Davening for the Right Shidduch

Q: Why do you criticize those who aren’t getting married if the Gemara says that finding one’s partner is as difficult as Kriyas Yam Suf?

A: Now we have to understand it’s not true. It doesn’t mean it’s difficult for you — it’s difficult for Hashem, k’veyachol.

Why is that? Because Hashem has to manipulate thousands of details in a person’s character.

It’s like if you have to make an automobile to order. If you make them on the assembly line, so one after the other they are exactly the same requirements. It’s not too difficult. But suppose a wealthy man wants an automobile made to order, with all types of specifications. So it’s difficult. You have special machinery.

Hashem makes each person to order — there’s no assembly line. Nobody in the world has the same mind. She’ein da’tam domah zeh lazeh (Berachos 58a). Of the millions of people, nobody has the same mind. The mind is very complicated; all kinds of middos, all kinds of attributes.

Hashem has to make each person exactly to order for some other person. And each one is going to test the other. They’ll be living together and each one will become a shaleim if they utilize the opportunity correctly. Of course you have to utilize it correctly.

Now, Kriyas Yam Suf, Hashem made. And He makes shidduchim too. But the complications of shidduchim are more complicated, more than even Kriyas Yam Suf. To tool a person and make his mentality fit for another person, making it to order each one, is such a difficult achievement that Hashem considers it one of the most important things He does in the world and is more complicated than any neis that He did in the world.

### Pray for the Right One

Q: Why does the Gemara say specifically that a man has to pray for a wife?

“For this, let every pious man pray to You in the time of finding, that the overflowing waters may not reach him” (Tehillim 32:6). Rabbi Chanina said: The time of finding refers to a wife, as it says, ‘He who finds [matzah] a wife finds [matzah] good and obtains favor from Hashem’ (Mishlei 18:22).” (Berachos 8a)

A: What should the pious man (chassid) pray for? Rabbi Chanina says a wife. Of course, when we say every chassid must pray for that, it’s self-understood that every chassidah, every pious woman, also must pray for that. She also must be mispallel to Hashem to find the right one.

All unmarried people are urged to turn to Hashem and invest time on this matter. It pays to devote time to tefillah. If you’re already married, you must pray that you make the best of what you have. Before you go back the three steps after Shemoneh Esrei, after you say Yiheyu l’ratzon, put in a request for this. You can do it in the middle of the day, too, not just during Shemoneh Esrei. When you’re going to meet a marriage prospect, ask Hashem to guide your footsteps. If she’s not the right one, ask Hashem that she should turn you down.

The Gemara cites a pasuk. “Matzah ishah, matzah tov — If he finds a wife, he finds good” (Mishlei 18:22). “Good” means happiness and success. As you begin to reach the years when you must be serious, men and women, boys and girls must pray to Hashem. If they’re a chassid — if they have some connection with yiras Hashem, bitachon, emunah — they shouldn’t merely rely on their own efforts. They shouldn’t think that things will just happen. They shouldn’t merely say it’s foreordained, that it’s bashert. “Whatever happens will be good for me.” No, the Gemara says. You should pray because it could be that what’s foreordained for you isn’t for your good. It could be that Hashem has prepared a young lady who is going to help you acquire Gan Eden, because all your sins will be atoned for in this world by the misery she causes you, so you have to get busy and pray to Hashem. The same is true, of course, for girls.

Don’t be stingy with your tefillos. Put in a lot of words, and if they’re accompanied by some tears, all the better. Men and women can weep when they pray for the right one. Better to weep now than later!

The first answer is from Rav Avigdor Miller. The second is from Rav Avigdor Miller on Tefillah (Judaica Press).