Why, for God's sake, aren't they getting married?
By Tamar Rotem
Reproduced
with permission from Haaretz©
A group of religious women met several weeks ago in a rented apartment in
Jerusalem, armed with writing pads and pens, and tried to make matches. "The
idea was that each one of us most probably knows a few fellows whom maybe
she doesn't fancy for herself but could be offered to others," says Sharon
Mayevsky, 31, who participated in the meeting. "We made lists and we
cross-checked. A kind of data bank."
An observer from the side, who tried to add a comic dimension to the serious
atmosphere, got withering looks.
Private initiatives of this sort, alongside more "establishment"
efforts that have emerged in the past two or three years among the religious
public, testify to pressure and consternation in this society in the face
of what in the internal discourse is called "the unmarried woman problem":
There is a broad stratum of impressive, intelligent, educated religious career
women in their late twenties and their thirties - but not a bridegroom on
the horizon. This tension is increased by the rabbis' reflections over "where
we went wrong," in calls to strengthen the education that sanctifies
the institution of the family, in Internet forums and in articles in the religious
newspapers about the problem, from which the question arises: Why, for God's
sake, aren't they getting married?
For the first time in its history, the national religious society is grappling
with the phenomenon of the postponement of the age of marriage, which crosses
the boundaries of religious streams or affiliations.
"The delay of marriage that characterizes modern society has also come
to the religious public," says Hannah Kehat, the outgoing chairwoman
of Kolech, a forum for religious women.
According to the results of a survey that was commissioned by the organization
in 2001, only about half the religious girls are married by the age of 25.
Thirty percent of them remain single after the age of 30. The late social
researcher Prof. Dafna Izraeli, who conducted the survey, found that the marriage
patterns of religious women have in recent years become more and more similar
to those of secular women. It might have been expected - in the context of
the increasing extremism that has characterized religious society during the
past 20 years, and the move to separate education for boys and girls - that
these patterns would have begun to approximate those in ultra-Orthodox society.
However, the significant difference between the two societies, religious and
ultra-Orthodox, lies in the openness to higher education. According to Kehat,
"the survey found a high correlation between education and the postponement
of marriage." Therefore, she says, in the more strictly Orthodox sector
of religious Zionist society, where education is more tightly controlled by
rabbis and directs girls to colleges for women rather than to higher education,
it is possible to discern a counter-trend toward earlier marriages.
Institutionalized matches
Being single undermines the ideology of the sanctity of the family that
is at the center of religious of life, explains Kehat. As potential mothers,
women are the basis of the family. Therefore, while single men are perceived
as potential matches, single women are more a problem in need of a solution.
The social pressure reverberates in a frenzy of encounters with potential
mates mainly through blind dates.
As opposed to the matchmaking revolution on the Internet (see box), influential
rabbis like Rabbi Shlomo Aviner are calling for institutionalizing the figure
of the traditional matchmaker by spawning a network of volunteer matchmakers
in various locales. Organizations like Emunah (which is parallel to WIZO and
Na'amat in the secular sector) and Yashpe, which is identified with the Young
National Religious Party, have picked up the gauntlet. Shmuel Shai-Cohen,
an educator and former rabbi, has set up Cathedra, a forum of lectures for
single men and women that operates in Givat Shmuel, where a community of singles
is developing.
Shai-Cohen points to separate education as one of the factors in the single
observant woman problem.
"From 10th grade they stop going to Bnei Akiva [the religious youth
movement] and our young people don't have opportunities" to meet others,
he says. "The boys cut themselves off from the world, study in yeshivas
and after five years in the hesder [combined program of religious study and
military service], they don't exactly know what to do when they meet a girl.
How to talk to her. There's a problem of communication."
Kehat notes that "the yeshiva boys are more closed and limited than
the girls, who are involved in the world."
But there are those who dispute the definition of the phenomenon as a problem.
