BEING SINGLE

Orthodox:

"No man without a wife, neither a woman without a husband, nor both without God." (Genesis Rabbah 8:9)
Today people spend more and more time single, what are some movements doing about this...

Traditional Judaism has no place for singles per se. Singles exist only as a transitional period. It is written in the Talmud that, "G"d waits impatiently for man to marry." (Kiddushin 29b). "One who does not marry dwells without blessing, without goodness...and without peace." (Yeb. 62b). One who does not merry is in constant sin, and G"d forsakes him." (Kidushin 29b, Pes. 113a). This sums-up the Orthodox and Chasidic view of singles, they have to look for their bashert-e (designated in heaven) and marry. Marriage is the ideal state needed to achieve holiness, and that applies to all —rabbi, priest, and prophet included.

Reform:

Men and women, in their teens or early twenties, once commonly moved, overnight, directly from their parents' home into a marital household. In contemporary America Jewish society, such a pattern is now uncommon, and single life has been extended. Moreover, increasingly numbers of American Jews never marry. For some this is a deliberate choice. Others regard it as their default decision or even their fate. Singlehood was once presumed, especially for women, to be a passage that has its terminus in marriage. Today, marriage is likelier than ever before to terminate in divorce and, at last for a time in Singlehood.

In a Jewish community that stresses family and build so much of its continuity on family rituals performed around the dining table, single and childless people are often made to feel out of place. Many Jews and Jewish institutions operate out of a popular (and unconscious ) "chain letter theory" of Jewish lifecyle: Marriage leads to birth which leads to naming, which leads to bar/bat mitzvah, which leads back to marriage, until an unmarried and/or childless offspring "breaks the chain". Put so starkly, this theory becomes laughable, but it is shocking to realize how often we behave as if we believed it.

Modern attitudes may have their roots, in part in Jewish tradition. The rabbis regard failure to marry as just that, a failure. However much we may disagree, few Jews won't reject the traditional affirmation and valuating of family and children. This leads us to say: What of single people in our communities who may not have any close relatives? How might we more fully include singles (those who have not married, as well as those who are single because of divorce or the dead of a spouse) in our vision and definition of family and community? What of single parents? What of childless singles during holidays which emphasize children and nuclear families? What occasions have we crafted (or might we not craft) for single adults to celebrate their milestone Jewishly?

While single people, in general, have lacked sufficient acknowledgment, respect, and opportunity for self-expression in a Jewish context, Jewish women have been more alienated than male counterparts. Men are bachelors, women, spinsters. Men who assert their disinterest in marriage are inveterate bachelors; women who assert their disinterest in marriage are often considerate manhaters. Venues for the unmarried in the Jewish community (for personal adds, to singles events, to retirement communities) all convey the impression, for reasons demographic, psychological, and sexiest, that single men are in demand, and single women, "flooding in the market". Women are still defined primarily through home, relationships, and family, rather than though work, and so the "failure" to marry and bear children is particular incriminating. The ides that women. even ore than men, should have a family is supported by Jewish cultural programming, though not by Jewish law.

Many of these stereotypes and sex-role divisions are losing the hold on a logical level. Yet they still retain a psychic grip. Interesting and accomplished single men and women with high self-esteem may live their lives with a sense of being "on hold". Jewish rituals marking the seasons of single life are lacking, especially for women. Married couples re-live and build on their own life passages through their children.

Rabbi Pamela Hoffman address the need for personal passage celebration in the lives of single Jews with annual celebration of adult personhood. Drawn from traditional sources and suitable for any Jew, it honors individual growth on one's birthday. To set his ritual in context, Rabbi Hoffman uses a celestial analogy, recognizing each of us as stars in our right, as well as members of various constellations.

Rose L. Levinson focuses unflinchingly on the shame we apportion to singles and the shame they internalize. Jewish singles want their status to be irrelevant, and ask for full inclusion in everything from programming to religious observances to synagogue membership applications.