“With the help of Hashem Yisbarach we are happy to invite you to participate in the wedding of …” We peruse the invitation note the date and the venue and then carefully check the time: “Chuppah at 6:30.” Accordingly we arrive at the wedding early — at 7:45.
This is early? Is this not a rude display of bad manners? Not at all. If we arrive over one hour after the stated time we will in all likelihood be early and will still have a 30-minute wait for the wedding. For every sentient Israeli knows that the proper translation of “Chuppah at 6:30” is: “Chuppah perhaps at 8.” I have often wondered if this deliberate misrepresentation of time is not disrespectful of the same Hashem Yisbarach Who sanctifies time (Mekadesh hazmanim) and to Whom token obeisance is invoked on every wedding invitation.
Some actually arrive in good faith at the stated hour frittering away the time in idle chitchat ingesting endless meatballs and cakes and imbibing a cascading flow of drinks — all while the minutes tick away. When one calculates the amount of time wasted as we wait for the chuppah to begin the total is staggering. Consider: if 200 people wait 90 minutes the aggregate total of squandered time comes to a mind-boggling 300 hours.
Why should this be so? Why should weddings (and bar mitzvah celebrations and the like) not begin at the stated time? Why the charade of announcing a time that everyone knows is misleading? This universal Israeli habit (and also in New York and other major cities around the world) reflects an inordinate disregard for the most valuable commodity we possess: time. After all how much food can the digestive system consume while waiting for the distinguished rosh yeshivah or the uncle from Haifa or the zeideh from Bnei Brak or the brother-in-law from Connecticut to appear?
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