“If your husband is digging his own grave, then you need to be an ‘eizer k’negdo’ and take the shovel from his hand”

A Quality Shadchan [Is Yente the Matchmaker No Longer Enough? / Issue 915]

I read Penina Steinbruch’s article about dating coaches, and was shocked that there was no mention of what is, in my mind, the most important component of the discussion — the experience and expertise of the shadchan that the couple is using.

When my husband and I were dating, we used a renowned shadchan with many years of experience, who was also a rebbi of my husband. Throughout the dating process, my husband spoke to him countless times, receiving advice and hadrachah about how he was feeling, how it was going, the next steps to take, and so much more. The shadchan supported my husband without putting pressure on him and encouraged him to go at a pace that worked for him/us. My husband always felt that he had his/our best interests at heart. I don’t think he felt, at any point, that a dating coach was necessary or would be anything more than redundant. The shadchan was also available to speak to me and guide me, and his knowledge of my husband and understanding of where he was holding were invaluable.

In stark contrast, many others I know have used a friend of the family as their shadchan, or even worse, a friend of the dating couple, who just happened to think of the idea. These people were young, inexperienced, and lacked the knowledge and skills to guide the couple effectively through the dating process.

I honestly don’t know whether dating coaching is a necessity, a luxury, or unnecessary. But I think that many couples make the huge mistake of not investing in a quality shadchan, and that leads to many of the problems that convince us that dating coaches are vital.

Name Withheld

An Alternative Space [The Guru Will See You Now / Issue 915]

When I saw the short description of the article about holistic medicine on the cover, I was excited to read it. Yes! Maybe someone actually will describe what my issue with the system is.

The article started off with a horror story of a doctor who was imprisoned due to a baby’s death during a home birth. This sets the tone for the rest of the article — that alternative medicine is bad.

Woven through the article was the idea that our community is becoming more receptive to alternative medicine practices. But there’s already a huge movement in the US in general away from conventional medicine to “quasi-medical practitioners” or alternative medicine. This isn’t a community trend at all. Since Covid, health, food, and vaccines have become politicized. People are now well aware there’s something very wrong with the food and medical industry and that something must be done to change that reality.

As I read further on, I wondered why only conventional medical practitioners were interviewed. Shouldn’t you interview people who use alternative medicine or an alternative practitioner who can explain their process and outcomes?

The primary reason people seek alternative medicine is for chronic disease. Many of us have been visiting conventional doctors for years for conditions like diabetes and autoimmune diseases. The medicines the doctors have given us have not made us healthier. We get sicker. Then we get an increase in the medicine dosage. As the dose increases, we feel sicker. The cycle then loops on single repeat until either we lose hope of ever getting better or we lose trust in the system.

This is the desperation that gets many people into the alternative medicine space. It’s not because we’re looking for a shortcut or quick fix. Quite the contrary; most of alternative medicine will start with dietary and environmental recommendations that are hard to implement and can take months to see results from.

You wrote that, “Social media allows every new craze to spread in a viral fashion” and potentially causes “confirmation bias.” You can spin it in that direction, or try the other side spin and feel that for a moment. Social media provides an alternative space for people to hear ideas that their doctor and the pharmaceutical industry won’t share due to lack of training or lack of financial incentive. This doesn’t mean that we should follow people blindly, but much of the “craze” tends toward natural remedies, exercise and healthy diet, and home birthing. In the medical system, conversations about this are severely limited. I’m so grateful for the “interesting ideas from mommy chats.” I’ve gotten way better advice about maintaining kids’ health from other mothers than I’ve ever gotten from my pediatrician.

Alternative medicine isn’t a cure-all. Most people who seek this care will still seek conventional doctors for acute care. What the medical industry has a hard time understanding is that while it’s true that there’s a lot of blind trust in the alternative space, they’re asking for an equal amount of blind trust from their patients. There has been much fraud in medical studies, where the funding industry pushes results in studies that work in their favor, even if it means adjusting the testing or selectively interpreting the results. Just because in medicine they do double-blind trials does not mean the interpretation is completely truthful. You have to look at who funded the study, who participated in the study, how and who interpreted the study, etc. Another huge problem with studies in conventional medicine is that companies are not motived to study ideas such as, “What will be the outcome if we provide less or cheaper interventions.”

Name Withheld

Wish I Could Ask Questions [The Guru Will See You Now / Issue 915]

Dr. Lightman recommends that women seeking a home birth should have proper backup and follow-up care…. Yes, women should have backup and coordinated care. But following up with hospital protocols such as administering the Vitamin K shot is part of the reason some choose to have a home birth in the first place. There is much discussion as to why Hashem created babies with thin blood to begin with. Did he make a mistake in His design? Maybe there’s a reason? Does thickening babies’ blood that much so soon have unintended side effects? Maybe oral Vitamin K is safer? Would fully delayed cord clamping mitigate hemorrhaging risk?

I gave my kids the Vitamin K shot out of fear doctors sowed in me and mostly because I didn’t feel free to choose. But I wish it was common to be able to ask questions like these from conventional doctors and get real answers.

When I want to understand common medical practices and try to research what’s behind them, I find that a search online will often bring up only one narrative and one answer. It takes a lot of digging to get alternative views to the medical industry’s narrative.

