Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I am newly married (almost five months) and just learned I am pregnant. This might be great news for other young couples, but for me, it is a jail sentence.
Not so long ago, I was a carefree, eighteen-year-old Bais Yaakov graduate, fresh out of school and just beginning the shidduch parsha. I was the oldest of eight and lived a very sheltered and comfortable life. I had many friends from school, shul and the surrounding neighborhood and was considered one of the popular girls, scoring high marks in school, always in the center of things and seen as a person with middos and talent. It didn’t hurt that my parents were big baalei tzeddaka and my father a pillar of our community. My mother shopped for us at all the best stores and we lacked for nothing, so it was no surprise that as soon as I graduated, all the roshei yeshiva approached my father with shidduchim for me. Only the best bochrim would be good enough for me and it seems, that every yeshiva had only the best bochrim. So, I began seeing suitors, but was not really into it. After each meeting, I told my parents that I wasn’t ready to get married – I had only just graduated. I wasn’t expected to go to work, as money was no object and, in truth, I wanted someone who would support me, not the other way around. My father decided to take matters into his own hands, saying if I waited too long I would miss out on the “best boys.” He also said that he wanted his future son-in-law to learn for a few years and would be willing to support us for that time. Always being an obedient and loving daughter, I gave in.
It was not before I was introduced to Zalmen. I really didn’t have any feelings for him the first time we met, the conversation was anything but easy and I couldn’t wait for it to end – I just wanted to go back to being me. But my father said to give him one more chance; he was the “cream de la cream.” Little did I know that date number two would the lead to a l’chaim. His parents came and my parents agreed to the shidduch. Bewildered, I realized I was now engaged to a total stranger and there was nothing I could do about it. The very next day, preparations for the wedding began in earnest and I was caught up in the whirlwind of activity. Zalmen, to his credit, called every week before Shabbos from Eretz Yisroel, where we would live for two years so he could learn in a kollel in Yerushalayim, but the calls were strange and stilted.
The wedding was set to take place regardless of the tears I shed trying to tell my mother that I didn’t want to get married. My mother tried to calm me down, saying she felt the same way when her parents arraigned her marriage to my father, and look how good that turned out. Small solace for me, as I wasn’t quite sure I would be so lucky. Finally, I gave up, wiped away the tears and decided to do what was expected of me.
I don’t remember too much of the wedding, except being dragged down to the chuppah. In the Yichud Room, Zalmen made some small talk about how in ten days time, we would be on our way to our new life in Eretz Yisroel. We spent our first night in a rented basement apartment and I can’t even express the shock and horror I felt at what I had to endure; I didn’t know that I would never be the same again.
Those ten days flew by in a matter of minutes and the next thing I knew, I was kissing my mother and siblings good-bye at the airport, just before boarding the plane that would take me away from everything I knew. When we arrived in Israel, there was an apartment waiting for us in Geula, close to my husband’s kollel, and a job waiting for me in a girl’s school. I hated everything: my life, my parents for sending me away, and work. When I called home in tears asking why they made me go so far away from home and why I had to work when my father said he would support us, the answer I got was that that this was what was expected of me and that I should change my thinking and everything would be better for me.
But it never got better. I feel nothing for my husband and am happier when he is away from me. Now I find out I am expecting, shutting the door on my chances of ever going home again. Here I am, stuck in a strange place where I know no one, married to a man I am beginning to realize I detest and will shortly have a child for whom to care while working to pay the bills. My days are dark and filled with sadness – even davening to Hashem has taken on an empty, hollow meaning.
Then, I walked into the supermarket and met you; for this I am grateful. Your words helped to peeled away the heavy black cloud that encircles me and offered me hope that there is a chance I may yet find happiness.
Dear Friend,
I am grateful to be the vehicle by which you will find joy and peace of mind in your young life. Your story is one I have heard countless times, with variances in the details, but from both young men and women. They are either not ready to commit to marriage or have been brainwashed into believing that they must start off their married life in kollel.
I firmly believe that not every bocher is cut out to learn. I can’t tell you how many times I pass a yeshiva and see a group of young men smoking and shmoozing on the street curbs. Wouldn’t it be wiser and more of a chesed for roshei yeshiva to pick out the best boys who are really serious in their learning endeavors and let them sit and learn, increasing their stipend by the surplus that would be gained by weeding out those who are just wasting time?
In addition, not every girl is cut out for the struggle and sacrifice involved in kollel life. I can’t tell you how many sad and broken women started out with this misconceived vision only to find themselves locked into a life of sadness and regret.
My biggest bone of contention is with parents who cannot or will not recognize, for whatever reasons, their child’s angst about marriage at so young an age. For the most part, today’s eighteen year olds are soft and tender, much like fragile saplings that need more time to mature and bloom. But we tend to repeat what we know and, as your mother pointed out, she too was subject to the same circumstances she placed you in, so she can’t see why you are so unhappy.
Young men are a different species, not as evolved as girls their own age, even by today’s standards. Not everyone is capable of doing what is expected of them and, throwing them into a union for which they are not ready, will cause great despair and sadness to one or both of the spouses. I’ve stopped counting the number of young daughters returning home to their parents with one or more children in tow because the marriage failed. It is time for our rabbinic leaders to do some heavy soul searching and find solutions to stem the tide of this paralyzing epidemic. Perhaps it is time to set differences aside and find some ways to keep families together. This is long overdue.
