A Big Fat Jewish Wedding

Before Yael and I got married, her brother Yehudah asked me to come with him on an errand. It seemed innocent enough and I agreed. He drove me out into the marshes in Haifa's harbor district where poisoned streams of industrial waste flowed in canals by factories and the electrical power plant. The perfect place to dump a body.

He started talking about Yael, and told me what a stand up girl she was, and that he would hate for her to get hurt. Coming from a hairy, muscled Mediterranean guy like Yehudah, the message was clear.

Obviously, I did the right thing without further persuasion. I discovered later that while Yehudah is a little wild, he's not violent and the ride in the marshes was a practical joke.

Yael's family is a big one. When they are together there's noise and confusion and lots of good Indian food (Her parents came to Israel from Bombay). And do the math. Yael is one of six brothers and sisters which all have at least three kids each and if you take in account cousins and nieces and nephews, that adds up to a lot of weddings and brises and Bar Mitzvahs.

Yael and I saw "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", a comedy about a girl of Greek-American extraction that falls in love with a regular WASP kind of guy. The story hinges on the contrast between her colorful and spicy family and the groom to be that is as bland as "toast" according to the girl's mother. All through the movie Yael and I laughed and our eyes would meet; the movie was about us!

Weddings Greek, Jewish, Israeli, or Indian – they are all variations of the same genre of loud and crowded chaos.

And to be honest, I am toast. I like quiet, I like tranquil, I like boring. I hate big, fat Jewish weddings. Once I told my brother Barry about an up coming (Yael) family event. I was all pushed out of shape because they were putting a lot of pressure on me to go.

Barry was taken aback by my stick in the mud attitude.
"You're lucky enough to have people who go out of their way to invite you to share their celebration, to spend time with you - and you're angry about it?!!"
As usual, Barry has a point. Yael's family pays me the highest compliment; they want me to be part of their family. And I'm not in the mood to party with them.

Being toast is chutzpah.

There's this parable about how God is like this guy throwing a big, fat Jewish wedding. He sends out invitations, but everyone in town are toast. They have better things to do, they're busy, they have excuses. They blow the guy off.

The guy doesn't cancel the wedding. He invites the poor and the beggars, and they all have a great wedding. It turns out that this guy is a pretty serious dude, kinda like the goon Yehudah pretended to be. He punishes all the people that didn't bother to come to his wedding.

The moral of the story is that God pays us the greatest of compliments. He offers to let us be part of His family, and if the invitation is the greatest of favors, then blowing it off is the greatest of insults.

What I'm wondering is this. What about toast? What about a guy like me that doesn't like big, fat Jewish weddings, but shows up anyway? What about someone that goes to the wedding, but can't wait for it to be over already?

What does God do about toast?