so many of you have talked in here and here's what I have to say:
Not everything you do believe in means everybody is wrong and what you believe in is the right thing. If you find this kind of marriage weird and wrong oh and "old fashioned" well how about other people find your way of marriage disgusting? or just against the laws of this world?
Not everything in the market is the new fashion and the right choice you make!
We've got a meat market nowadays and this meat market might not be meat market to some. Again, to me it is, to you it is "new fashion" do you understand where I am coming from. Great.
The Muslim girl got disgusted from that first potential partner because we all saw the mess he was in. He was not clean, not so faithful, not shy enough, and his hair was a mess. Well this is according to the Muslim girl anyways. Again, some people might find him attractive and handsome. Since she didn't then she is looking for a faithful one!! Someone who is a bit more handsome, bit more fearing to GOD... Hint Hint!! THEREFORE it wasn't the parents that wanted religion to come first in the equation rather it was the girl and her morals that disliked the situation!!
Same goes along with the Jewish girl. Her parents found her random guys to meet. What a great pleasure for someone to have having people come to meet you to see if you both are compatible. Marvelous, clean, respectful, pure, innocent, protective way of getting to know someone rather than going out for a beer, being dragged to his/her place, having sex all night long, wake up and go get married after knowing she is pregnant?? Nothing wrong with recommending a person you met or saw... But as long as you respect your parents enough that you at least ask them what they think of this person. You respect the moments you were carried in your mothers womb and the moments your father's sweat came down his cheeks to make you a living.
Again, some people might find this to be the alright way of getting married but I just wanted to show you how it looks from the other side of the rope.
Now you ask why religion? Why are all those men Muslims or Jewish that came forward to the girls? Well it is the girl's choice! How you say? well here it is: The Jewish girl's mother was participating and making the decisions about the religious nature of the man coming forward. Basically lets roll back to the time that she, the mother, was younger. Did she have a choice if she can marry other than a Jewish? No, well why the heck is she not letting her daughter choose then? Are you trying to tell me that ok ok when they were young they wanted to have a choice but couldn't and when they got older they wanted to have a choice for their daughters but couldn't?? That is not the case here. The mother and father knows about the rules. And as they grow older they believe in these rules more and more and try to teach these rules to their children as their children cannot for see that far ahead where the parents are. Therefore it is a good idea that the children be following their parents (not blindly though) but following them to a certain extent as they have seen far more and have better understand how things function. OH just to note that both the Jew family and the Muslim family have already sat with the children long time ago and have had a good conversation of why and why not you should or should not marry someone other than your faith! So it has come pretty common among the family to follow the foot steps of the RULES!
It is taught in the Towrat and in the Quran that this is what is lawful for you to marry and this is what is not. Period. These people are simply following the RULES! The same as the Ontario population follow the rules of marrying gays and lesbians, the Muslims and the Jews are also following the rules!!. I have no problem with that and in fact I envy their good practice and their obedience to their rules and to God. If, however, you have no rules to abide by then don't go pointing out fingers on those who have rules and say : "they are old fashioned". You pointing fingers at them is telling me that you are old fashioned.
More about choosing religious partners: I, for example, would not want to see my daughter go out with a person that doesn't have RULES sent down from God that I have taught her all through out these years. That person is not qualified according to the RULES to be a fair husband. He might cheat on her, he might disregard her, he might make her lose her faith, he might be a heavy drinker and get abusive, he might be swearing to God the one that she believes in, loves and lives for. For that, the RULES left no space where any man other than that of your faith can come near your daughters. You will have to live with these RULES as long as you are around people who believe in these RULES. If you happen to have a problem with that then hey there are lots of fish out there for ya that play their cards with out RULES or laws. All it costs you is a bottle of beer.
regardless if you think that this is fair or unfair, biased or false, you will have to go back to square one to the RULES and prove them wrong first before you prove the actions wrong.
Just a short respond to that person criticizing the "old dried up woman". This comes from a traditional point of view. Therefore, traditions and cultures need not be stoned in ones head and worshiped. They need to be updated (if they are to be followed anyways) every time the society has a need for it. For instance, during the Jewish girl's parents time, this "old dried up woman" did very well at matching people that not even a psychologist could do nowadays. However through out the years and with the lack of new experience rather the same old trick followed over and over, she becomes outdated compared to the newer generation out there. Yet she is still a match maker but needs some more newer skills to cope with the surrounding families and different needs! It is unfortunate in this movie to have showed this case however there are much more successful ways out there served by many Jewish communities and other religious people. But it would make sense for the movie maker to bring this as an extreme example to argue the extreme case scenario. Have we been intelligent enough to look around us, we would have realized this and showed more respect rather than jump to conclusions about that particular group of people.
