Yated Shidduch Forum 7/2/21: I Keep Getting Shidduch Calls About My Friends. Why Does No-One Trust Me?
Question:
For the past few months, I have received numerous phone calls about shidduch references for my friends whom I have not seen or spoken to ever since the coronavirus hemorrhaged all of our social lives. Even after I say nice things about my friends, the girls or their mothers decide that the prospect is not shayach simply because I don’t have 100% up-to-date information on the bochur. Seriously? Why isn’t learning about his middos tovos enough information just to say yes for a first date? Not even a Zoom date?
Meanwhile, I continue to see shidduch résumés of singles being posted in WhatsApp groups where the most up-to-date résumés feature references that include the phone numbers of rabbonim who were niftar during the height of the pandemic between Nissan and Sivan 5780.
Perhaps the time has come to do away with or restructure the manner in which shidduch references are checked? If you want to get to know your spouse, why must you engage in excessively wasteful investigations rather than simply getting to know the other party in a natural face-to-face way? And for every shidduch suggestion that you reject over such nonsense, do you realize how much time you wasted by playing phone tag with the other party’s references who have their own busy lives?
I would love to read the panelists’ opinions on this matter.