Traveling panel will focus on ways the Orthodox community and its members can enhance the lives of single men and women.
Many Orthodox American single men and women feel alienated from the broader Jewish community, which may treat them as inferior because of their marital status.
This was one of the conclusions of the recently released “The Challenges of Singlehood Among American Orthodox Jews” study conducted by the Orthodox Union’s Center for Communal Research (CCR). The CCR’s mission is to help the OU and beyond to better understand and serve the Jewish community through data.
Coined the “crisis of experience” by The Shidduch Center of Baltimore’s executive director Rabbi Shlomo Goldberger, the majority of single study participants agreed that negative communal attitudes and treatment of single community members represent their greatest challenge during singlehood.
The study was published in anticipation of the yamim noraim, a time for religious and interpersonal reflection and self-improvement, with the aim of elevating communal support of single men and women. In order to amplify the study’s findings, the OU is promoting a serious public dialogue about the crisis of experience. In the days leading up to Rosh Hashana, OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer, motivational speaker and advocate for single community members Tzipora Grodko, and former applied researcher at the Center for Communal Research Channah Cohen will lead engaging panel discussions in Florida and Maryland, followed by a livestream broadcast from New York on Tzom Gedaliah.
“When people talk about the ‘shidduch crisis’, they actually mean two completely different things, according to Rabbi Goldberger,” says Cohen, who will serve as the panel moderator. “One issue is the ‘crisis of process’, meaning how people date, for example, whether they have sufficient access to dates, do shadchanim work, is there an age-gap issue demographically that’s preventing some people from getting married? The other issue is the ‘crisis of experience’, which is a feeling among singles that as long as they’re unmarried, there’s no place for them within the Orthodox community.”
The CCR’s mixed-methods study included a quantitative, 25-minute survey taken by over 2,300 single participants that was disseminated through eight major Orthodox dating platforms and websites such as Partners In Shidduchim, SawYouAtSinai (including YUConnects) and The Shidduch Center of Baltimore, among others. In addition, approximately 50 single men and women, and about 50 shadchanim and community leaders were extensively interviewed.
Cohen, who was one of the researchers, notes that many single people feel completely invisible in the Orthodox community, particularly after age 25, and especially at shul.
Cohen says, “Single community members say, ‘At work I sit at the head of a board table and run presentations and everyone says I’m still so young, I have my whole life ahead of me, I’m professionally accomplished. Then I go to shul and people view me as a nebach because I’m not married.’”
Tzipora Grodko never imagined she would become an advocate for single community members. The 29-year-old from Monsey, New York, herself unmarried, holds an LMSW and is a transformative coach while managing Aim Hire, a nonprofit that helps provide employment with dignity to seasoned professionals ages 40-plus that have been unemployed or underemployed for 18 weeks. Inspired by her friends and acquaintances and the hurt she says they continually experience in their communities, Grodko gave her first speech at Monsey’s Beis Medrash Ohr Chaim in March on “Things Shadchanim Should Know.” Her presentation was uploaded to YouTube; within four days it garnered almost 6,000 views and she received overwhelmingly supportive feedback from parents, single men and women, and matchmakers.