1. From speaking to people I are more confident than you are that many girls will be willing to delay shidduchim. I think part of the reason for this is because many girls are anyways less interested in starting shidduchim right after seminary (a tendency which in my experience has been growing over the last few years).
2. I don't think it's unjustified to put the onus on the girls more than the boys. This is because getting married at 23 or 24 has better justifications than getting married at 19. The maturity gained in those years is definitely important for getting married (at least given the current norms and climate), the gain of real world experience and building financial stability on the girls side is also beneficial in many ways, and getting off the high of the post seminary year can be very smart before making long term life choices.
The fact that girls are marrying later anyway is a pointo against this takana, not for it.
Letes assume there still are 15% of girls getting engaged in that year. But on average they probably engaged only aroung Purimtime, 80 days befofe Shavuous. 15% of that is 12.
So all this tumult with Daniel's talk about creating 'social stigma' for people
who are 'hurting the tzibbur', the entire oppressive environment of telling al girls they can't marry with little knowledge of their personal life, and the shifting of the blame on the girls is for what?! For 12 days gained!
Why is the fact that girls are starting to marry later appoint against this Takanna? It's not like they're doing it enough to make the takana unnecessary, It's just a small shift that I think that the takana can build on and will find a receptive audience.
Regarding your second part I have no idea what you're trying to say. What 12 and what 15%?
What don't you understand? If only 15% of girls get engages in that year anyway and among those the average is 80 days earlier than the takana than the takana only cuts an average of 12 days from the age-gap.
The bottom line is that this one-size-fits-all takana seems oppressive to me. (And neged haTorah and neged Chazal but you obviously don't mind that.)
I'll just mention a counterpoint although I don't think it's strong is that maybe a takkana could shift the expectation once it because the norm and many girls might start even after that. But I agree that's a bit of a stretch.
Another point which is a bit stronger is that 15% get engaged because they've been dating for most of a year already, so by the time shavuos rolls around a decent percentage already finds a shidduch. But if they only start dating then it won't hit 15% in so short. Plus many girls start dating before the tu bshvat freezer opens either by the guys who come home sukkos or from the previous freezer of shivah asar batamuz.
I was going to add, but forgot, that had Rav Shach known the consequences of his supposed approval of the freezer he would have been rolling in his grave. He probably thought it would last a few years and then sanity would prevail. Yet now the freezer is holy and untouchable that we need a freezer for the girls to, so as to maintain the boys freezer.
Which goes to show the importance of חכמים הזהרו בדבריכם. People may think that this is just a minor, perhaps even temporary change, but soon this may become the established heilige takana which can't be touched and should even be expanded, despite it being quite obviously neged haTorah and neged Chazal.
This slippery slope is actually one of the problems I have with this takana.
As I wrote elsewhere in these comments "this sets a terrible precedent, and gives Daas Torah power to continue to make takanos against Chazal".
They claim that this is just less than year and anyway girls need a breather space etc., but as you are pointing out, will it really end there? Or will this become the new starting point for further delays? Perhaps even more sem (they are already talking about some kind of part day sem).
They talk about how girls need to earn more money before they marry. That definitely is a concern as I noted here https://daastorah.substack.com/p/chareidim-finally-care-about-themselves/comment/112455729 but shouldn't that be an incentive to talk about how unaffordable Lakewood has become, how it now can cost a frum family over 100k (even well over, and it keeps going up) just for housing and tuition. Add taxes etc.
Is this really what frum girls are supposed be doing? Marrying at 22-23 so they can save up to support their husbands etc.?
Eventually, the bachurim and the RY could fall back into their old habits and perhaps even marry older because the girls will solve the problem on their part (In Israel the average age of marriage for charedi girls is already 22.1)
As you noted in your original comment, these concerns don't bother you because you anyways think people should marry later. But for a frum person (or a pronatalist) it is already a travesty that bochurim marry this late, and for girls to be forced to delay marriage just to accommodate this is a travesty of travesties.
Part of the logic is that without pushing the girls later, having the boys come back earlier won't help as much as they may just marry young girls. Also if the girls are delaying it helps put pressure on the RY to have their boys go to EY earlier, they get much more heat for not cooperating.
Also, 20 percent are getting engaged by Pesach, (the data collected last year in Lakewood High Schools as per the Pesach milestone of Rav Moshe Hillel's orignal suggestion), by Shavous it may be 25 percent or maybe even pushing 30 percent.
The OU data is that 22 percent of girls are getting engaged their first year, Anecdotal evidence from the grade that graduated BJJ and some lakewood high schools last year puts it at closer to 30 percent, and it doesn't seem likely that this 22-30 percent will get engaged immediately after Shavous but rather over the next year - although admittedly perhaps a bit faster then the just, but at this stage the whole age gap is only 2 years, girls 20 boys 22 so it should work out bezh!
Correction: I made a mistake I spoke to someone very involved, and he said the 20 percent didn't come from the OU study that I mentioned, but from data collected from last year from Lakewood the high schools, however the 20 percent is by April (Pesach time) It would seem plausible that by June (Shavous) it's more like 25-30 percent.
Either way I think you guys need to get your act together. It really doesn't look good when you tell everyone what you think they want to hear. In the brochure they thought that presenting a low number is good so they wrote that. Then I said the opposite so you wrote the opposite.
I got involved in helping those with the publication at the last minute and put a lot of effort into it (stayed up the whole night working on it), but I'm certainly not the decision maker there.
The Adei Ad brochure said 20 percent was till pesach like R Moshe Hillels orignal suggestion
Since the publication, from talking to people the number I've been hearing is closer to 30 percent from different high schools and seminaries, but I haven't done a methodical study on this yet, the OU study probably skewed a bit to the left of the ultra yeshivish circles because it was done online, and maybe those circles left out marry earlier (which makes sense they are more conservative).
In the amount of boys getting engaged the first year in shidduchim, OU said 46 percent but BMG data from summer zman 2023 showed 75 percent getting engaged that first year, so it is possible my theory is correct and the ultra yeshivsh were underrepresented in the OU study.
It does raise into question all of the other things that don't work? So we now recognize math?
The Kollel support model does not work mathematically and neither does having so many kids.
2) R Elya Brudny Shlita - another one of the rabbonim showing leadership - has been dealing with a spate of divorces and marriage issues specifically a result of girls getting married while within the post-seminary bubble, who then crash back to earth a few months after marriage and realize that the ideals they were brainwashed with is not the life they actually want. As a result, R Brudny strongly believes that girls should wait a year after seminary to live in the real world and find themselves.
this matches what i have seen and we need to have a serious conversation about the pros and cons of seminary to our community.
3)"Not all roshei yeshivah have expressed their commitment to the proposal, and thus, not all boys will be following it"
Shaddchonim should commit to not redt shidduchim to anyone in those yeshivos
I heard from someone who heard directly from a RY who was by the original meeting about this initiative that what got it going was that a certain RY who has many daughters stated that he is worried for his granddaughters. They all exclaimed "you?! Every bachur in America will want your granddaughters! To which he responded "I don't even have enough shtellers for my eidim, certainly not for my children's eidims."
I would like to post something from an Israeli study (from Eli Paley's institute):
"The downward trend in marriage rate in Haredi society within this age group does not indicate a decline in the general marriage rate but rather a growing trend to establish families at older ages, usually for fiscal reasons. Haredim are experiencing a growing need for financial stability in recent years, especially women, who typically bear the burden of earning a living in a family’s early years. These women complete their training at ages 18-24. In the past, young Haredi women tended to marry during their professional studies. Still, the demands of the advanced training required today to enter high-quality positions and professions in industries characterized by high productivity is creating a trend in which Haredi women tend to marry only towards the end of their training and the beginning of their career."
In other words, when life is unaffordable and Kollel is considered a neccessity, women will marry younger.
This tells us two things:
1. The takana is unneccessary as it will happen anyway, especially if people like Reb Elya Brudny will educate the public.
2. the great tragedy being caused to Klal Yisroel by BMG. We are becoming more and more like the Modox as time goes by, due to BMG's policies of (delaying marriage and) making life less and less affordable by squeezing everyone into one of the most expensive cities in the world.
I don't understand your question. What else is the point of Adirei HaTorah; of feting young yungeleit with no need to pay tuition and a mortgage, yungeleit who would have been eligible for free daycare, food, healthcare, and or daycare etc, if not for Adirei HaTorah (and who are mostly receiving much financial support and whose wives mostly earn high salaries), with tens of thousands of dollars annually?
This isn't a secret. The Voice had an article in Elul about how hard it now is to get yungeleit to move OOT. The Ami Pesach edition had an interview with Roshei Kollel from Detroit and Denver who confirmed that it is very hard to get yungeleit since Adirei HaTorah.
The worst part is the timing. From the middle of 2021 to late 2024 the cost of monthly mortgage payments for an average house in Lakewood rose about 150%. This is after 4 years (as far back as Zillow shows) of barely changing. At the same time, it became obvious that (a) in much of America tuition vouchers are here to stay (about 40% of schoolchildren are now eligible) (b) in NJ it will never happen. Anyone who does have to pay tuition and a mortgage in Lakewood is being crushed, but by the time they will realize what BMG has done to them it will usually be too late.
(Additionally, it strengthens the misconception that there is something heilig about Lakewood.)
I am impressed by Lazer Scheineir's dedication to the cause, but it is a pity that it is mostly going to waste and even causing tremendous harm for the Torah and Klal Yisroel.
It isn't just the freezer. It is the fact that they continue to accept 23-24 yr. old bachurim. If the data is truly conclusive, any bachur who comes to BMG at that age (especially if they sign on to the freezer) should be considered an avaryan bmaizid bfarhesia and should not be accepted in any self-respecting yeshiva (perhaps even without the shidduch crisis this is true). Let those guys go to work before they marry. Additionally, we need to reflect long and hard on why bachurim dread coming to BMG so much and why RY are so hesitant about sending them there younger than age 23-24, something that is unprecedented in Jewish history and only doesn't exist in any other Charedi community.
That Lakewood is the only one that it is unaffordable.
Can you give me a community that is?
I looked into moving out of town for a while.
Houses are still 400k- 500K in Jewish neighborhoods, salaries are way lower, groceries are more expensive and free tuition usually means that you pay anyways.
In Cleveland total fees (for families earning less than 200% of the Federal poverty level) is 600 a year, and houses are avaliable for less than 3k.
Additionally, there is a grant of 30k for a down payment from the gov for first-time homebuyers.
The key is to put as much down as possible (don't be embarrased to beg etc._ I think there is perhaps no greater tzedakah than this if you have a large family)
thus one can live on a low income and be eligible for programs etc.
South bend and Cleveland have cheap houses and free tuition which is actually free. I think Milwaukee as well, and as of recently Texas, though I'm not positive of the last 2.
Florida has vouchers but still charge a lot on top of that.
In general I believe the main issue is not the age gap, rather the "pileup". Since there are so many more girls than boys dating at any given time, girls will automatically have a harder time finding a shidduch. This would be the case even if there were zero population growth and zero age gap. By virtue of starting shidduchim earlier, you are creating a tremendous surplus of girls. Imagine if tomorrow girls would decide they're dating from age 14. Will there suddenly be more girls in the world? No. But there would be much more girls dating, which in and of itself creates a crises.
Pogrow from NASI has been talking about this more recently, and less the age gap. I believe this is the real issue. Though age gap may be easier to explain to the public, whether or not the numbers add up.
All it means is that boys are much more in a system where they are expected to learn to a certain age and marry right away, whereas with girls each girl gets married at a different pace.
The only study that showed that is the DAAAS Study, and the OU study showed 6.5 percent, the recent census shows like 7-8 percent.
Dr Rosenbach, the lead author of the DAAAS study, has acknowledged the new data and said she is onboard with it. Her original study had up to a six percent margin of error, so 2 percent plus six percent is 8 percent closer to what the new research shows.
The 7-8 percent numbers are from a census, not an actuarial model, so they will include the divorcees because divorced men end up marrying single women because of the uneven dating age gap, and pile up. without the divorced and OTD it is one percent less 6-7 percent female surplus.
That said, to reverse engineer the formula that caused the age gap we see here are some possibilities.
1) A 2.5 year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 103:100 boy to girl birth ratio (admittedly smaller then the national 105:100 ratio - but the OU study showed this ratio in our community and Wikipedia says this ratio is within range) = 7 percent female surplus.
2) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4.5 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 6.25 percent female surplus.
3) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 5 percent female surplus.
Because of the difficulty in knowing which of these models is correct, the retrospective census showing a 6-8 percent female surplus is so helpful.
Well, I did my part (even if they say there is no crisis in EY). One of my boys married a girl older than he is, and one married a girl 4 days younger than he is.
To my chagrin, sometimes it takes things awhile to change. My neighbor had many children born with Tay Sachs , the “Jewish” disease. Finally, a Satmar Chassid from America started Dor Yesharim. The Rabbanim here were very hesitant (I guess “ Bas Kol”, etc). She got up at a conference for educators and spoke, or rather cried, behind a mechitza, begging for the “Olam” to start checking for Tay Sachs. I’ve been to mental institutions here that used to be full of Tay Sachs children just waiting there to die. Now those wards are totally empty.
So sometimes these things take a strong voice and real initiative. And a bit of time.
Yes, I'm very glad someone is working on it. It takes a lot of courage, when everything you say gets discredited.
I don't see why we need hard facts data. We can just ask the girls themselves. If they are worried, it's crisis that needs action. Why would releasing the statistics cause people to panic? Everyone can already see for himself that he knows far more girls in shiduchim than boys. And if it's not the number data theory, it's something else that can only get addressed after we try the number theory.
Just by the way project NASI is not a new thing. They've been begging the boys (and their mother's) to get married younger, and the boys didn't listen. (like they never listen, even in the times of tanach)
Now they're coming after the girls, because, yes they will listen, 1) they don't have a choice, they are disadvantaged here. 2) they want their friends and older sister to get married too. Because they are worried, they all are.
I couldn't agree more, that is the best response to all the skeptics, even if the number theory proves not to be the problem (or not the full problem), and it is something else, we will only know that by working on this first. But if we do nothing, then nothing will happen. this plan has very little downside and tremendous potential upside be"h.
People need to understand that if we can successfully pull this off, then be"h it will likely lead to more initiatives focusing on other angles of this issue. Success breeds success, and the energy can go a long way.
Also, even if the age gap isn't causing the whole problem, it will still help to solve the problem, because of population growth, meaning even if the problem is that too many boys are going OTD (although the data shows that it isn't the primary problem), it will still help because there are just more 22 year old boys then 23 year old boys because of the age gap.
The fear is that releasing the numbers will hurt the older girls and cause the younger girls to panic more and not wait.
No it hasn't been published yet (I have seen it privately and analyzed it extensively).
They are in the process of preparing it for the public. the Rabbonim are concerned about creating panic, but they also need to show it to build trust, so they are debating the best way to do this.
I think if you reach out to them, they will probably share it privately. Although right now it contains thousands of people's names, and their status of married, single, divorced, OTD, so I think they will need to anonymize the data first.
The OU data is public https://yeshivaworld.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TSI-CCR-LZavgan-1.pdf, but is an online opt-in survey, so not as conclusive as the Adei Ad data, which is a census ( much better data, no opt-in bias, no need to guess population growth etc), the OU data has multiple models for the age gap, but the Adei Ad census confirms that the highest number from the OU actuarial predictive model is correct.
This is perhaps the most pathetic claim I have heard from the askanim. For fifteen years NASI has been posting provocative ads and articles stating that at least 10% of girls will remain single. Similar (and sometimes worse) comics are still being shown to support the new initiative. Yet they refuse to publicize the data which shows that only 7% of girls have no male counterpart in the community. Why should anyone trust their claims before it is publicized and published in a peer-reviewed journal?!
And, if they truly are worried about causing a panic among older Bnos Yisroel I suggest they do a similar study in Chassidic and Israeli communities. I suspect it will show enough bachurim to bring the gap down to close to zero, perhaps even to negative territory.
You are being ridiculous, Nasi has nothing to do with the current efforts, and the Rabbonim who sit with the pain of older girls who are hurt by these types of data are hesitant to publish it. Simple.
1. Virtually nothing in that article reflects reality. The age gap was not 'discovered by Rabbi Deutch'. In fact, a member of his Kehilla went to Reb Matisyahu about this more than 20 years ago. Most of the history there is agenda-based not fact-based.
2. Although I am the furthest from a BMG fan possible, and I believe that the freezer is a bad idea, its elimination will have zero effect on the crisis. The gap is not age-based, it's stage-based. The class of 2023 marries the class of 2019, and that has to change. Marrying them a few months earlier won't change that basic fact.
Not necessarily. If the boys begin shidduchim a few months earlier, they will be redt far more girls from a grade above what they would otherwise be ready, as the girls are still relatively new to the shidduch market making them more appealing to the "good" boys overall.
In my opinion, the age gap theory is incorrect as an explanation/cause of girls remaining *permanently* unmarried or for an increasing percentage of unmarried girls- AS LONG as boys are willing to marry girls their own age.
Meaning, we don't need the "solution" of telling girls to delay marriage. The RYs have been misled. Rather, we just need boys to be willing to marry girls their own age. But I think almost all boys are already willing to do this in principle. Therefore, my conclusion is that if there is a significant cohort of girls who are remaining unmarried, or an increasing percentage of unmarried girls, the age gap is not the cause. I believe the RYs have been misled by faulty math.
"Now let’s an analyze what happens when the age-gap is four years, meaning that on average, the boys marry girls who are four years younger. So when the 120 girls born in 1994 turned 19 years old in 2013 and started looking for shidduchim, only 105 boys born in 1990 who turned 23 in 2013 started looking for shidduchim. Since you cannot possibly matchup 120 girls with 105 boys, at the very best, 15 of those girls cannot find a shidduch. Of course we hope that the 15 girls will find a shidduch with next year’s boys. Next year, however, a new batch of 125 new 19 year old girls are starting shidduchim along with 110 new 23 year old boys, again leaving 15 girls with no matchup. In two short years, we are already dealing with 30 girls who cannot be matched up. This goes on year after year, and the number of single girls continues to grow year after year. If, on average, the boys would be actually be older than the girls by four years, then 15% of all graduating Bais Yaakov high school girls would never get married. Of course, not every 23 year old boy marries a 19 year old girl. Some actually marry girls of the same age, or even girls who are older than themselves. However, if all boys were actually marrying girls who on average, were four years younger, we would have a 15% problem on the girls’ side. So we can now safely draw the following chart."
It's the very last two sentences that are key. "However, if all boys were actually marrying girls who on average, were four years younger, we would have a 15% problem on the girls’ side"- but is that what's really happening? Do boys insist on marrying girls four years younger? If so, the solution is to tell them they needn't or shouldn't insist that.
I'm just saying that an average age gap between boys and girls *on its own* does not mathematically lead to a permanent cohort of single girls or an increasing percentage of single girls- assuming that boys are willing to marry girls their age. This is mathematically true, as I showed you. But if the age gap theory is a theory that boys are less willing to marry girls their own age, then it can lead to that outcome.
Are you addressing something I said? There can be two causes for an age gap- either girls starting shidduchim earlier than boy, or boys being unwilling to marry same age girls. The first on its own does not mathematically lead to a permanently single cohort of girls. But the second can.
You are just stating another area in which the Prisoners Dillema causes this problem. For an individual bachur there is often little incentive to marry an older girl, and often there is an incentive to marry a younger girl (if she is a great catch).
Nope, you aren't telling them when or who to date, but when not to date, subtle but important difference. the Torah says you can't marry your sister, but won't say who you have to marry, it's too personal to formalize even in light of the shidduch crisis.
The real end goal is that in a few years it will be against the social norms for a girl 19 to be dating, just like a girl in 12th grade isn't dating.
True but responding to Happy's point (unless I missed the boat) that these rabonim missed something, isn't there goal to close the age gap and try to have people may their age? All he's adding is that there are already a bunch of 23 year old girls so we should encourage that they be looked at instead, but that's not really practical. Closing the age gap in a practical way seems more reasonable to me. There are plenty of other nuances at play (such as the age-old immaturity of guys wanting younger girls and the fact that the "best girls" are snatched up earlier so anyone old is definitionally (mistakenly) second tier, and that all guys are "top guys" because there's a surplus of them (when in reality the girls are generally waaay better) and the fact that many guys aren't really the line term learners they claim to be, etc etc) but the best way to solve this is to normalize the minimization of the age gap. I'm not sure what math Happy is arguing with.
I didn't even see this comment before I wrote my other comments.
In my opinion, we should be gozer taanis on the fact that someone could even talk like this. הנהיה ככל הגוים בית ישראל? And even worse than them in a way, for is there any other nation that bans women from marrying until age 20, even just through deliberately creating a social ban?
How can anyone possibly 'like' this comment?!
The Torah does not state that a girl may not marry before her sister. But the Torah does have many restrictions about whom one may marry, and Chazal speak very strongly about marrying young both for girls and boys and פריה ורביה is one of the first mitsvos in the Torah and the world was created לשבת יצרה. We hopefully expend much of our energy educating our kids that their primary tafkid in life is to raise a large family and educate them in the ways of the Torah - and now we are going to tell them that it is assur, because some RY decided that the current crazy yeshiva system is so Heilig?!
Additionally, if the problem is truly the age gap the only glatte thing is to address the age gap and tell people that having a large age gap is an עולה שאין כמותו. The only possible reasonable takana I can think of is that no RY or rav should be mesader at a wedding with a large age-gap and no-one should allowed to help an enable such a shidduch. I don't see what could possibly be wrong with such a takana. It addresses the core issue, and it isn't 'telling people who to marry'. It is just telling them to focus only on people within their age bracket – a very reasonable thing to say.
But specifically they should be focused only on the age gap itself. Everything else is a distraction and causes all kinds of conflict.
I think it should be basic common sense that if the age-gap is the problem it should be assur to marry a large gap (unless the boy is already older (28?) or has some serious disability or the like.)
1) The first part of your comment doesn't really add up, the whole point of this is to help people get married, you have to look at the macro not just the micro.
2) Impossible to get all the RY onboard with your suggestion, therefore the only possibility is the current plan.
You are saying that our community is already so far removed from Torah values that we must lift our hands in defeat and accept that ככל העמים בית ישראל and even worse than them.
I can't accept that.
Besides, who needs all the RY? Every RY who is still frum or at least accepts reality will be on board and those who and the frum olam won't have a problem.
The frei olam who doesn't care about the Toah or Klal Yisroel will continue to have a problem.
You get the boys not to date them (not telling them who to marry - just who not to date - much easier), no one redts them a shidduch at that age, and you make a stigma against hurting the community by breaking the guidelines.
Wedding Takanos didn't require three people to break the rules like here: 1) the boy 2) the girl, 3) the shadchan. Also, it was less important than here - fancy chasunas don't cause same level as harm as breaking the guidelines will. Also, it's not rich vs poor like there. Also, you are not taking away anything, just delaying it a few months. Also more of a stigma that you are causing a few of the guest by the chasuna not to be able to find a shidduch for their daughter. And a few other differences.
>you make a stigma against hurting the community by breaking the guidelines
Again, this is a horrible horrific thing for a Jew to say - that a girl who follows the Torah and marries at age 20 is 'hurting the community' just because some RY have hearts of stone and refuse to change the yeshiva system.
When you say 'pragmatic' all I hear is 'let us continue to harp on the most vulnerable and play victim-blaming because those who are actually at fault will never admit it and will always insist on being treated as kings'.
Again, I just can't accept that. I believe Klal Yisroel can do much better than that.
Besides, I think Klal Yisroel will reject this takana, as Ash described - only I think they are doing the right thing by rejecting it - and this will just be wasted energy which will strengthen the case of the pessimists (like yourself) who claim that real change is impossible, and the RY will of course forever be able to blame the girls for not complying with Daas Torah etc. (which would have shortened the age-gap by a full 12 days!).
You are acting completely irrational and not Torahdik.
The rational way to go is first publish the data, make it clear and obvious to everyone what the real problem is and work from there.
You haven't even published the data, and you are already screaming that there is no way to solve the problem except with your totally crooked idea of scapegoating the girls.
So that wasn’t clear in the Mishpacha article at all. And that troubled me. Also, I’ve seen data that by age 35, 96% of men and 94% of women within the Yeshiva community are married.
They are in the process of preparing it for the public. the Rabbonim are concerned about creating panic, but they also need to show it to build trust, so they are debating the best way to do this.
I think if you reach out to them, they will share it privately.
