Anyone else not a fan w meals with lots of ppl?

Ema of 5

Mon, Oct 02 2023, 8:50 am

amother OP wrote:

Yeah it's not a royal summons, but repeatedly rejecting invitations could be hurtful to people. Also, the truth could be hurtful to people and my understanding is a white lie is halachically okay and sometimes better than the truth if the truth would make someone feel bad. My general practice in these situations has been that the least-bad solution where a friend regularly invites you is to turn down most of the invitations and accept them once in a while and "suck it up" and go and have the best time you can.

Why would someone be offended or hurt by “we would love to come, we just really prefer small meals.”

watergirl

Mon, Oct 02 2023, 9:55 am

I hate it. And there is no way to know until you get there that it's one of those huge meals. While I am always grateful when I am invited, to be honest, I feel like the host is just ticking off a list when they host a lot of people at once. There is a family who used to do this often and invited us a few times; she had servers on shabbos clearing, cleaning, and serving, and she also had people making the food. It was like a non-simcha simcha. But the table was so hectic, so loud, and there were so many small conversations going on, it was just very unpleasant for everyone but the hosts (so it seemed).

I've also been to huge meals where the host tries to get everyone to be engaged in one conversation but does it in a very uncomfortable way, like everyone has to go around the table and say a thing on XYZ. It's so uncomfortable also.

I think it's best to limit it to a smaller crowd where you can actually have one cohesive conversation and no one is on the spot or on show.