Who am I to challenge the gedolim of our generation? I say this with complete sincerity—I have the deepest respect for our rabbanim and roshei yeshiva, whose wisdom and guidance shape our communities. The ongoing initiative to address the shidduch crisis is undoubtedly well-intentioned, driven by a genuine concern for Klal Yisroel.
And yet, I cannot stay silent. Because while I respect our leadership, I also respect the thousands of bnos Yisroel who are waiting in pain, their lives effectively put on hold as the crisis worsens. And instead of fixing the root of the problem, we are now telling these girls to wait even longer.
The proposed solution to the shidduch crisis is to delay girls from entering shidduchim for an extra year. Let’s be clear about what this means. We are preserving the status quo for boys while telling young women to hold their lives in limbo for the system to “balance itself.” But balance at whose expense? The emotional toll of this waiting period is devastating—helplessness, uncertainty, and frustration.
Why is the onus always on the girls? Why should they be the ones making sacrifices?
Let me ask a simpler question: Why does a 24- or 25-year-old bochur need to marry an 18-year-old girl? Would it not make more sense to align the ages of boys and girls entering shidduchim, rather than pushing girls back another year?
This isn’t just about numbers—it’s about fairness. We have built a rigid, artificial system where boys always have younger options, while girls are forced into an impossible situation.
And that leads us to the real issue, one that nobody seems willing to confront.
Why do so many boys refuse to date girls their own age? Why has it become the norm for a 24-year-old bochur to only consider an 18-year-old girl? Why is a 21- or 22-year-old girl considered “too old”, while an 18-year-old is seen as ideal?
Let’s stop pretending this is just a numbers problem. This is a cultural problem—a mindset that has been ingrained into the system for so long that we don’t even stop to question it. We have created an environment where bochurim feel entitled to the youngest match possible, as if anything beyond that is a downgrade.
And here’s the most baffling part of it all: These are boys who have spent years immersed in limud torah and developing their middos—yet when it comes to shidduchim, their primary concern is that a girl shouldn’t be “too old”?
Where is this coming from? How does a system that claims to produce Bnei Torah also produce a generation of young men who will outright refuse to go out with a girl just a few years closer to their own age?
What does it say about our values when the same boys who spend hours learning about chessed, anivus, and yiras shamayim refuse to even consider a 22-year-old girl—but will happily meet an 18-year-old?
This mindset is deeply problematic, and it is fueling the very crisis we claim to be solving.
By encouraging boys to constantly choose younger, we have manufactured a system where women in their early twenties—perfectly wonderful, smart, kind, and growth-oriented women—are overlooked simply because of a number.
And our solution is to push girls to wait even longer? This is not a solution. This is an avoidance of the real conversation that needs to happen.
If we are serious about fixing the shidduch crisis, then the first step is changing the mindset of our young men. Rather than telling girls to wait, we should be telling boys to grow up. Rather than normalizing the expectation that a boy should only date significantly younger girls, we should be teaching them that a true ben Torah values middos, compatibility, and shared life goals over superficial criteria. And rather than reinforcing an unfair system that benefits one side while crushing the other, we should be working to create a reality where both boys and girls have a fair chance at building a bayis ne’eman b’Yisroel.
Because the real solution isn’t in making girls wait. It’s in teaching boys to stop looking for the youngest possible match and start looking for a true partner in life.
Sincerely,
A Hopeful Jew
The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.
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14 Responses
Another day, another anonymous letter gives an option without any practical solution and without any initiative to change anything.
Pray tell, how do you suggest any change in a cultural mindset, and what are you or Mr. Anonymous going to do about it?
While we are at it, why don’t we all give suggestions as to what someone else should do to cure cancer and bring about world peace? In theory, of course…..
I’m not quite sure the point of the whole rant. Poster wants the girls to be “allowed” to date at 19, but the boys at 22,23 should be taught to only date girls their own age.
If boys were so educated and compliant, seems to me like the 19 year olds will be waiting anyway……since the 22 and 23 won’t be dating them.
What exactly is the point of this piece?
1. The reason a young girl is considered “better” isn’t because of agree, but because usually a young girl will be snapped up earlier.
