More and more couples today are witnessing their own churban — the dissolution of their own mini Beis HaMikdash. But second chances are the blessing of life and whether widowed or divorced it’s always possible to rebuild. What happens in the interim in that preparation phase between the first and second bayis? And how can the newly single fortify themselves for Part Two?
The shidduch process is daunting in the best of cases.
Take a young man and a young woman both unaccustomed to communicating with members of the opposite gender throw them together for a few hours five or ten times and hopefully there will be a mazel tov at the end.
But then there are people for whom the process is more complex. No they’re not less-accustomed to communicating with members of the opposite gender; in fact it’s their previous experience that makes the process more complicated. From widows and widowers to those who are divorced these men and women have been through the loss or pain and sometimes the stigma of a previous marriage. And now they are ready to move on to hopefully find the right one — for the second time.
Getting Realistic
Once a miniscule subset of people seeking shidduchim second-timers are no longer a tiny minority. Dovid Katsburg of Jerusalem’s Binyan Olam one of the largest chareidi non-Internet-based shidduch databases shares some staggering statistics. “Since we started five years ago we’ve interviewed and registered 8 000 singles many of whom are now married. Out of that total we’ve interviewed 2 000 men and women — about half of each — who have already been married once.”
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