MARRIED- BY FRIENDS

I think that it is hard for anybody to find their match. I think this is true for everyone, whether religious or not, Jewish or not, everywhere. It is easier in traditional societies where there is less expectation of marriage perhaps, and where the cult of the individual as we know it in the West, does not have such a stranglehold. I wonder what it is like in North Korea? I guess if the Dear Leader tells you to marry someone, you marry someone, but he can’t force you to be happy, can he?

I know that I have seen both sides. I dated like crazy, I went to parties and to discos and to singles functions and university social groups and such, and I had a lot of fun and a lot of boyfriends but no keepers. Then after I had a sort of epiphany, you should excuse the expression, I decided that I wanted a more religious life. A friend introduced me to my husband-to-be, and after a false start, we clicked, dated for 5 weeks, got engaged (Dec 24), got married after 2 ½ months and, after 9 months, had twins (Dec 22). So I was engaged, married and had twins within a year. (They were 4 weeks premature, and don’t think low-minded people weren’t counting on their fingers at the time.) No mucking around.  We were 24. It’s been 32 years, 5 more kids, 7 grandchildren B”H. No complaints. Well, actually, plenty of complaints, but who listens to a complainer?

So I naturally thought that in my frum life, the road to marrying off my children would be clear and simple; none of this sordid frustrating dating stuff, no noisy dark clubs, no waiting for commitment.  They would be spared all of that stuff. They would go on dates when they were prepared to be married and there would be no doubt that the other person would be looking for the same thing. Commitment. Similar values.

Well, maybe this works for some people, but I can tell you that it is nowhere near as simple as this. For one thing, there seems to be a gender imbalance. Why should this be? Aren’t boys and girls born roughly 50:50? So, say some are unsuitable for marriage one way or the other…is there such a large number of unsuitable boys relative to unsuitable girls? It seems that there is. And so, if you have a son…not just any son, but ‘a good boy’ as opposed to a smoker-toker-joker, then your phone will ring until it melts. But if you have a daughter, ‘a good girl’, alleh midois, alleh maalehs, la crème de la crème…nothing.

If you have a son, it is as if you are in a jungle and you need a machete to chop through all the weeds and clear a path until you find the right one. But if you have a girl, it is like you are in a desert. And far away in the distance, there stands a lone palm tree. But it might be a mirage.

Then there seems to be an attitude problem, where boys and girls, influenced (I nearly said “infected”) by Hollywood values, think that they have to be IN LOVE, LO-O-O-O-VE, LERRRVE in order to get married. Well, you don’t. You have to be ‘in like’. You should be amused, intrigued, looking forward to seeing each other. But you don’t need to be head-over-heels, fireworks in the air, in love. That stuff fades pretty quickly, but affection and loyalty and putting the other person first, that’s for the long haul.

Back in the shtetl, expectations were different. My own father, from Poland, was the son of a second wife. The first wife died in childbirth (and the baby was nourished by a wet-nurse whose own child became the ‘milk-sibling’ of the motherless child.) And then Grandpa married his late wife’s younger sister. And then he died when my father was 11, of a strangulated hernia. And then she remarried. (And then ‘the Nazi murderers killed them all’ as my father was wont to say.) On my mother’s side, her paternal grandfather, from Bessarabia, was 13 when he was first married to a 12 year old girl. They had 6 children, and then she died, probably relating to childbirth also. Then he remarried and had 8 more children. It is easy to see how expectations of marriage would have been different in those days. Certainly these folk, bent on survival, duty, tradition, would laugh at today’s roses and valentines and romantic notions of happily ever after fairy tales. I’m sure- I hope- they liked each other, assuming they knew each other before the wedding, but they trusted their parents to look out for them, and Hollywood wasn’t around then. And even if they knew about Romeo and Juliet, it’s worth remembering that everyone dies in the end. So they were unlikely to have been all starry-eyed.  And after The War, people married in DP camps; pitiful remnants of European Jewry, refugees with only the clothes on their backs, given to them by The Joint or the Red Cross, found each other and had enough strength and optimism to want to start a new life and procreate. I can tell you that these folks weren’t proposing in hot-air balloons filled with red roses.

So now we expect that marriage will last much longer because life-spans are generally longer, and that the relationship will deepen and evolve over the years, and there have been a million books written about this. But we can’t seem to get our kids hitched! Secular for sure not! They think they will be young and fertile forever! They think it’s fine to do everything else but get married, and then when the matter becomes more pressing, they are still fotzing around as if they were 20. And for every girl yearning to settle down and start a family there are 10 guys who think they are Peter Pan. Do you know that in Israel 2010 there were 4,900 single women who used reproductive technology in order to conceive and have a child on their own, before it was too late? OK, Israel, I guess there is a worse gender imbalance because of casualties of wars, but that’s a lot of single women. Also fertility treatments are free in Israel. But this sounds to me like a default plan. I personally know 2 sisters who did this, both highly educated professionals in their 40’s, and now they each have a baby and couldn’t be happier. But they would have preferred husbands to do this with.

Recently there have been some rabbinical directives re early marriage, and I laughed nervously at the ages suggested. 20? I think of myself at 20, let alone a boy. No way was I ready. No way were my sons ready at that age. But then, after a certain point, whenever that might be, it seems the kids get too ‘smart’, too savvy, critical and picky, unless they were always critical and picky types from the get-go, and nobody is good enough. But then, low 20’s sounds better, and parents are usually still around to be supportive. But in the secular community, they think even 24 is too young. And if that is your mindset, then it IS in fact too young.

Anyway, in this roundabout, digressive post, I am saying that young people, married or single, should be doing much more to introduce other singles to each other. The professional (or even the well-meaning amateur) shadchan should be something only used if all else fails. Ditto J-date or Frumster or Saw You At Sinai websites. Friends should look out for friends. We parents try, or maybe we don’t try, but really, we only think we know our kids and what they need. Sometimes their friends know better.

So, friends? Peers? Time to make more of an effort to get your friends hitched. Be a nudnik, be pushy if you have to. That’s how I found my husband, noodged by an annoying friend to give it a try, give it another try.  32 years on, I am still grateful to that nudnik.

PS: Today, 22 Adar, is actually my wedding anniversary, and I would like to say to my husband, who never reads my blog, that it’s been an amazing 32 years, ups and downs for sure, but here we are, and it’s just grand. Thank you.