A meeting of gedolei Torah was held at the home of Rav Yaakov Bender in Far Rockaway this past Motzei Shabbos to address the shidduch crisis, from which thousands of bnos yisroel are suffering as they wait for their zivugim. The gathering – a continuation of a long series of meetings being held throughout the US to implement the vision of R’ Moshe Hillel Hirsch – focused on a practical solution envisioned by Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch shlit”a to the ongoing crisis.
The solution aims to address the age gap that has been a major factor in the crisis. The plan suggests that bochurim begin learning in Eretz Yisroel by Pesach of their third year in bais medrash, while girls would only begin shidduchim approximately a year after completing seminary. This adjustment is expected to help balance the age gap while ensuring that the impact on bochurim’s limud hatorah is negligible.
Among those in attendance were Rav Mendel Slomovitz, Rav Binyomin Cohen and the Novominsker Rebbe, as well as local rabbanim and roshei yeshiva, including: Rav Chaim Yehoshua Hoberman, Rav Mordechai Respler, Rav Moshe Brown, Rav Eytan Feiner, Rav Mordechai Stern, Rav Moshe Perr, Rav Kalman Epstein, Rav Katzenstein, and Rav Sandler.
As in previous gatherings held in Lakewood and most recently in Monsey, the rabbanim and roshei yeshiva at this meeting expressed strong support for the proposed approach, viewing it as a vital step to address the needs of shidduchim-age Bnos Yisroel without compromising the bochurim’s growth in Torah.
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29 Responses
They yet again again seem to have overlooked the most egregious criminal impediment to Shidduchim:- The incredulous Lakewood freezer, which quite literally is single handedly destroying countless Shidduchim.
They should be focusing on imposing an immediate חרם on anyone enforcing this ludicrous freezer.
Ywn should make a Far Rockaway (5 towns) scoop (like Lakewood, Monsey, and Boro Park) there’s a lot that goes on over here
Also I am a little disappointed that I didn’t see anything about R Dovid Scheiner (my son’s Rosh Hayeshiva’s father) being niftar here (it was on matzav and the Lakewood scoop)
Not even an article from Rabbi Hoffman
What steps have the girls taken to fix this crisis , before were putting the entire obligation on the boys ?
@147: this is hardly true if at all.
The freezer adds a few weeks (roughly 14 weeks) of delay, which is negligible in the context of multiple years (which is the direction that has been pushed recently).
The chance I give of this working? 5%
It’s important to help the Klal. It’s more important to help yourself.
Find me the girls that will turn down a Shidduch with the “Best Boy” because they haven’t been back from seminary long enough. There’s tremendous pressure on girls to get married. Show me the older single girl that turned down 5 high potential Shidduchim when younger “for the sake of the Klal” because it was “Before” she was supposed to date.
As a Rabbi said, “People think Rabbis can wave a magic wand & have the Kehilla do whatever they want.”
When a girl’s parents who will pay a hefty Shadchan fee calls a Shadchan, tell me which Shadchan will turn them down, especially when other Shadchanim aren’t following the rules either.
why are you telling USA boys they need to travel to Israel to get married? They can meet and marry their wife right here in the USA, where they were born! Perhaps that is part of the problem, that USA boys marry girls from other countries.
A brief perusal of the yeshiva world headlines shows the powers that be addressing the hostage crisis and the shidduch crisis on the very same day.
I want to know which Rebbe or tzaddik said Mattir Assurim with great kavana this morning.
I didn’t understand what the solution is from the article. Can someone explain.
In my humble opinion they should prioritize the increasing divorce rate before they address the shiduch crisis.
The freezer is an issue but the significant age gap is a much greater issue and is the single cause of all the Shidduch issues. If the boys are marrying into a younger population- there mathematically is more girls in that population than them and therefore it’s impossible to match them up without removing the cherem drabbeinu gershon. Makes no difference if anyone is learning or not, wealthy or not, looks, working, yichus -we are talking here about simple amounts of uneven souls.
