Q&A: Mixed Wedding
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Mixed Wedding
Question
Is it permitted to hold a mixed wedding? After all, in my humble opinion, it’s a setting that involves joking around and frivolity.
Answer
This depends on the accepted norms in the society in question. In a mixed society, I do not see any justification for forbidding a mixed wedding. Whether people engage there in joking around and frivolity or not depends on you. In any case, it does not seem that this is the kind of setting that would lead to a forbidden act.
Discussion on Answer
Someone might choose to point out that in the time of the Levush, women actually had clothing…
Levush on the hole, or the hole in the clothing?
“They said in Sefer Hasidim that in any place where men and women see one another, such as at a wedding feast, one should not recite ‘in Whose abode is joy,’ because there is no joy for the Holy One, blessed be He, when there are sinful thoughts there. And nowadays people are not careful about this, and possibly the reason is that nowadays women are much accustomed to being among men, and there are not so many sinful thoughts here, since through familiarity they are regarded by them like white geese, and once people become used to something, they become used to it” (Levush, laws of custom, section 36).