A Mother Trying to Find Health

Swimming Upstream [Talking Shop / Issue 915]

I enjoyed the article about salesladies’ behind-the-scenes observations of the clothing shopping experience in the frum world. I definitely got the message that we’re trying to do better by our daughters. The article showed that it’s really never okay to comment about someone’s body shape or size. However, there were still some dangerous messages in the article that I’d love to address.

The article had two instances where salesladies said they see slim women “with daughters who are fuller,” and responded to a comment from a client,  “I’m so fat,” with “You’re not fat, you’re beautiful.” The message loud and clear is that fat equals not beautiful. But skinny doesn’t equal beautiful. This is the crux of this discussion.

Most people believe that if I cared enough and did enough, I would be a size 2. And that is just not true. Bodies come in all different shapes and sizes. I struggled with severe disordered eating in high school. I lost a lot of weight. I felt strong and in control, but really, I was being controlled by the voices in my head.

Now, at 33, I’m no longer skinny. Some may even call me fat. I still think I’m beautiful. I still take care of my health. I eat whole grains, fruits, and veggies, and exercise regularly, but I no longer fit into the category that society says is beautiful.

The beauty standards that we all have adapted to are the beauty standards of Hollywood. And yet, I feel like I’m swimming upstream in the frum world when I try to challenge this concept.

Name Withheld

Store Sensitivity [Talking Shop / Issue 915]

It’s so right of you to ask us mothers to refrain from focusing on our daughters’ weight, whether negatively or as a compliment, as this can lead to unhealthy body image or a negative relationship with weight.

Unfortunately, it has been my experience numerous times when shopping with my daughters that it’s the saleswomen who are hyperfocused on weight, urging us to buy clothing that we “look so skinny in,” or “Take this, it makes you look ten pounds less.” In our home, my girls would never hear such comments, yet for some reason for a sale, these women often are the ones pushing the idea that looking skinny is the ultimate goal.

If you work in a clothing store, please be more sensitive!

A Local Mother

Brooklyn, NY

Protect Our Kallahs [Yours, Mine, and Ours / Issue 915]

Thank you for publishing the story about the husband who was using his wife’s savings to save his father from the fallout of his financial irresponsibility.

It’s so important that kallah teachers know about this phenomenon and raise it with their students. I, like Miri, the wife in the story, came into my marriage with a large bank account, the results of hundreds of hours of tutoring students. I unfortunately let my husband know about it after making the mistake of reading Laura Doyle’s The Surrendered Wife, which encouraged no secrets between spouses — and he shared this information with his parents. Just a few weeks after our wedding, my husband gave his parents their first gift by paying their rent with the money I’d saved.

Many men like Dovid in the story do not come into marriage with money-management skills, and when they have a mom like Faye in the story, they often feel a young newlywed will just earn the money again.

Miri needs to get Lifelock to monitor unauthorized bank activity and that of her children to protect herself.

Been There, Done That

Check Your Definition [Yours, Mine, and Ours / Issue 915]

I spent a lot of time thinking about the story of Faye, Miri, Dovid, and the dysfunctional setup in which a mother is asking her adult children to fund her husband’s extravagant lifestyle. What a drama! What irked me the most was Faye’s abuse of the concept of “ishah kesheirah.” She saw that her husband was leading the family to financial ruin and chose to remain silent because “wasn’t this what they meant when they said to be an ishah keshieirah?” No, I don’t think that’s what the Rambam meant. If your husband is digging his own grave, then you need to be an “eizer k’negdo” and take the shovel from his hand.

R.J.

Not for Naught [Of Hope, Healing, and Hurt / Issue 909]

I’m writing in response to the woman whose arms are empty after recurrent pregnancy loss. Having recently experienced three consecutive miscarriages, I have a glimmer of an understanding of what she might be going through. (Only a glimmer, though, as everyone’s experience is different.)

I’d like to share a thought Hashem led me to that has provided me some comfort and perspective, when the consolation and empathy that others attempted to provide rang hollow.

What is a pregnancy loss? It is a life that comes into This World — a neshamah, a flash of the Divine — followed quickly by a death, which leaves a gaping void, a nuclear explosion. It’s a loss that the mother feels most keenly, as she is the only one who was ever in close contact with this neshamah. Her sadness over this loss is a statement that yes, this neshamah is real! This neshamah matters! For what is grief if not the declaration that someone’s life had value to me?

Imagine if the neshamah were to depart This World after completing its fleeting tikkun inside its mother, and no one would take notice. Like the tree falling in the forest that goes unheard, how tragic would it be if the cosmic impact of this neshamah’s departure mattered to no one?

Perhaps that is why the loss hurts so much. It’s the lost neshamah clamoring to be remembered, its impact begging to be recognized — and there is no one else who can do that but me, the mother. Each time we see a baby, or a friend in maternity clothing, we are reminded of that neshamah, and we ache.

But instead of feeling envy, or being paralyzed with sadness, we can realize that our pain is really an expression of connection to a holy neshamah that will always be ours. Elokai, neshamah shenasata bi, tehorah hi — and tehorah it remains, having never been sullied by exposure to this lowly world. We had the zechus of carrying it briefly, and we’ll one day be reunited with it.

So yes, my friend, the pain you’re feeling is real — and it’s not for naught. Your neshamah-child knows that you care.

Been There

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 917)