Yermie Kurkus writes on FB: This Shidduch Crisis is more of a Social Crisis found amongst the Orthodox circles. It is men and women who do not know what they want. In the non-religious and non-Jewish world – dating is for companionship, they simply don’t want to be alone, so they get together and 4-5 or 10 years later they decide to marry. However in the religious world, dating is for marriage. There is a very low education level on what marriage truly is! Women think, that the guy needs to be successful (what is that?) or a certain hight or weight or look. The men want certain barbie models or women with certain criteria – all are missing the point… What is marriage? What are the criteria, mindset or characteristics of what makes a marriage work? your hair color, belt size, shoe size? (thank God religious women cannot openly find out other “sizes”)… unsure emoticon I think that the moment women stop fantasizing on Vogue Magazine, and men stop looking for Victoria Secret models – this “crisis” will come to an end!
I’ve seen and heard it all at this point… the common denominator is that women (in my case) have absolutely no idea what marriage is and what they are looking for. They automatically judge on everything that is so external and irrelevant. They don’t even bother to communicate (a key ingredient to successful marriage – even if you don’t plan on marrying the guy) to find out more about a certain circumstance or situation that may seem (from the outside or on set) as a hurdle, they don’t even consider that perhaps it really is not an issue at all!
Again, in my case specifically, I am extremely accomplished and successful BH, I actually do come from a very prominent blood line (although not too famous) but notorious non-the-less (can be proven wink emoticon ) yet – I have heard every excuse under the sun why the woman would refuse dating or even properly looking into the Shidduch.
For example, there was one perfect profile that I approached – it was as though we have both copied and pasted each other’s profiles in the opposite fields (her looking for in my description and my looking for in her description) – our goals, mindset and characteristic matched 120% – yet she refused, she simply said no… with no excuse or reasoning! Ask for a reason and get ignored…!
Chaim Amalek: As I understand it, this problem is purely the result of one mathematical fact and one social fact about the demographics of these people: 1. It is a young and very fast growing population, with every age group slightly more numerous than the age group just preceding it. 2. Men prefer to marry women who are a few years younger than they. So every woman finds herself looking up at a cohort of men that is slightly smaller than the cohort of women to which she belongs. Hence the slight imbalance that they care calling a crisis. I think it impacts just a few percent who will be left out. Of course, if everyone married someone his/her age, this problem would vanish, as it would if males would occasionally marry someone a year or two older. And that’s that.
This works in reverse if you are a man born into a “baby bust” part of a demographic cycle, and want to have a family.
