “nobody cares” she was not bothering to teach new material, didn’t introduce any more interesting assignments, and just coasted on a project she’d started in week three. Apparently, I was the only one in the class who minded.
Take a buttonhole poll of Touro students – as I have – and ask them “Do you like Touro?” The ones who are there because they want a college education in a kosher environment will sheepishly admit, “Yes.” The rest will say “No” because nobody likes being forced to do anything. So naturally, the ones being forced resent Touro for being the catalyst of coercion.
Also ask “Why are you in Touro?” See how many mention the wonderful academics. And see how many give some vague, fuzzy answer to cover the fact that the real answer is, “Shidduchim”.
Pingback: Friday Repost: Not Begging for Shidduchim | Bad for Shidduchim