On Being Yotzai min haklal--when someone doesn't fit the mold--Part 1
In the original Grimm's story of Cinderella, Cinderella's two step sisters very much wanted to marry the Prince. When the messenger of the Prince came bearing the glass slipper, with the injunction that the girl whose foot fit the slipper would be the Prince's wife, the stepsisters, knowing the slipper was not really theirs, cut off parts of their feet so that they could stuff their feet into the slipper. The messenger was smart enough to notice the blood and to surmise, correctly, that neither stepsister was the original owner of the shoe. He went on looking further.
This story is analogous to some of the practices present in Klal Yisroel today, particularly as regards shidduchim. Like the slipper, which was a man-made article, some of our practices have nothing to do with halacha and a lot to do with human production.
Consider that slipper as a mold, a mold that a "true" princess has to be able to fit her foot into. Klal has its own "molds," molds that a girl has to be able to fit into or she is not a "true" princess. And like Cinderella's stepsisters, few girls fit the mold without doing some surgery or without hiding the true condition of their "feet."
Now some girls go through with the surgery or hide those feet--anything to be recognized as the true princesses they know they are. And some girls say no way. If a Prince can't recognize me by anything but my shoe size, who needs him. Somewhere there will be a different prince, one not nearly so myopic or narrow minded.
There are problems in store for both types of princesses. The princess who elects for surgery or hidden feet will eventually have to take off that glass slipper; it will just plain pinch too much. And if she never takes off the slipper? That princess may have problems walking straight due to misshapen feet. And just what do you suppose the reaction of her husband Prince will be when he finds out that the slipper didn't fit after all?
The princess who refuses surgery also will have problems. The Prince, who is hung up on glass slippers, will not look her way. And while she dreams that "some day my other Prince will come," someday may be a long time in coming.
Perhaps we need to ditch the glass slipper ideal and recognize that in the real world princesses come with all sizes of shoes, all types of widths and all kinds of different feet. If all a Prince wants is a girl who fits the glass slipper, he might want to invest in a good supply of knives and ibuprofen. Or perhaps get counseling for having a "foot fetish."
But it is not only the princesses who suffer when they don't fit the mold. The story tells us that the Prince was tall, dark and the most handsome man in the kingdom. He had unimaginable wealth and riches. He danced like a dream. And yes, his parents were a King and a Queen. We should also imagine that he was very bright,a go-getter and probably witty, intuitive, caring and sensitive. And oh yes, he was also "the best boy in Lakewood."
So there sit the princesses, waiting for the correctly molded Prince to come along, waving off all those who don't fit the mold. Perhaps we need to redirect these princesses to a different fairy tale: The Frog Prince. In that story a prince was turned into a frog and he could only be turned back into a prince through the love of a woman who would see him for what he truly was and give him a kiss.
Years ago someone gave me a refrigerator magnet that says: You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. Not quite Klal's practice, but close enough in meaning to apply.
So there we have it--not fitting the mold shidduch-style. How many people turn down shidduchim because of a misguided belief in "the Jewish Prince and Princess Syndrome" ?
The story is told of a man who went to a Rav for advice on finding his bashert. He was getting older and he despaired of ever finding the girl meant for him. The Rav listened and then answered: "Oh, you found her alright, and long ago. You thought her nose was too big." Nose, feet, whatever.
Life is NOT a fairy tale. It's more than time to get real when it comes to the molds our singles are supposed to fill.
2 comments:
All the cookie-cutter girls go first. I'm not a cookie-cutter person and don't really care about not going first. I calculate that all the cookie cutter men go first too, so the rest of us can match up as best as we can.
bad4shidduchim,
It does seem to be true that the girls who exactly fit the mold--or seem to-- are among the first to get married. And many of the same type of boys as well. The problem seems to be that many young men believe that they fit the mold perfectly when they don't--and yes some of the women as well. They are looking for those "cookie cutter" girls, but the ones that were available now aren't around any more. So they wait for the next "batch" to be presented. And the "batch" after that. And then the next "batch." The pool of available men thus becomes smaller while the pool of available women becomes larger.
I still maintain that the problem is in having those "cookie cutter" expectations to begin with.
When one of my children was young he went through a short period where the only lego blocks he would build with were the blue ones. Since the box contained equal numbers of blue, red, yellow and green lego,obviously he ran out of blue blocks before he ran out of building ideas. And it took him a little while to figure out that what was most important to him was to build rather than the color of the blocks. But he did figure it out.
People in shidduchim today seem to have that same "blue lego" fixation, but it also seems to be taking them a lot longer to figure out that it is the building that is important, not the block.
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