There are bad ideas, and then there are utterly absurd, Torah-defying, and self-destructive ideas. The suggestion that a $100,000 “kehila tax” be imposed on any girl who gets married before some arbitrary age dictated by community leaders falls squarely into the latter category.
Let’s get one thing straight: Marriage is not a luxury. It is a mitzvah. It is not something to be delayed at the whims of bureaucratic kehillah enforcers wielding tax sheets like a shidduch resume. This proposal is not only foolish—it is a direct attack on the very foundation of Klal Yisroel.
A young couple chooses to follow halacha and build a Torah home—and you want to fine them for it?! You want to place a tax on a Torah-observant Jew for following the divinely-ordained structure of Klal Yisroel? When did we decide that a community should act as a financial oppressor rather than a source of support?
This isn’t just absurd—it’s dangerous. By creating financial penalties for young couples, you are actively discouraging kedusha and making Torah life even more inaccessible. You are forcing people to choose between what they know is right and what they can afford.
And let’s not even get started on the halachic and hashkafic disaster of delaying marriage for artificial reasons. Do we really want to push bachurim and girls into years of emotional and spiritual turmoil while waiting for some community-approved timeline to get married? What do you think the inevitable consequences of that are?
And then there’s the elephant in the room—the shidduch crisis. Everyone is asking, why are so many girls waiting for a shidduch? Why does the process feel more inhumane and grueling by the year? And now you want to add yet another barrier?!
You think this ridiculous wedding tax will fix the shidduch system? If anything, it encourages elopement—because what financially strained family wouldn’t want to bypass this kehila tax and go get married in secret? What are we trying to accomplish here?!
The real problem isn’t people getting married too young. It’s the artificial barriers put in place by an overcomplicated, suffocating system. The resumes, the photos, the impossible expectations, the obsession with money—THAT is what’s ruining shidduchim.
You want to “fix” the crisis? Get rid of the nonsense. No more exhaustive, unrealistic checklists that turn people into commodities. No more “age gaps” created by man-made restrictions. No more pretending that if someone doesn’t check every ridiculous box, they aren’t “good enough.” No more making gezeiros on Yidden that the Torah never asked for!
When the Aibeshter decreed “Bas Ploni L’Ploni”, He didn’t leave anyone out. He didn’t create an exclusive club for only those who fit the latest shidduch trend. He didn’t require anyone to be the perfect blend of “top girl” or “top boy.” He simply said every Yid has their zivug.
So what are we doing?! We are playing G-d, deciding who deserves to marry when and under what artificial, man-made conditions.
The chutzpah to suggest that we need to police and fine Torah marriages while ignoring the actual systemic issues destroying the shidduch process is beyond insane.
This entire proposal reeks of elitism, control, and an utter disconnect from Torah values. You want to fix the shidduch crisis? Fix the system—not the people.
This kehila tax is the worst kind of modern-day gezeirah, a financial and spiritual punishment on those who simply want to follow Torah. And if we don’t wake up, this kind of nonsense will keep creating more barriers, more crises, and more pain for our own people.
The system is broken, not the singles. And the ones breaking it are the very people pretending to fix it.
Signed,
Get a Grip
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6 Responses
No, the real crisis is immature self entitled man-children who shouldn’t be getting married. Why should women who are professional, responsible, and productive stop living their lives to become servants?
Pretty shtark!
The real driver of the “shidduch crisis” is most probably that the vast majority of people just do what everyone else is doing. They forget to serve Hashem. They think that being a “system abiding” Jew is Avodas Hashem. They forget that “The Yeshiva System” (K-EY, 5-24) is not something that was designed for every Jew, it was designed for those who choose to learn Torah on a really intense level. Recently (30 Y) it has shifted to include everyone, whether it is what Hashem wants for them or not. And many just don’t think what Hashem wants from them, just what everyone else wants from them.
This is a sin, and could be the cause of a crisis.
Only Aveiros cause bad things to happen, not a bunch of single boys, who each independently choose to marry a girl who they meet and like, who happen to be 3-5 years younger than them.
Behatzlocha
“The suggestion that a $100,000 “kehila tax” be imposed on any girl who gets married before some arbitrary age dictated by community leaders falls squarely into the latter category.
Let’s get one thing straight: Marriage is not a luxury. It is a mitzvah.“
There’s no mitzvah for a girl to get married, the mitzvah is on the man and some say it’s a הכשר מצוה
Anyway according to the letter writer maybe the girl should get married at 12
calm down , what kehilla, what tax, hashem has set klal yisroel today in a way that there is no one that can institute anything , a tzarah it is these are shaalos for the dor.. a godol only has as much influence as the people following him my question to each of us from whom in this world would you accept a horaah to make a signifigant change in your life ? as an example from the biggets manhigim of the previous dor
rav shach zatzl- wrote letters screaming to the bnei torah of his dor to ” cover ground ” 50 blatt a yr first seder
reb aaron zatzl- for years reb arron was only in yeshiva on weekends and the bochurim were scared to go past him lest he ask where they are upto … acn u imagine
rav moshe zatzl- was disappointed that his dibros moshe which rav moshe held was bigger than his igros and he spent years writing was not learnt at all in the yeshivos gedolos… many more examples
There is some creative accounting going on here.
Problem: Many more girls then boys.
Solution: The system is bad and I hate shidduch pictures.
Anyone else notice something funny here?
I guarantee no one is going to shell out a hundred thousand dollars if their daughter married at 18 or 19. This is a real Purim joke. But I understand the pain of so many parents who have older children finding it hard to make a Shidduch. The next thing you know they are going to fine families who have older single kids. Where does this insanity end. The real thing that needs to be done is cut out Israeli seminary’s as it’s bankrupting poor parents. Parents have been brainwashed that if their daughter did not attend seminary they won’t be able to do a Shidduch. Chassidic girls don’t travel to Israeli seminaries and get married at 17,18 and 19. A girl who knows how to cook is more important to a guy than if she can quote the Ramban. Girls should learn how to bake sour dough challahs and sew cloths. Practice house cleaning and makeup. Forget everything else. When they marry they can ask their husbands for Parsha vertlech after they fed him. Sending young girls to seminary and having them roam the streets in Israel is dangerous. Then seminaries expect the girls to find a place to eat shabbos. Do you check whose houses they go to. You would not let your daughter hop around strangers houses even here in your own neighborhood. In Jerusalem one third of the population are Arabs and as we all know this government released thousands of killer Arab terrorists and many going back to their homes in Jerusalem. How insane is that. Keep your daughters home after graduating high school. Get her a job or a local seminary and let her start DATING. By the time the other girls return and they will have to wait another year as was decreed by askanim, your daughter will be married with a baby. And another ripoff is this spending on weddings. A wedding should not cost more than five thousand dollars and that’s a fancy wedding with sushi,meat and chicken. The wedding can be done in a yard or home as was done during COVID. Father’s dropping dead with heart attacks all over the place is no mitzvah. They are stressed out. Enough is enough.