In the Crosshairs of a Future Mother-in-Law

"I thought the days when matchmakers conducted real detective investigations were left behind in books about the nineteenth century. But in Brooklyn I ran into it firsthand. I was offered a shidduch with a guy from a very well-known family. We went on two dates, and I liked him like crazy — refined, gentle, deep.

Then on the third day an enraged shadchanit called my mother. It turns out the guy's mother had launched a total background check on our family. She called the principal of the school I graduated from six years ago, questioned our building neighbors, and — the cherry on top — tracked down the contact for the landlady of an apartment my parents rented in another city back in 2018! She wanted to find out whether my mother had paid the rent on time and whether the house was clean. In the end they closed the shidduch, because it seemed to them that my younger brother dresses too 'modern' for their standards. I sit and wonder: are we even looking for a life partner, or going through a security-service vetting? It kills all the holiness and humanity of the process."