The name of the recipient of this letter was not released.

B”H, the first day of Rosh Chodesh Adar II, 5711,
Brooklyn

Greetings and blessings,

In response to your letter in which you inform me that an appropriate shidduch has been proposed for your second daughter and that all sides feel that [the match] is fitting.

You ask my opinion about this, because your oldest daughter is not yet married.

[In reply:] You should ask your oldest daughter to agree to this and to forego her right to primacy. The engagement should be made without fanfare and there should be no hurry in setting the date for the wedding. May G‑d enable you in the interim to find the appropriate match — in both a material and a spiritual sense — for your oldest daughter and thus you will be able to bring twofold tidings of good news.

We don’t know the wonders of Divine providence. Perhaps [her willingness to] forego her privilege with a full heart and true happiness, despite her being “jealous of her [younger] sister,”1 will remove the final obstacle and hindrance and enable her to find her own marriage partner very speedily.

With blessings that the engagement agreement of your second daughter be carried out in a good and auspicious hour and that in the near future, you be able to share tidings of the engagement agreement of your elder daughter.

Greetings to all the members of our fellowship,

* See Tosafos, sv. vehilchasa, Kiddushin 52a; Rashbam, Bava Basra 120a; sv. lehalen; Maharit to Kiddushin, loc. cit. [These sources all emphasize that the standard practice is that the elder daughter should marry first.] Nevertheless, [if the elder daughter] foregoes her privilege, these concepts do not apply at all.