“The weight lifts when someone else says, ‘I also feel that way. You’re not alone’ ”
I found the On Your Mark about Chana Malka Klein’s work doing medical shidduchim depressing, bordering on horrifying. The very first paragraph mentioning the impetus for her beginning her work describes that: “I was one of the few people in the world who knew that behind the perfection lay a secret medical condition.” (Emphasis mine.)
Tzniyus and privacy are special, beautiful traits that should be lauded. They help define where the healthy boundary is between you and everyone else. Secrecy should be relegated to surprise parties and espionage. Secrecy means there is something that needs to be hidden because it’s shameful. (Or dangerous, if you’re an enemy agent or a family of Anusim).
These cases are so secretive, so horribly shameful, so absolutely forbidden for anyone to know about that Mrs. Klein doesn’t go to vorts in case someone thinks she made the shidduch and so it’s a medical one! Why such an extreme need to hide this information?
There’s never anything shameful about a challenge given by Hashem. Did these young people ask for their conditions? Do something to deserve them? Commit a crime to earn them? Why should they be so concerned with hiding it?
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