2. The onus is not on the girls alone; boys are being encouraged to start younger as well.
1. The reason a young girl is considered “better” isn’t because of age, but because usually a young girl will be snapped up earlier.
2. The onus is not on the girls alone; boys are being encouraged to start younger as well.
Excellent point. I completely agree with you. I wish the community would stop encouraging boys to stop marrying younger girls.
How should we go about changing the community’s mindset?
What about all the girls who are already 24 and up? Will this proposal help them?
You’ve answered your question about 5 times in your article.
By asking the girls to wait a year, the bochurim won’t be able to choose any 18 year old girls. Min age of girls will be 19 so the problem has become smaller.
Don’t you get it?
Yes, the issue is people making decisions not based on what is good for them, but what everyone else is doing…
I don’t understand how they can suggest asking girls to wait. These are ranbanim, they’re well connected and probably financially well-off. their daughters will likely find shidduchim even if they wait an extra year. What about the simple people with no connections and simple finances? We should say no to a suggestion because our daughter hasn’t been out of seminary the requisite number of months?! Who knows when the next suggestion will come? It’s really a lot to ask.
I agree we shouldn’t be arguing with the gedolim are you sure there’s no other details other than girls waiting?
Also I’m not sure which rabbeim you are referring to but my Rebbi told me when I was dating age is not a factor , and if the shidduch makes sense there’s no reason not to date a girl older than me. He even told me the name of a gadol ( I’m forgetting who) whose wife was older than him. I don’t think that guys looking for younger girls is something encouraged my the gedolim
If graduates of a yeshiva all come out without having good middos, then let’s stop pretending that this yeshiva produces bnei Torah. Forcing them to do the right thing is b’dieved, send them to places where they will learn the right middos in the first place.
In the very early 2000s, I spoke to 50 shadchanim,
by telephone, and I asked all of them:
“What are the biggest problems that harm shidduchim?”
The top two answers were: “short boys” and “fat girls”.
Short men cannot become taller, so I will not discuss them.
But fat girls can become thinner,
so we must do something about that.
Fat girls remain a constant problem, that cannot
be solved by giving financial incentives to shadchanim,
nor can this problem be solved by changing
the ages at which singles start shidduchim.
Instead of spending 1 or 2 years in Seminary,
which is a huge waste of money and total waste of time,
single girls should spend 1 or 2 years in the gym,
or long-distance running, to become thinner.
The weight and size they lose will do more
to help them get married than ANY Seminary.
PS: Just last night, on 2025 March 4th, I saw a teenage
Chareidi girl who was 5 feet tall and 5 feet wide.
In a few years, she will be attempting shidduchim.
Why should any 15-year-old Frum girl be 5 feet tall and 5 feet wide?
Why? Why?? WHY???
Fat girls are one of the biggest problems in shidduchim,
(no pun intended).
The divorce rate is too high for young women.
Sending Girls to Seminaries and the Shidduch Crisis
By Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin
All actions have reactions and nothing happens in a vacuum.
When a girl and her parents in America make the choice for the girl to be sent overseas to Israel after she graduates high school to study at a seminary in Yerushalayim, it affects both the girl and her future shidduch options. It also impacts the yeshiva boys she may want to marry.
The accepted idea is that attending a good seminary will enhance her shidduch prospects. So from around the time the girl is in eleventh and twelfth grade in high school at a great Bais Yaakov, her head is already in the seminary subject that goes with dreams of travel, touring, having fun, inspired lectures about all sorts of subjects, etc. She spends a year and sometimes two years in this dizzying seminary environment, and when she gets back, it takes at least another year for her to re-land and readjust to life back to normal at home.
Question: How is all that a “preparation” for the hard job of marriage, running a household, often with a full time job to cope with, as well as motherhood and child-rearing?
This means that from about age 17 to age 20 or 21, many girls are thinking about seminaries in Israel and are not actively going out yet. Those non-dating years for those girls are the equivalent of being “in the freezer,” meaning they are out of circulation from active shidduch dating.
What are the consequences of this for the yeshiva boys?
