Should I turn down a good person over an external factor: short stature, a physical flaw, no degree, poor English?

To someone for whom a candidate's imperfect English had become a reason to consider saying no, he answered that such a shortcoming is certainly not sufficient grounds to reject the proposal. In a shidduch the fundamental considerations must come first, and where everything else fits, this flaw is immaterial.

“lack of perfection in English is hardly any consequence in the matter of a shidduch”

He was told that a man was having a hard time in shidduchim because he was short. He answered with a single question: but can he be counted for a minyan? The conclusion Rav Rabinovich draws from this: a great many factors of this kind have no bearing on middos, on personality or on a person's ability to live and act, and a candidate must not be rejected because of them.

If you look for what really matters and listen to people who know, you will not miss your intended; but without giving it your all and putting marriage first, you may miss the boat. A girl who rejects a kind, caring, dependable, observant young man with a good income only because he has no college degree believes she is giving up nothing of substance. How does she know that forty days before his birth, when, according to the Gemara, matches are announced, it was announced that her husband would have a degree?

“if you don't give it your all and make getting married your top priority, you may miss the boat”

He tells of Yitzchak Yaakov Weiss, one of the finest bachurim in Hungary, who became engaged after one meeting. His mother, seeing the kallah later, was horrified by her severe skin disease and demanded an explanation; he asked for a second meeting, an unheard-of step in those circles, and after it confirmed the shidduch. Years later he explained: out of respect for his mother he wanted to check how severe the illness was, and when he saw that the girl would find it extremely hard to find anyone else, he understood that he could not shame a bas Yisrael like that. In his words, he had been destined to have no children, but because he married to spare her the shame, he was given a son.

“I couldn't hurt a bas Yisrael like that.”

Commenting on the story of the imagined hunchback, he stated plainly that a physical defect is not necessarily a reason to decline a shidduch. He told the story itself not as a justification for refusing but as an example of the opposite: when a shidduch is not meant to be, even non-existent obstacles appear.

“Though a physical deformity is not necessarily a reason to decline a shidduch”