I have recently attended several weddings were Mrs. Bride is older than Mr. Groom, & 1 of them with Mrs. כלה taller than Mr. חתן, & each one was a very happy event, so there you have it
The last 50 years saw drastic changes in the frum society, which naturally lower the ability of young couples to get married – including, primarily, an unhealthy societal attitude towards men earning a living and secondarily an obsessive compulsive desire to separate men from woman in all aspects of social life. This is the bed you made.
Maybe change the Kollel for all approach.
How’s about insisting that the boy can’t demand an enormous nadin, , or a house ,or a new car from girl’s parents . Instead learn a trade & support yourself . And yes I can talk .. I left lakewood 45 years ago and went to work in the cesspool called NY because I couldn’t pay the $ 220 that apts were going for those days .
This system is just going to implode. People rushing to get married for social reasons, unable to earn sufficient living, sending kids to school that they can’t afford to pay for, living in communities where they can’t afford to buy homes. Eventually, the laws of economics will win. Eventually steained yeshiva budgets, failed yeshiva fundraising, failed wedding fund fundraising will stop the madness. Eventually people will just get married when they can afford to and are ready.
There is a reason why all you rabbonim-bashing, smarter-than-daas-torah, know-it-all commenters were not invited to these meetings. What have any of you smart-alecs done to solve or ease the shidduch crisis?
The Roshei Yeshiva of BMG have taken upon themselves the achrayus and responsibility to ensure and maintain the ever-growing highest levels of serious amaylus batorah which is the kiyum and protection of am yisroel, whether you understand this fact or not. The successful growth of amaylim batorah depends very much on the very foundation it begins with, for a post-eretz yisroel bachur. If not for the “freezer”, the first zman for those entering BMG would just be a wild marketplace of shiduchim hefkeirus. Could any serious learning take place with such distraction and focus? Additionally, it is not a secret that a bochur may begin shiduchim before entering BMG, and if it results in an engagement before the zman begins he certainly won’t be turned away. Likewise if a shiduch process is at a serious point of expected finalization as the zman begins, the bochur also won’t be turned away. Otherwise, the yeshiva’s responsibility is to make sure that a bochur gets a firm, distraction-free basis for serious amaylus batorah for several months before beginning shiduchim. This is necessary for the individual bochur’s success, and to maintain the proper ruach in the yeshiva for overall success of all the lomdim.
And so, if the “freezer” is not for you, so spend all the time you need involved in shidduchim before entering the yeshiva, and then apply to BMG as a yungerman or choson.
Therefore, the freezer is hardly to blame for the shidduch crisis.
Ah all the Gedolim in the comments of a yeshiva world article are back! We will take all of your daas Torah into consideration. Thanks for taking the time to write what you think about this matter. You are definitely saving Klal Yisroel!
This is not going to work because girls are not going to wait. They are desperate to get married. The onus is on the boys to start dating much younger
Torah family and marriage is a miracle where her life is only one man and almost no chance after, this man is her existence who she is supposed to have big family as lust etc… many girls see it as too early for such relationship where there is no more fun only work for meaning, where in the secular world there is no meaning in marriage only culture, in the Orthodox world it is life and death situation who you will marry, if there is hundred thousand boys and that many girls and all the older boys marry girls then that means there is hundred thousand girls that missed boat, and no more young people can get married, but it also means there is more girls then boys, so some young people have to get married, and so many of the young didn’t marry some of the old, the crises both got old, life is very short, before you know it there is the grave and after that it’s no more interest, if the young would know how short life is and want meaning and culture they would get married sooner
I don’t understand what happens if Avraham yehusha says this zman there is no room, but come back next zman. He does do that. You think these boys will go to an alternative yeshiva ? No way. They will wait around
defend the gedolim- well said
love will find a way!