It is assumed that “good learning boys” will also spend some of their post-high school years in a yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel. That usually happens after the boys spend at least two or three years in post-high school bais medrash in America, and then they go to Eretz Yisroel for a year or two or more. When they return, they start dating seriously. That means that from the ages of about 18 to 22 or 23, the boys are not dating and they’re in an extended “freezer.”
We also know that there is a so-called “shidduch crisis” for all age groups. So one may ask, is there any connection between the way girls and boys put off getting married in favor of going to seminaries and yeshivos in Eretz Yisroel and the resulting shidduch crisis, since all actions have reactions and nothing happens in a vacuum?
Recently, there were again full page ads in the major English language charedi papers calling on bochurim to marry at a younger age, meaning not waiting longer than about age 21.
I agree 100% with the call for boys to marry at a younger age, especially in our times, when by 21, a good full-time learning boy is already a strong lamdan, having received the finest chinuch in the world’s best yeshivos.
But I look at things like this as a big “sugya” [subject], and as with any regular sugya, we all have our own kushyos and tirutzim [questions and answers] – at least we think we do until we get shlogged up [refuted].
So this is my big kasha on this very big sugya, and I will be glad if I can get shlogged up: Who are the American boys supposed to marry at 21 if all the good American 18, 19, and 20-year-old girls are away in seminary in Israel? And how can the American boys get married if they are all in Israel at that age far away from home, since they will not marry frum Israeli girls either?
The above kasha is for the American English-speaking yeshiva olam, because the Chassidishe velt does not have this problem. No Chassidic groups anywhere send their daughters far away to any seminaries. They keep them close to home through high school, and by the end of high school, the 17- and 18-year-old girls become kallahs, because they go from graduating from their various high schools to the chupah with little real delay.
Likewise for the Chassidishe boys. They have little or no secular studies and they learn in yeshiva continuously until they get married, but they start with the parsha of shidduchim from the age of 18 or 19, and by 20 or 21 most are married. Their parents are actively guiding and helping them in all this, making shidduchim for their children from the get-go.
Same for all charedim in Eretz Yisroel, even among the Litvishe. They do not send their daughters overseas to seminaries, and the boys are all learning in Eretz Yisroel, so making shidduchim is not interrupted by delays due to travels to far-off yeshivos or seminaries, and they therefore can indeed get married between the ages of 18 to 21. After all, it does say in Pirkei Avos, “At 18 to the chupah.”
At one time, there were great social and political upheavals going on, so marriage was sometimes delayed, like during the years of the two World Wars in the 20th century. But in our own times, frum society has all the freedoms in America and Israel to function as dynamic fully operative Torah societies, with all the benefits of the modern world to help them.
Yet, the American yeshiva world does not do it that way. We have developed a counter-intuitive trend of sending boys and girls away from home at the most crucial time when the boys and girls are at the most desirable age for marriage.
You don’t have to be a great sociologist or chochom to know that a girl is most ideal for marriage at the ages of 17, 18 and 19. When a girl turns 20, she is already in a different category. This is not rocket science.
So why are we sending our daughters away and taking them off the shidduch market when they are most ideal? Would one delay picking a crop of the most wondrous foods for a year or two for such reasons? The crop will just grow old and “wither on the vine.”
Some people will say that a girl is not mature enough to marry at 18 or 19. So let me ask you: How does sending her away from home for a year or two to a strange country where you are not sure who is supervising her all the time, and letting her go on tours and have fun, fun, fun, and have a great one-year vacation etc, lead to her becoming mature? Mature from that?
Others may say she needs the extra chinuch. And my question to that is, what has she been doing the 12 years she was in Bais Yaakov and all those summers she went to the best day camps and sleep-away camps, and what about her home? Has that not all taught her more than enough to start her own family?
Anyhow, coming back to my kasha: Why are people calling on American bochurim to get married at a young age, which I agree is 100% correct, when those same bochurim do not really have anyone to marry because all the good American 18- and 19-year-old girls are away in seminaries in Israel?
And the follow-up to that: Why are people not calling on American girls not to go to seminaries if it takes the good girls out of circulation for shidduchim? At age 18 or 19, let them be ready to marry those 21-year-old good bochurim who would probably love to marry them but they are not around.
Okay, everyone will do what is best for their spouse.