[Avodah] Circles Where It Is Not Done Today

Jay F. Shachter jay at m5.chicago.il.us
Tue Jun 7 21:11:13 PDT 2022


>
>>
>> There was a time when the Kallah was brought to the men's side of
>> the hall, she sat down next to her Chasan, and men danced in front
>> of them.  In many circles this is no longer done today.
>>
> 
> In those circles where it is not done today it was never done.
> 

This is not true.  Or, if it is true, it is true only because you are
defining your terms idiosyncratically, to the point where you are
saying nothing useful.

Your point is well taken (anticipating a point that you are likely to
make in reply) that the term "circles" must refer to communities and
not to individuals.  You are not making a statement about individuals.
You are not saying that, for every individual person at whose wedding
there is total separation of the sexes, there was also total
separation of the sexes at that person's previous weddings.  You
cannot be saying that, because an individual person, typically, only
has one wedding.

Rather, you are making a statement about communities: you are saying
that there are communities, made up of individuals, such that, at the
weddings of those individuals, there is total separation of the
sexes.  And you are saying that, for every community of which this is
true in the present, it was also true in the past -- i.e., when the
past members of those communities had weddings, there was total
separation of the sexes at their weddings also.

And when I attempt to demonstrate the falseness of your statement with
a counterexample -- when I say that there is a man living on Diamond
Street between 52nd Street and 54th Street at whose wedding last night
there was total separation of the sexes, whereas there was a woman
twenty years ago living on Diamond Street between 52nd Street and 54th
Street, at whose wedding twenty years ago there was not total separation
of the sexes -- you will say that this is not a counterexample, it
does not disprove your statement, because the set of people living on
Diamond Street between 52nd Street and 54th Street is not a community,
so your statement is still true.

And then when I press you to define your terms, and I ask, What then,
according to you, is a community? -- unless you are being very
vigilant, because you know that you will be caught in a tautology, you
will end up giving definitional criteria that include continuity of
practice, you will say, inter alia, that a community is a group of
people, who engage in the same or similar practices over time.

But then you are saying nothing useful.  If there is continuity of
practice, then there is continuity of practice.  If a community, by
definition, is a group of people, among whom, some are fertile, who
make babies, who replace the ones who die, and among whom there is
continuity of practice from one generation to the next, then your
statement -- "In those circles where it is not done today it was never
done" -- is almost completely tautological (it is not completely
tautological only because there can be continuity of practice in some
things and not in others).

So let us understand your statement in the only way it can be
meaningfully understood.  You wrote:


      In those circles where it is not done today
      it was never done.


The only meaningful way that statement can be understood, is:


      If someone has a wedding where there is total
      separation of the sexes, then it is much more
      likely than not, that there was total separation
      of the sexes at his or her parents' wedding.


Now the statement is not tautological.  And it is now untrue.

The reverse, in fact, is true -- in most cases where there is total
separation of the sexes at a couple's wedding, there was not total
separation of the sexes at the weddings of that couple's parents.
That is because there has been, over the past few decades, a steady
increase in the separation between the sexes at weddings, just as
there has been at other events, like yeshiva banquets, so that the
separation was almost always less, a generation ago, than it is now.
Let us consider three generations of a family that you will not say
was less Torah observant in previous generations than now.  When Ahron
Soloveichik (that is the correct spelling of his name, he spelled it
differently than his brother Yosef Dov Soloveitchik) married Ella
Shurin, there was mixed seating at their wedding.  There was separate
seating at the weddings of their six children, but no mxitzoth.
Mxitzoth began to appear in the third generation.  The same trend has
occurred in other areas, as stated above.  There used to be mixed
seating at the Telz banquet (there used to be mixed dancing at the
Telz banquet).

The most important question, however, has not yet been addressed.
Why do we care?  Why do I have to correct misinformation of the sort
that was quoted at the beginning of this article?  Why do we care
if someone in Australia makes a wedding where the men and women are
separated by an opaque wall four meters high?  Or, more precisely, why
do we care if someone in Australia makes a wedding where the men and
women are separated by an opaque wall four meters high, and the people
at the wedding think that this is normal, that this is, traditionally,
what was done, in Jewish weddings?  The reason why we have to correct
misinformation of that sort is that ignorance about what is normal
leads people to violate the halakha, and we do care about that,
because kol Yisrael `areivim zeh (ba|la)zeh.

I know a man who attended his daughter's wedding, during the year when
he was mourning for one of his parents, I forget which one.  You
probably know another man who did the same, or you know a woman who
attended her son's wedding while in mourning for a parent.  Everyone
on this mailing list knows that you are not allowed to attend weddings
during your year of aveluth for a parent, and that your daughter's or
son's wedding is not an exception to this halakha.  However, everyone
on this mailing list also knows that this halakha, your Rabbinic
obligation to mourn your parents for a year, can be pre-empted by
another halakha, your Scriptural obligation to gladden the bride and
groom.  If your daughter is unable to enjoy her wedding, unless she
sees you at her wedding, then there is a long line of teshuvoth that
say that you are allowed to attend her wedding when you are in your
year of mourning for a dead parent.  I think this line of teshuvoth
originated with the Noda BiYehudah, but I have not seen the original
teshuvah, I am saying this based on what I have heard.

When I asked this man whether there was a mxitzah at his daughter's
wedding, he said "Yes".  (Actually, he said "Of course".  I was trying
not to embarrass him.)  Obviously, there can be no hetter to attend
your daughter's wedding while you are in mourning, if she cannot see
you at her wedding, and cannot even know whether you are there.  This
man dishonored his dead parent, by participating in a s`udath nisuin
during his year of aveluth.

Ignorance of Jewish history, ignorance of what is historically normal
and what is historically abnormal, thinking that abnormal things that
are common in your neighborhood -- like mxitzoth at weddings -- are
normal, leads to the violation of halakha, because teshuvoth are
written in a context, and if you are ignorant of the context, you will
misapply the teshuvoth.  If you had told the Noda BiYehudah that there
could be a mxitzah at a wedding, he would have looked at you like you
were crazy.  So of course the Noda BiYehudah would not write, in a
teshuvah that you think allows you to attend your daughter's wedding
during your year of aveluth, that it does not apply when there is
total separation of the sexes at the wedding.  He would not have
conceived of a need to write such a thing, just as he would not have
written that a teshuvah only applies to people who feel the pull of
Earth's gravity, that it does not apply to people who are weightless
in outer space.


               Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
               6424 North Whipple Street
               Chicago IL  60645-4111
                       (1-773)7613784   landline
                       (1-410)9964737   GoogleVoice
                       jay at m5.chicago.il.us
                       http://m5.chicago.il.us

               When Martin Buber was a schoolboy, it must have been
               no fun at all playing tag with him during recess.



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