About a week ago, someone sent me an e-mail of a “shidduch meeting” form. For those who don’t know, a shidduch meeting is when a group of (usually) women get together and see who knows whom and if there could be any possible set ups from that group.1 Since everyone knows different people from their various circles, it’s reasonable that two compatible people would never have met nor would they even have people in common who could get them together.
The organizer wrote up a form with “basic” information. I don’t know how seriously the participants used the forms – it’s possible they just used the names had the “sponsors” describe the singles – but disliked several of the questions asked. Independently, each question provides some information about a person and perhaps indicate if X would be shayachet for Y. As a unit, many of these questions are insufficient or inappropriate to describe the entirety of a person.
For example, here are the 10 questions from the form (in addition to personal background info like occupation, school, etc) with my comments. I copied the questions as they appeared on the form and as you will see, many are horribly phrased. Also, the questions are presented in the order in which they were received, but order should not be confused with importance.
1. Do you/are you looking for someone who intends to cover her hair?
Some may consider hair covering as merely a religious barometer, like a guy wearing a black hat (see below). The major difference is that there are actual halakhot of married women covering their hair. Consequently, if a woman does not plan to cover her hair, or she plans to cover her hair not in accordance with Jewish law,2 then she would not be appropriate for a significant population of the Orthodox dating pool.
2. Do you/are you comfortable with (a girl) wearing pants?
Awkwardly phrased. The gist is if you’re a girl, do you wear pants, if you’re a guy, do you care? This infers from the culture religious issues of modesty, but the halakha is not as clear cut as the hair covering. As phrased, this promotes stereotypes of what modesty is halakhic or socially acceptable. Some context would help, as there are many times when pants would actually be more modest than a skirt. At any rate, whether or not one agrees with the implications of women wearing pants, it’s a practical question for determining if two people from the vast modern orthodox community would be appropriate.
3. Do you/are you comfortable with (a boy) wearing jeans?
I don’t understand this one at all. Maybe on some level wearing jeans has some religious implications and indicate where someone is “holding” religiously. It might be a factor for some people, but in my opinion, not enough to make a top 10.
4. Do you/are you looking for (a boy) who intends to wear a hat?
Like #3 this one is directed to the right end of modern orthodoxy. Depending on the people involved, this may or may not make a top 10.
5. Do you plan on having a television in your home?
Interesting idea, but horrible presentation. It’s a religious indicator, but I don’t think television should be reduced to a simple yes/no, good/bad dichotomy. Instead, I suggest the following scale (work in progress):
- I tape the weather channel to see what I missed.
- I talk about Rachel, Ross, and Joey like they’re real people.
- Just give me Law and Order and the Simpson’s.
- Nothing but PBS and the History Channel.
- I need it for the VCR…and the news.
- Box of Satan.
This way you find out not only religious beliefs, but some degree of personality (or lack thereof)
6. Do you plan on attending movies with your spouse?
This one is even more vague than the TV question. What type of movies are we talking about? Finding Nemo? Yentl? Sallah? School of Rock? Blazing Saddles? Lord of the Rings? The Big Lebowski? Dogma? Sound of Music? Rocky Horror Picture Show?3 Furthermore, you could plan on sneaking out to see the movies by yourself without your spouse, or even rent them.
7. Do you/are you looking for someone who will be learning or engaged in a profession?
Is this a choice? My spouse can either be learning or engaged in a profession? Do I want a stay at home wife? Kollel husband? Applicable to a small percentage of modern orthodoxy, this question might be more of a personality indicator than a religious one.
8. Do you/are you looking for someone who will learn on a regular basis?
Regularly setting aside for learning establishes Torah as an important part of Jewish life. Children who see their parents learning may come to value Torah more themselves, or minimally not get as cynical at a society which asserts the importance of Torah and then promptly neglects it.
I just wonder if this applies to women learning too.
9. Do you/are you looking for someone who will attend minyan on a daily basis?
Yet another religious indicator (noticing a pattern?), but practically useless for a marriage, especially once kids come.
10. Are you a Kohen?
According to halakha, a Kohen cannot marry a divorce or a convert and the convention is not to set up kohanim with people who have questionable Jewish lineage. Very important question.
Most of these questions attempted get a religious sense of a person. While society is obviously important in a modern orthodox society, many of the questions are irrelevant to having a successful marriage. Several questions merely reinforce harmful stereotypes of what is and what isn’t religious. On the other hand, if people think in these stereotypes then these questions may be useful. So my question is, for men and women, what are the top 10 questions you think would be most applicable to the most people in the modern orthodox community? What questions would best define you as a man or woman?
The goal here is not to tell everything about a person, but to have a sense if two people would be compatible. Also, the questions have to be phrased in such a way that they will be useful. People don’t always like thinking about themselves, or would just lose patience with a long survey. More questions would help, and so would asking how important an issue is to someone. For example, I may not want a TV, but I won’t care if my spouse does.
