Several years ago I was heading to a shul in Israel for Mincha when I encountered a most unusual sight. On the footsteps outside the shul a small crowd had gathered, and, of all things, a wedding was being conducted. To my even greater surprise, it quickly became apparent that there were actually two weddings taking place. A double shotgun wedding on the steps outside shul before Mincha!
The mesader kiddushin was a rabbi from a nearby moshav. The witnesses to the marriage were chosen at the scene. The guests were local residents on their way to shul, who also functioned as an impromptu band. The wedding “meal” consisted of bamba, pretzels, candy, and soda in the lobby of the shul. The whole thing took about 15 minutes, for both weddings. True story.
On the one hand, it would have been nice if the couples could have enjoyed a celebration more befitting the greatness of the occasion. But I can’t help but wonder if these couples – probably new olim with little to their names – should really be feeling sorry for us instead. I doubt many people remember anymore, let alone care, that this double wedding was so simple. The new couples surely did not need a lavish affair for the moment to be special, and were able to begin life together free of an unnecessary financial anchor.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting that semachos be conducted in this fashion as a lechatchila, only that a minimal-yet-tasteful affair is preferable to an opulent one. Few would argue otherwise (the argument that “those who can afford to go overboard are entitled to” rings hollow with me), yet many families continue to outspend their means for a fleeting indulgence. They go deep into debt and burden themselves with multiple jobs for a few hours of empty social adequacy.
How many millions of dollars does our community flush into opulent semachos every year? How many thousands of additional hours of hard work are performed to pay off the mountain of debt? How much family tension and private suffering is endured just “to keep up” with a society gone mad?
The attempted takana of a group of rabbis several years back merely underscores the inability and/or unwillingness of community leaders to tackle serious communal problems head-on, and lends support to my belief that contemporary Jewish practice is determined from the bottom up. Some may deem this position disrespectful, but the facts speak for themselves.
Since the average Jew will continue to commit financial suicide as long as society demands it (for reasons best understood by experts in human psychology and mussar), we must change the demands of society. In the absence of true religious fidelity, there is only one way that can be accomplished. I know the solution will work if properly implemented, because it has already been proven.
In mishnaic times it became the social norm for funerals to be elaborate affairs. The dead would be buried in expensive garments, and professional lamenters would often be hired to wail in the streets. The stress on the family to keep up and the difficulty to pay for the funeral exceeded the pain of the death itself. It reached a point where people abandoned their dead and fled!
The spiral of madness ended when Rabbi Gamliel, the nasi of the generation, ordered that he be buried in simple linen shrouds, without the opulence that had come to be expected for even an ordinary person. The entire nation adopted this as a custom – after all, who would dare take more honor for himself than Rabbi Gamliel? – and the custom remains to this very day, nearly 2,000 years later (see Kesubos 8B).