The Joy Peddlers

One of the noteworthy middot (character traits) of this couple is the way they each dealt with their lonely years of watching their friends, one after another, get married and build families. Try to imagine the pain of their continued singlehood – each of them has friends who are now preparing for their own children’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations! It would have been totally understandable for them to have said to themselves: No more weddings, I can’t take the pain any more – how can I celebrate someone else’s joy when I myself am so stricken? I have no emotional energy to be happy for them!  Indeed, many others in their situation have done just that – they stand off to the side, unable to see beyond their own sorrow, oftentimes becoming desperate or cynical along the way as well.

However, both the bride and the groom (separately), had the exact opposite reaction. Not only did they not quietly exclude themselves from their friends’ weddings – they specifically put in tons of extra effort and resources to make sure that not only were they there, but that they were actively enhancing the simchah. This continued for each of them for more than a decade – and they never stopped.

Avi the chassan (groom) learned how to walk on stilts and traveled all over New York for years, attending every sort of Jewish wedding you can imagine, enhancing the weddings with his clowning and stilt tricks. He even had a special suit made just for this mitzvah. (You can imagine the special moment when he got on the stilts at his wedding for his own bride – no need to put him on a chair, he towered over the mechitza separating the men’s and women’s dancing!).

Esther the kallah (bride), herself an avid dancer and gymnast, also put in tons of extra effort with regard to the mitzvah of bringing joy to a bride and groom. She came to every wedding with arches and huge duffle bags of shtick (fun items like pom poms to enhance the dancing) that she bought herself. In fact, because the entire community relied on her shtick, her friends had to work hard to get other shtick together so that her own wedding wouldn’t be lacking!

She also did gymnastic tricks and her love of dancing (besides her own skill, she would call out the steps to help others along too) always energized the women’s side. Even more, she made sure she danced at every wedding she was invited to, no matter where it was. A significant portion of her budget and vacation time was used on her sometimes rigorous schedule of traveling to her friends’ weddings.

There is much to learn from their reaction to their respective years of fruitless searching (besides that they are one heck of a pair with the exact same – and exemplary – reaction to the same difficult situation!). I would like to focus on one aspect in particular, though: their tremendous tenacity under pressure.

Our culture is completely focused on instant gratification. If we don’t get what we want – now – we throw temper tantrums or self destruct through a myriad of mechanisms to drown out our woes. We wallow in self pity while blaming others for our predicament, complaining all the while. Oftentimes, we even complain to Hashem about how He runs His world, questioning His justice in sending us the trials we face.

Each member of this couple chose the more difficult route of facing down the challenge with strength, spirit and perseverance. They didn’t give up hope, and they didn’t give in to sorrow or fatalism, even after so many years. They clung to their emuna that everything Hashem does is for the best, and if they are still single, then that is for the best as well.

This core emuna enabled them to rise to the occasion, both in their joy for others, and in focusing on what mitzvot they could do in their current situation. In addition to focusing on bringing joy to other couples at their weddings, the chassan in particular chose to devote the extra time he would have otherwise spent supporting a family to learning Torah. He has what to show for it – at his engagement party, he also celebrated learning the Gemara (Oral Torah) in its entirety (a gigantic feat that many never accomplish in their lifetimes) – for the second time.

Instead of choosing the victim mentality of anger and frustration, they each chose the victor mentality of emuna. They just kept on praying, kept on doing mitzvot, kept on learning. They each built themselves into tremendously caring, dedicated, and selfless individuals – spiritually beautiful people. And in the end, Hashem rewarded each of them with meeting a person of the same caliber.

May they build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisrael – a faithful house of Israel – and may Hashem give all of us our sweet endings and send us Moshiach, speedily and in our days – amen.

*This is a true story with only the names changed.