Grayson Levy does a great job of this with Frumster. He asks a nice mix of religious and personal questions, and he forces members to express themselves beyond simple multiple choice questions.
I also acknowledge that most of the forms tell more about the person who constructs them than it does about the singles.
Anyone else have suggestions?
1. Not to be confused with kiddush or shabbat lunch. This at least has no pretense of being anything else but a shmooze fest.
2. Or at least the “Jewish law” as understood by the guy, or more realistically the guy’s rabbi. I’m not going to discuss here the laws of hair covering and what is “real” halakha and what is custom. My point is that if a guy thinks that what a woman plans to do is forbidden, don’t set up those two people.
3. My personal opinion is that some of these movies are assur to see, others are mehuyav on everyone. No, I will not say which is which. My father likes to tell following story from R. Faur’s shiur. One day R. Faur said the only movies which are mutar are cartoons and westerns. After naively seeing Fritz the Cat (or part of it at least), he then told his shiur that cartoons are also assur.
As you probably know, I am no fan of pigeonholing questions like these. They do, however, capture a substantial number of current stereotypes and cliques within orthodoxy/modern orthodoxy, and therefore might be useful as an early sorting system for some people. For many people who don’t fit in a bin, such as yours truly (I’d *love* to see my shadchan profile: black hat and owes his marriage in not-so-small part to the Rocky Horror Picture Show…), however, I fear that this kind of questionaire does much more harm than good.
At least in my social circles, though, the questions on hair covering, pants, and jeans *do* have substantial social ramifications, and are likely to be appropriate. The really interesting thing, though, is the phrasing of the three questions: “Are you comfortable with a boy wearing jeans/girl wearing pants?” vs. “are you *looking* for a boy who wears a hat?” Why might someone not *seek* a jeans-wearing boy, or be *comfortable* with a hat-wearing one?
You don’t get it. Just because these questions are unimportant to you does not mean that they are unimportant to other people. Even superficial or misguided people need to get married.
1. The question is valid. I would not even consider a woman who does not plan on covering her hair. She isn’t in my parsha.
2. Answering that yes I feel comfortable with a woman wearing pajama pants and ski pants but not regular pants is just silly. I know what the question means. You know what the question means. So stop nitpicking.
3. For you, yes. But many others consider it inappropriate. Not a matter of tznius but of conforming to communal standards. (I can just see you asking, whose community? That’s the whole point!) I don’t own a pair of jeans.
4. Not just the right end of Modern Orthodoxy. There is a whole world of just plain Orthodox Jews out there also. Don’t forget about us.
5. For you, the answer is yes. But you don’t want to be lumped together with everyone else. Any question can be made more specific, and you don’t want to be lumped together with people who watch Sex in the City. Understandable, but too bad for you.
6. Not vague at all. You just don’t want to answer yes.
7. You know what the question means. Don’t be silly. Anyone who says Shma twice a day is technically learning. It means learning full time. Kollel. Don’t be a wise guy.
8. Finally, a good question.
9. Useless? Huh? Kids? What are you talking about? I know married guys with kids who don’t go to minyan during the week.
10. Another good question! Yippee!
Let’s look at the breakdown of questions, and garner from this what are the most important charicteristics of a marriage:
4: clothing
3: davening and learning
2: view on popular culture
1: an actual, practical question
Needless to say, I think clothing is a little overrated. Would it ever occur to someone to put questions like:
Do you give 10% of your income to tzedaka?
Do you participate in any chesed? Do you want your spouse to?
Do you expect your spouse to fulfill any predefined roles in the marriage (cooking, cleaning, working, etc)? What about yourself?
And I don’t think the frumster categories are particularly helpful either. I thank the Shadchan above that I never had to use it, but I honestly don’t know if I’m modern orthodox machmir or meikil. I once heard R’ Carmy quoted as saying that R’ Moshe was machmir on tuna fish and meikil on eishet ish. But I guess he could at least call himself Black Hat. What about me? The main page says, “Whether you are Modern Orthodox, Religious Zionist, Yeshivish, Haredi, or just plain shomer Mitzvot, Frumster is the place to find your match.” But “just plain shomer mitzvot” is not a category. Neither is “religious Zionist” for that matter.
The answer to number 7 is, of course, “yes.”
Hello? Does the person answering these questions have any personality or originality at all? You wouldn’t be able to tell from those questions. I don’t think you can get any kind of portrait of the person except an extremely narrow view of one aspect of their lives. From the posted questions, you could maybe rule out a few people, but it leaves a lot to be desired in ruling anyone in. Personally, I know I look for someone who can think for themselves and has a bit of intelligence. From this list, there is no way to be able to see that. I think a question or two about what priorities or personality characteristics the individual is looking for would go a long way to getting a better idea of who the person filling out the form is.
Here are some suggested questions. I’m not taking care to word them perfectly.
