The burgeoning number of singles who are experiencing great difficulty with shidduchim — often referred to as the shidduch crisis — is in reality just a symptom of much deeper problems in the religious community, which combined make a systemic failure of the shidduch process inevitable. What lies under the hood of this crisis is complex and multi-layered; it cannot be reduced to sound bites or a single cause.
Consequently, any attempt to address the “shidduch crisis” that focuses only on the symptom, without addressing the underlying causes of the problem, will have only marginal success at best, and will fail to fix the problem.
In 2003, I started a grassroots organization called EndTheMadness whose purpose was twofold: bring sanity and true Torah perspective back to the shidduch world, and create more and better opportunities for singles to meet.
One without the other is insufficient. If the community veers astray from the Torah, and people bring warped attitudes into shidduchim as a result, it doesn’t matter how many events, shadchanim, and apps are out there; they are doomed to fail. At the same time, the many singles who do have the right perspective still need more and better ways to meet. After all, you cannot marry someone you don’t meet, and there have probably never been more hurdles to cross before one can even reach the milestone of a contrived blind meeting (which shouldn’t even be called a date).
In the olden days (our parents and grandparents), hishtadlus meant a man asking a woman out, the woman saying yes, and both of them putting their best foot forward with an ayin tov. Today hishtadlus means tinkering with a shidduch resume, sending it around to who-knows-who, paying a “coach,” paying a gatekeeper for the hope of being fixed up, engaging in bizarre segulos, praying in cemeteries, and even taking extreme measures to alter one’s appearance.
This is not healthy, and as I’ve written about elsewhere, I do not believe this is what Hashem wants (see https://chananyaweissman.com/article.php?id=295)
EndTheMadness never had more than a handful of volunteers at any given time. We operated without a board of directors, without an office, without any fundraising, without paying for advertising, without anyone taking a salary, without any politics or bureaucracy, without any shtick. We simply got things done, organizing over a hundred events of various types, including symposiums for the community and social events for singles (usually for $5-10 per person, with pizza included, and often for free), and dozens of Shabbatons (for which we initially charged $18, before raising it to $36, for a full weekend of programming and meals).
These events led to countless self-arranged dates, at least twenty marriages that we know of, and many other positive things that naturally occur when good people meet other good people in a relaxed environment (friendships, connections, job leads, etc.)
My purpose in running these events was larger than “merely” helping the people who attended; it was to model for the community a better way that could easily be replicated on a larger scale. Instead of expensive singles events filled with pressure and awkwardness, which often require subsidies that drain community resources and turn singles into tzedaka recipients, whose success rate rivals that of a scratch-off lottery ticket, and which only magnify the pain and disillusionment for singles who don’t hit the jackpot, EndTheMadness events were positive experiences even for those who didn’t leave with a date and didn’t break anyone’s bank.
There is no need for collateral damage or human sacrifice for a tiny percentage of singles to find a match. Unfortunately, that is the consistent result of all the various shidduch groups, dating sites, apps, and other initiatives offered to singles. EndTheMadness modeled a better way and demonstrated proof of concept.
It is impossible to condense all the necessary pointers to fix the shidduch world in a single short article, but here are some suggestions that will immediately improve the situation. I encourage the community to read my two books on the subject, EndtheMadness Guide to the Shidduch World and How to Not Get Married: Break these rules and you have a chance, along with over a hundred articles, to get the full picture and finally turn things around for the better.
It can be done, and it is our responsibility to get it done.
- Invite a few single men and women for a Shabbos meal (to be clear, the same meal). Allow them, enable them, and encourage them to meet each other, without pressure or expectations. Maybe it will lead to a date, and maybe it won’t. But it needs to become normal again for singles to meet each other through the course of regular life, without being thrust into forced environments like singles events and blind dates.
- Make it normal for singles to be seated together at weddings and other events where there is no halachic imperative for them to be separated. No one is being forced. Your chassidishe cousins don’t have to sit in mixed company, nor do married couples. Single women who don’t want men to meet them naturally and ask them out (this is another problem that deserves greater discussion) don’t have to sit with men. They can give their shidduch resume to a shadchan or friend and plaintively gaze over the mechitza.
But the option of meeting people with common friends and backgrounds, in this most natural and conducive of environments, should be available for those who would like to take advantage of it. Every wedding can lead to another wedding, naturally.
3. Get rid of shidduch resumes. Completely. They have only been around for the last 20 years or so, not the last 2000 (they had ink and paper then too), because they are a terrible idea. I know all the arguments about “saving time” and making things easier. These arguments are baloney. I’ve elaborated a great deal about this in other articles for those who don’t already get it, but those who do get it need to take back their humanity, have a bit more bitachon, and insist that anyone who wants to be involved in their personal life get to know them personally.
So much about the shidduch world today is dehumanizing, and the reduction of singles with minds, hearts, and souls to a boilerplate resume is incredibly dehumanizing.
Get to know singles as real people, and privately take your own notes if you need them. By all means, make a suggestion, but be prepared to explain why you thought of this particular gal for this particular guy. Unless you have ruach hakodesh or an impeccable track record, saying you have a hunch doesn’t cut it.
Singles should also insist on having a real conversation with anyone who wishes to be involved in their personal life before being given a sales pitch. Would-be matchmakers who don’t care enough to do this don’t need to be involved in their personal lives. Hashem can find a better shaliach.
4. Stop doing things like the Roman matron who thought she could outdo Hashem by making “speed matches”. The latest craze is AI suggesting matches based on shidduch resumes. Can you get any more dehumanizing than that? I hope we don’t have to find out.
The primary focus should not be on “saving time” or working with the greatest number of people. It should be on doing things the right way, making this the norm, and counting on Hashem to bless our individual and collective efforts.
5. Take responsibility for singles in your shul and neighborhood. This does not and should not mean making them into a chessed project. Everyone has needs, and in a healthy community, we will be aware of and sensitive to other people’s needs. For example, if someone is sick, or a woman just gave birth, we organize to provide them meals and run errands for them. If someone needs a job, we try to help them. If someone needs to get married, we get to know them and their needs, and try to help them as a friend and concerned member of the community — just as they would do for us.
6. Make it normal for singles who daven in the same shul for years on end to actually meet each other. They should not have to enter a shidduch resume into a database and wait for some stranger to fix them up for this to happen. That is utter madness.
7. Make it normal for singles who live in the same community to meet each other. They should not have to go on Zoom speed dates to have a short video chat with someone on the other side of the world, when there are plenty of people similar to them right next door.
8. Don’t wait for organizations to solve the shidduch cris
is. This is something regular people need to do on the ground, starting immediately. You can make a life-altering difference for people right now, without much effort or cost. Be a trendsetter. The reward is enormous.
9. Don’t immediately dismiss these idea and give me all the reasons why this can’t or won’t work. First of all, it can and it did; I proved it with EndTheMadness. Second, I will in turn ask what you are willing to do differently right now. If the answer is nothing, then you have forfeited the right to ever complain about the shidduch world. You made your choice, so don’t whine about it.
I hope the community will take these suggestions seriously and get to work. We don’t need more focus groups or more data. We don’t need to keep repackaging the same failed ideas while expecting different results. We need to overcome our neuroses, return to a sane, Torah-based approach, and start doing what actually works without letting another day go by.
Rabbi Chananya Weissman is the author of eight books and hundreds of articles on a wide range of topics. His articles and books are available at chananyaweissman.com, and his most recent work is available at chananyaweissman.substack.com. His weekly Torah classes and other videos can be found at https://rumble.com/c/c-782463. He can be contacted at weissmans@protonmail.com.
