 CHAPTER
FIVE:Those Who don’t Fit the Model: Family Situations and Status
in Judaism and the Jewish World
3C. Woman Stands Alone: The Situation of the Single Woman
For two reasons, the situation appears to be worse for single Jewishwomen
who would like to marry, than for single Jewish men:
Firstly, at least subconsciously, women in general still
tend to be perceived people who are valued through their success in making
a family home for themselves. Thus, women on their own are more likely
to be perceived as failures, than men in a single state.
In addition, aspects of the image of the legendary carefree bachelor
playing the field, with a cavalier disregard for responsibility may well
still accrue. Moreover, it is often a positive image that will likely
counteract the more negative aspects of the status, such as loneliness
etc. For a woman, however, no such set of positive images exists - a woman
alone is likely to be seen as just that.
Worse still, many women are likely to internalise that negative image.
A very honest and sad self-portrait of a single middle-aged Jewish woman
is given in a heartrending article, “Standing Alone at Sinai:
Shame and the Unmarried Jewish Woman” by Rose Levinson in “Lifecycles”,
another excellent anthology published in 1994.
Here, she talks about the shame that attaches to the unmarried woman
who suffers from two major problems. In terms of the organised Jewish
community, says Levinson, the single Jewish woman is almost invisible.
She appears so marginalised, so peripheral to the organised community
institutions, so close to the bottom of the totem pole of Jewish priorities,
that she feels that she has no value in terms of the community. In addition
to this, her own self image is crippled by the internalised feeling that
she has been found unwanted by everyone. In a chosen people, she is unchosen,
unwanted, undesired.
A second reason that women perhaps find themselves in
a worse situation than men is that there are more of them around.
Here is not the place to go into the details of demography, but it appears
clear – at least for the North American community – that,
for a variety of reasons, there are more Jewish single women who want
to get married to fellow Jews than there are corresponding men. Speculation
about this phenomenon began to emerge in the early 1980’s and was
soon backed by research.
It was also one of the factors in the development of a phenomenon mentioned
in the previous chapter, namely: the appearance of a number of Jewish
dating services, often sponsored by communal organisations, trying to
grapple with the plight of the would-be-married-Jewish-single.
Finally, it is clear that the situation of Jewish singles
in the contemporary world has had to be reassessed.
Thankfully, many organisations in the Jewish world have started to do
that. Some have done so through initiating the aforementioned dating services,
while others have done so by major programmatic outreach designed to bring
Jewish singles into more contact with each other.
But there are those who suggest that the aim should not be merely to
try and turn Jewish singles into Jewish marrieds, essentially a contemporary
application of the traditional Jewish agenda. Rather, these advocates
would say that there has to be a major reaffirmation of the dignity and
the autonomy of the single Jewish person in their own terms.
It might be desirable to produce more Jewish married couples, but it
has to be recognised that, for reasons of choice or for reasons of objective
reality, there will always be many Jews of marriageable age in the modern
world who are not married. They should therefore not be considered or
treated as failures who did not make it to the final post, but rather,
should accepted as a legitimate element within the Jewish community
- men and women alike.
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