The Erev Rav Control the Shidduch World — Part One
An onslaught against the Torah and the Jewish family from within
Embedded above is one of the most important classes I’ve ever given. It is also available on Rumble here. In 52 minutes I go through more than 35 ways the shidduch world operates completely against the Torah and eerily in line with the Amalek/Erev Rav agenda to wreak havoc on marriage and family, reduce the number of children being born, and wage war on the Jewish people from within.
Please compare this to what The Gedolim™ — the ones who are always being boosted and glorified in the Erev Rav media — have to offer. Decide for yourself who is presenting a more sensible, Torah-true perspective, and who is engaging in rhetoric and deception.
I’m going to say something that will be a radical chiddush to many people: Gedolim have to follow the Torah, too.
Even brand-name Roshei Yeshiva and media-certified Gedolim — the ones who have their picture on the cover of Mishpacha and have hagiographic articles written about them — have to follow the Torah.
The fact that they say something doesn’t automatically make it Torah, especially if it goes against the Torah in clearly demonstrable ways.
Rabbis have the right and obligation to educate the public, to clarify the Torah’s position in cases of doubt, and to generally guide us in living according to the Torah. They do not have the right to make things up, distort the Torah, issue proclamations without substantiating them, avoid or decline to address questions against their positions, belittle or bully people who have sincere questions, or act as if their proclamation is the voice of G–D, even if it seems to contradict Chazal.
They have the power to teach Torah. They sometimes have the power to establish guidelines for their local community. They do not have the power to redefine the Torah. (For more on this topic, here is another very important class I gave on when one must listen to a rabbi.)
Approximately 20 years ago a small group of individuals spearheaded a campaign to make radical, unprecedented changes in the shidduch world. They claimed that these changes were the only solution to the so-called shidduch crisis, which had come to the forefront of public attention only in recent years, and which itself was unprecedented.
The campaign was predicated entirely on the following presumptions:
- The problem was a large and increasing backlog of unmarried women. (The plight of unmarried men was and remains completely ignored; it is assumed that the deck is heavily stacked in favor of men, to the extent that they have lists of amazing single women desperate for a date with them. Hence, if a man is having trouble getting married he is either not serious or there is something seriously wrong with him; the game is fixed in his favor and he still can’t win! Either way he is to be scorned, not supported — certainly not on the communal level like his single female counterparts.)
- The primary cause — if not the only cause — of the problem as they defined it was mathematical in nature; there simply weren’t enough eligible men for all the single women.
- Because men typically prefer to date younger women, since the demand for men far outpaced the supply, and because men held all the cards anyway, older single women (i.e. more than a couple of years or so out of seminary) were severely disadvantaged in the shidduch world.
The only solution, therefore, was to rig the system. Instead of being concerned first and foremost with the best interests of the individuals seeking their services (and paying handsomely for them) shadchanim would be bribed by interlopers to make matches based on demographic considerations (men with women their age or older).
Meanwhile, innocent younger women who wished to get married would be sidelined. They would be forced to “wait their turn”. In essence, older single women would receive preferential treatment (like affirmative action) at the expense of younger single women, who would be temporarily robbed of dating opportunities, ironically turning them into at least somewhat older single women, too.
Fun fact: Based on Chazal’s usage of the term, this is literally creating agunos. See Vaikra Rabba 20:10 regarding Nadav and Avihu:
רַבִּי לֵוִי אָמַר שְׁחָצִים הָיוּ, הַרְבֵּה נָשִׁים הָיוּ יוֹשְׁבוֹת עֲגוּנוֹת מַמְתִּינוֹת לָהֶם, מָה הָיוּ אוֹמְרִים, אֲחִי אָבִינוּ מֶלֶךְ, אֲחִי אִמֵּנוּ נָשִׂיא, אָבִינוּ כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל וְאָנוּ שְׁנֵי סְגָנֵי כְּהֻנָּה, אֵי זוֹ אִשָּׁה הוֹגֶנֶת לָנוּ
Rabbi Levi said, they were haughty. Many women were sitting anchored (agunos) waiting for them [hoping Nadav and Avihu would marry them]. What did they say? “Our father’s brother [Moshe] is a king, our mother’s brother [Nachshon] is the head of tribe, our father is the Kohen Gadol, and we are both deputies to the Kohen Gadol. What woman is worthy of us?
