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From: moran@aluxp.UUCP (moran)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: n.r.j.singles
Message-ID: <276@aluxp.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 12:56:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: aluxp.276
Posted: Wed Aug 14 12:56:06 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 22:38:31 EDT
References: <273@aluxp.UUCP> <142@unc.unc.UUCP>
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> 
> In article <273@aluxp.UUCP> moran@aluxp.UUCP (Alan Lustiger) writes:
> >Recently, I had the (mis)fortune to attend Homowack Lodge Shabbos
> >Nachamu Singles Weekend (in the Catskills).
> >  . . .
> >===> The women there that are still college age seemed, on the whole,
> >to be doing nothing with their lives but looking for a husband. They
> >seemed to be hanging around until he shows up. (One memorable example
> >told me that she was taking off a year teaching, and then "I guess I'll
> >go to dental school." The reason that she was taking a year off was
> >to _avoid_ dental school!!)
> 
> Traditional Jewish values REQUIRE marriage and family.  Any life
> without this is considered inherently unsatifactory.  It's to be expected
> that unmarried Orthodox Jewish women would consider finding a husband
> to be highest priority in their lives (theoretically, this also should
> hold for the men).
>
Finding a spouse, I believe, _should_ be the highest priority. 
But not the _only_ priority. 
 
> >===> (equal time) Very, very many of the guys there were socially, well,
> >retarded.  This is no doubt due to growing up in an all-boys environment
> >in school. 
>
> An Orthodox friend once caught me reading a book about overcoming shyness.
> I confessed that I also had been observing a couple of my Italian-American
> friends to get ideas how to be more relaxed and sexy around women.
> He told me that shyness with women was a DESIRED trait for Jewish men.
> It keeps them out of trouble.
>
In a situation like this, someone's got to open their mouth first. Most 
women there weren't, and these guys likewise weren't.
 
> >===> (corollary to 1 and 2 above) The most interesting people I met
> >were either over 25 years old (and presumably with more learned social sense)
> >or they were not quite as religious as the average person or they
> >were ba'ale t'shuva (more "normal" teenage social lives).
> 
> Interesting that you consider "normal" to mean "like the gentiles".
> Your values seem to deviate severely from those taught in the Talmud.
> Mine, likewise, but then I'm a heretic (like most other American Jews).
> I assume you are at least nominally Orthodox, or you would not have
A
> attended in the first place?
> 
> 	Frank Silbermann

I put "normal" in quotes exactly to mean "like the average American (gentile)".
This does not mean that I like it, but having gone to college and now
being in the "real world" I want a wife who I can talk to intelligently,
and I assumed that these weekends are the least of all evils as methods
for meeting her.       

There are alternatives for the more right-wing Orthodox, namely, going
the shadchen route. I don't think that there is anything wrong with that.
But it ain't for me (unless, chas v'sholom, I get desperate :-)). I
think that there is a correlation between the shyness of the guys there
and their frumkeit, so I think that the matchmakers would be better for
B
them.

But it seems to me that people who go to singles weekends accept a "given"
that they are going to have to be more sociable in order to meet people.
That's why it bothered me that the guys weren't (though, of course, that
meant less competition :-)).

		Alan Lustiger ..aluxp!altuxb!ail