Simcha on a shoestring

It’s a well worn cliché but that doesn’t detract from its veracity: the recession is affecting everyone, and that includes certain people I know who would never have imagined in a million years that they would need to delay the purchase of a new Merc by a month.  I tell you, some people are really suffering.

 

My friend Moshe was only able to go two Shabboses before people started to speculate as to why he was in shul but his Merc wasn’t in its usual parking space around the corner.  He was able to shrug it off for a while by pretending the car was being serviced, “Those Nazi’s” he complained, “they say they’re the greatest engineers in the world so why can’t they get my sun roof to close properly?  It’s deliberate!”  After a while however, people stopped believing him, and he was forced to admit the embarrassing truth; the economic conditions had forced him to apply for a Freedom Card.  The upside of this for Moshe is that he is now able to get off the bus outside shul rather than two stops away.

 

What makes it worse for Jews is that living in a tight-knit community there’s enormous pressure on us to put on a good show regardless of our financial circumstances.  I find myself in exactly this difficult place at the moment.

 

Thanks to the Almight my daughter, the apple of my eye (crab), is to be wed in the spring and Mrs J is insisting on a simcha that puts every other simcha in the history of spoilt Jewish girls and nebbishe Jewish boys to shame.  My wife has little interest in the financial pressure we, along with the rest of the world, are under.  Her knowledge of current affairs does not extend beyond Radlett.  (Still, there are enough affairs going on there to keep her ears flapping for a good long time so it’s probably just as well).

 

So I’ve had to do some thinking and I’d like to share a few ideas that are guaranteed to ensure a spectacular simcha on a shoestring.

 

1      Select your shul carefully.  Some are much cheaper to join than others and many will do a deal if you ask.  My research tells me that you can find some desperate ones out in the sticks, and while they might not have proper rabbis the advantage is that fewer guests will travel to them and that will further allow you to keep your costs down.

 

2      Go for quality rather than quantity.  A smaller do will save you a fortune and you can announce it as very exclusive to those who might have expected an invitation.  Be ruthless even if that means not inviting close family.  The only criteria upon which you should decide who’s to be on your guest list is wealth.  The advantages to this are manifold.  You’ll be able to hire a tiny venue, many of the invitees will probably not come because they’ll be at some fancy charity do, and they’ll send a good gift anyway.  Your simcha will have a better ROI than General Electric.

 

3      Of course it would be entirely inappropriate to ask people to stump up for their drinks.  Gentiles may like a pay bar but frankly, for me, that’s a non-starter.  There’s no money to be made from selling alcohol to Jews.  However at my precious girl’s wedding one of the table decorations will be a dish with a label simply saying “Thank you”.

 

4      While it is forbidden to get married during the Omer there is no prohibition against having the party then, so here’s a nifty tip:  make sure you have other plans for Lag B’omer and arrange for the wedding party to take place on some other date during the 49 days.  The restrictions on entertainment will mean you save a packet by not hiring a band or discotheque.  Instead, borrow a selection of board games from your friends.

 

5      Finally, you know all those benschers you’ve been collecting from Barmitzvahs and weddings over the years?  Well cross out the names and dates and write in the details for your own do.

 

So there you have it.  Eat your heart out Money Mensch.

 

 

 

Masorti Judaism and All That

 

An embarrassment was averted at the Masorti shul I happened to visit last Shabbat.  The awkward situation arose when one hapless gentleman called to the Torah didn’t have a tallis.  Fortunately a woman came to his rescue with hers.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Masorti, allow me to explain something of the story of this group whose flavour of Judaism appeals to a small but growing section of Anglo-Jewry.  I have consulted my historian friends W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman and I am indebted to them for the following.  You might call it “1964 And All That”.

Back in the late 1950’s Rabbi Louis Jacobs wrote a book called “Believe Me, We Have a Raisin”.  In it he contended that the children of Israel did not feed on manna from heaven when wandering in the wilderness, but that they probably lived an agricultural life cultivating vines and the like.  To his annoyance nobody took much notice of the book and so a few years later in 1964 Rabbi Jacobs decided to publicise it by having an affair.  This was known as “The Jacobs Affair”.  Rabbi Jacobs’ wife was understanding but the United Synagogue was not and they refused to allow him to hold his affair either at Jews’ College where he worked, or at his old synagogue.  They said his book was a bad thing and that consequently Rabbi Jacobs was a bad rabbi.

