“I know too many ‘yeshivish’ young men who can’t get a date because they aren’t learning full time”
This letter has been in me for a long, long time, and I thank the letter writer who responded to the article “Soft Landings” — about helping our post-seminary daughters adjust back to life in America — for giving me the opportunity to air my thoughts.
I couldn’t agree more with the letter writer’s sentiments that seminary “should give a girl ambitions in ruchniyus that will carry her forward regardless of whether her husband finds his life’s calling inside the beis medrash.”
However, my experience has been vastly different from her conclusion that “Many of our seminaries are succeeding in this mandate,” and the fact that the responses to the question posed in the “Soft Landing” article focused so much on supporting our daughters’ decision to marry a long-term learner indicates that I’m not alone.
I know too many “yeshivish” young men who can’t get a date because they aren’t learning full time. When it came to shidduchim, my friends whose sons were learning full time were deluged with résumés. My son has chosen a different path — one that still revolves around Torah but is not strictly “learning full time.” He is “yeshivish” and quite brilliant. Still, we receive résumés in barely a trickle. But what can I say? My own daughters wouldn’t agree to date a boy with my son’s profile. A friend recently told me of her son who is in his late twenties. For seven years, he learned full time, and the résumés poured in. After seven years, he started to work — part time! — and the flow stopped as suddenly as Kri’as Yam Suf. “But,” she pointed out, “he’s the same person!”
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