Top Five Revisions to the Shidduch System

PNN asked me a while ago what my top five revisions would be to the shidduch system currently in place. There's more than five revisions I'd make, but here are the ones that I'd put into place first, in no particular order.

1. Remove the middle man or woman. Once a first date has been set up and gone on both sides have to say yes or no within 24 hours. The shadchan will report the results to both sides. After that, the couple is on their own. You want a second date? You call and ask.

2. Mixed events for males and females (can't get too much more mixed than that) will be a requirement for every community to host on a regular basis. While there may be programs presented at these get togethers, let no one mistake that sufficient free time for the attendees to mingle will be a requirement of every program. In point of fact the best of these programs will be the ones where the mingling is built into the program, such as a game night where the males and females will be playing against/with each other, or a chesed program--let's have them preparing food baskets or sorting clothing or what have you.

3. Get rid of the age ranking system in place. For some reason that escapes me the "greener" the male and female, the more valuable they are in the system. Mother Nature is laughing at us for sure. While young bushes and trees and plants are surely necessary, it's the more mature specimens that are the most valuable. Go ahead and walk into any plant nursery. The cheapest item there is a package of seeds with a picture on the package of what the planting should look like when full grown. Of course, there is no guarantee that those seeds will sprout at all or that they will grow "straight" or that they will ever get to full size. The next cheapest items are the small seedlings stuffed 6-12 per tray. Again, they may show that they have roots but what they will actually do as they grow is not known. The most expensive items in the nursery are the full-blown specimens, the ones where you can see just what kind of plant you are getting, with what strengths and weaknesses. They come in their own individual pots and the more mature they are, the more they will cost you.


We need to stop pushing our young people into the shidduch parsha before they have sufficient roots and growth to thrive. While some plants may mature relatively early, a whole lot of them don't.

4. Stop the crazy time proscriptions. There are any number of people who have proscribed that dating has to run according to specifics of a clock and a calendar. First dates shall only be X number of minutes/hours. Subsequent dates may not exceed a specific hour count. Six dates maximum and you decide yea or nay. On the basis of what may be only 12 hours of interaction, we expect that our singles will be able (and willing) to make a decision that could impact them forever, both in a good way and a bad way. What other items of great importance do we attach such a timetable to? Shopping for a house can take months, if not years. Investigating and deciding upon a college to go to can take months of steady research, visitations and thinking. Even buying something simple, like a couch or an outfit for a wedding or a new car can involve weeks/months of looking, re-looking and re-re-looking. Yet, we suppose that following a simple and condensed time formula will allow all singles to make a life-altering decision based on 12 hours in a fairly artificial environment--not only suppose it, but require it. Unlike that outfit, which may turn out to be unsuitable when viewed in the privacy of your room at home, "returning" a shidduch or marriage is fraught with difficulty and is an emotionally scarring situation.

Let me simplify this one a bit. You get on an airplane at JFK heading towards Israel. You are squashed into an itsy bitsy seat that is not all that comfortable and you can't stretch out the way you want to. You are not necessarily dressed for comfort but for public view. You and a stranger are going to be sharing that space and are expected to be friendly but be formal. This is not a place to be raising subjects that might bring about emotional or heated discussion--social chitchat is the rule. Now add this--you disembark in Israel and are accosted by your nearest and dearest (and yes, some who aren't so near or so dear) and are told that you must make a decision RIGHT NOW: are you going to marry your seatmate or not? Yup, 12 hours of limited travel and a life-altering decision must be made.

5. Get rid of the "Too many cooks spoil the broth" syndrome in place. If only the male and female dating were involved in the process of trying to get married there would still be problems because of points 1-4 above. Now add in that there are whole slews of people who are actively involved, who push themselves into the process. Granted, it's perfectly natural to want to talk things over with someone you trust. But we've gone way beyond the "talk things over" aspect. The way things run today there are way more than two people who are going to be making the decision about who gets married to whom. Parents/grandparents/siblings/other relatives/rabbis/rebbis/morot/friends and just plain acquaintances all seem to feel that they are an integral part of the decision process, with a vote that counts at least as much as the dating people's do. In the end only two people are going to walk away from that chupah and go home together, only two people are going to get married. It's THOSE TWO PEOPLE whose wishes must be paramount. They might be making a mistake? Maybe yes and maybe no. But the mistake is theirs to make, not the entire world's.

Given the high divorce rate in Klal today (and no, that is not merely a result of divorces being easier to obtain or more socially acceptable), given the burgeoning sholom bayis problems particularly among younger married couples, what do we really have to lose if we change the system being used today?

Unlike baking and cooking, no proscribed recipe for making a shidduch is going to work across the board for everyone, nor will it result in a "perfect product" every time that recipe is followed. Even in cooking and baking every good cook knows that a recipe is only a loose guideline--sometimes it will work perfectly and other times it won't. We in Klal need to stop believing that our recipe for shidduchim is the exception to the rule--a recipe that works in all instances using a whole bunch of ingredients that differ from each other and from those suggested in the original recipe.

As I said in the beginning of this posting, there are lots more than five things I would change about shidduch making, but even utilizing one or two of the changes I suggest could make a big difference for a whole lot of people.