Friday, July 01, 2011

Adventures in America, Summer 2011, #3, Preparing for a "Plastic Wedding"

This time I'm prepared.  We're in for another "plastic wedding."

American Jewry has changed.  In our day, decades ago, most Jewish weddings, no matter how non-religious the families were, took a kosher caterer.  A festive event necesitated "Jewish style" food, and the goyim, traif caterers, just didn't know how to fill up a Jewish stomach.

Today, from what we have been told, things have changed. 

But eating plastic wrapped kosher food at an "all Jewish" wedding is nothing compared to what someone I know recently went through.  She decided that even though all the major players in a family wedding weren't really Jewish and it was even going to take place on Shabbat, she would attend so she could see her surviving parent, all her siblings, their kids and lots of cousins.

America has changed.  American Jewry has changed.

I live in a special Jewish "bubble" in the holy city of Shiloh, thank G-d!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

yep, the average jew of your age and background married a jew.
today a jew of your background marries a non-jew.

this is one the great strong points of israel that often goes unnoticed: it has millions of irreligious jews who almost exclusively marry jews. compare that with anywhere in the diaspora.

Batya said...

Things have changed, and not all for the better. Also there' s more isolation between relgious and non-religious Jews today

Ariella's blog said...

It used to be that for religious events, even people who didn't keep kosher at home would consider a kosher caterer, particularly if they were Conservative. But already years ago, I went along to my husband's cousins' bar mitzvahs where the food was all not kosher. I could have had an airline type dinner, but I didn't eat anything while I was there and stayed out of the range of the dancing.

Batya said...

Ariella, if the rabbis, Conservative at least, would refuse to officiate if it wasn't kosher, it would make a big difference.
It was rather incongruant to see all the men in kippot eating traif.

Tzivia said...

Canada's a bit of its own bubble, and I believe the Conservative rabbis still only officiate if it's kosher.
The paper I write for started allowing non-kosher simcha venues for its wedding / bar mitzvah supplement a couple of years ago. The editors know me, though, and never assign me to write up those ones.
(they learned the hard way when they asked me to write about Bar Mitzvahs at the Hard Rock Café!)

Batya said...

In the states it's more "business "than halacha.
A few decades ago a relative was upset to discover that the Reform rabbi charged more to officiate at their "mixed" wedding that he would have if both had been Jewish.