On the other hand, in Fields of Offerings: Studies in Honor of Raphael Patai, Robert Gordis thinks that the origin from the sense of "shear" is more likely. " Beschert" is often used to mean Christmas and New Year presents, which according to folklore are divine gifts, hence the connection to beshert. Those who accept the first etymology explain that the destiny described is allotted (given) by the providence of God. ( The claim that it is related to the Hebrew באשר ba-asher - "in that" is a folk etymology.) The other theory is that it derives from the German bescheren - "cut, clip", cognate with the English "shear" (which ultimately has the same common ancestor as "share"), and related to upsherin - the Hasidic practice of cutting a boys hair at three years of age. This root is cognate with the English word "share". One says it comes from the German bescheren - "to give, to bestow - usually as a gift" (which has the third-person singular simple present beschert, past tense bescherte, past participle beschert). What is the origin of the word? There are two primary theories. So if the parents or matchmakers weren't setting up the marriage - then perhaps it became more clear that God was.
The term beshert found deeper resonance after the 18th century, when romantic love and compatibility began to replace marriages arranged on the basis of money and social standing.
An interesting explanation of the more recent prominence of the term (and concept of soulmate as a whole) can be found in this article: The sense of soulmate shows the association with a marriage partner - a "match made in heaven", but in Yiddish the sense was more general and referred to "fate" or "destiny" in a wider sense.
This Yiddish word entered the Oxford English Dictionary as both an adjective - "predestined, ideal", and as a noun - "soulmate". Today I was asked about the word beshert (often spelled bashert).
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