The New York Times
Rabbis Put End to Wearing White After Labor Day

For most Orthodox Jews, the biggest event in their life is their wedding - an event combining their friends and family with singing and dancing and all types of festivities. Teens and adults alike were shocked on Tuesday when a group of rabbis released an edict against marriages.

The decree, signed by 178 rabbis prohibited Orthodox Jews from participating in marriages including their own. The rabbis warned that weddings include acts of “ribaldry and lightheadedness” such as dancing and singing, and the newly married couple would be lured away from spiritual purity on their wedding night. The ban has thrust internally and externally tensions of how the Jewish community regards gender relations.

The growing popularity of “hot button” topics such as women’s rights and homosexual marriage has troubled most Hasidim. Some fear that the opinion of a spouse may rival the opinions of the rabbis, who have the final word on all things in Hassidic daily life.

In an effort to avoid a full ban on marriages, the rabbis had attempted to ban parts of weddings such as the dancing and all other festivities not essential to the marriage.

That was not enough nor accepted widely enough to prevent the rabbis from feeling the need to express their absolute power. Last Monday, the rabbis agreed to convene on Tuesday, to demand that all planned weddings be canceled and all future weddings be banned. The text of their edict warned that weddings “strip the youth of their innocence, and often, of their clothes.” Coerced to believing it was the right thing to do, all 178 invited rabbis, signed the edict.

Dr. Shloimie Danzig, a father who had been planning a wedding for his daughter to take place Wednesday, was appalled. “I’ve been planning this wedding for months,” said Dr. Danzig, who was looking forward to marrying off his daughter. “Now they have to ban it? Couldn’t they have banned weddings before I put down my deposit?” Dr. Danzig will sustain an estimated $250,000 in losses.

Anticipated brides and grooms throughout the Brooklyn metro area have come out saying that they will not get married. In interviews with a Time’s correspondent, many had the same feeling that they had no choice but to obey the decree. “If I am to get married and have children, how can I answer my children when they ask why I disobeyed a rabbinic decree?”

A man answering Rabbi Dovid Rabbinowitz’s cellphone, who declined to identify himself, claimed to know nothing about the ban and suggested that we had a wrong number. Rabbi Dovid Rabbinowitz is one of the first hundred rabbis to sign the ban.

The ban has provided yet another glimpse into the supposedly secretive Hasidic world. Debate over the ban has raged on blogs and on the radio, both of which have been banned years ago but provide anonymity to those who wish to challenge their leaders without fear of excommunication. “The rabbis are dictators,” said one blogger. “But I love them anyway, cuz their [sic] cute too.” Others defended their spiritual leaders in a more traditional manner, saying that they were protecting young people. “Our rabbis know more than we do, most of them have been married, they must see the evils from their own marriages and wish to save our children from those pains,” wrote another blogger.

Some critics claim the rabbis are manipulating the community, one signer, Rabbi Tzvi Finkel of Brooklyn, told the Times that the rabbis have seen the great pain marriage causes the community and issued the edict to lift that burden. “Time is pressing on this issue, with oil prices so high, and housing prices on the rise, a family of eleven or twelve children all looking to get married just can’t afford the financial burden. It was either allow the selling of children to be used for medical research, which the rabbis have strictly forbidden claiming that science is a devilish farce, or forbid marriages which will save the average Brooklyn family upwards of 3 million dollars.”

There is no indication that this ban will be lifted or is in anyway temporary, Shalom Bloom, a Brooklyn resident reported. “Rescinding the ban would call the rabbis’ infallibility into question. In the past temporary bans have been made. A 400 year ban was put on polygamy, and after the 400 years it was adopted indefinitely. Now the rabbis have banned monogamy, it’s just the logical next step.”