The OU data is public https://yeshivaworld.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TSI-CCR-LZavgan-1.pdf, but is an online opt-in survey, so not as conclusive as the Adei Ad data, which is a census ( much better data, no opt-in bias, no need to guess population growth etc), the OU data has multiple models for the age gap, but the Adei Ad census confirms that the highest number from the OU actuarial predictive model is correct.
The basic gist of it is that in the 28-34 cohort, there are 7-8 percent more single women than single men; exact numbers depend on whether you include OTD, divorced and remarried.
To be fair, lots of significantly older singles end up not being as strongly connected to the yeshiva world, which is why the data of actual yeshivish older singles might be skewed.
Then how can that data make sense? The vast majority of married couples I know from the Lakewood world have a 2-5 year gap in age (for several decades already), and I find it hard to accept that the average won't show such a gap. The yearly growth is also strongly supported in numbers which outweigh other minor considerations (such as more boys going OTD, or a slightly higher male birth rate,) so such a small difference seems highly suspect to me.
The NJ Health Data shows that the ratio of boys born yearly vs girls to white non-Hispanic mothers residing in Lakewood is close to 107 (the OU study is clearly flawed in this aspect).
And the study by Dr. Sokol showed that the average gap is only 2.2 years (which is quite reasonable in my experience).
So other than the claimed data from Adei Ad there is no support for the hypothesis that the age-gap causes more than 2% of girls to be single.
It took much arm-twisting but I was able to get someone to read to me (without permission) the claimed data which showed about 7% of women over 30 are single with no counterpart in the community (and twice as many women get divorced as do men). (I say claimed because how do I know they didn't cherry-pick data?)
However, it is very possible that the solution is in other communities. I just read yesterday that there are thousands of older single bachurim in Israel. I never heard of that previously. However, I did hear many times about the famous bachurim shidduchim crisis in the chasidish community.
I feel like in order to understand the impact of that phenomenon, if true, we would need numbers. But yes there will always be questions on data. I’m not saying the study and those numbers are dispositive, it was just the only collected data I am familiar with and it seems to suggest the age gap crisis is a myth.
But apparently there is more data that I haven’t seen yet and I’m excited to see it!
Yeah. That’s my other problem with the article, they make it seem like the Rabbis, at least in my impression is that they, like yourself, would rather rely on instinct based on anecdotal evidence without looking at the data.
Thank you for bringing this topic up and providing links to source data.
I will start from the end: I disagree that the age gap theory is correct and that reducing the age gap will do anything. I strongly agree with Slifkin that this is another "radical societal change" experiment that will fail.
Age gap theory is one aspect of a multifaceted issue, not a definitive or exclusive explanation.
The mathematical model provides an oversimplified framework to frame the Shidduch Crisis, but falls short of a comprehensive explanation.
It oversimplifies complex human dynamics with rigid demographic assumptions, lacks robust data transparency, and ignores essential sociocultural contributors.
Specific examples:
Fixed 5% growth rate:
The model assumes a constant year-on-year population increase of 5%. In reality, demographic
growth is subject to fluctuations due to socioeconomic factors, immigration, and changes in
fertility patterns.
Uniform age-gap:
The study treats the age-gap between boys and girls in the marriage market as a fixed or
dominant norm. While trends may exist, age gaps vary by family, background, and individual
circumstances. Social behavior is far less uniform than the model assumes.
Complete participation:
It implicitly assumes that almost all boys and girls from each cohort actively participate in the
shidduch system simultaneously and in the same way, which is unrealistic.
The Avi Chai Foundation used school enrollment data to estimate gender ratios and growth. However:
School enrollment doesn't always reflect birth demographics, especially when families opt to homeschool, move abroad, or send children to non-mainstream schools.
The data reflect students enrolled many years later (ages 6-18), potentially introducing bias due to differing dropout rates or migrations.
The assertion that the Chasidic community has the "opposite problem" (more unmarried boys) due to different age-gap norms is made without adequate empirical proof. There is no clear data provided measuring actual marriage rates by gender or age in these communities.
Important to keep in mind that just because there are other issues besides the age gap causing less then 100 percent marriage rate, that isn't proof that the age gap isn't causing 6-8 percent female surplus.
This is besides the humiliation the current system causes even to those who do get married.
We need to do what we can, the age gap can be dealt with. what is your practical, pragmatic suggestion for dealing with the other issues?
Let me give you some ideas(in my order of priority):
* Involve actual professionals, not rabbis or askanim who have zero knowledge of how demographics work.
* OTD rate
- Men, in general, tend to be less "religious" than women. From anecdotal evidence of the experts, the rate is at least 20% ( and that is in "nice" homes)
What I mean by this is that seminaries create a vision of a husband, but only a tiny % of people can or even want to participate in this. This creates an imbalance in expectations, aka pickiness syndrome or virtue signaling by parents who want "the best boy."
* Social networking reach; aka yichus.
* Financial situations
* Personality compatibility and emotional preparedness
In terms of what the seminary teaches, they are all privately owned If their customer base wants them to sing a different tune, they certainly will. the parents of the girls need to ask for that, but they haven't yet, to the best of my knowledge.
If a parent projects genuine Yashrus to their children from a young age, it will greatly protect them from the negative effects of seminary.
"In terms of what the seminary teaches, they are all privately owned If their customer base wants them to sing a different tune, they certainly will. the parents of the girls need to ask for that, but they haven't yet, to the best of my knowledge."
That assumes the parent body wants the change. However, we cannot deny that in the last thirty years, the Orthodox( I include everyone in this category) movement has become more "Yeshivish" ideologically, and that implies certain realities.
Even if the parent body disagrees with this, it is still unrealistic due to the current religious hashkafa and the social pressures in our communities.
In one of his recent interviews, R Wein said it best: "We invented cancel culture."
"If a parent projects genuine Yashrus to their children from a young age, it will greatly protect them from the negative effects of seminary."
In my opinion, that is also unrealistic, considering the number of children that we have.
We wholesale outsource raising our kids to schools, which overall lean right.
"It's up to the parents to make this change."
This is possible in a society where non-conformist ideas are not labeled heretical(Slifkin, for example, or YU).
That is not our current frum society. Just like we outsource the raising of our children to school, we outsource a lot of our decision making to Rabbis ( Daas Torah ) ;
The only we I know of is DanielTzvi and Joe, if together we don't outsource shidduchim and decision making, then it won't, it's not easy but it's possible.
Thanks for engaging, 6-8 percent reflects 50 percent of single women in the American yeshiva world still single in the 28-34 cohort.
The 3:1 ratio (or 2.3:1 ration based on my calculation) is of the ratio young men and women in the dating pool, not the percentage of those still single and it is certainly caused by the imbalances entry into the shidduch market of boys and girls and the subsequent lengthier process for the 85 percent of girls to get married vs the far quicker pace that 93 percent of boys get married., a important distinction.
The stats you quote from the OU study need qualification: What age bracket is it?
There is a team of top data professionals from the country working on the data.
OTD rate was measured by the Adei Ad census, it is very low (0.5 -1.5 percent, if I recall correctly) and not a significant part of this discussion.
The facts the above census discovered seem not to corroborate the anecdotes you are mentioning (at least in the American Yeshiva world).
Closing the age gap brings more boys (due to population growth and male to femal birth ratio) into the pool, which helps even if the gap is caused by men being gay although I must mention that the available data doesn't show that 6 percent of the men in the American Yeshiva community are single due to that.
I will conclude by pointing out that besides listening to the podcast (which I did a while ago) and reading that book, I still think the current tireless, selfless, research-based efforts are the most practical way forward for the American Yeshiva community.
With a teffilla that our collaboration and efforts to ease the suffering of so many bring the Yeshua needed in this Parsha.
"Thanks for engaging, 6-8 percent reflects 50 percent of single women in the American yeshiva world still single in the 28-34 cohort."
Can you please explain the math behind this?
"The 3:1 ratio (or 2.3:1 ration based on my calculation) is of the ratio young men and women in the dating pool, not the percentage of those still single"
I understood it that way.
"and it is certainly caused by the imbalances entry into the shidduch market of boys and girls"
This is where you lose me. I need to see the math behind these calculations.
Let's use simple numbers and assume there are NO other issues that exist, just the age-gap, then:
* Let's say in 2025, there are 10k women available, that means
* Applying a 2-year age gap, the men these women would marry were born 2 years earlier, in 2002, which was a smaller birth cohort (because the community is growing about 3.8% per year).
To account for that, we need to scale the male population down by 2 years of negative compounding growth:
* Male cohort size=10,500÷(1.038) ^2≈10,500÷1.077=9,749
That is a difference of ~ 4%, not 200%.
So, back to my original point, this shows a lack of men in the system, i.e., men went somewhere. Aliens did not come and snatch them all :)
"and the subsequent lengthier process for the 85 percent of girls to get married vs the far quicker pace that 93 percent of boys get married, a important distinction."
Let's assume these numbers are valid and that there are no other barriers to getting married(OTD, etc, etc ); this means that 15% of girls and 7% of men never marry ( in our hypothetical example above, this will mean 1.5k girls and 700 boys ); to me, the question is why?
"The stats you quote from the OU study need qualification: What age bracket is it?"
18- 81+, but in the context of shidduchim are, between 18 and 29
"There is a team of top data professionals from the country working on the data."
When they publish, will they also publish their names? will this be peer reviewed?
"OTD rate was measured by the Adei Ad census, it is very low (0.5 -1.5 percent, if I recall correctly) and not a significant part of this discussion.
The facts the above census discovered seem not to corroborate the anecdotes you are mentioning (at least in the American Yeshiva world"
This contradicts the Pew ( and other studies) study -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_derech that states: "A 2013 survey on American Jews conducted by the Pew Research Center, which included more than 500 Orthodox participants,[16] found that 52% of Jewish adults who were raised Orthodox were no longer Orthodox. When subdivided by age, it found that 17% of these are accounted for by those under the age of 30, 43% by those aged 30–49, 59% by those aged 50–64, and 78% by those aged 65 and above. Some experts think that the higher attrition rate in the older age groups is possibly "a period effect in which people who came of age during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s left Orthodoxy in large numbers."[17]"
A subsequent 2020 study found the attrition rate to be at 33%.[18] This lower rate may be due (at least in part) to the fact that in this study, the sample of adults who were raised as Orthodox Jews includes a larger percentage of people under the age of 30.[19]
True, I don't know how they define Orthodox vs how Adei Ad defined it. They might have looked at the right-wing orthodox.
Seems like somewhere in between. 1 and 33%. The point is that it is not negligible, since men tend to do all the leaving.
"Closing the age gap brings more boys (due to population growth and male to female birth ratio) into the pool,"
It is certainly true that closing a gap WILL help, but it is THE solution.
"which helps even if the gap is caused by men being gay although I must mention that the available data doesn't show that 6 percent of the men in the American Yeshiva community are single due to that."
I think that some of these men will OTD and others will just never marry.
"I will conclude by pointing out that besides listening to the podcast (which I did a while ago) and reading that book, I still think the current tireless, selfless, research-based efforts are the most practical way forward for the American Yeshiva community."
100% with this, the key is "research-based efforts";
I am afraid that this is not the case; this is another case of top-down, Rabbinical class, pushing a societal policy without proper research and making informed decisions.
Let me know what you think of the book!
I will just summarize my points:
The formula to shidduch crisis is as follows:
Hashkafik misaligntment ( women are more religious than men) +OTD + "Social networking reach, aka yichus." + "Financial situations"+
"Personality compatibility and emotional preparedness" + Mental health issues ( 2.8% of people in the USA have autism, mostly boys ) + "Age gap + " males who don't want to marry." = shidduch crisis.
Also this is not a radical change but a slight shift in mindset.
The changes are not drastic, the girls are being asked to delay beginning shidduchim from Chanukah after seminary to Shavous after seminary, which is more like a 5-month delay not 18 months as stated in this article.
This is important for the following reason: when the American Roshei Yeshiva approached R. Hirsch for guidance on how to deal with the shidduch crisis in America, he gave two pieces of foundational guidance, and that is in the interest of the solution being implemented and actually helping out the issue the solution should not 1) Be the same set of solutions that have been attempted but ended in failure over the past twenty years 2) Not be a drastic change to the current system.
Many other potential changes were brought to the table and R. Hirsch dismissed them as being unpractical because they were too drastic and would engender to much opposition from the community to be implemented.
The official report is still being prepared (you can email info@adeiad.org to get it when its ready) but for now please see below.
