(October 26) Barbara Sofer says that her cell phone rings in her
dress pocket as she is stooping to examine the soup-bowl-sized jellyfish washed onto the
shore.
What are you doing at the beach at a time like this?" asks her
incredulous friend, on the line from New York. In her friend's mind, Barbara is sandbagged
in a safety room, gas mask dusted and ready.
Barbara writes: "Not that I'm indifferent. The cell phone is turned on because my son
has been doing reserve duty from the start of the riots. Even from the pretty shoreline,
the difficulties ahead look long and forbidding, something like the tentacles of the
medusa. I find myself apologizing for taking time off from the chronic vigil of war news
in an attempt to enjoy our usual Succot shore visit. I mumble something about the cycles
of tradition being a source of strength. "
So, too, Barbara admits an awkwardness in turning back to the matters of our daily lives
while she hears artillery salvos from her kitchen. Nonetheless, her Torah scrolls are
rolled back to the beginning, and she once again confronts the first commandment: be
fruitful and multiply.
Barbara continues: "I can never hear those words chanted without thinking of the
singles among us. Let's face it: our religious world isn't a felicitous place for
singlehood. Happiness is described as a groom gazing at his bride or as a mother of
children. Even if we have long realized that love is blind and that marriage is often an
eye-opener, in our family-centered world there's a stigma attached to those who don't have
a life partner."
She recalls how the many and multifarious difficulties of religious singles were painfully
discussed at a parlor meeting to which she was recently invited by Eden 2000, an
organization which provides activities and succor for such people.
Statistics confirm what we might have guessed: there are more singles and fewer marriages
in the Jewish world than there were in decades past. About one out of five Jews is single
and the numbers are rising. In California, for instance, in 1997, 87% of those 18-29 were
single. Okay, that's California. What about Israel? The latest survey I could find was
1996, 50% for men, 29% for women, both up 6% from a survey three years earlier. In
contrast to a recent Time magazine cover story claiming that many women are choosing the
single life, religious singles want to get married, according to the Eden 2000 organizers.
They want children, too. In a US TV documentary about women having babies on their own,
nine of the 11 women featured were Jewish.
Barbara adds: "WE MARRIED folks secretly harbor our own
ambivalence. Singles, we conjecture, don't want the responsibility of marriage: they're
lazy, self-indulgent and psychologically impaired. If they would just shape up, at least
if they stopped complaining about how exhausted they are, they would surely find someone.
"
Naturally, Barbara says, she and others assume they desire our advice on exactly how to do
that. "I felt shame about being single," confessed a relieved newlywed at the
parlor meeting. "You have no idea how free married people feel to dispense advice to
singles. They fearlessly approached the most intimate of topics, whether they knew me well
or not. Imagine telling someone that you should compromise and wake up every morning next
to someone you neither love nor respect."
So much for own hubris, she remarks.
She then asks: "Why aren't singles getting married?"
One approach, she says, is that single people are incapable of doing
so. Various types of relationship therapy are recommended, from psychoanalysis to
short-term romance coaching, and specialized drills in moving from dating to engagement to
marriage. Sociological theories also abound on the reasons the number of singles has
grown. Women, some claim, want to "marry up," and finding a better-educated
partner is hard for women who are so well educated. (New York Jewish Week writer Sandee
Brawarsky has even written a book called How to Meet Men as Smart as You Are).
Others say modern men are obsessed by looks, that even the ugliest man believes he
deserves a beautiful wife.
And still another theory is that Jewish men and women are evolving into non-suitable
mates, that women seek self-fulfillment and equality while men want compliant homebodies.
While speculation goes on, another survey shows that meeting someone through family and
friends still remains the best way of finding a life partner - above singles' bars, and
she supposes, singles' synagogues.
At least we can do something about that. Rare should be the Shabbat meal where singles are
not invited, or the week when we didn't pass on a phone number.
Barbara concludes her commentary by saying:
"Next week's parshat Noah, celebrating the march of couples
into the ark is a good place to start. Even as we recognize the need to support singles,
we have to stop treating them as disabled, or "socially challenged."
"Singles aren't accorded grownup roles in most of our communities, and rarely do we
expect them to reciprocate our hospitality or help out. The beginning of the year is the
customary time for community reorganization. Unhappily, as singles get older, they have a
tendency to move out of the religious orbit to find a world more amenable to their status.
In addition to changing our own patronizing attitudes and fostering activities for
singles, we need to offer singles positions of community leadership in synagogues, and
specifically in benevolent organizations.
"Singles who fantasize that they will have more time for doing hesed when they are
married with children should think otherwise. Working in a soup kitchen, helping new
immigrants,
raising money for a charity, or volunteering at a hospital are good ways to develop the
qualities needed for marriage. "
Besides, she adds, what a fine way to meet someone with an equally giving heart.
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