door!”
But I was very worried about getting married. My cousin Shaindel had told me that my siblings and I would be shunned in marriage because nobody wanted a family with a crazy boy like Nachum. I rolled my eyes but I knew she was right. Who would want to marry me when I turned eighteen, when nobody even wanted to come over to play?
Fraidy, queen of my class, refused even when I promised her my newest stickers from my sticker collection. Esty wouldn’t come either, but she said it had nothing to do with my brother. It was because I lived in Flatbush. She wouldn’t even call me on the phone. It was too expensive, she said, being long distance from Borough Park.
Only Blimi had come, and she had stared and stared at Nachum, and the next day had told Chaya Sarah and the others all about it.
Now, in spite of my impeccable rabbinical bloodlines, Nachum had ruined my marriage prospects. My mother said that I was being ridiculous. Marriage was bashert, preordained by Heaven. She said, “God plans, but man laughs.” Or maybe she said it the other way around. Whatever. If it was meant to be, it would be.
But I knew that Nachum could un- bashert it all, because shidduchim, one’s marriage prospects, were very important. In fact, shidduchim were so important that most families didn’t even let God make things happen. No matter what God said, they simply wouldn’t marry into a family that included Nachum.
It was like the time Chaya Sarah’s oldest sister almost got engaged to a boy, but then didn’t. Chaya Sarah had told me in secret that her sister would soon be a bride—her mother was so excited and it was all perfect, bashert, straight from Heaven. But at the last minute they found out the boy had had an operation on his head when he was six. He was healthy now—the family had medical reports to prove it—but still. It would have been bashert, but an operation like this was simply unacceptable. Who knew what was hiding in his head? My friend’s mother was so hurt and insulted that she refused to speak to the matchmaker ever again.
There was a long list of rules about getting married, and there was nothing even God could do if one broke these rules. They were:
1. Don’t wear the wrong color tights.
2. Don’t wear denim.
3. Don’t be too poor.
4. Don’t be a baal teshuvah (a once secular person who repented and became religious).
5. Don’t have a relative who is a baal teshuvah. (Tell him to stay secular.)
6. Don’t have any medical conditions. If you do, lie to the matchmaker and say you don’t.
7. Don’t have a crazy child.
8. You can wear the wrong color tights, and sometimes even denim, if you have a lot of money.
9. You can be very poor if you have many dead rebbes or Torah scholars for ancestors.
10. You can have certain medical conditions if you have money and many dead rebbes or Torah scholars for ancestors.
11. Please. Don’t have a crazy child.
This is why many families gave their crazy children away—so their other children could fulfill their destiny. Blimi’s neighbor’s parents had a Down syndrome child and had given him away when he was just born. So did the family who lived at the end of Blimi’s cousin Nechy’s block, but no one was supposed to know.
The rules made shidduchim easy for everyone to understand. It is the way everyone knows whom God wants us to marry, and whom He absolutely does not. But my mother didn’t seem to care. Even for the sake of my future marriage, she wouldn’t throw my brother away. I had once heard her say in an argument with someone on the phone that Nachum was a child, not a toy to discard. If God had given her this son, then He had meant for her to care for him.
She annoyed me, because she was using the bashert thing in all the wrong ways. If Nachum was bashert, meant to be, from God, then how come he made all our shidduchim un- bashert, not meant to be, from the same God?
I told Shaindel, irritably, that I could marry anyone I wanted,
But I was very worried about getting married. My cousin Shaindel had told me that my siblings and I would be shunned in marriage because nobody wanted a family with a crazy boy like Nachum. I rolled my eyes but I knew she was right. Who would want to marry me when I turned eighteen, when nobody even wanted to come over to play?
Fraidy, queen of my class, refused even when I promised her my newest stickers from my sticker collection. Esty wouldn’t come either, but she said it had nothing to do with my brother. It was because I lived in Flatbush. She wouldn’t even call me on the phone. It was too expensive, she said, being long distance from Borough Park.
Only Blimi had come, and she had stared and stared at Nachum, and the next day had told Chaya Sarah and the others all about it.
Now, in spite of my impeccable rabbinical bloodlines, Nachum had ruined my marriage prospects. My mother said that I was being ridiculous. Marriage was bashert, preordained by Heaven. She said, “God plans, but man laughs.” Or maybe she said it the other way around. Whatever. If it was meant to be, it would be.
But I knew that Nachum could un- bashert it all, because shidduchim, one’s marriage prospects, were very important. In fact, shidduchim were so important that most families didn’t even let God make things happen. No matter what God said, they simply wouldn’t marry into a family that included Nachum.
It was like the time Chaya Sarah’s oldest sister almost got engaged to a boy, but then didn’t. Chaya Sarah had told me in secret that her sister would soon be a bride—her mother was so excited and it was all perfect, bashert, straight from Heaven. But at the last minute they found out the boy had had an operation on his head when he was six. He was healthy now—the family had medical reports to prove it—but still. It would have been bashert, but an operation like this was simply unacceptable. Who knew what was hiding in his head? My friend’s mother was so hurt and insulted that she refused to speak to the matchmaker ever again.
There was a long list of rules about getting married, and there was nothing even God could do if one broke these rules. They were:
1. Don’t wear the wrong color tights.
2. Don’t wear denim.
3. Don’t be too poor.
4. Don’t be a baal teshuvah (a once secular person who repented and became religious).
5. Don’t have a relative who is a baal teshuvah. (Tell him to stay secular.)
6. Don’t have any medical conditions. If you do, lie to the matchmaker and say you don’t.
7. Don’t have a crazy child.
8. You can wear the wrong color tights, and sometimes even denim, if you have a lot of money.
9. You can be very poor if you have many dead rebbes or Torah scholars for ancestors.
10. You can have certain medical conditions if you have money and many dead rebbes or Torah scholars for ancestors.
11. Please. Don’t have a crazy child.
This is why many families gave their crazy children away—so their other children could fulfill their destiny. Blimi’s neighbor’s parents had a Down syndrome child and had given him away when he was just born. So did the family who lived at the end of Blimi’s cousin Nechy’s block, but no one was supposed to know.
The rules made shidduchim easy for everyone to understand. It is the way everyone knows whom God wants us to marry, and whom He absolutely does not. But my mother didn’t seem to care. Even for the sake of my future marriage, she wouldn’t throw my brother away. I had once heard her say in an argument with someone on the phone that Nachum was a child, not a toy to discard. If God had given her this son, then He had meant for her to care for him.
She annoyed me, because she was using the bashert thing in all the wrong ways. If Nachum was bashert, meant to be, from God, then how come he made all our shidduchim un- bashert, not meant to be, from the same God?
I told Shaindel, irritably, that I could marry anyone I wanted,
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