Census Methodology
Adei Ad conducted the first true census of every eighth-grade graduate (2005–2011) from multiple boys’ and girls’ schools in Lakewood, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Baltimore. Instead of a survey, each student was tracked from eighth grade through today via their classmates, capturing marital status (single, married, divorced/remarried) and those who left the frum system (OTD) or dropped out before twelfth grade.
Sample Sizes
Adei Ad tracked roughly 2,580 girls and 1,770 boys across tens of eighth-grade classes, yielding a deep, representative snapshot of our community’s married vs. single population.
Inclusive of Divorcees & OTD
Because this was a true census, the 7–8 percent female-surplus figure includes divorced/remarried men (who often marry the remaining single women - due to the current imbalance, widening the gap) as well as divorced/remarried women and those who left the community. Excluding those groups reduces the surplus to about 6–7 percent.
In other words, in the 28-34 age bracket, there are 15 percent single women and 8 percent single men.
Root Cause: Age Gap + Population Growth
Additionally I'm pasting the info I sent to others to answer their questions in case that may be helpful
Thank you for your questions.
There were three large studies on this.
1) The DAAAS study by Dr Sokol and Dr Rosenbach that you are referring to didn't show a age gap problem.
2) The OU study showed a age gap problem but the extent of it depends on different input into the models 2.5 -6.5 percent.
3) Recent Adei Ad data that was a census (not a predictive model like the two above) that shows a 6.5-7.5 percent surplus. This data is in middle of being prepared to be shared.
The Author of the first study, Dr Rosenbach, gave the following statement.
"By the way I did add this note to the doc so feel free to borrow this language in my name.
added on 4/17/25 * The OU and the shidduch initiative recently put out new predicted age gap theory numbers based on a lowered 2.5 year age gap, predicting a surplus of between 2.5 to 6.5 percent of women based on the age-gap theory. I could get on board with these lowered numbers where closing the age-gap a bit can help equal out dating and marriage opportunities by those small yet significant percentage points. Yet the dating opportunity discrepancy seems to be skewed more than that, indicating there may be other variables to assess as well."
This really needs a much longer conversation, but this is for starters. Efforts are being made to prepare the data for the public along with extensive documentation to explain to people the multitude of various, often complex factors that this topic includes.
The 7-8 percent numbers of discrepancy between married men and women IN THE YESHIVA COMMUNITY in the 28-34 cohort (sorry for the caps lock - can't do italics) are from a census, not an actuarial model, so they will include the divorcees because divorced men end up marrying single women because of the uneven dating age gap, and pile up. without the divorced and OTD it is one percent less 6-7 percent female surplus.
That said, to reverse engineer the formula that caused the age gap we see here are some possibilities.
1) A 2.5 year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 103:100 boy to girl birth ratio (admittedly smaller then the national 105:100 ratio - but the OU study showed this ratio in our community and Wikipedia says this ratio is within range) = 7 percent female surplus.
2) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4.5 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 6.25 percent female surplus.
3) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 5 percent female surplus.
Because of the difficulty in knowing which of these models is correct, the retrospective census showing a 6-8 percent female surplus is so helpful.
>>Only you the krumme baal habas has to listen to the Eret yisroel Gedolim when it comes to the WZO
Actually no, Reb Moshe Hillel supports Eretz Hakodesh and directs them. (He asked someone I know to become a delegate.) Only now that Reb Dov came out against, he tells people who ask that 'we must follow the psak of the gadol hador' וד"ל. (Also, he is clearly afraid of the BMG and co mafia, as we see from his support for the girls part of this takana.)
Normalise my idea: get married at 17 - 19 and delay having children till age 22. The yeshivos will never promote this because they want to control young men by trapping them in poverty and debt slavery.
Right, nobody would think that the reason this isn't promoted is A. Yeshivos don't mix into people's private lives, they aren't Chassidishe Rebbes, and B. it is against Halacha.
Begging for Brachos shows a lack of willingness and self confidence in exercising any Hishtadlus When you truly show that you are Noseh Bol Chavero and realize that the Shabbos table might be a great place to meet a Zivug then we. An talk about possible solutions to a system that truly ritualizes emotions and reduces your potential spouse to a Cheftza as opposed to a living breathing thinking Gavra
Amazing Oped on this subject:
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/2392178/mailbag-why-klal-yisrael-must-rally-behind-the-rabbanims-plan-to-solve-the-shidduch-crisis.html
If all there are left is undesirables... Either way, older girls aren't undesirable as long as they are the age or slightly younger than the bochur.
1. From speaking to people I are more confident than you are that many girls will be willing to delay shidduchim. I think part of the reason for this is because many girls are anyways less interested in starting shidduchim right after seminary (a tendency which in my experience has been growing over the last few years).
2. I don't think it's unjustified to put the onus on the girls more than the boys. This is because getting married at 23 or 24 has better justifications than getting married at 19. The maturity gained in those years is definitely important for getting married (at least given the current norms and climate), the gain of real world experience and building financial stability on the girls side is also beneficial in many ways, and getting off the high of the post seminary year can be very smart before making long term life choices.
https://daastorah.substack.com/p/chareidim-finally-care-about-themselves/comment/112455729
The fact that girls are marrying later anyway is a pointo against this takana, not for it.
Letes assume there still are 15% of girls getting engaged in that year. But on average they probably engaged only aroung Purimtime, 80 days befofe Shavuous. 15% of that is 12.
So all this tumult with Daniel's talk about creating 'social stigma' for people
who are 'hurting the tzibbur', the entire oppressive environment of telling al girls they can't marry with little knowledge of their personal life, and the shifting of the blame on the girls is for what?! For 12 days gained!
Why is the fact that girls are starting to marry later appoint against this Takanna? It's not like they're doing it enough to make the takana unnecessary, It's just a small shift that I think that the takana can build on and will find a receptive audience.
Regarding your second part I have no idea what you're trying to say. What 12 and what 15%?
It is one point.
What don't you understand? If only 15% of girls get engages in that year anyway and among those the average is 80 days earlier than the takana than the takana only cuts an average of 12 days from the age-gap.
The bottom line is that this one-size-fits-all takana seems oppressive to me. (And neged haTorah and neged Chazal but you obviously don't mind that.)
Oh I see. Good point.
I'll just mention a counterpoint although I don't think it's strong is that maybe a takkana could shift the expectation once it because the norm and many girls might start even after that. But I agree that's a bit of a stretch.
Another point which is a bit stronger is that 15% get engaged because they've been dating for most of a year already, so by the time shavuos rolls around a decent percentage already finds a shidduch. But if they only start dating then it won't hit 15% in so short. Plus many girls start dating before the tu bshvat freezer opens either by the guys who come home sukkos or from the previous freezer of shivah asar batamuz.
I was going to add, but forgot, that had Rav Shach known the consequences of his supposed approval of the freezer he would have been rolling in his grave. He probably thought it would last a few years and then sanity would prevail. Yet now the freezer is holy and untouchable that we need a freezer for the girls to, so as to maintain the boys freezer.
Which goes to show the importance of חכמים הזהרו בדבריכם. People may think that this is just a minor, perhaps even temporary change, but soon this may become the established heilige takana which can't be touched and should even be expanded, despite it being quite obviously neged haTorah and neged Chazal.
This slippery slope is actually one of the problems I have with this takana.
As I wrote elsewhere in these comments "this sets a terrible precedent, and gives Daas Torah power to continue to make takanos against Chazal".
They claim that this is just less than year and anyway girls need a breather space etc., but as you are pointing out, will it really end there? Or will this become the new starting point for further delays? Perhaps even more sem (they are already talking about some kind of part day sem).
They talk about how girls need to earn more money before they marry. That definitely is a concern as I noted here https://daastorah.substack.com/p/chareidim-finally-care-about-themselves/comment/112455729 but shouldn't that be an incentive to talk about how unaffordable Lakewood has become, how it now can cost a frum family over 100k (even well over, and it keeps going up) just for housing and tuition. Add taxes etc.
Is this really what frum girls are supposed be doing? Marrying at 22-23 so they can save up to support their husbands etc.?
Eventually, the bachurim and the RY could fall back into their old habits and perhaps even marry older because the girls will solve the problem on their part (In Israel the average age of marriage for charedi girls is already 22.1)
As you noted in your original comment, these concerns don't bother you because you anyways think people should marry later. But for a frum person (or a pronatalist) it is already a travesty that bochurim marry this late, and for girls to be forced to delay marriage just to accommodate this is a travesty of travesties.
Part of the logic is that without pushing the girls later, having the boys come back earlier won't help as much as they may just marry young girls. Also if the girls are delaying it helps put pressure on the RY to have their boys go to EY earlier, they get much more heat for not cooperating.
Also, 20 percent are getting engaged by Pesach, (the data collected last year in Lakewood High Schools as per the Pesach milestone of Rav Moshe Hillel's orignal suggestion), by Shavous it may be 25 percent or maybe even pushing 30 percent.
The OU data is that 22 percent of girls are getting engaged their first year, Anecdotal evidence from the grade that graduated BJJ and some lakewood high schools last year puts it at closer to 30 percent, and it doesn't seem likely that this 22-30 percent will get engaged immediately after Shavous but rather over the next year - although admittedly perhaps a bit faster then the just, but at this stage the whole age gap is only 2 years, girls 20 boys 22 so it should work out bezh!
>The OU data is that 22 percent of girls are getting engaged their first year.
Interesting. I know for certain that one askan told me it's less than 20%, and I'm pretty sure the Adei Ad brochure stated the same.
Is BJJ representative?
Correction: I made a mistake I spoke to someone very involved, and he said the 20 percent didn't come from the OU study that I mentioned, but from data collected from last year from Lakewood the high schools, however the 20 percent is by April (Pesach time) It would seem plausible that by June (Shavous) it's more like 25-30 percent.
I thought you were the one behind it?
Either way I think you guys need to get your act together. It really doesn't look good when you tell everyone what you think they want to hear. In the brochure they thought that presenting a low number is good so they wrote that. Then I said the opposite so you wrote the opposite.
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/2392178/mailbag-why-klal-yisrael-must-rally-behind-the-rabbanims-plan-to-solve-the-shidduch-crisis.html
I got involved in helping those with the publication at the last minute and put a lot of effort into it (stayed up the whole night working on it), but I'm certainly not the decision maker there.
The Adei Ad brochure said 20 percent was till pesach like R Moshe Hillels orignal suggestion
Since the publication, from talking to people the number I've been hearing is closer to 30 percent from different high schools and seminaries, but I haven't done a methodical study on this yet, the OU study probably skewed a bit to the left of the ultra yeshivish circles because it was done online, and maybe those circles left out marry earlier (which makes sense they are more conservative).
In the amount of boys getting engaged the first year in shidduchim, OU said 46 percent but BMG data from summer zman 2023 showed 75 percent getting engaged that first year, so it is possible my theory is correct and the ultra yeshivsh were underrepresented in the OU study.
Good points.
It does raise into question all of the other things that don't work? So we now recognize math?
The Kollel support model does not work mathematically and neither does having so many kids.
2) R Elya Brudny Shlita - another one of the rabbonim showing leadership - has been dealing with a spate of divorces and marriage issues specifically a result of girls getting married while within the post-seminary bubble, who then crash back to earth a few months after marriage and realize that the ideals they were brainwashed with is not the life they actually want. As a result, R Brudny strongly believes that girls should wait a year after seminary to live in the real world and find themselves.
this matches what i have seen and we need to have a serious conversation about the pros and cons of seminary to our community.
3)"Not all roshei yeshivah have expressed their commitment to the proposal, and thus, not all boys will be following it"
Shaddchonim should commit to not redt shidduchim to anyone in those yeshivos
Those aren't affecting the RY grandkids just yet.
I heard from someone who heard directly from a RY who was by the original meeting about this initiative that what got it going was that a certain RY who has many daughters stated that he is worried for his granddaughters. They all exclaimed "you?! Every bachur in America will want your granddaughters! To which he responded "I don't even have enough shtellers for my eidim, certainly not for my children's eidims."
About 2:
I would like to post something from an Israeli study (from Eli Paley's institute):
"The downward trend in marriage rate in Haredi society within this age group does not indicate a decline in the general marriage rate but rather a growing trend to establish families at older ages, usually for fiscal reasons. Haredim are experiencing a growing need for financial stability in recent years, especially women, who typically bear the burden of earning a living in a family’s early years. These women complete their training at ages 18-24. In the past, young Haredi women tended to marry during their professional studies. Still, the demands of the advanced training required today to enter high-quality positions and professions in industries characterized by high productivity is creating a trend in which Haredi women tend to marry only towards the end of their training and the beginning of their career."