"Does defining the phenomenon of being unmarried as a problem answer
a social need?" asks Hagit Bartov in a critical article that recently
appeared in the organ of the religious kibbutz movement, De'ot ("Opinions").
"In the eyes of religious society, a woman who is not connected to a
family unit disturbs the social order, the sexual order and the religious
order, and therefore threatens the stability of society," she writes.
For Bartov, a single woman of 35, being single actually presents a challenge
that may spur change: "The phenomenon of single women pursuing a religious
lifestyle that does not involve a man poses a challenge and a possibility,
at least for those who are seeking social legitimization for the equal involvement
of women in Jewish life. Marking single women as a problem weakens the power
of this alternative."
It is easy to see why Sharon Mayevsky could be perceived as a "threat"
to the social order. She breaks down boundaries by her very nature: She is
an actress and teaches a course on feminist theater at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. She looks like a modern young woman from Tel Aviv. Not long
ago she appeared in the forum of "The Modest and the Charming" on
the Techelet religious channel on television.
Mayevsky grew up in Petah Tikva "in the most National Religious Party-ish
surroundings imaginable," as she puts it, and attended the Yeshurun religious
high school. When she came to Jerusalem after studying theater, her eyes opened.
The growth process she experienced characterizes an entire stratum of women.
First she discovered the area of the Old Katamon neighborhood, the heart of
the Jerusalem religious scene, to which the single religious women flock.
The nickname that has stuck to this neighborhood, "the Swamp," encapsulates
their parents' anxieties, and to a certain extent also those of the young
women who live there, about the difficulties of extricating themselves from
the neighbourhood. That is, life in single coziness contributes even more
to the postponement of marriage.
Hephzibah Shtull, who will be getting married next month, speaks from personal
experience about the process that takes place far from the observing eyes
of parents and of social criticism. The "process of becoming single"
is characterized, she says, mainly by intellectual development and the adoption
of a critical perspective. The young women who flock to the so-called Swamp
from the Jewish settlements in the territories or from the bosom of the religious
bourgeoisie are exposed in Jerusalem to a pluralistic religious way of life,
to leftist political ideas, to initiatives for meetings between Jews and Arabs,
to other streams of Judaism and so on.
`State of waiting'
This process begins with waking up to the understanding that being single
is not a temporary state of being. "From the age of 20 I always though
that this year it's going to happen. You live in a state of waiting,"
says Shalhevet Rubin, 29, a lawyer who lives alone in Tel Aviv. "Then
I thought, so, am I supposed to sit around and wait for him? In the meantime,
I haven't been planning my life."
Rubin represents a completely different social cross-section from Mayefsky.
She comes from Bnei Brak. In high school she attended an ulpanit (Orthodox
girls' school) in Tel Aviv, and she defines herself as strict with respect
to the observance of religious law. She prays every morning, wears only skirts
and elbow-length sleeves and plans - of course - to wear a head covering after
she is married. In other words, she is a strongly observant woman. But in
recent years she has opened up to the secular world, and now shapes her religiosity
solely through her feelings - "It wasn't forced on me."
The problem is that while she allows herself to enjoy the cafes, declares
that she loves culture (theater mainly) and celebrates her independence, the
boys she is offered and who suit her religious requirements - that is, graduates
of the hesder yeshivas - will not tolerate her lifestyle.
"One of the fellows I went out with said to me, if you're a lawyer,
how will you take care of the home?" scoffed Rubin. She realized that
in order to meet a suitable mate, she had to broaden her criteria. "Today
what is important to me is that the guy be a human being. I'm no longer measuring
how religious he is."
In recent years there has been a growing phenomenon of "mixed"
religious-secular marriages. Another, newer phenomenon is that women are marrying
men who are a few years younger than they are.
Rubin is not sorry that she has not married, like her 22-year-old sister.
