If you’re planning on getting married nowadays, you won’t get far without a shidduch resume. Ask anyone. Well, not anyone with a child of marriageable age, because none of those people had shidduch resumes. Nor did any gedolim.
In the old days, nobody had shidduch resumes. What on earth did we do? Maybe everyone kept it all in their heads—I don’t remember. There were a lot fewer people; I know that.
Definitely for most of Jewish history, there were no resumes. People just handwrote whatever information they had, and then the singles sent in a drawing of themselves. Then there was a whole hock about, “Is it tznius to send a drawing? Because I hear that anyway the drawing is not always accurate.”
Even when I got married, there were no pictures. I mean, pictures existed. You developed your film and you got one copy, so you would have to send around the one copy. And the guy was like, “Oh, she has red eyes! I don’t know…”
So there had to be a better way. Better ways keep coming along all the time, so IY”H soon a better way than this will come along. It had better. But in the meantime, we might as well learn how to write a shidduch resume that makes you stand out, but also looks exactly like everyone else’s so no one reads too much into it.
The better way can’t get here soon enough.
NAME: So he knows who to ask for when he comes to the door. In case the parents aren’t sure.
HEIGHT: This is the single most important item on the resume. You must write your height, but baruch Hashem not your weight. Height even comes before date of birth.
DATE OF BIRTH: Also write your age, in case the prospective guy is bad at math.
CONTACT INFO: Include your home address, so people can look it up on Google Maps and see if it’s nice.
PARENT INFO: This should include their height, where the father learned, and whether he still gives that yeshivah money when they send him mailings.
SHUL: You need to write this, even though where the family davens might have less to do with hashkafah and more to do with which shul has good cholent. I don’t ask my shaylos during davening anyway.
RAV: Putting down the name of a rav is a good indicator that you have shaichus to a rav. Unless he’s the rabbi of the shul, in which case maybe you wrote him in because he sits up front, in the shul that is closest to your house.
SIBLINGS: If the single in question has siblings, you need to write all about them, even if you’re not particularly proud of their accomplishments.
Note that the only solid piece of information we’ve written about the girl so far is her name and her height, and now we’re already on siblings. The resume should look like it was written by a neighbor who was not informed until the very last second which kid exactly she was writing about.
I think if you really want to know about somebody, ask for a resume about one of their siblings. Then you can read it and find out about them. That’s why a lot of times if you submit your daughter’s resume to a shadchan, the shadchan is like, “Ooh, can you send me her brother’s resume?”
And you get all offended.
MECHUTANIM: The reader is not going to know your mechutanim from Yehupitz, unless they too have relatives in Yehupitz. But it’s going to show that other people are willing to get involved with your family. They don’t want to be the only one. That’s why if this is your oldest kid, it’s going to be a little harder to marry them off, because no one wants to go first on anything.
EDUCATION AND JOB EXPERIENCE: This part is exactly like a job resume, down to previous employment and honor roll and that time she was a counselor at Camp Noonewantstodrivethatfar.
REFERENCES: This is so the reader can call your friends during dinner and play conversational chess to figure out what you’re concealing. You can’t just write, “References available upon request.” You have to put in a bunch of people that the reader can call to verify that you’re not an axe murderer.
“Yeah, someone that they know and prepped beforehand vouched for them, so it’s okay.”
Maybe we should put in references for the references.
But not everybody in your life has a complete picture, so you want a mix of names: a teacher, a family friend, a single friend, a married friend, a divorced friend, a widowed friend, a co-worker, a person you used to date, and one person who’s met you once and doesn’t know why you put their name on your resume.
And this way, even if they don’t call anyone, it tells them that you have at least four friends! And your parents have at least one.
WHO I AM: This is the part at the bottom in which you write about yourself in two sentences, as an afterthought.
If you’re having problems writing this, I would say—at the risk of being morbid—what do you want people to say at your levayah? Write that.
“I’m so young!”
Make sure to also mention that you’re kind, caring, a good friend, family-oriented, and that you like to laugh, are frum but worldly but not too worldly, and that you’re sometimes serious but you like to have fun. In case the other person hasn’t met a human being before.
Other great adjectives to stick in about yourself: outgoing (“I’m going out, right?”), thoughtful, warm but sometimes cold, engaging (“I hope to get engaged, right?”), creative, articulate, frank, patient, likable, observant, polite, teachable, balanced, approachable, brave, classy, curious, inspiring, realistic, relatable, supportive, and sturdy.
If you are a guy, you also might want to mention whether you eat gebruktz, and how many hours you wait after fleishig. If you’re a girl who is not afraid to be fleishig, that is a great thing to mention that will have people breaking down your door.
You can’t write anything negative about yourself, obviously. If there’s something less than positive about you, people will have to get it from context—that, for example, there is a good quality that you didn’t mention. And then hope it’s not just that you forgot to mention it.
“She didn’t mention that she likes chesed. Does that mean she hates chesed?”
WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR: Ask yourself: What do you want people to say at his levayah?
This is where you write that you want someone who is serious but fun, is chesed-oriented (chesed starts in the home), and is always striving to grow, in case you find something about them you don’t like.
You also want to write that you’re looking for someone out of the box. No one on the planet is looking for someone in the box. They want a spouse they can pick out of a crowd.
Basically, “out of the box” means “different in some way, but I can’t tell you how.” How about you tell me on your resume what you consider “the box”? Do you mean “not like my brothers”? Because there’s a limit as to how far out of the box you want the person to be.
Finally, you want to proofread your resume before you send it out. For example, make sure that you wrote that you’re looking for someone “kind and communicative,” not “kind of communicative.”
You also want to make sure your shidduch resume has impeccable grammar, so people don’t think you’re uneducated. Though if you are uneducated, or have no attention to detail, and are looking for the same, then maybe you do want people to know that.
The other thing to remember is that like a job resume, it’s a one-page autobiography all about you, so it can’t be more than one page or people will decide they no longer want to hear about you. If your life is so interesting that you need a second page to describe yourself, no one wants to read about it. When making the most important decision of their lives. People don’t like having a lot to read—they like having very little to read, and then analyzing every word that’s there way too intensely and trying to infer stuff. That’s a better use of their time.
Basically, it’s a piece of paper to wrap around your photo when you send it around so the mailman doesn’t get in your business.
And then people can overanalyze the photo.
“Why is she wearing pink?”
Because that was the color at this wedding. Not her choice.
“Why is her face orange?”
Okay.
A good resume will be vague enough that the shadchan can sell it to the largest number of guys. If you write a unique resume that’s good for just one guy, who knows if this shadchan knows that one guy? Should that prevent her from setting you up? You want a resume she can sell to 100 guys. Our goal here is to make the job easier for the busy shadchan who doesn’t know you and will charge thousands of dollars for her services, so that she doesn’t have to get to know you. All she has to do is match up compatible yeshivas and Beis Yaakovs, and she’s done.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
