I invite the reader to a mind game.
Let us suppose that the Jewish community was to undergo a rapid process whereby lashon hara (evil talk) became indispensable, routine, and encouraged. Suppose further that our young adults were infantilized by their parents and teachers, privacy was trampled in the name of virtue, and trivial externals became as much of an asset ? or more ? as honesty and menschlichkeit.
Imagine that this dangerous process were to spawn an alarming increase in depression, anxiety, and eating disorders in our high school population. Picture large numbers of people being discouraged from seeking medical or psychological help when it’s desperately needed. I would hope that headlines would scream out our pain, that editorial writers would demand action, and that our rabbis and educators would insist on new programs to combat this erosion of our most basic ideals. We would be searching our souls and beating our breasts, wondering how these secular influences have insinuated themselves into our community.
The problem is that there is nothing secular about it. This fiend is uniquely Jewish and uniquely frum. This product of our own creation has a name which increasingly strikes fear and panic across the Orthodox community, from Modern to Haredi and from sixth graders to grandparents. It is a monster that, like Shelley’s Frankenstein, was spawned with all good intentions but then ran amuck across the countryside. It is commonly known as shidduchim ? the process of finding a mate through reliance on marriage brokers or advisers.
I am in no position to evaluate or analyze the relative merits of different modes of how our kids go about finding mates in our different communities. But after 15 years in the practice of psychiatry, largely in the religious community, I am increasingly alarmed at the human wreckage the shidduchim system has created, how it has arrested the normal development of many teenagers, and how it has rent the fabric of our professed morals and values.
Truth to tell, I was hoping never to have to write about this at all. I was hoping that some prominent, well respected, religious community leader would have the courage to address this painful phenomenon forcefully and publicly. It is clearly their responsibility, and I unapologetically place this burden on their shoulders where it unmistakably belongs.
It is not exactly a secret in our community that the aveirah – the sin – of lashon hara is all too often suspended in the search for a mate. This will, of course, be vigorously denied, and voluminous responsa, proclamations, and religious decisions will be cited to prove that this would clearly violate the Torah. But that does not change reality.
I wish it were just apocryphal that families, rabbis, doctors, and friends are asked the most intrusive, inappropriate, and invasive questions by shadchanim or other agents about the young man or woman.
Included on the “need to know” list are such issues as the young lady’s dress size; the kind of table cloth used in her home on Friday night; whether the prospective mother-in-law comes to the table dressed in a dress or a robe, sheitel, scarf or hat – and whether the meal is served on silver or plastic cutlery, china or paper dishes.
How does he wear his black hat? How does his grandfather wear it? Has anyone in the family gone to a coed camp? What medications are in the medicine cabinet? Are there slipcovers on the sofa? Is she a good cook or a bad cook?
I used to view these questions as silly aberrations, but it is clear that they have gone main-stream. These types of questions illuminate the character of the questioner more then they clarify the personality of the young adult in question. They are also a medium in which slander and gossip are nurtured. Are the laws of gossip and slander supposed to be sacrificed on the altar of desired marital bliss?
To be fair, many fully appropriate questions are also asked, questions about schooling, aspirations, family relationships, religious commitment, aliyah, etc. I would like to believe that most families still confine themselves to these kinds of questions.
However, when I am called about prospective mates whom I know, I am almost never asked about their chesed, how much tzedakah they give, if they are respectful to parents and friends, if they visit their grandparents, if they are honest in business, if they pay their taxes, if they swindle the government, if they are kind, etc.
Why not? Do we really believe that her dress size informs us about the scope of her deeds and that his type of hat enlightens us as to his type of humanity? Shame on us if we do. When Abraham appointed Eliezer as a shadchan to find a suitable wife for his son Isaac, our patriarch was quite specific in his criteria. Look as I might, I could not find even one reference in that portion of the Torah to looks, money, social status, table cloths, or any of the other currently popular inane preferences. Eliezer, in his role as matchmaker, sought young women of impeccable moral character. Why don’t we demand a similar standard of our modern professional and lay shadchanim?
And what of the privacy of the family being discussed? Are there no limits as to what is fair game? The Jewish people were blessed by G-d through Bilam in the desert precisely because we did not look into our neighbor’s windows. Now we have an entire industry consisting of practitioners who engage in precisely that activity. Can those who ask these shallow and foolish questions really be trusted to keep the answers confidential?
