Hachnosas Orchim and Singles
The Yomim Tovim are fast approaching and women are busy shopping and planning and preparing. But there is one extra preparation I would recommend to all--inviting a single for yom tov.

Some singles are from out of town and cannot get home for yom tov. Some singles live here but have no family to go to. Some meals may be covered by invites but not all. We seem to assume that the singles have "covered" it already. You know what they say about assumptions. The world may have changed, but it is still the host and hostess who offers an invitation, not the guest who is supposed to ask for one.

We are enjoined to be like Avraham Aveinu and practice hachnosas orchim--hospitality to the stranger among us. If only for the sake that singles should not be alone for yom tov, offer an invitation. And who knows, maybe someone in your shule will ask about the person, and maybe they will know someone for a shidduch, and another family will be added to the roster of Klal Yisroel--and all because you added some more chicken to the pot and shared it.

One of my favorite stories about hachnosas orchim involves a 66-year-old single woman. She ran into someone she sort of recognized from shule in the supermarket. Both women had heaped wagons. The younger married woman asked her "Are you having company for yom tov?" The older woman replied "Just myself." The younger woman said "You are not spending yom tov alone, you are coming to me" and that is what happened. End of the story? No.

The younger woman also had her married brother and his family for yom tov, all but one niece, a woman in her late 30s and unmarried. This niece had moved away from New York, being unable to stand the pitying glances sent her way any longer. The girl's father cried a lot over that yom tov, missing his child. The older woman had a good friend who had a son in his 40s who had a hearing problem and who had never married. She thought to herself "What could it hurt?" and "red" the shidduch.

Now the father of this unmarried daughter was a doctor, and although his specialty was not Ear, Eye and Throat, he knew someone well whose specialty it was. He said he would speak to his friend about any new developments that might help this hearing impaired gentleman, and in the meantime he would "red" the shidduch to his daughter.

You think you know the ending? Nope. When the hearing impaired single met with the hearing specialist, that doctor was super impressed with him. And so was his cousin's daughter, who worked in the doctor's office as an audiologist. Those two would get married. And the man, thankful for the circumstances that caused him to finally find his "bashert," "red" a shidduch to someone he knew for the unmarried niece. It wasn't a shidduch, but the man mentioned the woman to a friend of his, and yes, that became a shidduch.

Hachnosas orchim and shidduchim--two couples married because a woman in Waldbaum's invited a single for yom tov. Please, order that extra chicken now.