The Ethical Simcha
Upcoming wedding? Bar mitzvah? Bris? Ordination? Rabbis Alana Suskin and Joshua Ginsberg have put together an excellent list of principles to keep in mind while simcha planning, to make sure it’s done Jewishly and justly.
Check it out here.
Sorry… I would tend to disagree with the principles provided. Specifically the emphasis on making it more orthodox – even if the celebrant is not orthodox.
There is a myth in our community that comfortable for all means kosher for all. That the dress code that must be applied and the social norms used must be those of the frum community.
Frankly it’s offensive and divisive. Do we need to make sure that there’s a kosher option for kosher participants? sure… does that mean that it can’t be the same as the vegitarian option? or a seperate dish from everyone elses? kosher food is expensive, and quite possibly not what i want at my wedding, bris, etc.
pluralism and welcoming means that we make allowences for other people – not the we abandon our own understandings and beliefs. I choose not to be kosher and I choose not to be frum. To tell someone that they need to act frum at their own simcha is offensive.
Pluralism is learning to celebrate with one another and accomodate our differences, not finding a way to push it under the rug.
It doesn’t say anything about being “more Orthodox” or “acting frum”. The part about kashrut says “kashrut, as understood by our spiritual leaders and community”. So if your community’s standard of kashrut is that all vegetarian food is kosher, then vegetarian food qualifies. If your community’s standard is that you only eat organic free-range pork, then that’s ok too. This article says nothing about any particular standard of kashrut.
i also think that tzniut (modesty) is meant to be understood as a way to approach how the simcha is conceived not just what people wear. for instance the several hundred thousand dollar bar mitzvahs featuring ice sculptures, a-list preformers, and newspaper articles fail to meet the tzniut standard.
that said, i would have probably come up with a slightly different list of values were i in charge.
Organic free-range pork. Mmmmm. I think that says it all.
And then they wonder “Why? Why do the Orthodox persist in rejecting our legitimate branch of Judaism? Whhhhhhyyyy?”
Heh.
Who’s this “they”? I didn’t know that reductio ad absurdum thought experiments could talk.
Scratch that, I misused the term reductio ad absurdum, and that’s not exactly what I meant. But my point is that “free-range organic pork” was an absurd case that I made up out of whole cloth to prove the rhetorical point that the article doesn’t actually say what TomC was reading into it. If you thought this represented the kashrut practices of any real-life Jewish community, then you got punk’d.