Depending on your hashkafic back round, the following items may or may not hurt your chances of finding a good shidduch, . I have heard about the table cloth thing for years – you know, if your family doesn’t use a white table cloth you’re out, but no one has actually confirmed this for real – causing me to place it in the urban legend stack. Now if your parents were baal teshuva or if you went to school with a wrinkled bais yaakov uniform – those are real issues that may cause your shidduch market value to fluctuate.
Baal Teshuva ancestry: If your frum from birth blood doesn’t go back at least 3 generations your chances at a good shidduch could be hurt. Your family must have some shtetl fantasy literature stating that someone related to you was an Illuy (prodigy)
College degrees: Do either of your parents have college degrees? This means that they were bitul torah for money, unless they are wealthy enough to buy you a good boy, you are screwed.
Non-hemishe brand products: If a shadchan were to come to your house and find secular branded products your shidduch market value could be reduced due to your lack of support for frum companies no matter how expensive the products are.
Off the derech family members: Did your kollel learning brother go off the derech and end up at shaya cohens one year? You may want to cover this up somehow.
TV: did your family own a TV at some point? Did they ever lie on a school application about it? Polygraphs may be necessary.
Play Dates: Did you have coed playdates when you were a child, deep discounts in your future prospects due to this. You’re like used goods by now.
Tongue Clicking: As any true bas torah knows, constant tongue clicking is what constitutes a “good girl” midos are nowhere near quality tongue clicking.
Chesed: All chesed claims will be checked to make sure that no tips, payment or free food was received in return. Walking to the hospital on shabbos must have been mesiras nefesh, 5 miles each way to suffice for the gaiva that you undoubtedly had when you told your friends about your bikur cholim and chesed you did. HASC is way too modern and is severely looked down upon in the yeshivish community.
Bais Yaakov uniform: Was your uniform always in perfect shape, we will check old pictures to make sure it was in the best condition and worn in a most tznius way. I am sure you have all heard about the tzaras many mothers had to deal with when they find their daughters looked like Asian schoolgirls.
Facebook: Unless you are a kiruv rabbi, you have no excuse to be on facebook. If you happen to be on facebook you may want to make sure that you are fans of gedolim and kosher Jewish music and that none of your friends are of the opposite sex.
Saw You At Sinai: Sure everyone knows someone who got married from saw you at Sinai, but we know those people were desperate enough to throw away their shidduch market value by not having true emunah and going to the treife zachen of the internet. Being forced to put up a picture that could be copied by anyone you are set up with is terribly unztnius.
Color: Do you wear any color besides gray, blue or black? You’re in trouble then.
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{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
very sad
Sigh. When I’m being cynical (as I am now, I have a headache) I wonder about the craziness of this world. In particular, I wonder who is crazier – the person who actually lives this way and thinks this all is normal “I might be 300 pounds and look very odd, but come on, I do have some standards, I can’t be expected to marry a girl who went on playdates as a child…” or the person who knows how insane this all is, yet continues to live as an OJ. Just saying.
There are tons of OJs who are not BSC and HTT.
BSC ? HTT?
Holier Than Thou, Bat $h!t Crazy.
Even the ones who are not BSC, they enable them if you know what I mean.
a sad state of affairs. Case in point re Baal Teshuva Ancestry category: when I got married my ffb (now ex) in laws told me to tell everyone in my new community that I went to Bais Yakov for HS (someone received a good education in public school and then sacrificed everything to become frum? – Shh! – don’t let that secret out!) lol
:^( That’s just plain sad, frumgoth.
true, but I think they meant well – trying to protect me (and their future grandchildren!) from the closed minded attitude out there
I hope that your next husband and his family accept you as you are. My frum Hungarian relatives are lunatics about what others think, as well. I do my best to make them crazy.
Yup, and it’s good to know that their are some “FFB but normal” people out there. As for your relatives, give them a run for their money!
My in laws treat us as if we’re not even related to them. They’re embarassed of us. Even the grandkids:( And we live across the street from them!
a few more things that can hurt shidduch market value:
The kind of hat your father wears (must be Black, not straw, etc)
For a girl, not only what size she wears, but what size her mother is.
No joke, people that i know who have kids entering the shidduch scene have been asked these questions
I fail to see the problem by checking her out first. Even tosfos states the main thing by shidduchim according to people is the looks of the gal. To the fact of checking out her mother i give a bonus point.
Well then my shidduch value must be zero:) Good thing I’m married!
Can someone please explain to me what the problem with a non-white tablecloth is?? I was raised in frum family and we often had (and have) coloured tablecloths for Shabbos.. Is there some sort of significance of having a white tablecloth? And what does it have to do with Shiduchim?
I used to think there was a reason for white tablecloths. Then, I was at my Rebbi’s house (in Lakewood) and he did not have a white tablecloth. I think there is some sort of reason, I don’t know what it is but it can’t be that important.
My wife puts these beautiful Provencal print table cloths down for Shabbos. I definitely think that they’re more Shabbosdich than the white ones. White is fine, but give me a beautiful, colourful print any day.
I wore gray all over Lakewood, people wondered what was wrong with me…
Way to go. I wore a multi-coloured striped shirt in Oak Park, and received all sorts of sarcastic remarks about it. It amazes me how people want to distill frumkeit down to the colour and type of clothing you’re wearing. Next time I am back in one of the ultra-shtark choods, I am going to rock a zoot suit, Hawaiian shirt, and a spudick. Whoever questions it, I’ll give the standard answer “It is my family’s minhag”.
Stick to the north of Oak Park hoods:), I myself call South Oak Park, Little Lakewood.
I scored a whopping 0% chance. I added it up twice, too.
btw, my mother used a lovely blue tablecloth – from the end of a bolt of fabric, (the ends were sewn up by my sister) We had 8 kids….but I guess that doesn’t count toward my shidduch score.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
Groucho Marx
Earth to Yechiel…what does this have to do with the topic at hand? Or is this a clever metaphor for “what does any of this BS have to do with making a marriage work?”
dont forget support if ur parents cant or wont support u just forget it! and this goes for learning and college too for all u learning haters!
The shidduch system not all of it but most of it is complete B.s. I know your exaggerating but there is some truth to this.
Honestly, my family has all if not more of these so-called “defects”. While my family finds this aspect of the shidduch system laughable, we actually really respect the shidduch system as an appropriate way for yeshivish people to date.
For my sister, who went to BJJ, was yeshivish since her bat mitzva, and aspired to marry a full-time learner who would become gadol hador, the shidduch system was the only way to go. But my parents BT status, “chilled out” frumkeit of the family(i.e movies, lots of people magazine,and college was required), and lack of money definitely hindered my sister from getting the kind of guy she wanted. But because my sister really wanted the kollel type of guy–not just wanted it because that is what all yeshivish people want these days–I think she was so successful in getting what she wanted surprisingly quickly. Also it helped that she married an out-of-towner, so her in-laws were not as judgemental about our background.
Posting comments on Frum Satire may also hurt your shidduch chances.
Good thing I’m married.