In other words, when life is unaffordable and Kollel is considered a neccessity, women will marry younger.
This tells us two things:
1. The takana is unneccessary as it will happen anyway, especially if people like Reb Elya Brudny will educate the public.
2. the great tragedy being caused to Klal Yisroel by BMG. We are becoming more and more like the Modox as time goes by, due to BMG's policies of (delaying marriage and) making life less and less affordable by squeezing everyone into one of the most expensive cities in the world.
How is BMG squeezing everyone into one city? They are certainly responsible for the freezer, but I fail to see how the other issue lies on them.
I don't understand your question. What else is the point of Adirei HaTorah; of feting young yungeleit with no need to pay tuition and a mortgage, yungeleit who would have been eligible for free daycare, food, healthcare, and or daycare etc, if not for Adirei HaTorah (and who are mostly receiving much financial support and whose wives mostly earn high salaries), with tens of thousands of dollars annually?
This isn't a secret. The Voice had an article in Elul about how hard it now is to get yungeleit to move OOT. The Ami Pesach edition had an interview with Roshei Kollel from Detroit and Denver who confirmed that it is very hard to get yungeleit since Adirei HaTorah.
The worst part is the timing. From the middle of 2021 to late 2024 the cost of monthly mortgage payments for an average house in Lakewood rose about 150%. This is after 4 years (as far back as Zillow shows) of barely changing. At the same time, it became obvious that (a) in much of America tuition vouchers are here to stay (about 40% of schoolchildren are now eligible) (b) in NJ it will never happen. Anyone who does have to pay tuition and a mortgage in Lakewood is being crushed, but by the time they will realize what BMG has done to them it will usually be too late.
(Additionally, it strengthens the misconception that there is something heilig about Lakewood.)
I am impressed by Lazer Scheineir's dedication to the cause, but it is a pity that it is mostly going to waste and even causing tremendous harm for the Torah and Klal Yisroel.
It isn't just the freezer. It is the fact that they continue to accept 23-24 yr. old bachurim. If the data is truly conclusive, any bachur who comes to BMG at that age (especially if they sign on to the freezer) should be considered an avaryan bmaizid bfarhesia and should not be accepted in any self-respecting yeshiva (perhaps even without the shidduch crisis this is true). Let those guys go to work before they marry. Additionally, we need to reflect long and hard on why bachurim dread coming to BMG so much and why RY are so hesitant about sending them there younger than age 23-24, something that is unprecedented in Jewish history and only doesn't exist in any other Charedi community.
Bezh we should
see my updated comment.
>The Kollel support model does not work mathematically and neither does having so many kids.
You mean the Lakewood model of living in a city with crazy expensive housing and tuition instead of spreading out to cities with free tuition etc.?
There is nothing inherently hard financially (certainly not impossible) about Kollel and large families.
Completely false.
Huh?
That Lakewood is the only one that it is unaffordable.
Can you give me a community that is?
I looked into moving out of town for a while.
Houses are still 400k- 500K in Jewish neighborhoods, salaries are way lower, groceries are more expensive and free tuition usually means that you pay anyways.
In Cleveland total fees (for families earning less than 200% of the Federal poverty level) is 600 a year, and houses are avaliable for less than 3k.
Additionally, there is a grant of 30k for a down payment from the gov for first-time homebuyers.
The key is to put as much down as possible (don't be embarrased to beg etc._ I think there is perhaps no greater tzedakah than this if you have a large family)
thus one can live on a low income and be eligible for programs etc.
South bend and Cleveland have cheap houses and free tuition which is actually free. I think Milwaukee as well, and as of recently Texas, though I'm not positive of the last 2.
Florida has vouchers but still charge a lot on top of that.
Southbend is the boondocks…Cleveland not so affordable
I guess
In general I believe the main issue is not the age gap, rather the "pileup". Since there are so many more girls than boys dating at any given time, girls will automatically have a harder time finding a shidduch. This would be the case even if there were zero population growth and zero age gap. By virtue of starting shidduchim earlier, you are creating a tremendous surplus of girls. Imagine if tomorrow girls would decide they're dating from age 14. Will there suddenly be more girls in the world? No. But there would be much more girls dating, which in and of itself creates a crises.
Pogrow from NASI has been talking about this more recently, and less the age gap. I believe this is the real issue. Though age gap may be easier to explain to the public, whether or not the numbers add up.
True, there are two problems: the dating age gap and the marriage age gap. Very important point.
The marriage age gap only affects less than ten percent of the girls.
The dating age gap affects all the girls, and the ones most affected are those who have some vulnerability.
The dating age gap is a silly concept.
All it means is that boys are much more in a system where they are expected to learn to a certain age and marry right away, whereas with girls each girl gets married at a different pace.
Dating gap means that since girls start younger, there are much more girls on the market at once, creating an imbalance. What's silly about it.
Yup I used AI to try to figure out a exact number of the imbalance based of OU data, and BMG Internal Data.
Shidduch-Pool Gender Imbalance Report
1. OU CCR TSI Findings (Table 12)
Time Spent in the Shidduch System by Gender
From the OU CCR TSI study of married yeshivish children:
Mean time in the system
– Men: 1.05 years
– Women: 1.73 years
→ Implied ratio
2. BMG Internal Engagement Data
BMG reports 75 % of their bochurim marry within 1 year (vs. 42 % in the OU data). Recalculating the male mean:
75 % at 0.5 yr, 25 % at
New male mean
3. Adding Birth & Population-Growth
Rather than a flat 14 %, we use a 3.8 % annual growth (compounded over each gender’s mean time):
Gender Raw mean (yrs) Factors Pool size
Men 0.74 × 1.05 (birth) × 1.028 (growth^0.74) 0.80
Women 1.73 × 1.069 (growth^1.73) 1.85
→ Revised ratio
4. Summary of Ratios
Scenario Ratio (Women : Men)
OU data only 1.65 : 1
+ BMG engagement 1.73 ÷ 0.74 ≈ 2.35
+ birth & realistic growth 1.85 ÷ 0.80 ≈ 2.31
5. Why This Matters
At any moment there are 1.6–2.3 women in the shidduch pool for every 1 man. That large surplus lets bachurim be highly selective, and:
Girls with any relative disadvantage (network, geography, résumé) are squeezed hardest.
Many feel forced to compromise on standards or resort to tactics they’d otherwise avoid, simply to get—and keep—a date.
This structural imbalance is a key driver of the “shidduch crisis,” making it crucial to explore timing-based interventions to rebalance the market.
Sources:
– OU CCR TSI “Table 12: Time Spent in the Shidduch System by Gender” 46 percent of boys marry the first year.
– BMG internal engagement data (75 % marry < 1 yr)
– 5 % male birth surplus, 3.8 % annual female growth compounded over mean times
Here is a screenshot from the OU study and the BMG data:
**OU CCR TSI (n = 1039 men; 1237 women)**
Percentage of respondents’ children who married in each “year in system”:
- **< 1 year** : 42 % men / 22 % women
- **1–2 years** : 36 % men / 37 % women
- **2–3 years** : 14 % men / 19 % women
- **3–4 years** : 3 % men / 10 % women
- **4–5 years** : 2 % men / 5 % women
- **5–6 years** : 1 % men / 3 % women
- **6–7 years** : 1 % men / 1 % women
- **7–8 years** : 1 % men / 3 % women
**BMG Internal Data**
- **< 1 year** : 75 % of their bachurim marry within the first year
- **≥ 1 year** : 25 % marry later (breakdown by subsequent years not disclosed)
---
*So each year:*
- Under OU data, 42 % of men vs. 22 % of women marry in year 1; 36 % / 37 % in year 2; etc.
- Under BMG, 75 % of bochurim marry in year 1 (vs. 42 % in OU), with the remaining 25 % marrying thereafter.
What it means is that boys only 'come to the market' when they are fully determined to marry ASAP.
I don't get your point
Marriage age gap affects around 1-2% of girls
The only study that showed that is the DAAAS Study, and the OU study showed 6.5 percent, the recent census shows like 7-8 percent.
Dr Rosenbach, the lead author of the DAAAS study, has acknowledged the new data and said she is onboard with it. Her original study had up to a six percent margin of error, so 2 percent plus six percent is 8 percent closer to what the new research shows.
How can you get 7-8 percent? The numbers don't add up.
What are the average boy to girl ratio, average population growth, and average age gap?
No way numbers are even close to that.
The 7-8 percent numbers are from a census, not an actuarial model, so they will include the divorcees because divorced men end up marrying single women because of the uneven dating age gap, and pile up. without the divorced and OTD it is one percent less 6-7 percent female surplus.
That said, to reverse engineer the formula that caused the age gap we see here are some possibilities.
1) A 2.5 year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 103:100 boy to girl birth ratio (admittedly smaller then the national 105:100 ratio - but the OU study showed this ratio in our community and Wikipedia says this ratio is within range) = 7 percent female surplus.
2) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4.5 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 6.25 percent female surplus.
3) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 5 percent female surplus.
Because of the difficulty in knowing which of these models is correct, the retrospective census showing a 6-8 percent female surplus is so helpful.
Well, I did my part (even if they say there is no crisis in EY). One of my boys married a girl older than he is, and one married a girl 4 days younger than he is.
To my chagrin, sometimes it takes things awhile to change. My neighbor had many children born with Tay Sachs , the “Jewish” disease. Finally, a Satmar Chassid from America started Dor Yesharim. The Rabbanim here were very hesitant (I guess “ Bas Kol”, etc). She got up at a conference for educators and spoke, or rather cried, behind a mechitza, begging for the “Olam” to start checking for Tay Sachs. I’ve been to mental institutions here that used to be full of Tay Sachs children just waiting there to die. Now those wards are totally empty.
So sometimes these things take a strong voice and real initiative. And a bit of time.
Yes, I'm very glad someone is working on it. It takes a lot of courage, when everything you say gets discredited.
I don't see why we need hard facts data. We can just ask the girls themselves. If they are worried, it's crisis that needs action. Why would releasing the statistics cause people to panic? Everyone can already see for himself that he knows far more girls in shiduchim than boys. And if it's not the number data theory, it's something else that can only get addressed after we try the number theory.
Just by the way project NASI is not a new thing. They've been begging the boys (and their mother's) to get married younger, and the boys didn't listen. (like they never listen, even in the times of tanach)
Now they're coming after the girls, because, yes they will listen, 1) they don't have a choice, they are disadvantaged here. 2) they want their friends and older sister to get married too. Because they are worried, they all are.
I couldn't agree more, that is the best response to all the skeptics, even if the number theory proves not to be the problem (or not the full problem), and it is something else, we will only know that by working on this first. But if we do nothing, then nothing will happen. this plan has very little downside and tremendous potential upside be"h.
People need to understand that if we can successfully pull this off, then be"h it will likely lead to more initiatives focusing on other angles of this issue. Success breeds success, and the energy can go a long way.
Also, even if the age gap isn't causing the whole problem, it will still help to solve the problem, because of population growth, meaning even if the problem is that too many boys are going OTD (although the data shows that it isn't the primary problem), it will still help because there are just more 22 year old boys then 23 year old boys because of the age gap.
The fear is that releasing the numbers will hurt the older girls and cause the younger girls to panic more and not wait.
To determine the cause of the "crisis", if there is one, we need the following data.
1) Percentage of couples in which the husband is 3 yrs older, 2 yrs older, same age, etc.
2) Number of boys who graduate from high school/mesivta and go on to yeshiva
3) Number of girls who graduate from high school and go onto seminary
4) Number of boys who go OTD
5) Number of girls who go OTD
6) Number of boys of marriageable age who want to learn in kollel
7) Number of girls of marriageable age who want to marry a boy who will learn in kollel
8) Number of married and single boys and single girls of each age cohort (this might be the most important).
Note that 2-7 are all very similar in what they can tell us...
Adei Ad tracked thousands of girls and boys and together with the OU has the answers to most or all of your questions.
Do you have a link with the data?
No it hasn't been published yet (I have seen it privately and analyzed it extensively).
They are in the process of preparing it for the public. the Rabbonim are concerned about creating panic, but they also need to show it to build trust, so they are debating the best way to do this.
