DNA and making Shidduchim--a lesson to be learned

When scientists are attempting to match one DNA sample to DNA taken from a different sample they do not expect to get 100% correlation. 100% is the exception, not the rule. There are some 15 points that could be matched. If only 8 of these points match the scientist can posit that the two samples are likely to have come from the same person. If 10 match, the scientist is "sure" that they came from the same person.

Person "A" has 15 must have qualities for anyone they are going to date, otherwise how could that person be a match for them? Person "B" has 8 or 9 or 10 of those qualities. For a scientist, concerned with identifying a "true" match, those numbers would be enough to go on. If all the questions we ask are for the purpose of "scientifically"--read rationally and logically--finding a shidduch, then we also need to understand that scientists aren't using 100% as their number, and we don't need to either.

Perhaps we need to establish a smaller base of "must have" qualifications or be satisfied if fewer of our "must haves" are present, as long as a sufficient number of them are met. "Alles in einem is nisht du ba keinem."---No one has everything all together in one place at one time.

Let me illustrate with the story of the strangest shidduch I ever red. I was the shadchan for both the boy and the girl. Both families had a shopping list a mile long. Questions? Millions. And then the weird thing happened. I looked at the boy's list of requirements and I looked at the girl's list of requirements and they matched, 100%. I called both families and they did all the checking so beloved by Klal, and they both called back super excited. This was it--the perfect shidduch.

The boy and the girl spoke to each other on the phone and each reported back to me that they could not believe such "perfect" people existed, and they were so excited to be going out with each other.

The families were really excited too. On the night of the first date the boy's parents and the girl's parents got together to meet each other. The parents loved each other. Everyone concerned was sure that a mazel tov was in the very near future.

And then the girl came home--and then the girl stormed into the house, yelled at her father that if he ever fixed her up with someone like this again she would never speak to her father for the rest of her life, ran up the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. The parents could not understand what could have happened. The boy would later replay the girl's scenario for his parents.

Whatever seemed so perfect when on paper did not play out that way in real life. The actual meeting of this couple brought out things that simply could not be anticipated on paper. There is simply no substitute for actually meeting and talking to someone.

I said this was the strangest shidduch I ever red--the parents became "best friends." They vacation together, speak every day, share yom tov meals together and in general are the best "couple" I have ever set up. The boy and the girl, now very happily married to other people, once quipped to me that it was bashert that their parents meet, and I really should ask for "shadchanus gelt" for having facilitated their finding each other.

How does this story illustrate the point I am trying to make? Even on the rare occasion that 100% of what you are looking for should seem to be there, that doesn't make it any better than if only 65% had been there, or 78%. The boy and the girl above did not get 100% of every quality they were looking for in the people they would actually marry--but they did get the 75% that turned out to be the important things. Their experience with each other proved what I said above: no one has everything.