"It suits me to come into marriage with a salary, that no one will dictate
to me and I won't live at my parents' expense." She says she is "not
into that feminist thing," as she puts it, but is an independent woman
who stands on her own. "We all want to live as part of a couple - that's
the aspiration. But today I value the fact that I can get up and travel abroad
without asking anyone for the money. Twenty-eight is an ideal age. I'm working,
I'm earning and it's important to me to advance in my career. It's convenient
for me not to have any commitments."
Last summer Rubin went to Peru for a few weeks on her own. However, she
admits that she too feels the social pressure: "It doesn't matter what
you do, how much you've advanced - they're going to say about you: She's alone
again."
The conflict of singledom is exacerbated as you become increasingly more
successful and independent, says Tali Berner, 28 and a half, who coordinates
the Laifer Center for Women and Gender Studies at The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. Berner, who is originally from Ra'anana, now lives in the heart
of the Swamp, on Hapalmach Street, and is pursuing a master's degree on the
education of Jewish women in the Middle Ages. "The fact that they aren't
married often pushes the single women to succeed at any price," she explains.
"They invest in their careers and try to be talented, successful and
popular in an attempt to compensate for this terrible flaw. But this doesn't
satisfy their society. They are warned not to be too successful so they won't
scare away the man."
Double message
One young woman related that her mother was warned not to send her to Midreshet
Bruria in Jerusalem, where the women have acquired a scholarly reputation,
so that she won't turn out to be too intelligent.
Says Berner. "For my girlfriends, a real relationship is more important
than the future of the Jewish people. They don't want to base their family
on an emotional lack like they saw at home."
Single women seem to have, however, an unequal relationship with a world
that is run in couples, says Hagit Bartov. "It's hard to be in a place
where most of the activity occurs in encounters of couples and children. And
tradition - there's nothing to be done about it - is transmitted through the
children."
The moral superiority displayed by those who find shelter in the institution
of the family disturbs Bartov, who is now working on her thesis about women
and the religious kibbutz. She grew up on Kibbutz Yavneh and was educated
there in a mixed high school where girls learned Talmud, a rare phenomenon
in those days.
"I took six matriculation units in Gemara, but when the higher yeshiva
opened in Yavneh, they didn't agree to accept the girls. In the ulpana they
also teach the girls to be like boys, to develop an orientation toward religious
achievement and also toward studies and science. They tell the girls that
they can do it. And then all of a sudden they tell them: You're not a boy.
There's someone else who is going to perform the rituals for you."
Bartov is afraid of sounding like she is challenging the institution of
the family. All in all she believes in relationships between couples, and
has seen "good relationships here and there," but does not believe
they should be entered at any price. "You imagine that someone might
block your development. If this relationship doesn't bring emotional strength
on its wings, what will it be good for?"
There is a kind of illusion, she says, that marriage is wonderful happiness
while being single is a bad thing. But no one opens their mouth to talk about
the difficulties that married couples have and the price they pay in order
to remain in such a relationship. "Maybe there's something sad about
saying Kiddush [the blessing over wine] for myself, but nevertheless I make
Kiddush. And to someone for whom religious feminism is important, this is
a big thing."
Without a doubt, unmarried women are a threat to society, says Hannah Kehat.
It is a breaking down of male hegemony and control. On the fringes of the
phenomenon there are older single women who are thinking about the possibility
of single motherhood. And there are also those who have found flexibility
in Jewish law and have had a child outside the framework of marriage.
"The approach in Kolech is not to encourage this," says Kehat,
"but to give it legitimization. You can't separate the political aspect
from the problem of spinsterhood. You can't stuff the feminist genie back
into the bottle."
