The Star-K’s shidduch incentive program was hailed as brilliant when it first hit the mean streets of Baltimore. You see, Baltimore was suffering from a brain drain of sorts, the guys all left to New York and New Yorkers have long deemed Baltimore girls with that fretful status of GU – Geographically Undesirable, that left an abundance of aging girls who weren’t spring chickens anymore stuck in Baltimore with no men to date them.
Along came the Star-K with their “get those old maids married” program in which they would pay shadchanim a bonus if they would set up girls who were older than 22 years and 2 months old (WTF is up with that age), the girls had to get married, although it was never stated whether they had to remain married (during hard times people get desperate for money) It was something like $2000-$2500 bonus to the person who set them up – I myself thought the man should have gotten the cash since he had agreed to a life of misery with this old maid, but the Star-K saw it as a shadchan problem, not a daters dilemma.
All good things must come to an end, the Star-K has paid out a total of $320,000 (no one can actually prove the money made a difference) for 134 matches – of course new girls have aged and since the age gap theory is still the number one cause of the shidduch crisis, these 134 matches barely scratched the surface of the aging single girl population in Baltimore.
If you get paid, you can make a shidduch before Purim and you will get some, but if not you’l just have to settle on the mitzvah of setting two people up who get married.
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