This is painful, because it’s real life, not theory. There are good young men and women who genuinely want to build a home, and for a long time they’re just not getting there. They go out, they try, they open up, and then it doesn’t work out. Sometimes it’s close. Sometimes it feels like it should have worked. And still—it doesn’t. Over time, it wears people down.

Part of what’s going wrong is the way we’ve started to think about shidduchim. Without even noticing, we’ve moved into a world of specifications. Lists. Requirements. Boxes that need to be ticked. Height, background, expectations, “type.” And the more precise the list becomes, the less space there is for a real person to enter.

Because a person isn’t a specification sheet. A person is a whole world. And no one fully fits into someone else’s list. When the list becomes the main thing, the person standing in front of you can quietly disappear.

There’s also this quiet search for certainty. People want to know early on that this is “it,” that everything is already secure. But marriage doesn’t begin with certainty. It begins with a decision to build. If you only move when everything feels guaranteed, you often never really start.

The Torah gives us a sharp moment to think about this. It says about the sons of Aharon “and they died.” Chazal explain that they didn’t find a woman they considered “worthy” of them. Not because there were no good women, but because their standard had become too narrow, too fixed. In the end, nothing was built. It’s a hard message, but very direct: when the standard leaves no room for real life, life doesn’t enter.

Lag BaOmer points us in a different direction.

The students of Rabbi Akiva didn’t treat each other with proper respect. It wasn’t only about manners—it was about how you see another person. When respect breaks down, people become objects, comparisons, judgments. And then everything collapses. When respect returns, something opens again. The same is true here: the question isn’t only “does this match my list,” but “do I see the person in front of me.”

Think of a fire. A bonfire doesn’t start as a bonfire. It starts small, fragile, a spark. What we often expect in shidduchim is already the finished fire—warmth, certainty, clarity, all at once. But real connection doesn’t begin like that. It begins small. If there is basic goodness, decency, and a shared direction, there is something real to start from. The rest is built over time.

Rabbi Akiva himself lived this. After losing 24,000 students, he didn’t give up. He started again—with five. No guarantees. No certainty. Just the belief that something new can still be built. That same idea speaks to anyone still waiting: sometimes one meeting, one opening, changes the entire direction.

So what does this ask from us?

To loosen the grip a little. Not to give up on standards, but to stop letting lists replace people. To give space for a real person to be seen, not judged too fast, not tied down by preconceptions.

And also not to stay on the side. A suggestion, a name, a phone call—these things are small, but they matter more than we think.

Because in the end, shidduchim are not about finding a perfect specification. They are about two imperfect people deciding to build something together.

If we step back from specifications, we may finally start seeing people again—and more homes will begin to be built.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)