[Avodah] Report: Orthodox Weddings to Resume with ?Approved Model? in New Jersey: Rabbi Aaron Kotler

[Chana Luntz]

RLL writes on areivim:

<<Please see
https://matzav.com/report-orthodox-weddings-to-resume-with-approved-model-in
-new-jersey-rabbi-aaron-kotler/
[https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/chupah.jpg]<https://matzav.co
m/report-orthodox-weddings-to-resume-with-approved-model-in-new-jersey-rabbi
-aaron-kotler/>
Report: Orthodox Weddings to Resume with ?Approved Model? in New Jersey:
Rabbi Aaron Kotler |
Matzav.com<https://matzav.com/report-orthodox-weddings-to-resume-with-approv
ed-model-in-new-jersey-rabbi-aaron-kotler/>
The following report appears at TapInto.net:. While the Governor of New
Jersey has said to stay home repeatedly at every news conference, he may be
changing his tune.
matzav.com>>

While I have a niece whose wedding was originally set for just before
Shavuos (now PG end of August), and can certainly understand the pressures,
it feels intrinsically wrong, at least to me, to be carefully avoiding
weddings during sefira due to a plague that occurred nearly two thousand
years ago, and yet not be prepared to defer such weddings due to our very
own plague, right here and now.

In terms of halachic practicality: one needs at least two eidim not related
to the couple, and without ten men to make a minyan you can't have sheva
brachot, so Halachically authorising a Covid compliant wedding would seem to
be authorising one without sheva brachot.   Do you think that was ever
really the intention (I know that this suggestion of Covid compliant
weddings seems now to have now disappeared)?

I confess that one of the most powerful religious responses I have seen is
the piece in the link below by R' Gideon Rothstein - or at least the section
about nidui (not so much to my mind his attempted answers as to why G-d
might have put us into nidui, but the halachic description itself, including
the reference to being menudeh la-Shamayim):

https://www.torahmusings.com/2020/04/the-best-way-out-of-nidui/

I have yet to see this link anywhere else, but the correspondence  between
the requirements of nidui in halacha and the requirements of social
distancing required in most countries of the world today seems to me
uncannily precise.

What R' Rothstein doesn't mention is that someone who is in nidui cannot be
counted towards a minyan (Shulchan Aruch Orech Chaim siman 55 si'if 12).  If
R' Rothstein is right, and in fact a correct theological response is that we
have been menudeh la-Shamayim, those taking part in these Halachically
slightly dodgy minyanim would be missing the key point.  If G-d is sending a
message saying that we should all be considered in nidui, for whatever
reason, then responding to his message by insisting on forming minyanim with
ten people in nidui is exactly the wrong response (and presumably likely to
exacerbate the problem, which is of course what the doctors are saying).
After all, if someone who is menuda insisted on trying to join a minyan
against the strictures of the Shulchan Aruch, how do you think the Rabbis
who had put him in nidui would respond?  And hence what might one expect of
HKBH? One could of course go stronger, if one thought that it was not just
an analogy, but an actuality, saying that if one attempted to make a minyan
today in circumstances where everybody is halachically in nidui, then
presumably any bracha made dependent upon the existence of a minyan would in
fact be a bracha l'vatala (whether or not the issues regarding seeing the
other nine or being in the same room as them were the key criteria for
minyan in a non nidui situation), and this reasoning would also apply to
sheva brachot.  Following this line of reasoning therefore, sheva brachot
might in fact be impossible today, and hence no longer a requirement, but
such a line of thinking would surely also lead back to a questioning of the
general permissibility of weddings.

Kind regards

Chana