Shidduchim Part II - Lost and Found

The Wisdom of Rav Nachum, ZT"L

I was a student at Mir in Jerusalem for only one year. This was 5741 (1981) and it was the last year that Rav Nochum Pertzovitz, ZT"L, had the strength to deliver shiurim. Although I was able to attend Rav Nochum's shiur, his shiurim were lacking in depth due to the severity of his failing health. I came to the yeshiva too late to benefit from the true Rav Nachum. Perhaps, this is called "seeing him from from his back" (Eruvin 17a).

As was the trend in the Litvisha yeshivas, the Yeshiva maintained a fixed cycle of masechtos - what are know as the "yeshivisha masechtos" - to be studied. Many of the insights that Rav Nachum would commonly expound as the various masechtos in the cycle were repeated became legendary.

Thus, it is told over by his students that each time the Yeshiva studied Masechet Kiddushin, as the shiur reached the end of the first daf and they would study the following passage (Kiddushin 2b) :

We learn in a baraitha that Rabbi Shimon says:
Why does the pasuk say "When a man takes a woman" and the pasuk does not word it, "When a woman takes herself to a man"?
This is because it is the nature of the man to pursue after the woman and it is not the nature of the woman to pursue after the man. This can be likened to a man who lost an aveida (a lost object). Who goes looking for who? The baal aveida goes looking for his aveida (The owner goes looking for what he lost).

Rav Nachum would always remark on this passage:

So we see that the entire ordeal of finding a wife is just like someone looking for something that is already his but was lost - an aveida. Naturally, the owner will recognize his lost property the moment he sees it, so there should be no problem for a man to find his "aveida", his lost object.

So why is it that we see many young men who do not have such an easy time?

It is because they are seeking a metziah (a find) and not an aveida!