I think if you reach out to them, they will probably share it privately. Although right now it contains thousands of people's names, and their status of married, single, divorced, OTD, so I think they will need to anonymize the data first.
The OU data is public https://yeshivaworld.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TSI-CCR-LZavgan-1.pdf, but is an online opt-in survey, so not as conclusive as the Adei Ad data, which is a census ( much better data, no opt-in bias, no need to guess population growth etc), the OU data has multiple models for the age gap, but the Adei Ad census confirms that the highest number from the OU actuarial predictive model is correct.
>the Rabbonim are concerned about creating panic
This is perhaps the most pathetic claim I have heard from the askanim. For fifteen years NASI has been posting provocative ads and articles stating that at least 10% of girls will remain single. Similar (and sometimes worse) comics are still being shown to support the new initiative. Yet they refuse to publicize the data which shows that only 7% of girls have no male counterpart in the community. Why should anyone trust their claims before it is publicized and published in a peer-reviewed journal?!
And, if they truly are worried about causing a panic among older Bnos Yisroel I suggest they do a similar study in Chassidic and Israeli communities. I suspect it will show enough bachurim to bring the gap down to close to zero, perhaps even to negative territory.
You are being ridiculous, Nasi has nothing to do with the current efforts, and the Rabbonim who sit with the pain of older girls who are hurt by these types of data are hesitant to publish it. Simple.
Sorry, but you are. The current effort is following the exact same pattern as NASI. Some of the comics they put out were worse than those of NASI.
1. Virtually nothing in that article reflects reality. The age gap was not 'discovered by Rabbi Deutch'. In fact, a member of his Kehilla went to Reb Matisyahu about this more than 20 years ago. Most of the history there is agenda-based not fact-based.
2. Although I am the furthest from a BMG fan possible, and I believe that the freezer is a bad idea, its elimination will have zero effect on the crisis. The gap is not age-based, it's stage-based. The class of 2023 marries the class of 2019, and that has to change. Marrying them a few months earlier won't change that basic fact.
R Kalman Epstein was one of the first twenty years ago.
Not necessarily. If the boys begin shidduchim a few months earlier, they will be redt far more girls from a grade above what they would otherwise be ready, as the girls are still relatively new to the shidduch market making them more appealing to the "good" boys overall.
In my opinion, the age gap theory is incorrect as an explanation/cause of girls remaining *permanently* unmarried or for an increasing percentage of unmarried girls- AS LONG as boys are willing to marry girls their own age.
Meaning, we don't need the "solution" of telling girls to delay marriage. The RYs have been misled. Rather, we just need boys to be willing to marry girls their own age. But I think almost all boys are already willing to do this in principle. Therefore, my conclusion is that if there is a significant cohort of girls who are remaining unmarried, or an increasing percentage of unmarried girls, the age gap is not the cause. I believe the RYs have been misled by faulty math.
Please explain the fault in the math.
The website you linked itself acknowledges this
"Now let’s an analyze what happens when the age-gap is four years, meaning that on average, the boys marry girls who are four years younger. So when the 120 girls born in 1994 turned 19 years old in 2013 and started looking for shidduchim, only 105 boys born in 1990 who turned 23 in 2013 started looking for shidduchim. Since you cannot possibly matchup 120 girls with 105 boys, at the very best, 15 of those girls cannot find a shidduch. Of course we hope that the 15 girls will find a shidduch with next year’s boys. Next year, however, a new batch of 125 new 19 year old girls are starting shidduchim along with 110 new 23 year old boys, again leaving 15 girls with no matchup. In two short years, we are already dealing with 30 girls who cannot be matched up. This goes on year after year, and the number of single girls continues to grow year after year. If, on average, the boys would be actually be older than the girls by four years, then 15% of all graduating Bais Yaakov high school girls would never get married. Of course, not every 23 year old boy marries a 19 year old girl. Some actually marry girls of the same age, or even girls who are older than themselves. However, if all boys were actually marrying girls who on average, were four years younger, we would have a 15% problem on the girls’ side. So we can now safely draw the following chart."
It's the very last two sentences that are key. "However, if all boys were actually marrying girls who on average, were four years younger, we would have a 15% problem on the girls’ side"- but is that what's really happening? Do boys insist on marrying girls four years younger? If so, the solution is to tell them they needn't or shouldn't insist that.
Are you denying the gap theory or just disagreeing with the solution?
I'm just saying that an average age gap between boys and girls *on its own* does not mathematically lead to a permanent cohort of single girls or an increasing percentage of single girls- assuming that boys are willing to marry girls their age. This is mathematically true, as I showed you. But if the age gap theory is a theory that boys are less willing to marry girls their own age, then it can lead to that outcome.
And there is an age gap, which is obvious since girls regularly marry those three or four years older, while boys never do.
Are you addressing something I said? There can be two causes for an age gap- either girls starting shidduchim earlier than boy, or boys being unwilling to marry same age girls. The first on its own does not mathematically lead to a permanently single cohort of girls. But the second can.
We can encourage that but its hard to tell people who to marry.
The study that I referenced also found the gap for ages that men and women are married to be less than 4 years. So that definitely helps.
there is still a 2.5-year age gap that creates a female surplus, as evidenced by the Adei Ad data.
Yeah I was just giving one factor.
You are just stating another area in which the Prisoners Dillema causes this problem. For an individual bachur there is often little incentive to marry an older girl, and often there is an incentive to marry a younger girl (if she is a great catch).
Sorry, but in English older is a relative term.
Either way, I don't see how you are addressing my comment, and besides I wasn't discussing the new takana at all.
Isn't getting girls to marry later the same as getting boys to marry closer to their age?
Nope, you aren't telling them when or who to date, but when not to date, subtle but important difference. the Torah says you can't marry your sister, but won't say who you have to marry, it's too personal to formalize even in light of the shidduch crisis.
The real end goal is that in a few years it will be against the social norms for a girl 19 to be dating, just like a girl in 12th grade isn't dating.
True but responding to Happy's point (unless I missed the boat) that these rabonim missed something, isn't there goal to close the age gap and try to have people may their age? All he's adding is that there are already a bunch of 23 year old girls so we should encourage that they be looked at instead, but that's not really practical. Closing the age gap in a practical way seems more reasonable to me. There are plenty of other nuances at play (such as the age-old immaturity of guys wanting younger girls and the fact that the "best girls" are snatched up earlier so anyone old is definitionally (mistakenly) second tier, and that all guys are "top guys" because there's a surplus of them (when in reality the girls are generally waaay better) and the fact that many guys aren't really the line term learners they claim to be, etc etc) but the best way to solve this is to normalize the minimization of the age gap. I'm not sure what math Happy is arguing with.
Oy vey!!
I didn't even see this comment before I wrote my other comments.
In my opinion, we should be gozer taanis on the fact that someone could even talk like this. הנהיה ככל הגוים בית ישראל? And even worse than them in a way, for is there any other nation that bans women from marrying until age 20, even just through deliberately creating a social ban?
How can anyone possibly 'like' this comment?!
The Torah does not state that a girl may not marry before her sister. But the Torah does have many restrictions about whom one may marry, and Chazal speak very strongly about marrying young both for girls and boys and פריה ורביה is one of the first mitsvos in the Torah and the world was created לשבת יצרה. We hopefully expend much of our energy educating our kids that their primary tafkid in life is to raise a large family and educate them in the ways of the Torah - and now we are going to tell them that it is assur, because some RY decided that the current crazy yeshiva system is so Heilig?!
Additionally, if the problem is truly the age gap the only glatte thing is to address the age gap and tell people that having a large age gap is an עולה שאין כמותו. The only possible reasonable takana I can think of is that no RY or rav should be mesader at a wedding with a large age-gap and no-one should allowed to help an enable such a shidduch. I don't see what could possibly be wrong with such a takana. It addresses the core issue, and it isn't 'telling people who to marry'. It is just telling them to focus only on people within their age bracket – a very reasonable thing to say.
I agree they should get as many Roshei Yeshivah as possible to agree not to be Mesader Kiddushin. It will help somewhat.
But specifically they should be focused only on the age gap itself. Everything else is a distraction and causes all kinds of conflict.
I think it should be basic common sense that if the age-gap is the problem it should be assur to marry a large gap (unless the boy is already older (28?) or has some serious disability or the like.)
1) The first part of your comment doesn't really add up, the whole point of this is to help people get married, you have to look at the macro not just the micro.
2) Impossible to get all the RY onboard with your suggestion, therefore the only possibility is the current plan.
I guess 1 is based on 2.
You are saying that our community is already so far removed from Torah values that we must lift our hands in defeat and accept that ככל העמים בית ישראל and even worse than them.
I can't accept that.
Besides, who needs all the RY? Every RY who is still frum or at least accepts reality will be on board and those who and the frum olam won't have a problem.
The frei olam who doesn't care about the Toah or Klal Yisroel will continue to have a problem.
עת לעשות להשם
You are not being pragmatic, you can't be idealistic on the girls backs.
You cannot tell people who to marry, but we can and must change the system that preconditions them who to marry.
It's harder to tell girls to delay marriage! That's just not going to happen
You get the boys not to date them (not telling them who to marry - just who not to date - much easier), no one redts them a shidduch at that age, and you make a stigma against hurting the community by breaking the guidelines.
Some other ways to do this as well.
I have a feeling that will go over as well as wedding takanos (remember those?), but I wish them hatzlacha...
Yes, I agree. The only thing that will work is the Yeshivos telling boys to marry younger, which will happen when he'll freezes.
Wedding Takanos didn't require three people to break the rules like here: 1) the boy 2) the girl, 3) the shadchan. Also, it was less important than here - fancy chasunas don't cause same level as harm as breaking the guidelines will. Also, it's not rich vs poor like there. Also, you are not taking away anything, just delaying it a few months. Also more of a stigma that you are causing a few of the guest by the chasuna not to be able to find a shidduch for their daughter. And a few other differences.
>you make a stigma against hurting the community by breaking the guidelines
Again, this is a horrible horrific thing for a Jew to say - that a girl who follows the Torah and marries at age 20 is 'hurting the community' just because some RY have hearts of stone and refuse to change the yeshiva system.
Nope its called being pragmatic and practical.
When you say 'pragmatic' all I hear is 'let us continue to harp on the most vulnerable and play victim-blaming because those who are actually at fault will never admit it and will always insist on being treated as kings'.
Again, I just can't accept that. I believe Klal Yisroel can do much better than that.
Besides, I think Klal Yisroel will reject this takana, as Ash described - only I think they are doing the right thing by rejecting it - and this will just be wasted energy which will strengthen the case of the pessimists (like yourself) who claim that real change is impossible, and the RY will of course forever be able to blame the girls for not complying with Daas Torah etc. (which would have shortened the age-gap by a full 12 days!).
So the only way to solve the discrimination against girls is by telling boys to openly discriminate against other girls?
Is this attitude to girls so baked into our system?
We are trying to help the girls. You have to be pragmatic.
You are acting completely irrational and not Torahdik.
The rational way to go is first publish the data, make it clear and obvious to everyone what the real problem is and work from there.
You haven't even published the data, and you are already screaming that there is no way to solve the problem except with your totally crooked idea of scapegoating the girls.
What’s the crisis exactly?
“It’s a disaster,” says Rav Bender. “My son has a daughter who is 22. There were 67 girls in her class. Only 30 are married.”
Is it that 22 year olds aren’t married?
When I read this article I was upset for many reasons but I am happy they are at least trying.
It's that a large portion will never be.
So that wasn’t clear in the Mishpacha article at all. And that troubled me. Also, I’ve seen data that by age 35, 96% of men and 94% of women within the Yeshiva community are married.
Doesn’t sound like an age gap crisis to me.
The Mishpacha article was poorly written, but the substance is there.
The study you referenced was a online opt in survey, the Adei Ad data is a census - much more accurate and shows many more single women that age.
The researcher behind the study you are referencing has agreed to a partial 0retraction based on the new OU data, (besides the Adei Ad data).
I appreciate this! Is any of that other data available for the public?
They are in the process of preparing it for the public. the Rabbonim are concerned about creating panic, but they also need to show it to build trust, so they are debating the best way to do this.
I think if you reach out to them, they will share it privately.
The OU data is public https://yeshivaworld.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TSI-CCR-LZavgan-1.pdf, but is an online opt-in survey, so not as conclusive as the Adei Ad data, which is a census ( much better data, no opt-in bias, no need to guess population growth etc), the OU data has multiple models for the age gap, but the Adei Ad census confirms that the highest number from the OU actuarial predictive model is correct.
