Rabbi Weissman: De-HUMAN-izing.....

The Dehumanization of Singles

The Dreaded Shidduch Résumé, If Shidduch Profiles Were Honest, and recent anecdotes

In 2018, before I was banned by the Times of Israel for writing against the perversity movement, I published a lengthy article called “An End to Shidduch Résumés”. It begins as follows:

When I was growing up, which wasn’t that long ago, there was no such thing as shidduch résumés or profiles. Proponents of the “shidduch system” will one day argue that it was always done this way, dating back to the idyllic shtetls in Europe, where the Torah was given to the Jewish people and our traditions officially began. This is the way Jews always got married, we will be told. This is the way it is, this is the way it always was, and this is the way it must always be

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My memory serves me correctly. I did an online search, and shidduch résumés did not become widely used until 2004. Prior to 2004 there is nary a single online result to the term “shidduch résumé” or “shidduch profile.” If shidduchim were always conducted this way — as so many proponents of the “system” would have us believe — one can only wonder why shidduch résumés didn’t exist 30 years ago, let alone 3000. They had paper back then, too.

The outbreak of the shidduch résumé virus began a mere 14 years ago, but it has spread like wildfire ever since, and has overtaken virtually the entire Orthodox Jewish world. Whoever says the shidduch world cannot change is clearly proven wrong. It has undergone an extremely radical change (with shidduch résumés being only one part of that), in a relatively short span of time.

Virtually no parent of marriageable-age children used a shidduch résumé themselves. Those who pay lip service to “Da’as Torah” to stifle criticism of the “system” must acknowledge that no Rosh Yeshiva or Gadol has ever used one. The introduction of shidduch résumés into the “system” is actually more recent than my creating EndTheMadness to bring sanity and true Torah values back to the shidduch world. When I first began writing and speaking out about the shidduch world, shidduch résumés were almost entirely unheard of, if they even existed at all!

A mere 14 years later and you will be hard-pressed to find any Orthodox singles who do not have one. An entire generation is being taught that they must have a shidduch résumé, and anyone who doesn’t might as well take a lifetime lease on a bachelor pad. Singles today under the age of 30 do not even remember a world without shidduch résumés. It is all they know and the only option ever presented to them.

Fourteen years represents a generation of singles, and it is ample time to determine the results of a social experiment of this magnitude. It is time to lay it all on the table and decide if shidduch résumés help the situation or hurt the situation — and if they should continue to be used, or eliminated.

The rest of the article is available here.

The rest of this post is available HERE and much more.