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

[Heather Sassoon]

I wrote: 

> 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.

And EMT replied:

<<     I feel that it misses the point of the s'fira prohibitions to
attribute them to "a plague that occurred nearly two thousand years ago."
The commemoration was not decreed because of the loss of lives during the
plague; it was because of the major diminution of Torah knowledge which
resulted from it. It was not because there were deaths, but because of who
died and because of the effect on klal Yisraeil of their deaths.>>

So you are saying that we would still have had these prohibitions if there
hadn't been deaths, just that all of these talmidim had been struck by
amnesia during yamei sefira, forgetting all their learning?

But if losing Torah learning is a trigger for banning weddings, why don't we
ban wedding on zayin Adar and following (ie the mourning period for Moshe
Rabbanu)?  After all, that is when the most significant loss of Torah
learning in our history occurred, after Moshe Rabbanu died, three thousand
halachos were forgotten (see Temura 16a).  And unlike the case with Rabbi
Akiva's students, where Rabbi Akiva started all over again with new students
and there is no suggestion that the loss of Torah was permanent, with Moshe
Rabbanu it would appear, despite some reconstruction by Osniel ben Knaz, the
lost halachos remained forever lost.

> Hence, there can be no comparison to today's tragedy, which thus far, and
halevai
>veiter, does not have that negative effect.

Well not in our  communities, which in some ways are learning more Torah by
Zoom than they ever have IRL.  But in the community in which this particular
attempt to start weddings was announced, Zoom and such like, being internet
based, remain prohibited.  I can't speak for the effect of that on the Torah
learning in Lakewood, but certainly those communities here in England that
have continued to ban the internet, and have merely loosened their
prohibition on kids having "brick" phones, so they can have telephone
conference calls from school, have significantly diminished the amount of
Torah being learnt by the kids (and adults) in their communities.  Because
even if Tatte can learn and teach his kids, trying to do so at the level of
every one of his kids simultaneously in relatively small accommodation, not
to mention keep up his own learning without access to the range of sefarim
of a beis medrish, is quite a challenge, to say the least.   The government
here is worried that prolonged period out of school is extremely damaging,
and that is with assumed access to the internet.  There is concern that due
to the slide when kids are out of school, they might lose almost a year. The
same is presumably true in spades for Torah learning without the internet.

Note as well that not holding weddings is one of the stipulations of the
Mishna in Ta'anis 12b in circumstances where the 13 fasts for rain have
failed to have an effect, and the people are to be considered "k'bnei adam
hanezufin LaMakom".  That is not a case of loss of Torah learning either.

>EMT

Shavuah tov

Chana