A few notes before the article.
You can spend an hour watching yet another video about the shots (spoiler alert: they're really, really bad) or you can rock your world with powerful lessons from this week's parsha: R&B Torah Fellowship #44 - Powerful Lessons From Beshalach
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What will it take for rabbonim who supposedly are valiantly shielding the community from harmful outside influences, who ban books with dramatic proclamations, to say a word about JOWMA?
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Twenty years ago, on February 26, 2003, EndTheMadness held its first event. It was a community-wide symposium at Yeshiva University, featuring my rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Tendler, of blessed memory, Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Congregation Ohab Zedek on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Sandra Gross, a straight-talking matchmaker.
I was a graduate and rabbinic student at the time, with no prior experience running events, no team, no funding, no publicity, and I was flying by the seat of my pants. By the grace of God, we filled up the second-largest auditorium on campus, and the grassroots movement grew from there.
If you're interested in the full story, you can read 5 Years of EndTheMadness – A Retrospective. The audio recording of the first event, which is a must-listen, is available on the EndTheMadness site, along with several others recordings, at http://endthemadness.org/audio/audio.html.
Finally, to celebrate the 20 year anniversary (yahrtzeit?) of EndTheMadness, I am offering copies of my book "How to Not Get Married: Break these rules and you have a chance" for the discounted price of 35 shekels for buyers within Israel for the entire month of February. Email me to purchase. Those outside of Israel can get it on Amazon here.
Unfortunately I only have a few personal copies left of my magnum opus on the shidduch world, EndTheMadness Guide to the Shidduch World, but it's available on Amazon here and through Kodesh Press here. No one likes to pay for content anymore, and I basically give away everything anyway, but these books are worth it, they cost about as much as five minutes of useless advice from a "dating coach", and it's a great way to show a little love to someone who doesn't take money for spreading Torah.
I don't write much about the shidduch world anymore because I've already pretty much covered all the bases in my articles and books. But for this occasion I'm writing a couple of new articles or so. I hope that after all this time more people will be open to the truth, and, more importantly, will be willing to do something about it. Otherwise, what's the point?
20 Years After EndTheMadness: The Next Generation
If you are an Orthodox Jew below the age of 40 or so, you never experienced a world where shidduchim happened any other way. You might believe that the way it works today – or doesn't – is the way it always was, and the way it must always be. You might take it for granted that the way nearly everyone in your society goes about trying to get married – daunting, difficult, frustrating, and painful as the process almost invariably is, with increasingly poor results – is normal, even sacrosanct.
If you are an Orthodox Jew above the age of 40, you know that the shidduch world as it exists today is a radical departure from the way it used to be done. You know that certain segments of the Orthodox world that look down on “modern” Jews as essentially apostates (and not entirely without justification) have introduced massive religion-oriented “reforms” into the shidduch world, yet remain oblivious to the irony.
Their own parents and grandparents would hardly recognize the way young people attempt to find a spouse today, let alone consider it an improvement. The same rabbis who supposedly endorse this “system” didn't meet their own wives this way, though inconvenient history tends to be suppressed when possible and casually dismissed when not: it's different now, whatever.
At the same time, we are regularly lied to that “the shidduch system” is “the traditional” way. That is a weighty assertion, for it comes with an implied threat against those who would dare challenge the prevailing norms. This is why letters to the editor on the subject, and even dating columns, are almost invariably anonymous.
The “frum world” has its very own cancel culture, and this devastating punishment isn't reserved for incorrigible sinners. Those who, even with the best of intentions, question accepted social norms – all of which are treated with exaggerated religious importance – are fortunate if they are let off with just a warning. Those who deviate from these norms risk having their lives and the lives of their family destroyed, like a Chinese citizen whose social credit score drops to zero.
To be accepted as a “frum” Jew requires not just acceptance of all the mitzvos and a sincere desire to live according to the Torah, but rigid obedience to pseudo-religious social expectations and total subservience to authority figures, who are presumed to be quasi-prophets possessed of something called “Da'as Torah” (yet another modern innovation from those who claim to be unfailingly traditional).
Since the norms of the shidduch world have been consecrated as “the traditional way”, publicly challenging them is tantamount to heresy. Countless people are suffering in so many ways, quietly dying inside, but their desire to be accepted as “frum” and the terror of being canceled keep them in line. The most they can muster is anonymous, passive exhortations that “something needs to be done”. As if the reader of their letter will martyr himself on their behalf.
Orthodox Jews under 40 are oblivious to most of this – though the terror of stepping out of line is real – and were raised to be mindlessly obedient cowards from birth. Orthodox Jews over 40 lament what has happened, but worry too much about their children and grandchildren to speak out. Besides, even if they did speak out, it's their children and grandchildren who need to operate differently, and none of them dare be the first. It's a social death sentence.
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