100% Solution to Shidduch Crisis–Goral

one problem with the goral. I assume only singles will be entered into the goral, correct?

Well there are gong to be far more females in the goral then males. What are you gonna do about that.

I have a serious question, which is Pashuteh Yid, are you serious?

PY you write “so no system can invent a solution if the men simply don’t exist.”

Correct. And being that the case is such as has been discussed in the CR many many times, we therefore need to figure what happened that made the men simply not exist (AGE GAP) and alleviate that going forward.

Here we go again….. Yeah the age gap…… Right?

PY; Nice try! There is too many flaws in your proposal,

Like trying to eat stuffed cabbage with chopsticks, most of it ends up on the floor.

Don’t get discouraged though, for if you do not succeed at first try, try again.

are u kidding? this isn’t gona work at all….for a girl/boy who has been waiting all those years, davening that Hashem should send the right one, hoping everytime that this time will be the one, this boy/girl isnt just gona marry a name out of a lottery! they won’t appreciate the other person, they will only feel compelled to marry them! who wants to be in a marriage where ur forced to marry that person! I know staying single is hard…but being married to someone you don’t like is even harder…so pashute yid, you may “solve” the shidduch crisis with this…but your certainly gona escalate the divorce on!!!

BS”D

A completely voluntary goral might not be a bad idea for shidduch dates, but forced marriage this way is frankly barbaric.

Pashuteh Yid: Great proposal. But what about people who don’t have $10,000, or even anything close?

And also, kudos for the following:

. . . chosen completely at random for you from other singles who have agreed to enter . . .

(For everyone: Notice the use of “who” and not “that” when referring to people.)

AZ: Mezonos Maven answered your “critical question” for Pashuteh Yid:

That’s what the polygamy proposal aims to alleviate.

ben_hasdorim: I never tried it, but why would it be so difficult to eat stuffed cabbage with chopsticks?

Haifagirl: so whats it’s gonna be, polygamy (w/o any backing from gedolim) or close the age gap. Until you come up with a handful of Gedolim supporitm your soap box of polygamy it’s just a waste of cyberspace.

Either way the goral isn’t gonna do much.

Edited

As to the original proposal, didn’t a certain Saducee women try to do something similar in the course of her dialogue with R. Yochanan ben Zakkai?

Thanks PY, I needed that. Good job I didn’t bring my coffee down here or my computer might not be functioning.

And hey (es chatai ani mazkir) why not call the over 30 plan, Carousel?

There was a story with R’ Yochanan Ben Zakai and a Queen who asked him “What does your Hashem do a whole day?” He replied “makes shidduchim”. The queen didn’t think that was so hard, and she paired 1000 males and females together and told them to get married. They did and came back a couple of days later bruised and disraught and told her “this isn’t working”.

The Queen then admitted that it is a job only for Hashem.

I recall reading this from a small sefer on bitochon and hishtadlus.

As humans, wouldn’t it be a better solution to the shidduch crisis if each individual take on one single to daven for wholeheartedly, every day, from the depths of our neshamos, and daven as if they were our own child? I imagine it would have a much greater effect in shomayim where The Ribono Shel Olam, who is the orchestrator of all shidduchim, will shower His brochos and yeshuos to all those who need to find their zivug.

PY wrote: “JAG and Jewess, I am not kidding, as it is no worse than any other solution that has so far been put forth, and this one can actually work, if people really want to end the crisis.”

Instead of asking if you are joking, I’ll ask this- are you trying to satirize the other solutions that have so far been put forth?

You all laugh, but this is how my husband and I met – kind of. But it would never work these days because boys and girls are not permitted to meet in “natural” environments.

In the late 1960’s the social committee of my parents’ shul identified a need to establish a “kosher” meeting place for the youth; even at that time, popular music and film was undergoing a rapid change for the worse, and an innocent date for dinner and a movie became a potential mine-field because the content of films had become quite inappropriate. The shul responded by converting a basement room into a “youth lounge,” which would be outfitted with some tables for cards, a pool table, and a record player; the goal was to provide a place for social gatherings within the shul aside from the gym, which was the domain of the boys.

