squeak

Mordechai Schmutter

Part of writing is that some people will like what you write and others won’t. I hardly think that a few people expressing their inability to appreciate Mordechai’s columns needs to be silenced. I didnt see anything personal about it.

That said, most people with a good sense of humor love his stuff.

Sam, you would be making a good defense if he were disavowed by YCT. The examples you bring to mind were disavowed by their institutions.

If the numbers are actually 110 to 100, there is a more complex reason to it than just the age gap tbeory. Of that I am certain.

Here is what your insistence that it is the age gap leads to:

– Tacit approval of every personal criteria invented by shadchanim and/or parents. Theres nothing wrong wih saying we can’t go out with baalei tshuva, or someone who graduated high school with only a B average, or someone from a broken home, or someone whose distant relative is rumored to have been sick at some point, or someone who davens in a shul I once felt uncomfortable going to, or someone who lives on Kings Highway, etc etc. Nothing is wrong with this, because the main thing that is wrong with shidduchim is just the age of the boy and girl.

– A new criteria is introduced to the list of moronic ones already in effect. If the relative ages are not good then nix it. Girls have to wait longer than they’d like to start dating; boys have to go out younger than they possibly should be and with girls who make them seem inadequate.

If all the age theory did was make it “kosher” for a girl to be older than 22 and to make it kosher for a girl to be older than her husband, then kol hakavod. Removing artificial restrictions is a good thing. But it leads to a worsening in the restrictiveness, and the bad clearly outweighs any good. Especially because the whole theory is based in simple mindedness and ignorance of external factors.

I respect anyone who believes in the age gap theory, just because these days “respecting” someone means you disagree with them, think they are off the wall, but still want to be friends.

I certainly don’t think the shidduch crisis is a work of fiction. Characterizing the source of the problem as one that could only occur in a community of bacteria is, though. The “theory” is far too simplistic and utterly fails to take into account anything other than a single variable. An idea that excludes every complexity and any alternate inputs can only be welcomed by the simple minded.

Unix. Developer and loyal forever.

Clearly as 42 alluded, moshiach will do some video editing to show himself being on top of the sketchelach of the bais hamikdosh. Then he will post the video on jewtube. The real bais hamikdosh will come later and of course he wont stand on its roof.

I know a man who died after being on the internet for 90 years. He also smoked for 90 years, so apparently internet is more lethal than smoking.

All you can eat fish at Eden Wok?

If you’re still around, Im at the Starbucks drive thru holding a cup for you.

For one thing, someone whose views fall within the realm of compromise individually. Not the “average” of all his/her views. Sometimes to the far right and sometimes to the far left doth not each other cancel out.

Thats just a hodgepodge, no reason to describe that as moderate just because you pick from both sides of the fence.

A minimum wage increase across the board just leads to general inflation through trickle up. Marriage in this case can be argued to be just about the rights of marriage, aka a civil union on steroids, which seems unfair to oppose from a non religious perspective. Private school vouchers seem like a way to defund public schools and divert tax money to religious entities.

It would be fun to debate any of these, but I hardly think this qualifies you as moderate. More like ideological confusion. Or, to put all the views you listed into one bucket, I would say working poor religious sap.

Waiting for all the non-complaining people of the CR to complain about this threads existence.

You all think I locked the bedroom to keep him out, but the real reason I locked it was to keep my ocelot from getting out of the room and bothering him. And this is the thanks I get.

I think I would only marry a woman who would be open to my constructive criticism of her cooking/baking

You’ve got a lot to learn my friend.

OOM…. I didn’t say entertaining books. That of course would include TP.

I havent read this biography but I have heard of Rashi before. Therefore, I am more than a little bit baffled at what comparisons could have been drawn from the fabulous literary work by Conrad. Rashi’s commentary may well be fondly called kurtz and sharf, but even Kurtz wasn’t kurtz. Can you give us an example?

Moreso, I find it extremely unlikely that a frum author could capture anything from it at all without copying the actual text word for word.

Call a girls high school and ask for chesed hours. Less stress on you means you will be able to handle things better.

I hope I would have been #3.

If the workers are African American, it’s insulting to tip them.

(since this will almost certainly be misunderstood, no I am not serious. it is a ref)

i also misunderstand it. But I trust you, so I’ll let you explain the ref

The biggest proof of how disingenuous AZ, DY, and all of NASI really are is this conversation with ubiq. He present a problem that is indisputable (on “shidduch island” even 112 girls to 100 boys should lead to all girls getting ample dates) and they say “We could argue about that forever”. Note that ubiq isn’t even contending the age gap or any other NASI dogma, he is accepting their dogma as fact and then going a step further (or to the side perhaps), but even that amount of intellectual honesty is not to be found with them.

Off of the island, aka the real world, this is also true. There will always be some folks who will not marry and some who will never land a date (except a 100% blind one). This doesn’t go against anything NASI stands for, so I can only think of one reason why they would fight against the acknowledgement of this point.

GM1, your father’s work and his credential might mean something, if he were willing to show it. But with nothing but empty words to back an empty theory, you’d be better off not mentioning it.

For years now AZ and his ilk have been pretending their basis is fact, and now they admit otherwise. The paper signed by the 70 RY no doubt was based on a thorough investigation, but we know what that means now, too. I have doubted from the start that any reputable statistician had anything to do with this and now there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that I am right.

Page 4 already? Time for another. This supposed shidduch crisis is very confined to a lone demographic. So even assuming that the reason for the crisis is a shortage within the community, why wouldn’t the extras spill over and be absorbed into the next closest in ideals community? Certainly a shortage of prospects is a good reason to broaden one’s search. If you are thinking because of refusal to compromise on frumkeit, let me point out that frumkeit is a sliding scale, with ideologies varying slightly from person to person even within each community, and certainly the end of the spectrum of one commjnity lines up closely enough to the top of the spectrum in the next. The shortage would thin itself out as the spillover was shared through multiple communities and probably would resolve itself naturally. Unless there is such an enormous gap between the spectrums that no mobility is possible.

If that were the case, I’d be more worried about the ideals gap than anything else. Because if somehow a retaining wall is holding everyone in the same spot, against the natural tendency for people to be varied and complex, then I would bet dollars to donuts that the shidduch crisis far from the only crisis that this community is facing.

There are problems in the shidduch scene, I don’t think anyone pretends otherwise. Maybe some would hesitate to call it a crisis, but that is semantics. Did you mean to ask whether its kefirah to deny the popular explanations as to the cause? I’d have to pull a Wolf if you did.

It’s fantastic.