Life of Yeshiva Guy

Note: I must apologize in advance for the pretentious writing style used. I feel that due to the weighty nature of the topic at hand, any attempt to deal with it in an offhand manner would only serve to detract from its weightiness.

It is deep, and searing. Elemental, in ways I will not, cannot, describe, but those of you who have experienced this sort of pain can understand, and know all too well how to relate to it.

I speak of real, true emotional agony. Boruch Hashem, many go through life without experiencing this. Indeed, even the people who do occasion encountering this emotion more frequently, often enough shelve it deep in the closet of their minds, where they dust it off and examine it only twice, thrice per decade. This is out of necessity, more often than not. For after all, who among us can stare into that abyss for long?

The pain I speak of, and for, is not specific. It has no name, nor are there any criteria by which it can be defined. It is better this way, I think. It should not be diminished by pithy tags or convenient handles.

There are many within our community and many without who know these sort of pains, R”L. Today, however, I speak of one sort in particular. Some of the people who have met with and live with this agony are the older single men and women in our community. They, perhaps more than anyone else, are most familiar with this foe. They do battle with it daily. No vacation, no sick leave, no Shabbos or Yom Tov.

I hear every day of yet another older individual not yet married.

I confess plainly, I cannot think about them. I dare not. Quickly, I file their names in the musty box that resides deep in my mind’s closet, and shove it back, back where it belongs. Back where I need not think about it, or them.

This is wrong.

Painful as it may be for me, for us, I refer back to elemental pain. I have, perhaps, experienced it on a passing level. Perhaps not. But they, these Yidden- and I do not adjectivize them here for lack of a suitable term; heroes does not do justice to the mountains they’ve climbed in life, or to the peaks they scale and stare at us from- they know no respite from it.

I do not point fingers. I do not say, I do not scream, “Why is everyone silent”?

In fact, we are not. True enough, the pages of Jewish dailies throughout the world are awash with the “crisis”. Good. Let them be. But the natural corollary, aside from the desensitization it engenders, is the alleviation of personal achrayus it provides. See; others are handling it. Shidduch groups abound. The Letters to the Editor page is rife with their plight. Look, it even has a name. Now we must be making progress.

Am I bitter, too bitter? Maybe.

Imagine how they feel.

The truth is, we think, that we are not at fault. We don’t know people, or if we do, we don’t know enough people. Anyway, single people, as everyone knows, are notoriously difficult to deal with. A professional shadchan is called for.

The facts, however, are not so. We do know people. And if the pain affected you, even just on a fractional level, you would be working the phones, all day, every day. Oib es tut vey, shreit men.

So I guess I am pointing fingers. We are all responsible. We are all culpable.

In closing, I ask only this:

Have you actually picked up the phone yet? Just once, have you lifted the telephone receiver and placed a call? Do you realize that people around the world are desperate to hear the ring of the phone, your ring? Anyone’s ring? I think it not hyperbolic to state that someone’s life may depend on it.

Make the call.

Someone’s life depends it.