In order to raise funds for the project, the parents devised a raffle of “kosher” activities – the point was (1) to raise money for the renovation, and (2) demonstrate to us kids that there was more to life than movies and concerts (at least until the lounge was completed). The prizes included tickets to the zoo, museums, the local ice cream shop, and the skate rink, etc. The condition was that each prize consisted of two tickets and the winner had to find a date (winners were required to be post high-school, they were not encouraging high-school dating) from among the other “kids” in the shul (in our parents eyes, even college kids were “kids”).

Well, one boy who I thought was a complete nerd won tickets for a boat ride in the park. My girlfriends and I were nearly convulsing with laughter at the thought of this nebbish asking a girl for a date – he wore eyeglasses, attended city college at night, worked part-time during the day, and looked perpetually lost. While we joked about how long it would take him to fall out of the boat, he took his ticket to the mistress of ceremonies and asked whether she would intervene on his behalf in order to facilitate an introduction with one of the girls.

I nearly spilled my Coke all over my white skirt when Mrs. Goldish strode over and picked me up from the shoulder. The rest is history. Behind the glasses was a nice boy. Nothing remarkable, but we had a nice enough time and found each other’s company interesting.

So, the raffle can work.

the roman noblelady preceded you!

she had 1,000 man slaves and 1,000 female slaves and said this one should marry that one and everybody got all bruised so I don’t think it will work sorry

telegrok, thanks for sharing that story. You might say that it’s an argument for A600KiloBear’s modification of PY’s idea–a goral for shidduch dates, not shidduchim. Such a goral could even include a requirement that the matched couple only be allowed to date each other for a period of time.

However, in your story your future husband was already interested in meeting you, even if you were not interested in meeting him. In this goral, neither party would even know the other’s identity before meeting.

haifagirl, I see that I’ve offended you, and that wasn’t my intention. Please forgive me. To clarify what I was saying, I know that my acquaintances, older singles in their late twenties to early thirties, would definitely not be interested in a polygamous marriage or forced marriage to someone to whom they’ve been matched via lottery. Obviously I can’t speak for you, and I wouldn’t think I can. I only meant to say that in order to make a polygamous marriage work, both the husband and “sister wives” must agree to the arrangement. Ideally, the polygamous family should also live in a community of other polygamous families. And based on my conversations with older singles of my acquaintance (including relatives), there are not enough women to make this plan work.

The goral proposed by PY would also require a critical mass of people willing to participate, and again I don’t think the interest exists.

PY, are you saying that this idea is meant more as a mental exercise (for singles or others) than as an actual tool for creating matches? If so, then I see it very differently.

I’ve heard of that gemara, but I’m not sure whether it means that a woman would marry anyone at all–even someone who is violent or abusive–just so that she can be married, or just that she would marry someone who is not her ideal. If the former, in my opinion the gemara is describing what it true for some women, but this would not necessarily be a good environment in which to grow healthy families and children.

It seems from the story of the Queen mentioned earlier that a complete goral would not work. It would probably be considered a lack of proper hishtadlus. What might work is to put info about everyone into a computer program and have the computer make the matches. This has obviously been tried in many different ways by sites such as Sawyouatsinai and Frumster and other sites in the goyish world.

Just to explain briefly how each of the above 2 sites work. In each, the singles fill out a profile. In Frumster the singles themselves can then search by criteria and the site will give them profiles to review after which they can contact whoever they want. With Sawyouatsinai the singles themselves cannot search, rather a professional shadchan searches and then suggests matches. In each case, it is sort of an educated goral. Whereas a regular goral is completely random, here there is some rhyme and reason as to why someone is being suggested.

If you want to use PY’s idea but put some hishtadlus into it, perhaps you can have every older single be put into a computer and have the computer make a suggestion based on a bunch of criteria. Instead of having the couple then go out and decide, have them commit to marry whoever is picked for them. I doubt too many people would go for this though, but it is certainly better than PY’s completely random goral. Perhaps we can even add a little more human intervention by having the computer make 10 suggestions and then have each boy meet with a professional shadchan and then have that shadchan meet the 10 girls suggested by the computer and then the shadchan decides who to set him up with. This is very similar to how Sawyouatsinai works except that in our case, the couple would commit to marry whoever is picked for them.

I don’t think too many people would agree to this idea either but it’s certainly better than the original goral idea.

(btw, where is Kapusta, she was mentioned earlier in this thread in two different contexts, cabbage and queen)