The Risk of Marrying While Still in Yeshiva

As the distance, in both time and ideology, grows ever farther from my years as a post-highschooler studying in a religious zionist yeshiva in Israel it has become clear to me the unfortunate cost on people within Yeshivas of dating and marrying while still in the grips of the intense, and dogmatic, Yeshiva experience.

I leave most of my conversations with Yeshiva Bochers today with a feeling of both cynicism and envy for the absolute confidence in their black and white vision of the realities of this complex world. While I see Yeshiva as an incredible opportunity to immerse oneself in torah - these 20 year old kids are just beginning to expose themselves to the world of thoughts and ideas, if these kids decide to continue on to university Yeshiva will become a component of establishing themselves as individuals, yet, while they are immersed in the Yeshiva they are of the belief that this alone can sustain and allow for the full development of their potential.

It is this feeling, the desire to freeze this moment of perceived perfection, that is a motivator for them (promoted greatly by their rabbis) to try to irrevocably fix this moment as the basis for their entire being ---- what better way to do this then to decide to marry a woman who is looking for that type of man.

Once married, it is very difficult to turn back. These kids will get married, have children and, all the while, begin to realize that the world is not as they originally saw it -- but what do you do now? your locked in to the premise with which your wife married you.

I do not see this as some grand rabbinic plot, however, I do believe that there is a subtle understanding that if you want to 'lock' these kids in to a world view that you espouse, what better way then finding him a good shidduch