The basic gist of it is that in the 28-34 cohort, there are 7-8 percent more single women than single men; exact numbers depend on whether you include OTD, divorced and remarried.
Any idea how many men and women aren’t married by 35 and 40?
Waiting to 35 is a crisis.
What percentage by what age would be the crisis?
That’s not what Ash said. I’m happy to address that separately.
To be fair, lots of significantly older singles end up not being as strongly connected to the yeshiva world, which is why the data of actual yeshivish older singles might be skewed.
They tracked them so it doesn't matter if they aren't connected they were tracked.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that.
Then how can that data make sense? The vast majority of married couples I know from the Lakewood world have a 2-5 year gap in age (for several decades already), and I find it hard to accept that the average won't show such a gap. The yearly growth is also strongly supported in numbers which outweigh other minor considerations (such as more boys going OTD, or a slightly higher male birth rate,) so such a small difference seems highly suspect to me.
According to this study from AviChai https://avichai.org/knowledge_base/a-census-of-jewish-day-schools-in-the-united-states-2013-14-2014/ the growth rate is a little over 3%.
The NJ Health Data shows that the ratio of boys born yearly vs girls to white non-Hispanic mothers residing in Lakewood is close to 107 (the OU study is clearly flawed in this aspect).
And the study by Dr. Sokol showed that the average gap is only 2.2 years (which is quite reasonable in my experience).
So other than the claimed data from Adei Ad there is no support for the hypothesis that the age-gap causes more than 2% of girls to be single.
It took much arm-twisting but I was able to get someone to read to me (without permission) the claimed data which showed about 7% of women over 30 are single with no counterpart in the community (and twice as many women get divorced as do men). (I say claimed because how do I know they didn't cherry-pick data?)
However, it is very possible that the solution is in other communities. I just read yesterday that there are thousands of older single bachurim in Israel. I never heard of that previously. However, I did hear many times about the famous bachurim shidduchim crisis in the chasidish community.
How can which data make sense?
Do you have evidence of this?
Just anecdotal evidence from personal experience.
I feel like in order to understand the impact of that phenomenon, if true, we would need numbers. But yes there will always be questions on data. I’m not saying the study and those numbers are dispositive, it was just the only collected data I am familiar with and it seems to suggest the age gap crisis is a myth.
But apparently there is more data that I haven’t seen yet and I’m excited to see it!
Data is flawed.
Don’t you use data to support some arguments in this piece? Are you being sarcastic?
As someone who lives in this community, I don't believe that survey.
It wasn't a survey but a census of thousands of grads from 2005-2011 from around the country.
Yeah. That’s my other problem with the article, they make it seem like the Rabbis, at least in my impression is that they, like yourself, would rather rely on instinct based on anecdotal evidence without looking at the data.
Ash,
Thank you for bringing this topic up and providing links to source data.
I will start from the end: I disagree that the age gap theory is correct and that reducing the age gap will do anything. I strongly agree with Slifkin that this is another "radical societal change" experiment that will fail.
Age gap theory is one aspect of a multifaceted issue, not a definitive or exclusive explanation.
1. Let's start with "simple math."
Turns out it is not so simple.
Let's start with http://www.shidduchcrisis.com/math-explanation.html
TL;DR
The mathematical model provides an oversimplified framework to frame the Shidduch Crisis, but falls short of a comprehensive explanation.
It oversimplifies complex human dynamics with rigid demographic assumptions, lacks robust data transparency, and ignores essential sociocultural contributors.
Specific examples:
Fixed 5% growth rate:
The model assumes a constant year-on-year population increase of 5%. In reality, demographic
growth is subject to fluctuations due to socioeconomic factors, immigration, and changes in
fertility patterns.
Uniform age-gap:
The study treats the age-gap between boys and girls in the marriage market as a fixed or
dominant norm. While trends may exist, age gaps vary by family, background, and individual
circumstances. Social behavior is far less uniform than the model assumes.
Complete participation:
It implicitly assumes that almost all boys and girls from each cohort actively participate in the
shidduch system simultaneously and in the same way, which is unrealistic.
The Avi Chai Foundation used school enrollment data to estimate gender ratios and growth. However:
School enrollment doesn't always reflect birth demographics, especially when families opt to homeschool, move abroad, or send children to non-mainstream schools.
The data reflect students enrolled many years later (ages 6-18), potentially introducing bias due to differing dropout rates or migrations.
The assertion that the Chasidic community has the "opposite problem" (more unmarried boys) due to different age-gap norms is made without adequate empirical proof. There is no clear data provided measuring actual marriage rates by gender or age in these communities.
2. There is another study ( https://yeshivaworld.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TSI-CCR-LZavgan-1.pdf) that also focuses on the age gap exclusively. The reason why I am highlighting it is because of this:
It goes through all the same steps as http://www.shidduchcrisis.com/ and comes to the same erroneous conclusion ( i.e., age gap is THE reason )
However, according to this study, ~ 25% of people in Lakewood are NOT married:
From the Mainstream Yeshiva (Yeshivish) sample:
Total Yeshivish respondents: 3,813
Breakdown by gender:
Female respondents: 2,729 (72%)
Male respondents: 1,067 (28%)
(A small % did not disclose gender; we will exclude those.)
Marital Status (for 3,807 Yeshivish respondents for whom status is available):
Married: 2,762 → 73%
Never Married: 970 → 25%
Separated/Divorced/Widowed: ~75 → ~2%
+++++++
Assuming the survey is representative of the rest of the community, then:
This means:
~ 25% unmarried women and ~ 18% unmarried men;
A few questions:
Why % of women so high? The study is predicting ~ 2.5% and 6.2%
Why are so many men unmarried? The study is predicting 0.
Both of these studies have a huge problem: Both studies Neglect Sociocultural Factors
The model ignores other important factors contributing to why people remain single, including:
* Personality compatibility and emotional preparedness
* Mental health issues
* Financial situations
* Level of religiosity or hashkafa differences
* Social networking reach
I could go on, but since this is becoming too long to read already, I want to stop with criticism for now :)
_____________________________________________
The study that, in my opinion, actually starts to address what is going on is this one: https://18forty.org/podcast/channah-cohen-the-crisis-of-experience/
This study debunks the idea that the age gap is THE reason for the current crisis; it is part of a problem, but a very small one.
I will stop here for now to get any feedback.
Thanks for reading :)
Important to keep in mind that just because there are other issues besides the age gap causing less then 100 percent marriage rate, that isn't proof that the age gap isn't causing 6-8 percent female surplus.
This is besides the humiliation the current system causes even to those who do get married.
We need to do what we can, the age gap can be dealt with. what is your practical, pragmatic suggestion for dealing with the other issues?
Daniel,
" that isn't proof that the age gap isn't causing 6-8 percent female surplus."
I agree it is PART of the problem, and even if we agree that it is 6-8%, it is a small part of the problem.
Here are my thoughts on the matter:
Per @Ash, there is a 3:1 ratio of women to men, which is 200% more ( not 6-8% ); The problem is MUCH MUCH MUCH worse.
This is evident from the fact that, according to the OU study, 25% of women and 18% of men are unmarried.
"We need to do what we can, the age gap can be dealt with. what is your practical, pragmatic suggestion for dealing with the other issues?"
The first step is to define the core issues and then start addressing them correctly. I think that https://18forty.org/podcast/channah-cohen-the-crisis-of-experience/ began this process.
Let me give you some ideas(in my order of priority):
* Involve actual professionals, not rabbis or askanim who have zero knowledge of how demographics work.
* OTD rate
- Men, in general, tend to be less "religious" than women. From anecdotal evidence of the experts, the rate is at least 20% ( and that is in "nice" homes)
* https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/why-haredi-women-outshine-men-in-academic-studies/?utm_source=openai ( says 33% for haredim )
* Level of religiosity or hashkafa differences
What I mean by this is that seminaries create a vision of a husband, but only a tiny % of people can or even want to participate in this. This creates an imbalance in expectations, aka pickiness syndrome or virtue signaling by parents who want "the best boy."
* Social networking reach; aka yichus.
* Financial situations
* Personality compatibility and emotional preparedness
* Mental health issues
* Age gap
Another uncomfortable issue, what about the fact that at least 6% of men are gay ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/656708/lgbtq-identification-rises.aspx?utm_source=openai)
I strongly suggest listening to https://18forty.org/podcast/channah-cohen-the-crisis-of-experience/
Just to continue the conversation.
P.S. I recommend this book; it might not change your views, but it will challenge many preconceived notions.
https://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Few-Education-Princeton-Economic/dp/0691163510/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3SGFODK32QLTU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.x8br3x5aU9SIITQQDee-Y8X5JhJD5pWM1Y0sMJQ9JrOcnZUvXZbTwCwLkuJUcinTFq8_zwyI5hAOD8cCINNdZuJQlQuRDQMK7yGx5eYtbZbb3XnyV-e2D-6b_ZT0X-K7peihKlr_N1VDhBEJgMGE7v9PJkPmDZz0CULLXXuSI_Zl7Xo7wor_Do9oub2oGvUkRyA6AapvazVM4ofd1sb43H0-ipLNe4JcFLH9kPB8nMs.h-d07MHejGW262-MZFFyQEL9GfU0Jdfd3q0rZ4EQdZk&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+chosen+few&qid=1746040527&sprefix=the+chosen+few%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-4
In terms of what the seminary teaches, they are all privately owned If their customer base wants them to sing a different tune, they certainly will. the parents of the girls need to ask for that, but they haven't yet, to the best of my knowledge.
If a parent projects genuine Yashrus to their children from a young age, it will greatly protect them from the negative effects of seminary.
It's up to the parents to make this change.
Daniel,
"In terms of what the seminary teaches, they are all privately owned If their customer base wants them to sing a different tune, they certainly will. the parents of the girls need to ask for that, but they haven't yet, to the best of my knowledge."
That assumes the parent body wants the change. However, we cannot deny that in the last thirty years, the Orthodox( I include everyone in this category) movement has become more "Yeshivish" ideologically, and that implies certain realities.
Even if the parent body disagrees with this, it is still unrealistic due to the current religious hashkafa and the social pressures in our communities.
In one of his recent interviews, R Wein said it best: "We invented cancel culture."
"If a parent projects genuine Yashrus to their children from a young age, it will greatly protect them from the negative effects of seminary."
In my opinion, that is also unrealistic, considering the number of children that we have.
We wholesale outsource raising our kids to schools, which overall lean right.
"It's up to the parents to make this change."
This is possible in a society where non-conformist ideas are not labeled heretical(Slifkin, for example, or YU).
That is not our current frum society. Just like we outsource the raising of our children to school, we outsource a lot of our decision making to Rabbis ( Daas Torah ) ;
My 0.02, I know we are going off topic a bit :)
The only we I know of is DanielTzvi and Joe, if together we don't outsource shidduchim and decision making, then it won't, it's not easy but it's possible.
Joe,
Thanks for engaging, 6-8 percent reflects 50 percent of single women in the American yeshiva world still single in the 28-34 cohort.
The 3:1 ratio (or 2.3:1 ration based on my calculation) is of the ratio young men and women in the dating pool, not the percentage of those still single and it is certainly caused by the imbalances entry into the shidduch market of boys and girls and the subsequent lengthier process for the 85 percent of girls to get married vs the far quicker pace that 93 percent of boys get married., a important distinction.
The stats you quote from the OU study need qualification: What age bracket is it?
There is a team of top data professionals from the country working on the data.
OTD rate was measured by the Adei Ad census, it is very low (0.5 -1.5 percent, if I recall correctly) and not a significant part of this discussion.
The facts the above census discovered seem not to corroborate the anecdotes you are mentioning (at least in the American Yeshiva world).
Closing the age gap brings more boys (due to population growth and male to femal birth ratio) into the pool, which helps even if the gap is caused by men being gay although I must mention that the available data doesn't show that 6 percent of the men in the American Yeshiva community are single due to that.
I will conclude by pointing out that besides listening to the podcast (which I did a while ago) and reading that book, I still think the current tireless, selfless, research-based efforts are the most practical way forward for the American Yeshiva community.
With a teffilla that our collaboration and efforts to ease the suffering of so many bring the Yeshua needed in this Parsha.
Daniel,
"Thanks for engaging, 6-8 percent reflects 50 percent of single women in the American yeshiva world still single in the 28-34 cohort."
