Ynet, known for the intellectual frisson of its articles ( 😉 ), has posted a story about a young Haredi couple that has sort of eloped and gotten married despite the parents’ objections. Apparently the girl comes from a wealthy family, was spending some time in Israel studying and came across a young man. He was also Haredi, but apparently not the best scholar and maybe the girl’s father did some research on the boy and decided that he doesn’t feel like having to save his daughter from trouble in a few years.

Well, love is either wise or blind but youth is impetuous and the young couple, apparently with some encouragement from the groom’s father, decided to go ahead with the wedding. The bride’s father pulled strings, made phone calls and managed to get some important Haredi rabbis to speak out against the wedding. Posters were hung denouncing the pending marriage and perhaps even a little lashon hara, known to the rest of us as slander, was involved. Entitled “An Act of Villainy Being Carried out in Israel“, the posters were directed to the groom’s father:

“After hearing from important scholars that your son is about to marry a girl as opposed to the Torah’s wishes, we demand that you prevent this marriage which will not be held according to our dedicated Jewish law.

“Who can tolerate such a marriage with such great sorrow on the part of the daughter’s mother and father? It is a defamation of God to marry a person from the street considered problematic like the groom.”

Lovely, isn’t it. Obviously, these rabbis care about pleasing the rich daddy the girl’s welfare immensely and think slandering a young man publicly is the way to go about protecting her.

Well, not to worry folks, the girl got to marry the little troublemaker in an exciting and joyful wedding, and she can now proceed to, you know, have a lot of babies. If she’s lucky, he’ll find his true calling and go back to yeshiva to study and have her find a job so she can support the family. Ahh, bliss!

Mazal tov to the happy couple and may their love prove her father wrong. Although, to be perfectly honest, I have a feeling 19 year old girls are far less wise in the ways of the world than their daddies…

About the author

themiddle

24 Comments

  • You know, Middle, when I got up at 4 o’clock this morning and read the title of this post a little later, I thought for a moment you’d gone sentimental. 🙂

    BTW, the system usually expects the father-in-law to pay for the bochur if he can afford it; back in the Old World, when marriages were conducted as soon as the kids reached religious adulthood, a bochur too young to possibly work was living on subsidiaries by his in-laws called “köst”, which roughly translates as “food”.

  • froylein, no doubt you’re not the only one who gets up at 4 a.m. to read Middle’s posts. This is wonderfully wise: in the end, Middle reminds us, father knows best.

  • Tom, I get up at 4am, and if Middle has written anything in between my going to sleep and getting up, I’ll read it as I’ve got no human company around here. Today I was hopeful to see Middle’s softest side. 🙂

  • froylein, best not to tell Mrs. Middle about reaching out to her husband at 4 in the morning. She’s got trials enough as it is, Lord knows….

  • I respect the integrity of the Middle clan. I do, however, hope to get a Middle fan-shirt one of these days.

  • One can only imagine the sort of woman who’d take on a Middle. I wouldn’t know her if she nearly ran me down in her Mercedes SUV, but my respect for her is immense.

  • Didn’t know you were married, froylein. Did you also choose to elope?

  • I’m not married, just slain. If I were to elope, then I’d opt for Gredna Green even though I’ve read the wedding licenses there aren’t legally valid anymore.

  • She’s got trials enough as it is, Lord knows….

    One can only imagine the sort of woman who’d take on a Middle. I wouldn’t know her if she nearly ran me down in her Mercedes SUV, but my respect for her is immense.

    Ditto!

  • Daddy was smart to try to spend the money to try to prevent the marriage now, because it’s going to cost him six times as much to buy her back when she wants out because “The Scholar” can’t keep her in the style in which she is accustomed and he doesn’t want to give her a Get.

    As for the Rabbi’s, they are beholden to whoever has money, what’s news about that?

  • Not only that but they specifically target donors whilest still in college. But they do have balls alot of them open up Yeshivas by themselves with no money at their disposal, only hoping that HaShem will send them the donors.

    THe donors btw, get something out of the arrangement. They have a spiritual life there. WHat is so terrible really?

  • The thing that’s so terrible is that the Western hemisphere got over the concept of the possibility of purchasing spirituality, hence salvation, thanks to the Enlightment. Judaism is a pretty immanent religion, the focus on spirituality is a recent fad compared to the millenia-old history of Judaism. If people are made believe donations will make them more spiritual, we’ve returned to the Dark Ages – or TV Evangelism. 🙂

  • (froylein, I’ve got a couple of extra indulgences to unload, so if you party too hard this weekend, let me know.)

  • Middle: the next time I call you The Muddle, remember this thread – and what REAL abuse looks like.

    Happy Pesach!

  • No, no, please do keep calling me Muddle. It’s virtually the only exercise my roll-the-eye muscles really get.

    The rest of the tiime, you’re not so bad.

  • Middle:
    It’s virtually the only exercise my roll-the-eye muscles really get.
    – – – – – – – – – – – –
    Try reading your posts…

  • I do, that’s why your responses draw that tired faraway bored gaze from me…as the eyeballs begin to turn upward…