Shmorg All The Way
Regarding “Are Our Weddings Too Expensive?” (Is It Proper, June 28):
Perhaps we could learn from other Jewish communities where they have a different approach to organizing a wedding. Instead of having a smorgasbord before the chuppah followed by a full meal afterwards – really two whole meals – would it be a bad idea to have a light shmorg or even a cocktail hour before the chuppah followed by a buffet meal afterwards? It seems to me that this would save on catering expenses by reducing food and wait staff. A bonus is that it would also likely lead to less food wasted. Why can’t this be the norm?
Daniel Hagler
Teaneck, N.J.
Women Must Take the Lead
On Wedding Expenses
Interesting perspectives. I would be interested in hearing as well from women. While fathers are often very invested in the financial aspect of weddings, mothers – and their daughters – are typically the ones more invested in the aesthetics and trends which can lead to higher or lower price tags.
I’ve seen a number of discussions among women lately surrounding (and bemoaning) the high cost of weddings, while simultaneously seeing many more queries about “what are the normal gifts for chosson” or “where to buy X kinds of simcha gear.” And while bargain hunting is a large theme in these questions, the underlying understanding is “We want to do this right.” And many men defer to the women in their lives when it comes to this arena, regardless of how much they want to save financially.
As much as hearing male rabbinic perspectives can be helpful for some in deciding to scale down a wedding, after decades of hearing about this topic from this quarter (and experiencing many different formats of family weddings), I wonder if the needle will move meaningfully only once women authoritatively take over the conversation and demonstrate new trends that make it comfortable for mothers and daughters to do things differently. I would note also that while some of this could and should come from rebbetzins, the truth is that the greatest impact will be from true social influencers (and not just the ones on social media, but those women who are looked at as popular and with-it within their respective communities).
Chana Chava Ford
Via email
A DYI Wedding
Everything about frum life is too expensive and we will continue to lose people if we don’t fix it. And marriages are suffering due to this “keeping up with the Jones (or Bernsteins)” attitude.
My wedding had 140 people and cost less than $25,000 in Malibu in 2015. We did mostly DIY; I didn’t care about having anything lavish. I’d rather have a simpler affair that’s fun. Everyone says it was the best wedding they’d ever been to.
Kylie Ora Lobell
Los Angeles, Calif.
Open Letter to L.A. Mayor Bass
June 24, 2024
Dear Mayor Bass,
I hope you had a pleasant weekend. I am sure your job is a 24/7 job and it takes you in many different directions. I can’t imagine the amount of stress you must endure on a day-to-day basis. What I am sure you didn’t experience yesterday, June 23, was the inability to walk into your preferred house of worship to pray because there were people outside chanting death to you as you wanted to enter. Unfortunately, this is what I experienced with my son as we went to pray the afternoon service, something we have been doing in our tradition for thousands of years. Seeing the masked terrorists on Pico Boulevard blocking our entrance into our house of worship harkened me back to my early childhood and being taken out of synagogue because other masked terrorists, known as the Ku Klux Klan, threatened to blow up my house of worship. This of course was in Tennessee in the 1980s, a far cry from 2024 Los Angeles.
We can have political disagreements, we can even have unpleasant demonstrations by people we vehemently disagree with; that is what makes America, America – the ability of freedom of speech and to protest. Our First Amendment is a beautiful thing. At the same time, intimidation, hate, and discrimination are not a part of who we purport to be. Unfortunately, I have seen the opposite in our great land. And in our great city, the demonstrations have continually shown to be the opposite of peaceful protests. Just ask any Jewish UCLA student or anyone who has had the unfortunate luck to be around these so-called peaceful demonstrators who spew hate and violence.
With my sincerest utmost respect, where are you? Where have you been? Yesterday was not a surprise. Anyone who is Jewish and has experienced the recent spate of antisemitism could have told you yesterday’s demonstration was going to be a mess and was not going to end well. I appreciate your strong condemnation but that is low hanging fruit. I look at Mayor Eric Adams and his strong public condemnation of antisemitism early on as a perfect example of what we need. Los Angeles is a beautiful, diverse, unique city with many warts, including a long history of racism and corruption. And yet we deserve better.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Chaim Tureff
Time For Action
Regarding the Perspectives column by Devora Simon and Rabbi Micah Greenland describing the East Brunswick High School yearbook erasing the names and photos of a Jewish club and replacing them with those of Muslim students (“Erasure of Jewish Students Will Not Be Tolerated,” June 14):
East Brunswick is in our local Highland Park-Edison-East Brunswick community, yet this outrageous antisemitic act seems to have gone completely unnoticed here at the time it occurred. In this age of instantaneous social media, I hadn’t heard it mentioned by any of our Jewish officials, lay leaders, religious leaders, or neighbors. I only noticed it in a New York newspaper first, and only after that in other media. (Being a weekly paper, The Jewish Press first reported on it June 11.) Apparently, what happens to Jews in East Brunswick is their problem and doesn’t concern the rest of us.
This situation is common in our area as well as other heavily Jewish areas, where in recent years, there have been numerous reports in The Jewish Press and other media of Jews being targeted, harassed, taunted, subjected to violence, threatened, and ostracized – including in Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, and CUNY Universities, and in the East Brunswick, Highland Park, Linden, Teaneck, Lakewood, and Williamsburg areas, among others. In most cases, the victims were left to fend for themselves with little or no participation or support from other Jewish communities and organizations. After most attacks, there have been the usual expressions of outrage and routine memos issued from behind desks, but very little in the way of real action or counter-demonstrations in the streets, where it really counts.
In contrast to this, our “cousins” are always well organized, well funded, very zealous, and aggressive and disorderly in their mission. And in this way, they are winning the PR war in the media.
In view of the alarming increase in Jew-hatred locally, regionally, and nationally, Jewish communities today desperately need to become better organized, including more boots on the ground, to counter the all-out assault from our adversaries. Just issuing memos, chanting slogans like “Jews are United,” and singing “Am Yisrael Chai” will not do the job. In order to effectively counter our adversaries’ attacks, we must take stronger concrete actions to make sure that Jews are united – or else Am Yisrael Chai is a much more difficult task.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
