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| Learners - prime marriage material |
There have been a lot of ideas floating around by well intentioned Charedi rabbinic leaders to solve this ‘crisis’. But to the best of my knowledge, there has not been the slightest dent in it. A lot of young women over the age of 23 are finding more diffiicult than ever to find their mate.
I am not going to rehash any of the ‘solutions’ that have been suggested, Either they have not been fully implanted or they aren’t working. I am not even going to suggest my own solutions since they are non starters in Charedi circles.
But as Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin points out the one thing that seems to be ignored as a possible solution is the idea of young women not looking strictly for someone that will be learning in a Kollel. Aand instead to look for someone that works for a living. The fact is that there are many fine young men educated in Charedi Yeshivos that choose to work for a living while maintaining their ‘Charedi credentials’:
(There are) young yeshiva educated men who have decided to leave the world of full-time learning in yeshiva and have chosen to start a life in the working world. Sometimes they are called “earner-learners” who are kovea ittim meaning they “fix a set time” to learn Torah but they dedicate the bulk of their time to working…
(Some) have taken the step to go to college, such as to Touro College that has separate classes for yeshiva educated males and females… (with a goal of) becoming accountants, computer programmers, or obtain degrees in business management, marketing or some area of finance…
But as Rabbi Rudomin makes very clear:
These working boys are generally not the initial prime candidates for many of the American Litvish yeshiva world’s girls who have spent their lives in great Bais Yaakov-type schools... and then to top it off have spent a year in post-high school seminaries in Jerusalem where they are intensively educated to seek Kollel full time learning boys to marry.
I’m not sure that expanding the pool of eligible young men to include young men that chose to work rather than learn in a Kollel will completely solve the problem. But it sure can’t hurt. The problem is that his suggestion that dating ‘earners’ as well a ‘learners’ is also a non starter. That’s because Charedi young women have been ‘intensively educated to seek Kollel full time learning boys to marry’.
The question is why? How did the Charedi world get to a point where young women are taught to seek only ‘learners’ and reject out of hand ‘earners’?
We are not talking about marrying irreligious young men. Or even young men that are religious but uneducated. We are talking about young men that have gone through the same Yeshiva education that the learners have but have decided that in their own case God will be best be served by working for a living while setting aside regular times for Torah study.
Why are these fine young Charedi men rejected?
The answer is these young women have been taught to reject them. They have been indoctrinated by their teachers throughout all of their school years that ‘earners’ may be fine people but are not prime marriage material. That learners are prime. Thus becoming the only viable candidate for marriage, No point in dating someone that doesn’t measure up. The whole thrust of their education is to find someone like that and to support them with the best jobs they can get. They do not place any significant value on earners.
This is what just about every single girl in Beis Yaakov has been indoctrinated to believe from when they were old enough to understand the concept of marriage.
How did this kind of indoctrination become the standard of the Charedi world?
My guess is that the natural tendency of young women to seek someone that can support them has been changed. After the Holocaust the Torah world wanted to rebuild the Yeshiva world - restoring it in America to its pre Holocaust glory in Europe.
That required restructuring American pre Holocaust Orthodox communal paradigm of religious working men to include young men learning in Kollel. Those young men needed to get married. So Beis Yaakov started teaching all their young women that this was the ideal marriage partner in the hope that at least some of them would seek to marry learners. That has succeeded to the point of no return.
Now, over 70 year post Holocaust no young woman worthy of the being called Charedi would ever settle for an earner. They want to do what has been drilled into them constantly from as far back as elementary school. They may say about an earner that he is a fine boy but not for them. End of conversation.
So as great an idea as is Rabbi Rudomin’s solution is it will never happen. I think Mashiach will come first.
And the crisis continues…