Unintended but inevitable consequences spring from the overemphasis on the superficial and external qualities. For example, young women are acutely aware that to find a shidduch they need to be thin. Ten years ago, when I began lecturing in high schools about eating disorders, the bulk of requests was to speak to juniors and seniors. Now I receive an alarming number of requests to speak to sixth and seventh graders. Many of these children have already been indoctrinated to fear fat (the central symptom of anorexia). They diet, talk about food, calculate calories, compare dress sizes, and often feel physically defective.
Virtually all in this group endorse the notion that their obsession is at least partly attributable to their fear of not getting a shidduch. Their mothers or sisters have already warned them of the consequences of eating too much. Many of these girls become sitting ducks for the development of anorexia or bulimia. Still others can develop depression or anxiety disorders as a result of the constant worry and pressure.
Whenever I attend conferences of Orthodox mental health professionals and the subject of teenager (particularly female) psychopathology in the frum community is raised, the “shidduchim crisis” is often cited as a strong contributor. There are lively discussions and debates about the proper and most effective ways to deal with it, and there is universal agreement that without strong, public, sustained rabbinic direction, nothing will change.
For the segment of the Orthodox community that embraces the concept of Daas Torah, all it would take is a strongly worded proclamation from the appropriate rabbinic body declaring new, more sensible, sensitive, and ethical rules of the game. And for the community where Daas Torah is much less central there are equally powerful rabbinic voices that, once united, could publicly demand that sanity be restored to the process.
Aside from concerns about eating disorders, depression, and anxiety, there are more subtle psychologically corrosive fallouts from the shidduch scene. One example: At the time that young men and women begins the shidduch process they do so because a certain level of maturity, independence, and responsibility has been assumed. I have always found it odd, then, that if either party chooses to discontinue the process after a few dates the job of dispensing that awkward and uncomfortable message to the other is given to the shadchan, friend, or family member.
Why? Exactly what is it we are protecting the young adults from? From taking responsibility for their decisions? From learning how to deliver potentially distressing news to another human being with compassion and sensitivity? From learning how to tolerate disappointment and rejection? Isn’t a mature marriage, in addition to all of its wonderful aspects, also about taking responsibility, demonstrating sensitivity, and dealing maturely with disappointment and rejection? Adults in authority ought to see here an opportunity to teach and counsel their young charges about these real life skills, and not infantilize them and do it for them. We should be fostering adult communication, not stifling it.
I have had dozens of frum patients who delayed seeking medical or psychiatric help, refused to take proper medication, did not seek desperately needed support from friends and family, all because they were terrified that they or their children or grandchildren would not find shidduchim if word got out that they have a problem.
Abject paranoia abounds in the community when shidduchim are at stake. I’ve been asked to write prescriptions for patients using false names and to lie to insurance companies — all in an effort to conceal information that families feel will damn them to second or third class shidduchim.
Conditions for which group therapy is invaluable (such as certain anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and others) are routinely under-treated because of the refusal to send family members to a place where they might be spotted by another frum Jew. This applies not only to mental health issues but to medical issues as well. Sufferers refuse to ask for help from siblings, other family members, or even their own rabbis because of this perverted sense of propriety. The system almost demands that those who suffer from illnesses of any type remain alone, without the support and love that our community ought to be stellar at providing. Since when did we get so judgmental that our most vulnerable are forced underground?
Ask any set of parents who embrace or are forced to embrace the shidduch process about the inherent unfairness of it all. They will all agree that there is an understandably clear advantage for those who are star students in their yeshivas and seminaries. But many will become cynical and angry as they talk of the influence on the process of money, social status, an ill family member, rumors, and superficial religiosity. I know dozens of young men who wear black hats because they won’t get a good shidduch otherwise. Is this why black hats ought to be worn?
There are countless other issues that swirl around the institution of shidduchim that ought to be tackled by rabbinic authorities, perhaps in consultation with lay leaders and mental health professionals. Shidduchim are, to be sure, a time-honored and venerated institution for those whose communities prefer this method of introduction. But those in moral, spiritual, and educational authority should either discard it in favor of a more attractive and beneficial system or they should improve it considerably. The criteria for positive transformation should be how well or poorly the shidduch method reflects the values that we want every young couple to absorb from the process itself.
The young newly married couple are exhorted on their most happy day to build a home together based on the highest moral and ethical Jewish ideals. We severely handicap their chances of doing so if the very process that brought them together often remains rife with hypocrisy, superficiality, and paranoia.