This weekend
will see the end of the fourth season of the TV show "Wedding at First Sight". At the start of the season, there is a quasi-wedding ceremony between foreign men and women, who have been matched ahead of time by reality cast and a pair of psychologists who have found an interesting way to supplement their income and become famous. During the season, the husband and wife are supposed to build a relationship in front of the cameras, and at the end - there may be a real wedding and a real relationship without psychological guidance, without cameras and without an audience. Of the 25 couples who participated in the program - one got married. All but one of the participants came to the program after the age of 30. Almost all of them are freelancers, moderately intelligent, moderately handsome, certainly not weird or unusual. They all came to the program after contributing theirs to a growing Israeli phenomenon: an ever-increasing singleness, an increase in the age of marriage and an increase in the number of singles, who will probably not be married under a canopy and marry and will not establish a home in Israel.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2019 the percentage of singles among Jewish men aged 49-45 is 13%. For women - 11%. Quadrupled since 1970 for men and five times for women. The age of marriage is steadily rising, for both men and women, although the participants in "Wedding at First Sight" have long since passed 27, which is the current average age of marriage.
I am the last person to demonstrate aristocratic finesse in the face of the very existence of reality shows, and in any case there is no point in arguing with commercial success. "Wedding at First Sight" has around half a million viewers for the show, which is not a lot but also quite a bit nowadays. I even tried to watch one episode in the first season, but as the youngsters say: I did not connect. The attempt to fold a marriage - not a wedding, a marriage - into a television set, seems like a brilliant cellophane cover that fails to hide what really lies behind this television amusement: female misery.
I was under the impression that the men came to play, but the women wanted to go out with a husband and a house and children, for real. The asymmetry between the participants was sad to me, and there is enough trouble in the world even without consuming other people's initiated mental anguish. "Girls," I whispered sadly before turning off the TV, "I do not think that's how you will find a groom." Then I remembered that in a cultural and progressive environment it is really rude for a woman to really want to get married. It would be more noble to be a CEO, say, or a glamorous forty-plus-year-old bachelorette.
In a world full of female empowerment it is difficult to place marriage at the top of the female priority scale as an ideology. In Israel, ideological struggles related to women have in recent years focused on the phenomenon of violence against women (which is in constant decline, like all violent crimes), opening combat roles for women, resisting segregation events, segregation studies, equal representation and of course the ultra-important issue of female speaking. involved.
Not that the state or human rights organizations can or should direct their energies to find grooms for Israeli girls, but it may be worth noting that even if it is no longer pleasant to say that there is no contradiction between female empowerment and starting a family, and more with a man from the patriarchy The most is to tie your life to another person's life, build a house with it and have several children with it.
The institution of marriage is not highly respected by contemporary feminism, as it ostensibly enslaves women and prevents them from fulfilling the dream of generations to be a battalion commander in Sheldag. In fact, the place where both men and women have the greatest freedom is the family. The rulers and lawmakers are husband and wife, father and mother, and within their own private kingdom the state has no foothold.
No wonder every dictatorial regime bothered to fight the family cell and try to place other ideologies on it: in Soviet Russia, children were encouraged to report on their parents, since loyalty to the state was more important than family loyalty. In the United States, state welfare services have replaced fathers, especially among blacks. More than 60 percent of black children are born to single-parent families. Individualism to the level of narcissism, whether because of ecological fears or sexual permissiveness.We all know why a bride enters her canopy, but if she enters without a canopy - there will always be the man who will give up the headache.
In the week in which the
participants,
and especially the participants in "Wedding at First Sight," continued their journey to fame and loneliness (we will get married already, I wish, Amen), the documentary series "Givat HaNerot" by Carmel Dangor was screened at "Here 11". The series follows a group of girls aged 18-13, who left their parents' homes and established an illegal outpost called "Maoz Esther" in Binyamin. The girls are very right-wing, very religious and very independent, although it is a pleasure to see that they too have difficulty replacing a punctured wheel, like any normal girl.
What characterizes them, and is absent from bachelors and bachelorettes "marriage at first sight", is that all the youthful independence they exhibit stems not only from individualism, but from the obvious fact that they are connected to a story that is bigger than them. A Jewish story of settling the land, keeping mitzvos, starting a family. One of them, 17-year-old Ora Hoodia, is marrying her peer. He built a permanent home for the two of them himself, which will also probably be destroyed in the next evacuation. But even if she does end up living somewhere else, she will live there as a family.
A survey published last week by the Pio Research Institute reveals that only a quarter of Americans 18 and older want to have children in the future. A quarter do not want at all, and a fifth - not so much. With all due respect to the freedom that there is in an individual life, this is an illusion. It is easy for a centralized state to deal with individuals, since the individual is weak and can be controlled with the help of money, and if not - it is easier to suppress him, since he is depressed anyway. Family is another matter. Its members draw happiness and strength from each other. They need less of a state - or reality shows - to save them.
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