Romantica

…the bachur is brought into the room, where he meets his bride to be. They spend a half hour scraping their vocabulary for words that can fill the gaping silence, clear their throats a few times, and trace the tablecloth pattern with the fore-finger till the parents finally dismiss them. They then hurry home where the girl can shout and jump with her pals and the boy can call the list of relative till the 6th-removed-cousin to get his mazel tov.


In short, the start of a Chassidic marriage is not very romantic.

It doesn’t get much better.

Hashem has created this world with a wisp of romance. He put the beaches, the sunset, the birds, the flowers, the greenery, the snow and rain, all onto his planet. The only problem is, he also put man.

Man and flair have never gotten along. Man tends to get to the point, consider himself less lazy for spending less time at an act. Especially since the feminist movement in the goyishe world in the 1800s, romance was amongst compromises man had to make to fit into a more female dominated society.

Of course none of these developments affected the religious. So the Chassidic community, for all the commotion, remained accustomed to its simple marriages, with more love and less romance.

Times are a changin’ for us as we learn to have better taste in entertainment. Yet, I struggle. The classic candlelight dinner is ‘so tinkle’ for Yoelish, the leisure walks are proper opportunities to discuss business, and birthdays happen only when you’re born. And even when Yoelish does express interest in any of these celebrations there’s not much we can do about it. There are no fancy restaurants you dress up for that I’ve enjoyed thus far. There’s no place I can steal a private pool from. There is no kosher beach we can relax at. And without a doubt, there is no way I can get that peck of appreciation in public.

That all without taking the little cherubs into account, those that are always 'game' right when you got ready for a two-player-only round.