In my midrasha we have been talking a lot recently about how everyone should get tested by doar yisharim. What keeps on bothering me, is what if your bashert is someone that you wouldn't be able to have children with. Someone that you get the answer back from doar yisharim of no.
I had a good friend (many of you may have heard of him) named Mikey Butler. He had cystic fibrosis, yet lived a very fulfilling life, spending every moment he had doing whatever he could to help people. Doar yisharim also causes (inadvertently) that people such as him aren't born. How can we judge that we don't feel a person can live a fulfilling life because they will have a specific illness?

There are many wonderful people who are born through parents who do not get along with each other and end up divorcing each other, yet you wouldn’t suggest that we should try to pair couples that would get along with each other. To be honest, the only reason why I was born was because of Hitler. (My maternal grandparents only got married together because they met at the DP camps. My father’s family was in the states and my mother’s family would still be in Europe if it weren’t for the war.) Yet we’ll not give any Shadchunus to Hitler, of course. The point is, that we must try to make our situations as best as possible that we can, and leave it to Hashem to make special people with the couples we marry off.

Dor Yesharim is a wonderful organization that is out to help match couples that have a very small chance of having children with fatal diseases. They recommend that before one considers getting married they they get tested. After getting tested they recieve a number which you can request to be matched with another number and they'll tell you a "yes" or "no" of whether the couple is healthy in having children together. Until you decide to use the number to match, you aren't told. Even being a carrier is not something to worry about, as you need both the man and woman to be carriers.

This spares the anguish of dating, and getting married and then having sickly children which could have been avoided. I remember being told a story by a friend of mine, the night that it was happening that his friend, the potential choson, was waiting to propose to his future kallah, and become engaged but was waiting for the results of the dor yesharim test.

Aish Hatorah has a weblink that discusses this issue and includes a phone number for those who wish to get tested. http://www.aish.com/dating/wisdom/The_Genetics_of_Dating.asp

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sam-,

leppi, i don't think it is an issue of judging whether a person can have a productive life or not, it is an issue of testing so that couples are given the best chance to have healthy children. And everyone wants to have healthy children.

I think that like we warn pregnant women not to go near people with chicken pox, or other contagious diseases because of the danger to the foetus. If ch'vs someone has a child with an illness or disability noone is saying that that child is worth less than any other human being or that they cannot lead a fulfilling life. But we do our best to have healthy children. And if G-d decides otherwise we should try to do the best with it too.

Do we have any long standing guidelines for a shadchan for how to look into compatible couples for factors such as healthy children or a peaceful atmosphere in the home?

Perhaps doar yisharim is accomplishing something technologically which we already had a valid worthwhile tradition to be doing?

I've always wondered about the role of the shadchan and how many marriages could of taken place if the shadchan were more honest or "with it" or new exactly what was going on and didn't take one sided arguments.

Dor Yesharim is purely a biological factor whether a couple can have children that will be healthy. They test for a number of diseases. Well, as you asked, about compatibility... I have a better question - are couples tested before they get married whether they'll be able to get along with each other and whether "they are for each other"?

I don't think such tests are possible, but when it comes to biologically healthy children and helping in preventing the diseases tested for, I don't think there is recorded a child who was born with the diseases tested for by the approval of Dor Yesharim.

Does anyone know of a case (or cases) of where Dor Yesharim failed - where they gave their okay, and there was still a child born with the diseases that they try to prevent? I haven't heard of any.

I guess there is a presumed difference between emotional compatibility and genetic compatibility in that consciously we should be able to adapt as we grow and as necessary to achieve a harmonious relationship with our spouses... yet we do not have many options when it comes to these biological factors?

The question I tried to ask about a shadchan's guidelines however was whether we know whether they tried to track any factors which led to sicknesses which we now are able to track by genetic markers?

Dor Yesharim is based on research and proven that Ashkenazic families have this issue to deal with. Check out this website if you missed it in the earlier postings.

http://www.aish.com/dating/wisdom/The_Genetics_of_Dating.asp

Emotional or any other compatibility besides for disease related, I'd think would be based on what the two people involved feel and/or based on what other parties involved have to say....

quote:

The question I tried to ask about a shadchan's guidelines however was whether we know whether they tried to track any factors which led to sicknesses which we now are able to track by genetic markers?

AFAIK there were no shadchan's guidelines, although families would try and avoid marrying into other families that had (what they thought were) genetic illnesses, which caused people to try and hide their problems, and all the problems that come along with that.