– What are your thoughts on Aliya?
– What kind of car do you think you and your spouce should own: (’85 Le Sabre wagon, ’94 Camry, ’04 Caddilac)
…or something that goes to expectations for expensivenness of lifestyle.
Well, after confirming for myself that, sure enough, I’m not at all Orthodox (although question #8 is responsible for torpedoing most of my friends’ offers to set me up, and I agree with Avraham about the correct answer to #7)… wouldn’t it make better sense for the questionnaire to use one of those 5-item scales ranging from “not at all important” through “not especially important,” “neutral,” “somewhat important,” and “very important”? I realize that nobody wants to put these suckers on a graph, but it seems to me that that would restore some of the nuance to most of these minchag-related questions.
Here’s another one:
– Would you most like to live near or far away from your family? What about your spouce’s family?
How do you know that this targets the MO community? It actually sounds like a vanilla Orthodox questionnaire to me. I tried setting an Orthodox friend up with a guy but she couldn’t part with her TV for anyone, sight unseen, so there went that. Her loss, or (not) bashert.
My wife was at said meeting and I forwarded a copy of the form to a certain “Elder”. I personaly think that the whole idea of the meeting was misguided based on some of the “paper shiduchim” that were thought of that night.
Personally, I have watched the Big Lebowski with my wife (and to my surprise she found it funny) but we do not own a TV. For us, it is more a matter of not getting sucked into the tube when you could be doing something more productive, edifying, or cardiovascular. So, I don’t think you need to see it as a religious issue. Also, I should point out that if I ever had to fill this form out I would have answered yes to the TV question and my wife, having thought about it more, would have answered no. Furthermore, I have no preference as to whether my wife wears pants or covers her hair, while she does have certain specific views on the subject. Also, my wife is more fastidious about attending minyan (especially on time) than I am. So basically we would never have been set up by these wannabe shadchanim.
The bottom line is that unfortunately we are living in a culture that makes more of defining a person by the subcategories of subcategories which they fit into than by the nobility of their character. This is indeed a sad state of affairs.
As far as shiduchim go, we try to set up friends and aquaintances on a regular basis and firmly believe that the most important attitude that a person in the dating scene can have is “sure, I’ll give it a shot.” It may not, and probably will not work out, but having a jaded attitude that you’re sick of being set up with x or y type of person and will henceforth only date people who fall into categories p, d and q might just prevent you from meeting the person you want to marry. And the more people you know, the more people know you and the better chance of someone putting you together with the right person.
That is why I think it should be more accepted that the first 2-3 dates should be casual coffee shop liasons and not the high-pressure dinner+activity thing that 1) often makes the guy have to come up an entire “date concept” and shell out a lot of cash and 2) often makes the girl uncomfortable and overdressed.
Just my thoughts. Feel free to ignore them as coming from a now-married schmuck who’s clearly forgotten what the dating war of attrition was like back down in the trenches.
I just got a call from a woman from the Nielsens. She wanted to know how often I went to the movies. I wonder if she wanted to set me up….
There’s no way 2 people can decide if they want to get married unless they meet. Even the best shadchan cannot guess who will fall for whom.
OTOH why have people meet who have opposite views of Judaism – it’s usually a waste of everybody’s time. This questionnaire does just that – finds out where in the religious continuum you are.
Doniel:
Why set up people with different views of Judaism? Because they may well be perfect for each other. Yes, there needs to be some basic agreements, but people may have different views on the “jeans/movies/tv” and still be right for each other. My wife and I come from extremely different backgrounds, two of our best friends are a MTA/Bais Yaakov of Monsey pairing, and I’ve lost count of how many couples I know who would have never gotten set up with each other based on these moronic questions.
On the other hand, I *have* gotten a shidduch offer for someone who didn’t want to ever leave the states (despite my aliyah intentions), where the shadchan (who knew me for all of one evening) dismissed my concerns out-of-hand (“don’t worry! Who knows what you’ll end up doing?”). The orthodox community needs to get a clue as to what makes a good shidduch, and many of these questions ain’t it.
If I remember right:
Wittgenstein said that Westerns are the only movies that are not bad for morals.
Allen Bloom wrote feminism [sic] killed the Western.
Is Lebowski a Western? Nevermind.
these question have nothing to do with dating and you need a tv, what else are you going to do when your mad at each other, and the eleventh question should be “Do you think sideburn hair is sexy?”
these question have nothing to do with dating and you need a tv, what else are you going to do when your mad at each other, and the eleventh question should be “Do you think sideburn hair is sexy?”
I do aggree with you and i do think sideburn hair is sexy, and tv does help realitionship problems.
I just stumbled across this site… a jewish blog that doesn’t link to http://www.jewlicious.com
Go Figure…
Anyway, does it make any differance that the guy who wrote Rocky Horror Picture Show is now a Rav at Ohr Samayach in Jerusalem?
I am here to say hello and you have a great site!