People speak of a shiduch crisis. Too many singles, especially single women, are having difficulty getting married. The Nasi project claims to have a solution: men should marry older women. This is a good idea even if it does not solve the shiduch crisis.
Some believe the Nasi project will help more women get married. These women, we are told, are bypassed because younger men shun them. Others argue the Nasi project is no solution at all. If men marry older women these men will be unavailable to younger women. Either way some women lose out. I am not a demographer and offer no opinion either way.
The Nasi project deserves support for a different reason: older women can be wonderful shiduchim. My own Rosh Yeshiva told me there was no reason not to date an older woman. Who knows how many such shiduchim did not happen because men pursued some younger women who may have been less appropriate. Rabbi Paysach Krohn tells of how Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch married an ideal life partner who was a few years older than himself.
There is an inappropriate degree of conformity in some sectors of the frum world. Men may insist on marrying younger women because that is what they think their community expects of them. Perhaps they themselves have imbibed the belief it's wrong to marry an older woman, without independently thinking through the matter. The Nasi project challenges this belief. That alone makes it worthy of our support.
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