{"id":350,"date":"2026-02-10T20:13:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T20:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/kol-echad\/?p=350"},"modified":"2026-02-12T16:15:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:15:02","slug":"the-courage-to-be-unmatched-and-unmasked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/kol-echad\/the-courage-to-be-unmatched-and-unmasked\/","title":{"rendered":"The Courage to Be Unmatched and Unmasked"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sarah Lavane<\/em><\/p>\n

In each chapter of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz\u2019 book \u201cSimple Words\u201d he dissects the true meaning of another \u201csimple word\u201d but the word that I remembered years after reading that book was \u201cMasks.\u201d He has a lengthy explanation of that word and what constitutes a mask. Is it our clothing, the expression on our face, the hairstyle we choose, our behavior or more? And he asks, \u201cWhat is the real onion?\u201d When you peel the layers off, what is left? Who are we if we strip our masks off? This thought really resonated with me, especially in my dating life when masks seem to weigh so heavily in the process.<\/p>\n

Am I my age? The neighborhood I grew up in? The name I\u2019m called? The school I went to? I felt all those things were part of me, but not me. The questions asked by probing shadchanim or dating profiles didn\u2019t reflect my true essence. Was I being judged by the very things I felt shouldn\u2019t matter all that much? Who am I when things like my height or my school are stripped away? What are the questions and masks that matter? I wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

The one thing I was already sure of was that finding a husband was going to be much more difficult than I had ever anticipated. I had the overwhelming sense that untested people couldn\u2019t understand it. I was facing this challenge daily and could barely believe what I was going through myself. So when someone made an insensitive remark about my inability to find someone, my overwhelming wish was that I could make them understand who I was. But I didn\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n

Years later, I read a \u201cbad date stories\u201d book and was very disappointed. Story after story, the author mocked all her bad dates. We all manage to laugh about a bad experience after the fact. But what is it like to go through it again and again? How does it affect us and why isn\u2019t that discussed? Couldn\u2019t there be a book that had substance and gave people the insight to understand the inner experience of singlehood and dating ? I suppose that was the seed of what would eventually turn into my memoir \u201cUnmatched.\u201d I had always liked to write and had written articles, essays and poetry. I had taken writing workshops. Why not write about it? But every one of my attempts fell flat. They were preachy or whiney and just didn\u2019t work. The task seemed as futile as explaining the color yellow to a blind man.<\/p>\n

Once the seed was planted though, the compulsion to write that book grew, as did my pile of balled-up paper. I thought of all the things people didn\u2019t seem to understand – and there were so many little things – everything from the dread of disappointing my parents, figuring out how long was a fair amount of time to wait for a late date, looking into egg freezing, the morbid, selfish worry of who would say kaddish for me if I died childless and so much more. But there was one subject in particular I had never seen addressed anywhere – the difficulty of being shomer negiah. Everyone navigates this their own way. There are people who stick to halacha and suppress themselves. Some guiltlessly cross boundaries whether it\u2019s first, second or third base. Others give up and go off the derech. None of those options are ideal. Many, like me, walk the tightrope of wanting to do the right thing but slipping up every now and then. Each of these choices has a price. A lot of singles have difficulty reconciling their desire to do the right thing with their need to feel human. It\u2019s tough precisely because there is no satisfactory answer to this dilemma. Additionally, it\u2019s not discussed because we are a discreet nation.<\/p>\n

People who lecture on why bad things happen to good people also won\u2019t address the \u201cHow can He do this to me?\u201d aspect of dating. We\u2019re not supposed to be angry at God. People might question God over war, illness, poverty, infertility, but when it comes to matches, the tendency is to blame the \u201cunmatched\u201d rather than question God. God made our matches before we were born. If we haven\u2019t found him, the assumption is that it\u2019s our fault. So \u201cunmatched\u201d people often struggle with God. Some of us question Him, bargain with Him, get mad at Him, then apologize to Him, thank Him, pray to Him as the cycle starts all over again. Others give up on Him.<\/p>\n

