Simchas and Proportions

alis_al_kulana

Tue, Jan 23 2018, 6:27 pm

Fox wrote:

Making a chassunah is a little like being pregnant: you become an instant magnet for everyone's craziest, most insane story.

The only difference between crazy childbirth experiences and crazy chassunah experiences is that you're more likely to get an epidural during childbirth, though you may need it just as much if you're making a chassunah.

However, there is one theme that I discovered touches on a lot of the issues in the American frum veldt -- the outrageous costs; the endless opportunities for people to be offended; bridezilla-ish behavior that extends far beyond the actual kallah . . .

It seems that a great many of us have confused two entirely separate occasions, mistaking simchas for family reunions.

Here's how this played out in our own recent simcha: It seems that on the side of our mechuntanim, there were a group of siblings who hadn't been together for almost 20 years. Of course, they were eagerly awaiting this event, and their elderly parents were even more excited.

So far, so good.

Accommodating this reunion meant working at length to find a date that worked with everyone's travel plans (two of the siblings were coming from Israel), but it wasn't a big deal to us.

Then we discovered the phenomenon that is "Shabbos Sheva Brochos," where the kallah's family essentially hosts an only slightly smaller repeat of the chassunah. Long story short, the mechutanim informed us that they would like to invite 50-60 people! After all, everyone wanted to be part of this sibling reunion! And it would mean so much to the Bubbe!

Now, we happen to be blessed with reasonable, sane mechutanim, and the list was trimmed to a point where it was only a little crazy, but we were told by many of our friends, "Oh, yes, the Shabbos Sheva Brochos ended up costing a third of the cost of the chassunah!" And invariably, behind each of these tales, there was a Bubbe who would be devastated if the guest list were trimmed.

The same logic is behind the matching gowns. The photography is no longer for the benefit of the chosson and kallah -- it's when everyone gathers for family photos!

And, of course, if a branch of the family is missing for whatever reason, Bubbe is heartbroken and the terrorists have won.

Obviously, simchas are family events, and no one should deprive Bubbe of her nachas out of sheer spite or stubbornness. But it's also not so nice to try to throw a family reunion on somebody else's dime, and that's often the practical outcome when people try to turn a simcha into a family reunion.

I think this is where we need to borrow a page from the African-American community, where family reunions are big business. Plan a Shabbaton or a week-long Disney World adventure if you want; collect money all year long to subsidize the costs of people who can't afford to pay their own way; budget for matching t-shirts or whatever floats your boat; spend a whole day taking photos in every conceivable grouping.

Getting people to cut back on simchas is a tough sell. Nobody wants to make his/her children the korbonos for austerity. But turning chassunahs or bar mitzvahs into multi-day family reunions adds ridiculously to everyone's costs. It may be time to be honest with Bubbe and tell her that she's going to have to find cheaper ways to shep nachas.

[b]please submit to every frum newspaper for publication immediately