We were away for dinner Friday night and the conversation among the women turned to, what else, shidduchim. All the women at the table have been involved, in one way or another, in trying to red shidduchim. Two of the women mentioned that they were going to be making sheva brochos before Pesach and mentioned the name of the choson. I immediately said mazel tov as this was someone I had tried to fix up on many occasions. I casually asked who the kallah was and then my mouth fell open at the answer. The other women at the table laughed. Every one of us had attempted at some point to fix up the new choson with the girl who was now his kallah. He had never been interested enough to let "strangers" fix him up to even ask who the girl we had in mind was.
So how did they meet? His mother, who had obviously known the girl's name from all of us, somehow found out that one of her friends was a cousin to the girl. She and the cousin conspired to have the girl come for shabbos to visit her cousin. And the cousin invited the boy's family for a meal on shabbos. Boy saw girl and boy decided there was something to look at further. And then the boy couldn't get anyone to red the shidduch. The cousin decided that she "didn't see the shidduch" and his mother decided that she couldn't possibly red a shidduch directly. In desperation the boy called one of the women, his mother's friend, from the local shidduch circle and asked if she could do him a favor. By the time the shidduch was finally red the young man was in a sweat of desperation that he would never get to go out with the girl and the more things were delayed, the more he was sure that this shidduch was it.
Obviously all is well that ends well, and this couple that so many of us thought should get together have indeed gotten together. At the l'chaim, the two women who are giving the sheva brochas gave the choson mazel tov and also casually dropped into the conversation that the kallah was the girl they had wanted to fix him up with. As they described it, "his eyes bugged out" as he realized that those "strangers" who had wanted to fix him up just might have known what they were talking about.
No, not every shidduch a stranger presents to you will work out like this shidduch did. But then, you don't need every shidduch red to work out--you only need one to do so. Even if your mother or your cousin reds you a shidduch, just where do you think they got the person from? In all likelihood from a stranger.
You might want to remind yourself, the next time you are about to turn down a shidduch red by someone who "doesn't know you," that their knowing you is not all that important, since
G-d does, and G-d clearly has a sense of humor when it comes to shidduchim.
5 comments:
Think I can top your story. My parents had 3 of us in the parsha at once and it was making my mother crazy. She was making and getting million of phone calls. My sister turned down one shidduch that came from our dentist's wife's brother's nephew's sister in law's babysitter's uncle sort of. Since we didn't really know the shadchan and the shadchan didn't really know the boy no one wanted to start with the shidduch. A different boy that a friend read to her she said she would go out with. Somehow my mom mixed up her notes and the names of the boys and my sister ended up going out with the boy from the complete stranger. She thought he was a great boy but not for her so she asked him if he would mind if she fixed him up with her sister, me. 11 years married. Funny things happen on the way to a shidduch.
And maybe after I'm married I'll see the humor in all of this. Not laughing now.
It took my roommate and me 6 months to get comfortable enough to discuss anything sort of personal and you want me to spill my gutts about myself to a stranger? Not going to happen.
Kallah in this story is sort of a cousin of mine and every aunt and woman in the family is having a great time telling the story to all of us guys that are still single. Please, no more! We get it!
Big difference though between strange and stranger. I don't mind the strangers who suggest something for me. But some of those strangers are just too strange to deal with.
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