Jewneric: A New Platform for the Jewish Voice

What was on the checklist?

The obvious ones such as Shabbat, Kashrut, Chaggim, davening, then it went to do you wear skirts and how long is your shortest one? How tight? Oh you wear pants? How tight? What type? Why? How do you wear your hair? How much makeup? As the questions went on, they got more ridiculous!

The concept of “Modern Orthodoxy” has really created a very gray area. The problem is the more traditional side of Modern Orthodoxy and the Yeshivish tend to believe that the absence of certain observances (such as women covering their hair or only wearing skirts) prevent someone from attaining the title of Orthodox. The truth is that observance is a very personal thing that comes down to a single question. Is your life dedicated to Torah and Mitzvoth and the fulfillment of G-ds commandments? If the answer is yes then your life will always be dedicated to the betterment of ones self based on the guidelines set by the Torah. At that point everything else (i.e. Do you wear pants) becomes semantics. I guess the checklist is a tasteless way of determining if the place you are at in your spiritual journey is congruent with the place that your would be suitor is at. A good match always needs to be spiritually harmonious there just needs to be a more tactful way of determining the spiritual balance of a shiduch.

I have to agree with Zee. We have blurred the line between personal choice (minhag or simply open areas) and halacha, for which there are often several valid opinions anyway. Endless are the lists and rules - people want to have quantifiable and definable standards so they can know in advance if the mathematical equation will turn out right. Instead, we should be forced to, you know, get to know the other person.

What a novel concept a match based on a deep understanding of the person your with.

I don’t know when all of the questions became part of the dating process, but it really is very bothersome to me. In Parshat Chayei Sarah, Avraham Avinu sends Eliezer out to find a wife for Yitzchak, telling him not to find a wife in Canaan due to their lack of morality. We learn from here that although he could find a wife among a family of idol-worshipers, her morals had to be stellar. This is where we learn that middot come before hashkafah, because while hashkafah can shift and change in different stages of our lives, middot are not as easy to change. I wish our generation would understand this and instead of asking dumb questions like if a girl wears pants or skirts, why don’t we try to find out if he or she is a mensch and baal middot.

I think I have to differ with you guys on this.

While I think that the Shidduch process is ridiculous these days, I think it’s a consequence not so much of frivolous questions, but of pervasive questionable behavior that illicits a negative reaction and prejudice. It’s really not so much the efforts of the “right wing” element within “Modern Orthodox” circles (reminds me of the recent debates over who among the current presidential candidates represents the “Republican wing of the Republican Party”) to bring “Modern Orthodoxy” to the right. It’s much more of a consequence of the establishment of a Modern Orthodox doctrine. Over the past 2 generations (at least), there’s been this push to create an ideology of Modern Orthodoxy, rather than a recognition of a lifestyle that embraces both, a commitment to Halachah and engagement in the modern world. Since that time, a whole slew of things have happened. Among the major, most noticeable phenomena have been the reactions of those on the right, who would otherwise have never engaged in the modern world. Some have been forced to engage, simply because of the forces of technology, and some have willingly engaged. And some, as has been seen recently in the realm of cell phone usage, have gone so far as to reject modernity as a whole, including technology! (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2006/12/sprint_to_hasidic_jews_what_r.html)
But what I find most interesting is the phenomenon of those who feel pressured to engage, because they don’t want to be seen as backwards. What I think has resulted from this phenomenon in particular, and also tying into those who have been forced to engage in the modern world by technology, is that there is now a sense of “well, I may not be that modern, but you’re not that Orthodox” being felt by many. This, I think, has been at the heart of the problem among those who fall in the middle, particularly young people who want to get married and have a career. It used to be a lot easier when there was a label of ultra-Orthodox for those who refused to embrace modernity, and a label of Orthodox for everyone else who kept Shabbath and Kashruth. Within that pool of Orthodox, people could float around and find people whose Hashkafah meshed with their own, and grow together to the level that they felt comfortable with. Now, though, that there’s an actual Movement, whose label is Modern Orthodox, there’s a whole battle going on for who gets to decide what that means, and that has real ramifications in the Shidduch world. Now, people feel forced to weed out those traits that they feel will bode ill for their desire to grow from and to a certain level, rather than being able to get at the real meat of what the person’s Hashkafah is that they might date. That, I think, is at the heart of the Shidduch crisis, and at the root of these kinds of ridiculous questionaires.