Splitting a Stormy Sea

What are health-compromised young men and women to do when they hit marriageable age but find all roads to their future blocked? What if there were a shidduch initiative resting on a platform of medically trained shadchanim and a massive database of boys and girls with every type of medical condition, opening up shidduch possibilities they would never have known about otherwise?

This past Chol Hamoed Succos, Naftali*, who lives in Jerusalem and is the father of a large family, decided to daven Shacharis at the Churvah shul in the Old City where his longtime friend, Rav Eliyahu Zilberman, is the shul rav. Naftali had a lot to pray for: His daughter Penina, a bright, outgoing girl who at age 21 had finished seminary with flying colors, had been born with a disability that left her paralyzed from the waist down. How do you find a shidduch for a girl who is typical in every way except that she’s confined to a wheelchair?

When the minyan finished, Rav Zilberman approached Naftali to wish him a gut moed, and he had something else to tell him as well.

“You know who’s here this morning?” Rav Zilberman said. “Rabbi Stein is here for Yom Tov from the US. His wife, Libby, is a relative of ours, and she does shidduchim for young people with disabilities. Maybe she can help you out.”

When Naftali, a man who lives with simple emunah, called Libby, she told him that it would be helpful if she could meet his daughter face to face. Penina promptly took a cab to Libby’s hotel, they had a brief meeting, and right after Yom Tov, Libby and her husband returned to their home in Lakewood.