First we had the kids at risk crisis, then the bugs in the water crisis, then there were bugs in everything healthy, green and leafy crisis, the Indian hair sheitle crisis, the shidduch crisis, the visiting day crisis, the yeshiva tuition crisis and so on. It seems that every issue facing the frum community becomes a crisis – that is if those issues are interesting enough to gripe about at the shabbos table – what will the next frum crisis be?
The Divorce Crisis: Already on the rise, young couples are getting divorces more than ever, it’s not talked about much, but many couples rush into marriage fearing that they will never get married and therefore settling to communal pressure to settle and hoping that love will eventually form between the two of you. Frum leaders fear the divorce crisis so much that they cover it up, because for so long the “shidduch” system has worked and frum couples had a lower divorce rate than everyone else. This may also be called the ridiculously short marriage crisis.
The Chumra Crisis: Chumras are getting out of hand writes one reader on Hashkafa.com and suddenly the Coffee Room, Imamother and the readers write column in the Yated are filled with stories of people never actually finding bugs in strawberries and just peeling them because everyone else was doing it. Double Glatt meat is hard to find, heimishe cholov yisroel milk is super expensive after all the back round checks that go into finding really frum and heimishe cow milkers and shuls that allow women into them at all are blacklisted by many shidduch investigation companies.
The Tznius Crisis: The internet couldn’t be banned and suddenly the frum community finds itself in a dizzying fall from its pre-internet days. Women are suddenly wearing red, denim and other colors so untznius that the rabbonom never thought to ban such pritzus in the first place.
The Out of Town Crisis: Fed up with New York attitude, frum families are leaving New York in droves for places like Texas, Florida and California creating a massive brain drain, Lakewood finally loses its status as Ir Hakodesh as the new Lakewood branch in Montana is going strong due to its off the grid location far from the pritzus filled beaches of New Jersey. Monsey is empty and even Brooklyn seems a little less holy as all the holy people have left for greener pastures and cheaper rent. How will we retain a frum learned population in New York when no one who’s actually frum and learned can afford to live there?
The Gay Shidduch Crisis: With a new found openness in the frum community, the frum gay community is thriving, but unfortunately as with the hetero community there is a shidduch crisis. It appears that there are too many bears and not enough femmes to go around. Short, fat balding Jewish men are said to be in high supply, but their feminine metrosexual counterparts are usually not as frum and thus the gay shidduch crisis is on.
The OU Hechsher Crisis: One day someone over at KAJ wakes up and realizes that really frum so called heimishe people are aiding and supporting the modern orthodox movement. Not only are we frummies supporting chillul Hashems like Young Israel type shuls with low mechitzas and mixed kiddushim, but we are also going against halacha by supporting NCSY which allows coed events, women singing and pritzus in the name of Kiruv. Small frum hechsherim with barely legible Yiddish on their very small emblems rise up and boycott the OU and suddenly really frum people ask questions like “do you eat OU” similar to the way they would ask if you “keep shabbos” or not. The OU hires Lipa Schmeltzer to make a music video showing how frum their mashgichim are.