In my humble opinion, the main reason for the Shidduch crisis is because there is no real system. There’s a school system. A Yeshiva and seminary system where as long as you check boxes A, B & C (and pay tuition) the girls are boys have a place. Then comes shidduchim. For 12+ years, parents have entrusted the schools and Yeshivas with the Chinuch of their children. Now they are suddenly left on their own with no real tools how to navigate the “system” which is trying to make it to the long list of very, very few Shadchanim who are overwhelmed by the numbers. Months and years go by before their sons and daughters are even looked at. By the Chassidim there are many Shadchanim who are given lists of eligible girls that year and by their 20’s they are more or less married. (Yes, to boys the same age) There is also a larger pool of prospects because of the large circles of chassidus, and shidduchim are also made between different countries like Antwerp, England and Eretz Yisroel. Fathers check out the boys in the Yeshivas before they meet their daughters. It’s a marriage oriented mindset to start Yiddishe families and dating is kept to just a few dates due to the extensive research and trust by the parents. The age gap might help a bit, but still won’t ensure that everyone gets a fair chance. Principals, Roshei Yeshivas, Rabbeim and teachers who know their students need to take on a more active role on ensuring that their students get married. Perhaps hiring a liaison for each school to network with Shadchanim on behalf of their students will provide advocacy and a data base system that’ll help ensure that every name is seen.
The “AGE GAP CRISIS” is total non sense. There has NEVER been a time where there no bochrim in BMG. There have always been bochrim of ALL AGES on the market and there will continue to be.
The only crisis is that there aren’t enough good boys. My daughter is three years in shidduchim, dated six boys and said no to ALL of them. They want a ‘long term learner’, who keeps to a zman/schedule, he has to be geshmak, he has to be a Gavra, will one day get a shtellar, he should be a frum guy but not a nerd, the right type, a little heimish but not too heimish, not too short, no bushy beards, shouldn’t dress like a shmatte but not too cool and into his clothing either, the list goes on and on and there simply aren’t enough boys who fit the dimyonos that the seminary madrechos brainwash their minds with.
“because girls are not going to wait. They are desperate to get married.”
As desperate as they are, the girls are more than willing to wait till Mr Perfect knocks on the front door. No post seminary girl is willing to marry a working boy out of desperation to get married until they reach their upper 20’s and realize how much they lost out by waiting.
And thats why we have a crisis and the Chassidim don’t
Regarding the freezer, I have no problem with that. As noted above , you can date the boy before he enters BMG and the short 3 months wait does not play any major role in causing girls not to get engaged.
Many of my daughters friends got engaged and we never felt that “the good boys were grabbed by others”. There are just so many types and levels of boys (and family types) out there and its all about finding the right match and shutting down the freezer won’t make you find your ‘match’ faster. When the shadchan finally calls with the bashert one, the 3 months here or there makes no difference.
On the flip side, my son expressed how much he appreciated the freezer, as it gave him time to “land” after being in Israel for a year and he actually dated a girl right after he got back and then dated again after the freezer and I can assure you all that the maturity level and readiness to move ahead in life was incomparable, he really wasn’t ready yet and the freezer did him wonders
The proposal to delay girls from starting Shidduchim until “a year after completing seminary” might work on paper, for addressing the age gap issue, but doesn’t work in the real world.
The parents of young girls won’t agree to delay their daughters from starting in shidduchim, because the earlier the girl starts, from her own individual perspective (as opposed to her sacrificing for the Klal, statistically, by delaying her shidduch) she is increasing her own risk of C”V never finding a shidduch because the boys who are her marriage-eligible peers will have already married other girls.
This was already demonstrated. When NASI first started their very first proposal to the Klal was that Litvish girls start dating (and, effectively, marrying) later than they were up to that point. But what has happened since that time, is exactly the opposite. The girls started, on average, dating, getting engaged and marrying *earlier* than they had prior to the Age Gap issue being brought to light?
Why, you ask? Because once they became cognizant of the age gap crisis and risk, they immediately realized the later they start dating to look to get engaged and married, the much greater the risk is to themselves that they’ll be one of those left behind when the music stops playing for the musical chairs — and all the desirable boys are already married.
So NASI then switched tactics and, instead of hopelessly trying to convince girls to marry later, switched to trying to get boys to marry earlier.
The freezer is probably about 4 weeks of actual missed dating – If you were to factor in the rush and cramming in of dates before the zman that would’ve been spread over a few weeks had there been no freezer. 3 months later dating starts up again full force with a lot more people going out when the freezer opens vs. had there been no freezer.
Once again, lip service by out-of-touch elderly roshei yeshiva that have little impact on this very serious matter. Just another photo op for rabbonim.