Little bits about freedom of choice: When it is the LAW it is the LAW. There is no more choice over the LAW. Whether you like it or not this is the way it is. Do you have a choice whether you wanna pay the government half ya check through taxes or not? no you don't have a choice where as in Syria you do lets say for example. DOES THAT MEAN THAT THEY HAVE MORE FREEDOM OF CHOICE THAN YOU DO AS AN AMERICAN OR CANADIAN? Again when it is the LAW it is the LAW no questions asked. These are the true believers and true followers of the LAW or the books sent down from GOD. You can say they don't have freedom to show their bodies, to marry whoever religion person they want, but they can throw at ya the same argument that you don't have as much choice in other things as they do though.
I say, if you were talking about choice and how much choice is choice, keep it within your community and don't go out bashing others about their limits of choices. It is extremely difficult to compare one culture to another as non of us are sitting on fences and we all belong to communities and cultures of all sort of faith, race, ethnicity, tradition, or simply countries.
Done with that. My personal comments on the movie: It is sad sometimes when their is a lack of communications between one generation and another. I hope this movie serves as a reminder to all of us to have better communications with our children. It was shown that the Muslims in the movie had better communications than those of the Jewish family whereas that is not always the case. Sometimes it is the other way around but however this in the movie does happen every now and then and among all different kinds of communities with some communities suffer from it more than others. At any rate, what we need to understand is that there are cultures and traditions, and there are religions. We don't want to mis between them both! Some people follow traditions as if they are "the religion" and was inherited through out the years and some follow strictly the religion with no culture nor tradition involved. Not everything Muslims do nowadays is written in the books of Islam and same with the Jews. Therefore traditional and cultural societies does get in between people of faith and does introduce new behaviors and new attitudes. Those who stay firm in their beliefs don't get effected and those who take things loosely do.
One other note, what the Jewish girl did when she left the house was absolutely correct. Sometimes, you need to let you parents rethink things. Unfortunately, it has to be that she had to leave. In reality, a conversation should have changed their minds but apparently like I said before, the movie maker wanted to get the extreme case scenarios to the viewers which is alright as long as we understand where he is coming from.
Here I didn't see any arranged marriages? Arrange marriage is the marriage that is already arranged (hence arranged marriage) between two people without their consent. What we saw in this movie was not arranged marriage and that's why this movie is not called "the arranged marriage" or what not. Rather this movie is about arranging the marriage between these couples. As you all saw, the parents were striving to marry their daughters so their daughters can feel the pleasure of life as they saw it. It is a natural thing in parents to do when they have been married under the name of a Religion. They encourage marriage to one that is pure virgin like them rather than "sleeping around" with a hand full of unwanted diseases and lost identities here and there.
This fact might not be clear to the children but will be when their children grow up and learn from societies (Hence why the mothers would then repeat what they were taught and not flip flop but those mislead)
To those that don't like the idea of marriage as you might hate each other and prepare for battles later on throughout the marriage: there is always a sick option of divorce had things not gone right, even in the first few days, and shame on that society that points fingers at you when you divorce. As long as you are doing the right thing nothing else matters.
Lastly, how wonderful it is to marry someone that you are confident they are pure, clean, modest, respectful, virgin, virgin in their nature, honest, loyal, faithful and passionate.
And how miserable it is to marry otherwise !!
Cheers all,
Peace and blessing be upon ya all...
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Elektrofunk
16 years ago
I agree that what's right for me isn't necessarily right for others. I don't mind admitting that I'm not even sure what is right for me. But I'm convinced that a decision on who you choose as a partner should ultimately be yours. Seeking advice and council with your friends and relatives is probably a good idea, but the final decision is yours.
In the movie it seemed that both girls were much better qualified than their parents to find a good husband. In other cases it might be the other way around, but isn't it better that the one getting married makes unfortunate choices than the parents?
you come off as a well meaning person with sincere belief in love. also you come off as a very religious person with great respect for authorities. and that's exactly what this is about. as you said, i have to prove the rules wrong before the actions. i think the rule books of our three "mono" religions have been proven so flawed, that it would be ignorant to follow them blindly. laws and rules change, it is the only way for societies to evolve.
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