Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes:
Last Sunday the Los Angeles Times ran an article about extravagant Jewish Iranian weddings in California that portrayed our community as a bunch of shallow, boastful materialists who think the purpose of a marriage ceremony is to tell our friends how much money we have.
Some of the particulars detailed in the article, confirmed to me by people who actually attended, included a bride placed in a glass coffin to be opened by her half-masked "Phantom of the Opera" bridegroom. The coffin did not open for an hour and the wedding was nearly ruined by a shaken and tearful bride gasping for breath. But the coffin, on that occasion, was a telling symbol of the utter death of Jewish values that such ridiculous extravagances represent.
The article further cited the regularity of film crews at these weddings consisting of five or more cameramen with "a 25-foot crane over the dance floor." In television this is called a jib, and to give you an idea of how expensive it is, through the first season of my show "Shalom in the Home," we couldn't afford one - despite a multi-million dollar budget.
Strangely enough, the article quoted a rabbi of a temple in Los Angeles with many Iranian Jewish members who "makes a point of not judging - and even sees virtue in the enormous family gatherings."