Can you please explain the math behind this?
"The 3:1 ratio (or 2.3:1 ration based on my calculation) is of the ratio young men and women in the dating pool, not the percentage of those still single"
I understood it that way.
"and it is certainly caused by the imbalances entry into the shidduch market of boys and girls"
This is where you lose me. I need to see the math behind these calculations.
Let's use simple numbers and assume there are NO other issues that exist, just the age-gap, then:
* Let's say in 2025, there are 10k women available, that means
* Applying a 2-year age gap, the men these women would marry were born 2 years earlier, in 2002, which was a smaller birth cohort (because the community is growing about 3.8% per year).
To account for that, we need to scale the male population down by 2 years of negative compounding growth:
* Male cohort size=10,500÷(1.038) ^2≈10,500÷1.077=9,749
That is a difference of ~ 4%, not 200%.
So, back to my original point, this shows a lack of men in the system, i.e., men went somewhere. Aliens did not come and snatch them all :)
"and the subsequent lengthier process for the 85 percent of girls to get married vs the far quicker pace that 93 percent of boys get married, a important distinction."
Let's assume these numbers are valid and that there are no other barriers to getting married(OTD, etc, etc ); this means that 15% of girls and 7% of men never marry ( in our hypothetical example above, this will mean 1.5k girls and 700 boys ); to me, the question is why?
"The stats you quote from the OU study need qualification: What age bracket is it?"
18- 81+, but in the context of shidduchim are, between 18 and 29
"There is a team of top data professionals from the country working on the data."
When they publish, will they also publish their names? will this be peer reviewed?
"OTD rate was measured by the Adei Ad census, it is very low (0.5 -1.5 percent, if I recall correctly) and not a significant part of this discussion.
The facts the above census discovered seem not to corroborate the anecdotes you are mentioning (at least in the American Yeshiva world"
This contradicts the Pew ( and other studies) study -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_derech that states: "A 2013 survey on American Jews conducted by the Pew Research Center, which included more than 500 Orthodox participants,[16] found that 52% of Jewish adults who were raised Orthodox were no longer Orthodox. When subdivided by age, it found that 17% of these are accounted for by those under the age of 30, 43% by those aged 30–49, 59% by those aged 50–64, and 78% by those aged 65 and above. Some experts think that the higher attrition rate in the older age groups is possibly "a period effect in which people who came of age during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s left Orthodoxy in large numbers."[17]"
A subsequent 2020 study found the attrition rate to be at 33%.[18] This lower rate may be due (at least in part) to the fact that in this study, the sample of adults who were raised as Orthodox Jews includes a larger percentage of people under the age of 30.[19]
True, I don't know how they define Orthodox vs how Adei Ad defined it. They might have looked at the right-wing orthodox.
https://www.jpost.com/magazine/between-worlds-533476 => " According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israeli haredim born in 1992 have a 10% chance of leaving the fold."
Seems like somewhere in between. 1 and 33%. The point is that it is not negligible, since men tend to do all the leaving.
"Closing the age gap brings more boys (due to population growth and male to female birth ratio) into the pool,"
It is certainly true that closing a gap WILL help, but it is THE solution.
"which helps even if the gap is caused by men being gay although I must mention that the available data doesn't show that 6 percent of the men in the American Yeshiva community are single due to that."
I think that some of these men will OTD and others will just never marry.
"I will conclude by pointing out that besides listening to the podcast (which I did a while ago) and reading that book, I still think the current tireless, selfless, research-based efforts are the most practical way forward for the American Yeshiva community."
100% with this, the key is "research-based efforts";
I am afraid that this is not the case; this is another case of top-down, Rabbinical class, pushing a societal policy without proper research and making informed decisions.
Let me know what you think of the book!
I will just summarize my points:
The formula to shidduch crisis is as follows:
Hashkafik misaligntment ( women are more religious than men) +OTD + "Social networking reach, aka yichus." + "Financial situations"+
"Personality compatibility and emotional preparedness" + Mental health issues ( 2.8% of people in the USA have autism, mostly boys ) + "Age gap + " males who don't want to marry." = shidduch crisis.
Looking forward to more feedback!
**OU CCR TSI (n = 1039 men; 1237 women)**
Percentage of respondents’ children who married in each “year in system”:
- **< 1 year** : 42 % men / 22 % women
- **1–2 years** : 36 % men / 37 % women
- **2–3 years** : 14 % men / 19 % women
- **3–4 years** : 3 % men / 10 % women
- **4–5 years** : 2 % men / 5 % women
- **5–6 years** : 1 % men / 3 % women
- **6–7 years** : 1 % men / 1 % women
- **7–8 years** : 1 % men / 3 % women
**BMG Internal Data**
- **< 1 year** : 75 % of their bachurim marry within the first year
- **≥ 1 year** : 25 % marry later (breakdown by subsequent years not disclosed)
---
*So each year:*
- Under OU data, 42 % of men vs. 22 % of women marry in year 1; 36 % / 37 % in year 2; etc.
- Under BMG, 75 % of bochurim marry in year 1 (vs. 42 % in OU), with the remaining 25 % marrying thereafter.
Shidduch-Pool Gender Imbalance Report
1. OU CCR TSI Findings (Table 12)
Time Spent in the Shidduch System by Gender
From the OU CCR TSI study of married yeshivish children:
Mean time in the system
– Men: 1.05 years
– Women: 1.73 years
→ Implied ratio
2. BMG Internal Engagement Data
BMG reports 75 % of their bochurim marry within 1 year (vs. 42 % in the OU data). Recalculating the male mean:
75 % at 0.5 yr, 25 % at
New male mean
3. Adding Birth & Population-Growth
Rather than a flat 14 %, we use a 3.8 % annual growth (compounded over each gender’s mean time):
Gender Raw mean (yrs) Factors Pool size
Men 0.74 × 1.05 (birth) × 1.028 (growth^0.74) 0.80
Women 1.73 × 1.069 (growth^1.73) 1.85
→ Revised ratio
4. Summary of Ratios
Scenario Ratio (Women : Men)
OU data only 1.65 : 1
+ BMG engagement 1.73 ÷ 0.74 ≈ 2.35
+ birth & realistic growth 1.85 ÷ 0.80 ≈ 2.31
5. Why This Matters
At any moment there are 1.6–2.3 women in the shidduch pool for every 1 man. That large surplus lets bachurim be highly selective, and:
Girls with any relative disadvantage (network, geography, résumé) are squeezed hardest.
Many feel forced to compromise on standards or resort to tactics they’d otherwise avoid, simply to get—and keep—a date.
This structural imbalance is a key driver of the “shidduch crisis,” making it crucial to explore timing-based interventions to rebalance the market.
Sources:
– OU CCR TSI “Table 12: Time Spent in the Shidduch System by Gender”
– BMG internal engagement data (75 % marry < 1 yr)
– 5 % male birth surplus, 3.8 % annual female growth compounded over mean times
Also this is not a radical change but a slight shift in mindset.
The changes are not drastic, the girls are being asked to delay beginning shidduchim from Chanukah after seminary to Shavous after seminary, which is more like a 5-month delay not 18 months as stated in this article.
This is important for the following reason: when the American Roshei Yeshiva approached R. Hirsch for guidance on how to deal with the shidduch crisis in America, he gave two pieces of foundational guidance, and that is in the interest of the solution being implemented and actually helping out the issue the solution should not 1) Be the same set of solutions that have been attempted but ended in failure over the past twenty years 2) Not be a drastic change to the current system.
Many other potential changes were brought to the table and R. Hirsch dismissed them as being unpractical because they were too drastic and would engender to much opposition from the community to be implemented.
The official report is still being prepared (you can email info@adeiad.org to get it when its ready) but for now please see below.
Census Methodology
Adei Ad conducted the first true census of every eighth-grade graduate (2005–2011) from multiple boys’ and girls’ schools in Lakewood, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Baltimore. Instead of a survey, each student was tracked from eighth grade through today via their classmates, capturing marital status (single, married, divorced/remarried) and those who left the frum system (OTD) or dropped out before twelfth grade.
Sample Sizes
Adei Ad tracked roughly 2,580 girls and 1,770 boys across tens of eighth-grade classes, yielding a deep, representative snapshot of our community’s married vs. single population.
Inclusive of Divorcees & OTD
Because this was a true census, the 7–8 percent female-surplus figure includes divorced/remarried men (who often marry the remaining single women - due to the current imbalance, widening the gap) as well as divorced/remarried women and those who left the community. Excluding those groups reduces the surplus to about 6–7 percent.
In other words, in the 28-34 age bracket, there are 15 percent single women and 8 percent single men.
Root Cause: Age Gap + Population Growth
Additionally I'm pasting the info I sent to others to answer their questions in case that may be helpful
Thank you for your questions.
There were three large studies on this.
1) The DAAAS study by Dr Sokol and Dr Rosenbach that you are referring to didn't show a age gap problem.
2) The OU study showed a age gap problem but the extent of it depends on different input into the models 2.5 -6.5 percent.
3) Recent Adei Ad data that was a census (not a predictive model like the two above) that shows a 6.5-7.5 percent surplus. This data is in middle of being prepared to be shared.
The Author of the first study, Dr Rosenbach, gave the following statement.
"By the way I did add this note to the doc so feel free to borrow this language in my name.
added on 4/17/25 * The OU and the shidduch initiative recently put out new predicted age gap theory numbers based on a lowered 2.5 year age gap, predicting a surplus of between 2.5 to 6.5 percent of women based on the age-gap theory. I could get on board with these lowered numbers where closing the age-gap a bit can help equal out dating and marriage opportunities by those small yet significant percentage points. Yet the dating opportunity discrepancy seems to be skewed more than that, indicating there may be other variables to assess as well."
This really needs a much longer conversation, but this is for starters. Efforts are being made to prepare the data for the public along with extensive documentation to explain to people the multitude of various, often complex factors that this topic includes.
This substack has some a lively discussion on this topic that may help clarify questions you have( I'm Daniel Tzvi) https://daastorah.substack.com/p/chareidim-finally-care-about-themselves
As well as here https://darchecha.substack.com/p/is-there-a-shidduch-crisis/comment/112107566
The 7-8 percent numbers of discrepancy between married men and women IN THE YESHIVA COMMUNITY in the 28-34 cohort (sorry for the caps lock - can't do italics) are from a census, not an actuarial model, so they will include the divorcees because divorced men end up marrying single women because of the uneven dating age gap, and pile up. without the divorced and OTD it is one percent less 6-7 percent female surplus.
That said, to reverse engineer the formula that caused the age gap we see here are some possibilities.
1) A 2.5 year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 103:100 boy to girl birth ratio (admittedly smaller then the national 105:100 ratio - but the OU study showed this ratio in our community and Wikipedia says this ratio is within range) = 7 percent female surplus.
2) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4.5 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 6.25 percent female surplus.
3) A 2.5-year age gap in marriage, coupled with a 4 percent yearly population growth and a 105:100 boy to girl birth ratio = 5 percent female surplus.
Because of the difficulty in knowing which of these models is correct, the retrospective census showing a 6-8 percent female surplus is so helpful.
>>Only you the krumme baal habas has to listen to the Eret yisroel Gedolim when it comes to the WZO
Actually no, Reb Moshe Hillel supports Eretz Hakodesh and directs them. (He asked someone I know to become a delegate.) Only now that Reb Dov came out against, he tells people who ask that 'we must follow the psak of the gadol hador' וד"ל. (Also, he is clearly afraid of the BMG and co mafia, as we see from his support for the girls part of this takana.)
Normalise my idea: get married at 17 - 19 and delay having children till age 22. The yeshivos will never promote this because they want to control young men by trapping them in poverty and debt slavery.
Right, nobody would think that the reason this isn't promoted is A. Yeshivos don't mix into people's private lives, they aren't Chassidishe Rebbes, and B. it is against Halacha.
A, false
B true
Not disagreeing with the ultimate conclusion.
But the 3:1 ratio is way overstated. Girls are running to shadchanim. Boys play hard to get.
And that gentlemen is called confusing cause and effect.
Begging for Brachos shows a lack of willingness and self confidence in exercising any Hishtadlus When you truly show that you are Noseh Bol Chavero and realize that the Shabbos table might be a great place to meet a Zivug then we. An talk about possible solutions to a system that truly ritualizes emotions and reduces your potential spouse to a Cheftza as opposed to a living breathing thinking Gavra