Shidduchim: The View from a STreeT corner

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Shidduchim: The View from
a Street Corner
By Sara Yoheved Rigler
I
was all worked up by a
conversation with one of the
members of The Ladder, my
teleconference middos workshop for
single women. This particular member
is 28 years old, FFB, intelligent, pretty,
thin, and unmarried, although she
has been dating for 9 years and her
younger sisters are all married. She was
going out with a yeshivah bochur with
admirable middos from a good family
whose company she enjoyed, but she
broke it off because “he was on a lower
religious level than me. He wanted a
television.”
Having married a month short of
my 39th birthday and having been
blessed with a daughter at the age of
40 and a son, after years of prodigious
efforts, at the age of 46, I regretted
not having married earlier so I could
have had more children. Whenever I
hear my Ladder girls give their reasons
for rejecting this or that fellow (and
the most oft-cited reason is “lower
religious level”), I hear their biological
clocks ticking in the background. I
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am chagrined at the specter of their
not marrying at all. No husband. No
children. Joining the 500 frum women
over the age of 40 who are unmarried
(in the New York area alone!), whose
biological clock is precariously winding
down…or has already stopped. Yes,
televisions are bad (and my family
doesn’t own one!), but if it’s a choice
between a television and never
marrying, I say: “Choose the television
and on to the chuppah!”
But what do I know? I’m a baal
teshuvah, without the benefit of
generations of Torah hashkafah. Am
I right? Am I wrong? Such were
my deliberations when I ran into a
prestigious rebbetzin, the scion of a
long line of chasidic rebbes, on Rebbe
Akiva Street in Bnei Brak.
After a perfunctory greeting, I
confronted her with my question:
Should a woman marry a man who’s
on a lower religious level, who even
wants a television? Her eyes grew wide.
“Why, in my generation, in the forties
and fifties in America,” she said in her
24 adar 5773
thick Yiddish accent, “all my friends’
mothers had married men who were
am ha’aratzin [ignorant of Torah]
and mechalei Shabbos [not Shabbos
observant]. The men, they promised to
keep Shabbos and kashrus and taharas
hamishpacha. And the girls—they were
all good, frum girls—married them.”
With that she shrugged her shoulders,
and added, “Because there was no
one else to marry. And out of such
marriages came nice frum families, even
some of the gedolim of this generation!”
The crowds of shoppers on Rebbe
Akiva Street, including mothers
pushing strollers and girls with long
braids shlepping packages, wove
their way around us. This was a rare
chance to check my own ideas about
shidduchim with an authentic bearer of
Torah tradition dating back forever.
I had interviewed Rav Ezriel Tauber
on the subject [see page ( ) in this
issue], and he had presented the men’s
view, intellectual and Torah-based,
concluding that women do not have
to marry. But the wife, mother, and
grandmother in me bridled at this
viewpoint. Not to marry? Not to know
the fulfillment of having children
and grandchildren? I wanted to hear
the viewpoint of a woman, a woman
steeped in Jewish tradition.
“Nowadays,” I plunged forward, “a lot
of women think that if they reject one
guy, a better guy will come along later.”
The Rebbetzin grimaced. “We were
raised that marriage was an obligation
and waiting was not an option. You
married who was available at the time.
We had very few options, and we
married the options we had, and we
made the best of it, and we considered
it hashgachah pratis, that we married the
person HaKadosh Boruch Hu wanted
us to marry.”
“What do you mean that ‘marriage is
an obligation’?” I asked uncertainly. “It’s
not a mitzvah for women.”
“No,” the Rebbetzin brushed aside
that technicality. “It’s not a mitzvah
for women because Hashem doesn’t
obligate something like childbirth that
could, nebach, cost the woman’s life. But
a Jewish woman should get married.
Period. I’ll tell you, two girls from
Brooklyn—they were friends—came
to see me last week. They were both
seminary graduates, FFB, pretty, and 26
years old. One of them said to me, ‘If
I can’t get everything I want, I would
rather not get married.’ In all my life,
I never heard a Jewish girl say such
a thing. Not to get married because
she didn’t get everything she wants? I
couldn’t believe my ears.
“Then, her friend told me, ‘There’s a
nice boy from a family that my parents
are friends with. My father wants me
to marry him, but he’s not the talmid
chacham that I was taught in seminary I
have to marry.’ I almost fell off my chair.
The boy is lovely, the family is lovely,
and she got brainwashed in seminary, or
misunderstood what her seminary was
teaching her. A girl is supposed to listen
to her parents, not quote her seminary
teacher. For this they paid $20,000?
“There is a chiuv on the father to
marry off his daughter. It’s one of his
mitzvahs. She misinterprets what she
was taught in seminary, and she doesn’t
do what her father said?” The Rebbetzin
shook her head incredulously.
“One of my Ladder girls,” I ventured,
“told me that she learned in seminary
that a woman’s whole olam haba is to
send her husband and sons to learn
Torah. Her teacher told her, ‘If you
marry someone who is not a talmid
chacham, you’ll be in big trouble up
there.’”
The Rebbetzin mumbled something
in Yiddish. To me she said, “Wrong.
Wrong. Wrong! The man doesn’t have
to be a talmid chacham. Even if he’s
learning once a week, as long as his
settle?”
“Absolutely. I think I settled. My
husband settled. But you can’t go into
marriage with the attitude that this
is not what you want. You have to go
into it with the attitude that this is
hashgachah pratis and it’s good.”
The Rebbetzin glanced at her watch.
“Oy, I must go! It’s been good to talk
to you. Keep in touch.” And off she
scurried.
I crossed the street and waited for the
bus, replaying the conversation in my
mind. A woman must get married.…
She shouldn’t wait for a better prospect
to come along.… She should settle for
someone on a lower religious level and
daven him upward.… She should feel
that whomever she meets is hashgachah
”In my generation, all my
friends’ mothers married am
ha’aratzin and mechalei shabbos.
AND Out of such marriages came
nice frum families, even gedolim!”
goal is the Yiddishkeit of himself and his
family, that’s okay.”
“But this is exactly the problem,” I
insisted. “What if the guy her father
likes, his goal is not Yiddishkeit?”
The Rebbetzin didn’t blink. “She
should marry him and she should
encourage him to grow in his
Yiddishkeit. Not by nagging, but by
davening. She should beg Hashem that
her own dedication to avodas Hashem
should infuse their home. She has to
daven to Hashem.”
“Does it never happen,” I objected,
“that the woman davens, and the
husband never gets on board?”
“The way I was raised, if she got
married and raised frum children, she
did her job.”
“Are you telling these women to
pratis, and be happy with the choice.
I felt vindicated in what I had been
telling my Ladder members, that if they
acquired the necessary tools they could
marry even a fellow on a lower religious
level. But a voice inside me whispered,
“This will never sell in Brooklyn.”
Will it? 
Based on a true story. However, due to
the sensitivity of this story, all the names
and identifying details have been changed.
A new group of The Ladder, Sara
Yoheved Rigler’s teleconference workshop
for single women, is beginning after
Pesach, I”Y”H. For more information, see
www.sararigler.com.
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