Q&A: Returning a Wedding Gift
Returning a Wedding Gift
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I just heard about an unpleasant case and would be glad to know what the Jewish law is.
A woman received a large sum from her friend for her wedding: 900 shekels. A year later, the friend got married, and the woman gave her 400 shekels. For various reasons, it’s not exactly clear why. The friend got very upset and said that she had given a large amount because she knew that the other woman would also be getting married soon and that it would come back to her, and that this was deceit and theft and very insulting, and so on and so on. I know the story through the upset friend, so there may be additional details that were left out. From a halakhic standpoint, can one sue in a religious court the recipient to give a comparable amount, because all gifts are basically a kind of commercial exchange? Or is it simply that what she gave, she gave, and she has no right to sue, even though it may be considered improper or unpleasant and the like.
Answer
Obviously you can’t sue. It’s even a bit ugly to give a large gift in the hope of getting a gift back when you know your own wedding is near. People are supposed to give whatever gift seems appropriate to them, and not make calculations about reimbursement.
True, Marcel Mauss, in his essay on the gift, explains that a gift is a kind of transaction, but he is describing social norms, not legal obligations.
In Maimonides it appears:
A common custom in most countries is that when a man marries a woman, his friends and acquaintances send him money so that he may strengthen himself with it for the expenses he incurs for the wedding feast, and those friends and acquaintances who sent it come and eat and drink with the groom during the seven days of the feast, or during part of them; everything follows local custom. And this money that they send is called shushvinut, and those people who sent this money and eat and drink with the groom are called shushvinin.
Shushvinut is not a complete gift; the matter is well known, that a person did not send ten dinars so that he could eat and drink for one zuz, but rather he sent it with the understanding that if he himself marries a woman, the other will in turn send him as he sent to him. Therefore, if this one married and the other did not return the shushvinut, he may sue him in court and collect it from him.
It seems to me that today’s social conventions are not very far from this (there is a norm of covering the cost of your plate, and there is a norm of giving nice amounts to close friends, apparently on the assumption that it’s give-and-take. Also, people make Excel tables to know who paid how much—a practice that personally disgusts me, but it’s common).