Beyond Segulos

In the book "Riding the Waves" by Tamar Ansh, there is an amazing story that the author heard directly from the girl's mother.  It's called "The Sister Project" and it's on page 156 and the story goes as follows:

Shoshi (pseudonym) was a senior in an Israeli Beis Yaakov and there were about 40 girls in her class.  Most girls were from large families and although parents wanted to marry off their children in order, this was sometimes hard to do when there were many eligible siblings.  Many girls in Shoshi's class were worried about how they would do a shidduch when they had one or several older single siblings.

Shoshi and her friends made a list of all the older siblings in their class alone and it amounted to 40 singles! They did every known segula such as hafrashas challa, saying Tehillim, saying Perek Shira and Shir Ha'Shirim, they gave tzedaka, etc. and nobody got engaged.

Shoshi had initiated the project (even though she did not need this yeshua herself) and she was very disappointed.  She wracked her brains for an idea and came up with this - maybe they needed to do something that required mesirus nefesh on their part.  It's not that doing segulos is easy.  They take time and effort, but they're formulaic and don't necessitate going out of your comfort zone.

Her class had a teacher that no one liked and the girls misbehaved in her class, talking, passing notes, etc.  It occurred to Shoshi that their mesirus nefesh project should be that the entire class behave like model students for ten hours of this teacher's class.  Her classmates did not exactly jump at the opportunity but Shoshi insisted and convinced them all. 

You'll have to read the story for all the details but suffice it to say, the girls behaved, the teacher was thrilled, and after ten hours of behaving properly, ten singles from their list got engaged!

The girls were overwhelmed by this obvious cause-and-effect connection and decided to do another ten hours.  Yes, another ten names were crossed off their list.

Shoshi wanted to do a third round of ten hours but many girls had had enough.  Shoshi must be an extraordinary young lady because she convinced them, and she had to convince them all, to do it again.  The teacher was ecstatic, they had behaved for thirty hours, and thirty singles from their list were either engaged or married, and some of them were over thirty years old!

The story ends with the girls working on their fourth set of ten hours.