What color is your Shabbat tablecloth? Does your mother stack her dishes on Shabbat? These are questions you might be asked if you begin to date in the frum community, though they are not, according to Dr. Michael J. Salamon, the author of a new book on the growing problems in the shidduch (matchmaking) system in the orthodox community, a useful or responsible way to screen potential mates.
 
Written from the perspective of a frum psychologist, The Shidduch Crisis, published by Urim, will be a breath of fresh air for many religious Jews surprised and dismayed by the increasingly rigid rules of shidduch dating that have been slowly filtering in from the Charedi community. The book, already a bit of an underground classic among the young and marriage minded, looks at the shidduch system and tries to analyze its failures in a concrete and helpful way. Never does the book criticize the institution of matchmaking, but it does ask how we can improve the system, whose failures the author documents through statistics and personal stories, some of them as funny as they are chilling.
 
The Shidduch Crisis (including the appendix of common questions and the correct answers) is short and to the point. It is written as an essay, but an always engaging and entertaining one. Dr. Salamon intersperses his commentary with true dating stories which he then analyzes, always returning to the same point: If we cannot trust our children to choose a marriage partner for themselves, how can we think them ready to raise children of their own? The infantilizing of young couples, as well as the oversimplification of a person's goals, needs, and desires, is at the root of the shidduch crisis. Proof of the crisis is the ever growing singles population, as well as the religious community's rising divorce rate.
 
Although there has been much talk lately of the marriage crisis in the Jewish community, very few of the numerous books and articles have focused on the religious community, and even fewer have made concrete suggestions as to how we can improve the situation. Dr. Salamon's book with its common sense approach to dating and marriage, and its easily implemented suggestions for how we can ease and improve the dating process for ourselves and those around us, is a must read for anyone who has been, is, or will be involved in the shidduch system.
 
This review was written by Gabriella Elias-Bachrach

Published by Urim Publications. www.urimpublications.com

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