Early one summer, in a shiur addressed to mothers of
out-of-town seminary girls, the principal of a Bais Yaakov
high school in the States began with, "Your daughters will be
returning from seminary very soon. Hug them and kiss them,
welcome them home, let them unpack and then marry them
off."
This year's post-sem crowd has already unpacked and
reacquainted themselves with families and friends. Therefore,
their families are in the process of putting out feelers for
shidduchim.
I once heard it said that a shadchan serves one vital
role in bringing together prospective matches: to rule out
the ridiculous.
If a boy has made a commitment to go back to Ohio to manage a
fifth generation family business, don't introduce him to the
only daughter of a Yerushalmi family who has been groomed to
take over her mother's lifelong local chessed projects
[plural].
If your daughter's friends refer to her as `the princess',
there is a good chance that she doesn't want to meet the guy
whose passion in life is back-packing in high terrain.
A girl with a fear of heights will not be the appropriate
match for a semi-professional bungee- jumper.
A boy who thinks `overweight' is a disease is not suited for
your neighbor's plump daughter, even though under all of that
shmaltz she DOES have such a pretty face.
By now, you get the point.
As conscientious as today's matchmaking process may be, there
are some areas that never seem to be addressed by either side
OR by the shadchonim. I have my own list of seemingly
important questions that they just don't ask. You can
probably add quite a few of your own. [Ed. You're invited to
do so.]
First is the issue of biological clocks, often called Owls
vs. Fowls.
There are some who are `day people.' They wake at the crack
of dawn, have all of the laundry, half of the cooking and a
good part of the cleaning -- or in case of a bochur,
two hours of solid learning -- behind them before everyone
else is reaching for negel vasser and stirring from
bed. These people are called `fowls' because of their
similarity to the early-rising rooster. Of course, their day
comes to an end quite early in order to be up again at the
crack of the next dawn.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who grudgingly get
up -- after hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock
multiple times -- and go through what is left of the morning
in less-than-optimal spirits. But these folk hit their stride
in late afternon and then burn the midnight oil,
accomplishing hours of work, or quality study, while everyone
else is fast asleep. They are known as `owls' because of the
nocturnal feathered friends of that name.
When was the last time a shadchan asked where your
child fits into this picture? Isn't it as ridiculous to match
an `owl' with a `fowl' as it is to pair any other misfits?
Another area of potential compatibility, or lack thereof, is
commitment to orderliness.
Of course, when a boy comes to his prospective kalla's
home, everything is ship-shape. But where did the
kalla fit into the preparation picture?
R' Moshe Aharon Stern zt'l often told the story of how
his grandfather, R' Yaakov Yosef Herman of All for the
Boss fame, found him a shidduch. R' Yaakov Yosef
checked out a list of girls with good character from fine
families. And then, he did a little extra checking.
He dropped in on the family erev Shabbos to see what
the girl was doing. As he put it, "If she was in the beauty
parlor, she wasn't for us." Rebbetzin Stern passed the test
with flying colors. When her future chosson's
grandfather arrived, she was scrubbing the floor!
And when does the kalla see the chosson in his
natural habitat for the first time? Maybe during sheva
brochos, but usually even later. If he is comfortable
amidst clutter, and is used to leaving clothes where they
fall and dirty dishes at their point of use, he may need a
bit of retraining to suit the kalla's taste.
I know one family where the proclivity for ultra- neatness
went the other way. Shortly after moving into her new
apartment, a kalla received a letter from a hometown
friend. She took the letter out of the mailbox, opened it,
and after a quick glance, dropped it onto her bed as she
rushed into the kitchen to stir the soup.
After supper, she went back to read it. The letter was
nowhere to be found. Upon asking her chosson, she
discovered that he had thrown it into the trash, which he
then took out on his way to shul for maariv. "I
assumed that, of course, you were finished with it if you
left it lying around," he shrugged.
Then there is another area of potential conflict that a
friend of mine once brought up, only partly in jest. She
said, "You always ask where they come from in terms of
hashkofa, how long he wants to stay in learning, how
much financial help each side is prepared to give, and where
they each want to live.
"However, an important question no one asks is, `What are the
names of all of their ancestors who don't yet have
namesakes?' If their first daughter is going to be called
after favorite great-aunt Shprintza and later girls will be
Yenta and Yachna, wouldn't you want to know all that up
front?"
However, come to think of it, maybe generations of
matchmakers have purposely left those and other `vital'
issues for sorting out at a later date. Wouldn't shona
rishona [the first year of marriage] be a bit boring if
the new couple fit together from Day One as perfectly as a
long-married Saba and Savta?
