In the dormitory at Lakewood’s Beth Medrash Govoha, there is a certain tension in the air as Tu B’Shevat approaches: it’s the day the “freezer” opens, revealing a fresh crop of eligible young men lined up like the display in front of an Infiniti dealership.
Bochurim who haven’t really shaved since erev Sukkos look dapper, tucked in, and groomed. Young men circle the campus speaking into cell phones with the urgency of stockbrokers on the trading floor, consulting rabbeim, parents, and older brothers-in-law, suddenly on first name basis with the yeshivah shadchanim. Late night debates break out in rooms: ‘You don’t have to feel anything’ vs. ‘You have to feel something’, the merits of taking off your hat vs. leaving it on analyzed. (Conventional wisdom says that if a bochur leaves his hat on even while he’s driving, it means his hairline is in jeopardy, disappearing faster than a cloud of e-cigarette smoke.)
The yeshiva’s takanah forbidding new bochurim from starting the shidduchim process until past the halfway point in the winter zman, known colloquially as The Freezer, has spawned its own vocabulary: a bochur can be defrosting, still cold, or freezer burnt.
It’s spawned jokes. (On Tu B’Shevat, there is a minhag to daven for a nice esrog, in Lakewood, they daven for a nice esrog box.)
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