Yeshiva dormitories and the Shidduch Process--a Match not made in Heaven.

There are a number of ways that men and women are different but I'd like to talk about one way that people perhaps do not think about, and they should.

A lot of Klal Yisroel send their boys to schools where dorming is the rule. Some already go in high school. The rest go after high school. Even if a boy's family lives in the New York area he is likely to dorm for the convenience factor of not having to commute. And of course the yeshivot want their boys "living in" since they can devote more time to Torah study. Most of the dorms allow their boys only one "away" Shabbos. Summers are to be spent in the same way or in sleep away camps dedicated to learning.

What this means in practical terms is that boys hit their teens and are no longer under the sole, direct influence of their parents. Yes, I know, a Rebbe is likened to a parent. Pardon me if as a mother I don't exactly buy that. Boys now become responsible for themselves. It is up to them to figure out matters of hygiene, clean clothes and repairs to clothes that need them. Laundry is their responsibility. Frankly, some boys fail this part abysmally.

But just as important as the physical is the emotional and mental processes that are being formed at the dormitory. Boys hit the age for shidduchim and who do they have around them? Rational adults with some experience in this area? Not likely. They have other bochrim going through the same process they are going through. They leave for a date from the dorm and they return from the date from the dorm. If they can bring themselves to do so, they may talk over the date with another bochur. Their only contact with a female may be saying thank you to the woman who works at the local grocery store. Is this a problem? I think so.

How does a boy learn what a husband should be like? How does he learn how a man should treat his wife? The best place to learn this is in his father's house. What does his father do for his mother? How do his parents speak to each other? What can he learn from observing his parents? If he is at home he can speak with his mother or his sisters and see what a female point of view is--he can learn to talk to a woman. This type of information is absolutely not relevant to a boy of nine--his mind is far from marriage and how to build a good one. Just at the point where such information might be relevant, might be vital, he is no longer at home. Just when he needs to see marriage in all its workings, he isn't at home.

And then he gets married. And yes, he flounders. Maybe not in his reasons for getting married, or even in his picking out of his wife. But he flounders in the day to day occurrences of a marriage. He flounders in the subtleties he has never had a chance to observe. He doesn't know what the "customs" are. In some ways he is like the son in the Haggadah who doesn't even know what questions to ask. He'd like to have a wonderful marriage, if only he knew what that meant and how to get it.

Let's face it, the divorce rate in Klal has never been as high as today. The number of shalom bais issues among couples is also astronomical. I've heard people blame this on "too much secularization." We are wrongly imitating the actions of the secular world and this is the reason for the divorces. I've heard this blamed on the women of Klal--they are acting too aggressively, they don't stay at home, they are getting uppity, they don't know their place. What I don't hear being said is that the boys of Klal are "coming of age" without enough exposure to good role models of marriage, and no, learning about Avraham and Sarah is not sufficient.

Girls, who generally stay at home until they are married, have a distinct advantage over their male counterparts. When they need to know about what makes a marriage they are positioned ideally to find out. They observe their parents' marriages, they observe the marriages of their relatives with whom they are in closer contact then their brothers are, they observe their friends' marriages. This is the "show" part of "show and tell."

Years back my friend and I were trying to be meshaddich a young man from a Brooklyn yeshiva. He lived in the dorm. We both had spoken to him over the phone and found him to be personable. We had never met him in person however. We set him up on dozens of dates and somehow nothing ever went beyond the first date. We couldn't understand why. The girls were reluctant to say anything other than to reassure us that his midos were just fine. We finally made an appointment to meet with this bochur in person. All was explained as soon as we met him. He was suffering from extreme "dormitoryitess." You know the look--a button missing from his shirt, a bit of fraying on the shirt cuffs, a tie that visually told everyone what he had eaten for Shabbos last week. His hair needed a trim, his socks didn't match his pants or each other and his shoes needed a shoemaker. His suit looked like he had hung it up on the floor. When we tried gently to point this out to him, he answered: "But I don't know about any of this stuff!" We asked if there were anyone in the dorm he might ask--he looked at us incredulously. "Boys don't talk about this kind of stuff!" So we rolled up our sleeves and took him shopping for "dating" clothes. We explained patiently about "matching" and about how to fold socks and about when and how to do laundry, and about sending a suit worn often to the cleaners more than twice a year. And yes, we explained about deodorant and mouthwash and their place in the shidduch process. In short, we played "mother" since his mother was not present.

Yes, my friend ending up making a shidduch for this boy. And when the new kallah glowingly told my friend that one reason that helped her to decide on this young man was his obvious understanding of how much a girl likes a young man to look presentable and put together when he comes to take her out, we both hid our grins.

We are not likely to see the practice of boys dorming from a young age change. What to do then? If a rebbe is playing "in loco parentis" then he needs to play both mother and father and do so in a practical way. Boys in a dorm don't need choson classes--they need "I want to become a choson" classes. Parents need to remember that those "men" of theirs are not really yet fully grown--they still need guidance and examples. Most fathers are reluctant to have "that" talk with their young sons. They need to know that there is another one of those talks they need to have with their sons, the one centered around the topic of "What do Women Want."

I've said before that husbands are not born, they are made. Let me expand that by saying the making is a group project, and a lot of boys are not getting the group support they need. If we want the marriages of Klal to last, if we want shalom bais between couples, if we want divorce to go down, we need to remember that one part of the shidduch has not got the advantages of the other--one part of the shidduch finished raising himself.