Chicago Shidduch Blog

My husband was speaking to a neighbor on the next block.  The neighbor was FFB Rabbi. He told him he was having a kiddush on Shabbos for his adult daughter even though she had a kiddush at the time of her birth. He may of explained more at the time but I wasn't there. A few months later his daughter was engaged. Another conversation came up about our daughter. We are BT's and at the time of her birth, she had to stay in the hospital with complications. The first year of her life was a blur. I don't even think we knew to have a kiddush. So , with the encouragement of our neighbor we made a kiddush for her. The Rav made a short speech about this custom. Everyone gave us brochos for her. A few months later she was engaged. When the shidduch group grew, so we made a joint kiddush for the births of many of our adult daughters. Some had them at birth, some didn't.  The results were productive. I made my second daughters kiddush at home. After shul about 12 couples cam...

If you open up any jewish newspaper or magazine over the past few years, you've likely read about the "shidduch crisis" and how extremely painful it is for singles and for their families. So-called "experts" have cited data showing that there will be a large number of girls every year who cannot find their husbands as there aren't enough eligible young men on the market. These experts, however, left out a few demographics. For example, the wonderful organizations that do "outreach" and other community work often deal with conversion and spiritual growth of jews, allowing them to return to their roots. For the last 20 years, the numbers of returnees are staggering. Thus, the baal t'shuva world consists of more men than women. Additionally. many boys are marring older girls, as at least 15% of couples consist of a wife who is older than her husband. From the beginning of time, Hashem created exactly the right number of boys and girls. Perha...