I needed to write about all that. I felt the Orthodox world didn\u2019t fully comprehend this subject and should. I needed the \u201cmatched\u201d society I was living in, to understand the \u201cunmatched\u201d amongst them better. A whole segment of society was written off as a \u201csingles crisis.\u201d We are their friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives and need to be understood. I wanted to put the human face on this community issue ironically by ripping off the masks and labels.<\/p>\n

Addressing all this \u2013 especially the spiritual struggle \u2013 in a book would be challenging. How could I raise this issue in a modest way and still appeal to the broadest audience spanning liberal to machmir? How do I write about difficult subjects in an uplifting, entertaining and charming way? How vulnerable would it feel to share my own story? Would I be judged? Run out of town? Would those more machmir question my behavior and those more liberal wonder what the big deal was? How do I protect the privacy of the other people in the book? It seemed daunting. In time, I realized that instead of trying to explain the impossible, I would invite the readers on my journey.<\/p>\n

It was the OU\u2019s own Jewish Action reviewer who later compared my memoir, \u201cUnmatched\u201d to \u201cthe immersive experience of a visitor to a museum of the blind, the reader is plunged into an alien environment\u2014the quest of the Jewish woman in search of a compatible mate, along with the raging emotions, the humility, grief, betrayal, despair and faith.\u201d Apparently, this reviewer had indeed been along on my journey.<\/p>\n

But while writing it, I couldn\u2019t foresee that review. I struggled and thought \u201cno one is going to be interested in this,\u201d \u201cmy writing is terrible,\u201d \u201chow will my family react,\u201d \u201cwho will publish this,\u201d — yet I couldn\u2019t shake my distress at my situation nor the ache of being misunderstood. Even if no one else reads this, I had to write this for myself. I grappled with all the tests and struggles so long, I just needed to get it out.<\/p>\n

When I started, I did not feel like an author setting out to write a book. I was just a person with a need to share my story. This book wasn\u2019t \u201cplanned\u201d so much as \u201cfelt.\u201d I always joke that it took 20 years of thinking about it and four years to write and publish it. But it happened the way it was meant to. It\u2019s a much better book than anything I would\u2019ve written back at the start. I had more life experience, better writing skills and I had lived it, thought about it, discussed it way longer than I had ever imagined I would \u2013 all while working to change the very situation I was writing about.<\/p>\n

My goal in sharing my story was to bring solace and comfort to the \u201cunmatched\u201d as well as empathy and awareness to the \u201cmatched.\u201d And from the reactions I\u2019ve been getting \u2013 whether it\u2019s from \u201cunmatched\u201d readers who told me they cried because they finally feel validated or \u201cmatched\u201d readers who wrote how eye-opening this story has been for them or how many of the themes resonated for them too \u2013 it\u2019s gratifying to see that the book has indeed already begun to do just that.<\/p>\n

It took me years to learn to be my authentic self, to peel off some layers of my own onion, allowing me to rise above the boxes and labels that society had imposed on me. There is an irony here, as I mask my identity and those of the characters in my book. The details may be particular to my story, but the themes and emotions are universal. The experiences of love, hope, heartbreak, loss, regret, faith, grief, aging and so much more, affect us all, whether \u201cmatched\u201d or \u201cunmatched.\u201d Indeed, we are all so much more than our masks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sarah Lavane is a writer living in New York. \u201cUnmatched: An Orthodox Jewish Woman\u2019s Mystifying Journey to Find Marriage and Meaning\u201d is her first book. It was chosen as one of Jewish Link\u2019s \u201cSix Best Books of the Year\u201d one month after the book\u2019s launch.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more info, excerpts and reviews, visit: unmatchedstory.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To sign up for the Kol Echad Limited Series E-Magazine, click here:\u00a0https:\/\/www.ou.org\/kolechademail\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sarah Lavane In each chapter of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz\u2019 book \u201cSimple Words\u201d he dissects the true meaning of another \u201csimple word\u201d but the word that I remembered years after reading that book was \u201cMasks.\u201d He has a lengthy explanation of that word and what constitutes a mask. 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