The Wizarding World of Shidduchim

I was recently having a conversation with some friends about why it seems so easy for some people to just get engaged and get married, and for others shidduchim is years and years of anxiety and pain. Perhaps it is true that the simpler someone is, the less s/he needs in a life partner and therefore there are many people that fit the bill (thereby widening his/her pool of potential matches), but one friend brought up a valid point: the "simple" people already have so much in common. Likely they're coming from similar backgrounds, and so they already have all those similarities going for them. The more "complicated" someone is, the more characteristics s/he potentially has that may clash with someone else's. More on complexities and "older" singles another time, but here I want to talk about how background plays a large part in compatibility.

Hardly my own chiddush, frumkeit and its comparison to Harry Potter Wizarding World blood status is an interesting analogy that can help us understand this. Perhaps FFBs are "Purebloods." (Does someone need to be born to FFB parents to be a Pureblood, or does being born and raised frum qualify him/her?) I would assume that a BT would be a "Half-blood," and a convert is a "Muggle-born" "Mudblood." A non religious/unaffiliated Jew would then be a "Squib," ie. he can't access his "magic." A non-Jew would be considered a "Muggle"/"No-Maj."

With all that said, I'm not suggesting that we have a hierarchy in status based in yeichus or how we're born and raised. After all, all the good guys in Harry Potter don't stigmatize and/or discriminate anyone based on their blood status. I simply call upon the analogy to reconcile how backgrounds and hashkafa play a role in our understanding of the world and ergo our relationships. As a simple example, just as Hermione had no idea that being termed a "Mudblood" was derogatory, there is information and certain nuances that someone who isn't born frum lacks. Sure, s/he can pick it up, and s/he has the advantage of having coming from a place of broader knowledge and weltanschauung. Combining the intelligence he picks up when he makes the transition to Torah Judaism, s/he ends up more worldly than the average sheltered religious Jew. Now, there is something beautiful to being sheltered and insular as a community, but it's just very different than someone who is more broad-minded (either by choice or by upbringing).

There obviously is no objective "right" hashkafa, and there is no dial to turn to adjust what someone thinks about x, y, or z issue. It's sort of a miracle when two people end up thinking the same way about everything (which usually doesn't happen, and you don't need to think the same way as your spouse about every single thing) ...when you start to venture outside of communities that don't value individual thinking and sort of brainwash their members to all be the same and do the same thing.

Rabbi Benzion Klatzko talks about a related topic in a shuir labeled, "Can You Choose Your Judaism?" He comes at the issue by speaking about how different sects of Judaism involve themselves in kiruv, how each sect plays their own part, how what they do works for them, and how we need all twelve shevatim doing their own thing for Team Klal Yisroel to work.

Either way, back to the original topic at hand. Perhaps when two "Purebloods" meet, things are very simple for them. Their worldview is similar and they've been raised with a certain hashkafa. Purebloods that have more knowledge of, or are more involved in, things outside of the Wizarding World will have more complexities. (I don't think that complexities all boil down to how "broad" someone is, but it plays a large part.) Purebloods can marry Half-Bloods, can marry Mudbloods. It's just that the broader Pureblood, Half-Blood, Mudblood, will have a harder time finding someone that shares their exact combination of knowledge/outlook/worldview.