MISC-----yichus and marriage

carrot Posted - 20 May 2001 15:30

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Do you think yichus is important when it comes to marriage? A lot of people I talk to feel it is, personally I think this is very wrong, a person should not be judged by their family! this would leave a ba'al Teshuva and a ger little hope at marriage.

MODERATOR Posted - 20 May 2001 16:43

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I agree with you, generally speaking. The Steipler agrees with you too. In numerous letters to Rabbi Menashe Klein of Brooklyn, he writes that there is some intrinsic imperfection in Baalei Teshuva because they were born from non-frum parents is wrong. Rather, he says, if you see that the person's Middos are in order, and that they themselves are good people, it shows that no imperfection was inherited.

A guy in Lakewood once asked the Satmar Rebbe ZT"L about doing a shiduch with a Baal Teshuva boy, and the Satmar Rebbe answered, Chazal say "Mikveh Yisroel Hashem, mah mikveh m'taher es hatemeim, etc". meaning, the Torah purifies people, like a spiritual Mikvah. therefore, if you see that the boy is a ben Torah, whatever imperfections his lack of Yichus may have caused have definitely been erased by the purifying power of the Torah.

So the bottom line is it's what the person is that counts, much more than where they come from.

jj Posted - 22 May 2001 21:56

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if I had a choice between two ppl, one with yichus and the other without (but besides that, the same), does one have kedima over the other?

MODERATOR Posted - 22 May 2001 22:05

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It is difficult to believe 2 people can be completely equal, but theoretically, the answer is it’s up to you, there is no rule. The main point of Yichus is that the girl should be brought up properly so that she should be on a certain level. But if the other girl is equal that means she reached that level anyway. So someone might even say that that gives the non-Yichus girl an advantage, since you don’t know how the Yichus girl will respond equally well in the face of Nisyonos, since she had a better upbringing and less Nisyonos. The fact that her upbringing did not give her an advantage over the girl with a worse upbringing may be a disadvantage.

On the other hand, Zechus Avos is also something to be considered. And also, you never know when her upbringing may come in handy down the road, giving her the knowledge of how to act in certain situations that the other girl may not.

In the end, it's up to you. Neither of the girls has any official "kedimah" over the other.