1,688 nice Jewish boys and girls
DosiDate, "an easy-going, non-stressful matchmaking Web site especially
for Orthodox Israelis," as it is described by its founder Grayson Levy,
was set up nearly two years ago. Unlike ordinary matchmaking sites, applicants
are required to categorize themselves first according to their style of religious
observance - the item is labeled "hashkefa" (outlook) on the site
in English. They have to state whether they are "hafifnik" (casual),
"Modern Orthodox liberal," "Modern Orthodox machmir" (strict),
"Carlebachian," "Haredi Leumi" (ultra-Orthodox Zionist),
"Haredi" (plain ultra-Orthodox) or "Hasidish." It is not
clear why anyone would choose to style himself a casually observant Jew but,
according to Levy's figures, no less than 1,668 casual Jews have already signed
up.
About 13,000 singles have already registered with the site, among them about
5,000 women and about 6,000 men (the rest are divorced). The male edge on
the site punctures one of the single women's assumptions - that there are
no men. According to Levy, it is possible that the difference stems from the
fact that men have more access to the Internet.
Up until about a year ago Levy himself was single. He looked into sites
like JCupid and J-Date and Jewish matchmaking sites abroad and realized that
there was an unexploited niche here. A newly religious person from Canada
and a computer programmer by profession, Levy notes that "people want
the best. They are choosy."
Sexual questions with no answers
"Despite everything," says Tali Berner, relating to the phenomenon
of single religious women. "This isn't a `Sex in the City' revolution,
because we don't have sexual freedom."
Sharon Mayevsky is prominent among the group of young religious women who
are posing a challenge to their society with their flexibility concerning
various matters - above all sexuality. Unlike the others, however, she is
prepared to take the risk of talking about this uninhibitedly. "I feel
like at the age of 30, I'm invulnerable. I can allow myself to say things.
I allow myself to do everything. I don't envy anyone who feels responsible
for religious society."
In the question-and-answer forums on religious Internet sites like Kippa
and Moreshet, rabbis are asked innumerable questions - usually by boys and
young men, about the prohibitions on contact between men and women. The atmosphere
that develops from these questions is one of embarrassment. Many of the questions
are asked after the fact. The rabbis fend off the queries and try to strengthen
the young people and bring them back to the right path.
Mayevsky says that the rabbis don't know how to answer. Especially regarding
sexual matters. "At the age of 20 or 25, it's still legitimate to prohibit
contact, depending on how successfully the authorities have instilled the
consciousness in people that it is forbidden to touch. But I'm getting older.
I have a partner and and I want the relationship."
In every traditional society, the myth of the preservation of virginity
until marriage prevails. Among themselves, however, these women do not hide
the fact that they cross the lines . Mayevsky does not understand the point
of the prohibition at a more mature age. "My body, the thing with which
I'm supposed to be on the friendliest terms, because it is `I,' is so much
in conflict with itself because of the restrictions imposed by the rabbis."
One of the rabbis who answers questions at the Kippa site - Rabbi Shai Piron,
who heads the Democratic Yeshurun Ulpana - responds: "I can well understand
the physical need to realize a couple relationship at mature ages. I can respond
with empathy, with understanding of the difficulty, but there never will be
a change or any flexibility in Jewish law."
For her part, Mayevsky has gone one step further. At a conference held at
the Laifer center a few months ago, which dealt with the subject of niddah
(ritual impurity during and immediately after the menstrual period), she raised
her hand and asked, in front of an audience in which there were many single
women, why they weren't talking about ritual baths for unmarried women.
The daring question is still hanging in the air. This is the next debate.
"If someone is looking for the framework of Jewish law, she has to perform
the ritual bath if she has sexual relations," says Mayevsky. "I
don't understand why someone like that has to lie to the bath attendant and
say that she is married."
It is possible that in the past women like Mayevsky, Bartov or Berner would
have abandoned religious society and its restrictions. But young men, it turns
out, tend to leave the fold more.
"It would be easy for me to leave, but for me this is a familial matter,
a cultural matter. It's a question of belonging. I've come to the conclusion
that I will shape my life the way I want to," says Mayevsky. "Who
decides who is religious? Are we able to accept a thief or a murderer, but
unable to accept someone who has sexual relations? The murderer Yigal Amir
will always remain religious."