Compelling women to wait before dating and getting married is making them agunos. That’s what the oilam is supporting now. For the ridiculous, completely unjustifiable, entirely speculative sake of making it easier for older women to get married first.
Have The Gedolim™ said one word about this? They are literally making thousands of women agunos.
When this scheme was first introduced to the public it was met with great skepticism and outrage. Few remember this anymore. See here for an op-ed of mine that was published on the odious Yeshiva World site back in 2011 in response to the NASI Project. The shady editors of the site made sure to add the following disclaimer, which they don’t typically do: NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of YWN.
Note that many of the comments, especially the articulate ones, strongly agree with my article, while the naysayers resort to childish personal attacks, conveniently behind the veil of anonymity. Such impressive “Torah Jews”. So very frum. So very convincing.
The following week they published another op-ed blasting NASI’s initiative, here, again with many articulate supportive comments. NASI clearly had their work cut out for them to sway public opinion.
Nowadays those who voice dissent against the same ideology, the notion of controlling when adult men and women are allowed to begin dating and whom they are pushed to date, are attacked for going against “Da’as Torah”. No matter that this scheme lacks da’as and tramples all over the Torah. No matter that twenty years of attempting to foist this on the community have resulted in dismal failure and increased misery.
How do you sell much of the public on an idea that is totally against the Torah, senseless, cruel, and a dismal failure to boot?
- Do what it takes to get a few brand-name rabbis to sign a Kol Koreh, then get more to piggyback and add their names to it. (That’s how it often works these days in The Torah World™.)
- Do an intense media blitz and shove the idea down everyone’s throat as the Da’as Torah-approved solution, the only solution, which must be urgently adopted.
- Raise millions of dollars, grift much of it for personal expenses, advertise the next urgent fundraiser, and repeat.
Twenty years of relentless media propaganda, melodramatic rabbinic proclamations, and expensive advertising campaigns transformed this absurd, immoral, completely un-Torah scheme into The Torah Way™.
The idea is still a tough sell, because it’s so horribly bad and evil, but you won’t find many “Torah Jews” willing to challenge it and put their name to it. After all, who are you to go against “Da’as Torah”? Who are you to even question?
You wouldn’t want something unfortunate to happen to your unmarried sons and daughters, now, would you? So keep quiet and follow Da’as Torah.
The latest iteration of the solution to the presumed age gap problem is being pushed very hard in the Erev Rav-controlled “haredi” media. The April 8, 2025 edition of Mishpacha magazine — a known Trojan horse that is somehow sold all over “haredi” neighborhoods with nary a protest — features a 28-page insert near the beginning of the magazine.
Surely this cost well into five figures just for the advertising space, not to mention the large production and design team, but I doubt many people stopped to ask where all that money was coming from.
Should we assume that the best “solutions” are the ones that have wealthy backers buying the biggest microphones?
Should we assume that money didn’t play a key role in gaining rabbinic support?
Should we assume that the “frum media” isn’t heavily incentivized to promote this scheme in news and features pieces, in addition to the obviously paid advertisements, thereby mainstreaming it in more subtle ways?
In Part Two I will go through this lengthy insert and tear it to shreds. For now, I want you to listen to the class and share it.
Mishpacha claims to reach over 250,000 readers each week. They and the other “frum media” certainly won’t promote the true Torah perspective, so the only way it will reach all these people is if we share it with them ourselves.
This article thoroughly demonstrates that age-gap-based initiatives are completely against the Torah, and in fact are in line with Molech ideology. Please share it.
I am also including two more important articles:
1. Molech Then and Now Part Four: The Shidduch World
This article thoroughly demonstrates that age-gap-based initiatives are completely against the Torah, and in fact are in line with Molech ideology. Please share it.
- Rewarding Failure, which I wrote in 2023 as part of a series of special articles about the shidduch world in honor of 20 years since I started EndTheMadness. You can see the entire series at https://chananyaweissman.com/articles.php at the very bottom of the page.
All these years later the results speak for themselves: despite all the media support, rabbinic support, and funding from singles seeking “quality attention”, NASI has neither solved the “shidduch crisis” nor even alleviated it. Instead of admitting failure, they have doubled down on their social engineering, and now promote lowering the age when men are allowed and encouraged to date to 21.