Rabbi Jacobs’ followers were upset because they knew he was only saying what many Jews privately believed, so they helped him to form a new synagogue in London.  They didn’t know what to call the synagogue and to this day it is known as the New London Synagogue.

Rabbi Jacobs was supposed to be Chief Rabbi but when the time came to make the appointment they couldn’t get hold of him because his friends had bought the synagogue secretly and the phone number was not listed.  This infuriated Jacobs because he very much wanted the job and he blamed BT for the mix up.  Rabbi Jacobs didn’t want the same misfortune to befall another hopeful for the role of Chief Rabbi and so he wrote a manual called “Helping With Directory Enquiries”.

Time passed and while he hadn’t intended to start a movement the children of Rabbi Jacobs’ synagogue began to move out and open their own shuls.  They decided to call their shuls Masorti which comes from the Hebrew word for “transit”, thus remembering how Rabbi Jacobs was forced to keep shlepping his family and belongings from one place to another when he was trying to find a venue for his affair.

Masorti synagogues can now be found all over Europe and consequently they must comply with equal opportunities laws from Brussels.  This is why some ladies wear kippot and tallitot and some men wear sheitels and snoods.  In every other respect the service is virtually identical to that which you would find in an orthodox shul, which is no surprise because Rabbi Jacobs was an orthodox rabbi.  He just had a thing about raisins.

Happy clappy services

A few weeks ago I was subject to what the Spanish inquisitors would surely have considered a far more effective conversion tool than strappado and the rack: singing and clapping.

Let me explain.  I attended a shul service that suddenly went all happy clappy on me.  Now, I could understand if this dreadful happening had taken place in one of those progressive reconstructionist deconstructionist post-denominationalist gatherings, but this was not the case.  I’m talking frum.

At this small Shabbat minyan all was droning along perfectly acceptably.  There was no chazzan, as is often the case in such situations, just a service leader whose method of creating a holy atmosphere was to make like a secret service operative surreptitiously whispering into his lapel pin.  Then all of a sudden someone started clapping and yelling during the Kedushah!

Don’t these people know that clapping is prohibited anywhere on Shabbat, let alone in shul!  The reason is perhaps a little flimsy in that it is to guard against the possibility that a person who, in his excitement, temporarily loses his mind and feels compelled to fix or make a musical instrument for the purposes of accompaniment.  Nevertheless, the law is the law.

 

I’m aware that some chassids are happy with clapping on the basis that unlike in the temple days when every other Jew was a skilled instrument maker, that particular competence is now confined to vast factories in Shenzhen, thus rendering it highly unlikely that this particular law of Shabbat can be broken.  However, I must insist that chassids do sometimes adopt rather too cavalier an attitude toward our traditions.  Clapping and dancing can lead to fixing a utensil, obviously, and fixing a utensil is one of the 39 prohibitions of Shabbat; one that I’m more than willing to go along with it if it means an end to caftan clad hippies strumming along to Jewish Kumbaya.  I tell you, Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach (Zt”l) has much to answer for.

 

Were I, on the other hand, to attend a Liberal or Reform service I would be prepared for the prospect of such entertainment.  It’s a well-known fact that the choir does the communing, or should I say, performing, on behalf of the audience – I mean congregation – in their synagogues.  I know of at least one chap who was expelled from a reform synagogue because he disturbed the choir by having the temerity to try to pray for himself.  I’ve also been to one shul where they didn’t provide siddurs at the door but tambourines and penny whistles instead.

 

Let me be plain.  I don’t attend shul to watch or participate in a concert performance; I go to pray.  If I am present at an orthodox shul services and someone alongside me finds himself suddenly moved to yelp and dance I would be the last to object should he find himself just as suddenly moved into the street via the nearest window.

 

In Christianity it’s known as rapture and typically reserved for athletic types who do gymnastics down the aisles of churches.  Can you imagine what it would be like to sit in shul with people chanting “Praise the Lord” every twenty seconds while cartwheeling around the place? Think of the potential damage when the ark is open, not to mention the danger to over-excited women up in the gallery!  They may lose their hats.

 

No, I need the Jews who pray around me to maintain a sense of decorum and limit their public expression in the way that those secret service operatives do.

 

I am English after all.