You read that right. In many parts of the Orthodox world, yeshiva students do not begin dating when they are ready to get married and want to get married – the younger the better – but when the powerful rabbis, who supersede both parents and their adult children, allow them to. Until then, the men are proverbially incarcerated in something called “the freezer” (I am not making this up) and barred from fulfilling the very first mitzva given to the human race.
They are literally frozen out of marrying and starting a family until a quasi-prophet with “Da’as Torah” deigns to allow them. Hordes of devout Jews have been conditioned to believe this is both normal and “the Torah way”.
Of course, Chazal explicitly recommend for men to be married by eighteen (Avos 5:21) and speak very harshly about those who delay by choice beyond the age of twenty (Kiddushin 29B). Subsequent rabbinic authorities have rationalized permitting additional delays, but it was always for the needs of the individual, not for some presumed benefit to “society”.
Today the privileged class pulls the strings of helpless singles and parents who are beholden to them. They decide when people are allowed to marry, and now they seek to control who dates whom, based not on Torah or common sense, but – like “public health” and “climate change” narratives – on mathematical models and projections.
But it gets even worse. Recently NASI embarked on a massive fundraising campaign, generating $384,797 from well-meaning but naive community members. To put this in perspective, the community could have used this money to create EndTheMadness-style events twice a week in twenty Jewish cities all over the world for an entire year, and probably had money left over to dole out free copies of EndTheMadness Guide to the Shidduch World (we were very frugal). That would completely change the landscape of the shidduch world and lead to numerous shidduchim in a pleasant, natural way, but of course the privileged class would lose their control over the population, and therefore such an idea must never be considered.
Instead, NASI is using this largesse to promote itself and grease the wheels of the same shadchanim who continue to be honored and feared for being disastrous failures. Your donation of $1250 would sponsor a NASI ad. For only $1000 you could pay some “expert” to offer “shidduch coaching” to an unfortunate person who was socially handicapped by his society, or has simply allowed himself to be convinced that there is something wrong with him because he is still single.
For $3600 you can sponsor a “shadchan training course”, the curriculum for which would surely be entertaining were it made public. For the small sum of $5000 you can finance “one engagement for an under-the-radar single”, which sounds like a “feed a starving child in Africa” campaign, though how the bounty brings the promised salvation is unclear.
If they paid men to take out under-the-radar women they might otherwise not consider, it would be plausible and less distasteful than paying shadchanim to manipulate them; likely more effective, too. But, again, that would empower the peasants.
According to tax records, the NASI Project has been receiving an average of over $300,000 a year in grants and contributions since 2014. That is a lot of money, and it’s very unclear what benefit, if any, the Jewish people have received in return. The Jewish people have certainly been indoctrinated about “age gap” theories, a presumed demographic crisis, the urgent need to control when people date and who they have the opportunity to date, and, of course, the need to enrich hardworking shadchanim without focusing on whether or not they actually get people married. (NASI claims this is out of their control, even as they assure us that $5000 buys an engagement.)
According to Charity Navigator, NASI has a Zero-star rating. There is virtually no information available about their results and accountability. They just take in huge sums of money and dole it out however they see fit.
I would like to believe that the people behind NASI are well-intentioned, though severely misguided, but they wield much more influence over the shidduch world than they should (which is none at all). One thing I know for sure is that, much like the “public health” overlords, they are not prepared to take tough questions from the peasants.
Not only did they ignore my well-publicized criticisms, but Moshe Pogrow, the founder and head of NASI, declined to comment for a 2009 article in the JTA. According to the article, Pogrow said that “he had no interest cooperating in an article addressing anything other than the “fact” that the age gap is at fault.”
If someone is so insecure about his position that he can only speak to those who fully accept it, that tells you all you need to know.
I invite readers to compare my comments in the aforementioned article and overall approach with that offered by NASI. Unlike NASI, I do not believe money can buy our way out of this situation, nor that religious figures with dubious “Da’as Torah” can or should legislate us out of it from on high. It is no one’s place to decide how old someone should be when they are allowed to date, to hold singles hostage for “quality attention”, or bribe matchmakers to concern themselves with “the greater good” over the good of the human being standing before them, who hired them to work on his individual behalf.
I believe in educating people according to true Torah principles, which are clear for those who care to see them; providing more and better opportunities for singles to meet; letting incompetent, failed shadchanim be naturally weeded out of the system – Quit! Please! – and dropping the shtick.
The shidduch world is a big racket. Stop being suckers.
No comments:
Post a Comment