חתונות יקרות

00:01 This is Igris, and today we are going to cover a topic that more than one person has asked me to cover over time, and I've been pushing it off mainly because it is more or less, uh, ready-made, and I was waiting for a day where I didn't have pre-- time to prepare a share from scratch. We've had this one on the back burner for a long time. Very excited to bring it to you today, and it is wedding expenses. Uh, whether you're supposed to have an expensive wedding, what the Rebbe feels about spending too much on a wedding. A, a lot of people listen to this share regularly. I have the analytics, so I know how old you all are, and most of the people listening to this share, you're probably not at that age yet. The, the average age for our listeners is a little young for planning weddings, but they're coming up eventually. It's good to have in the back of our heads. I want to open by-- I, I don't think I'm gonna explicitly name and shame on the podcast where people can only hear me, but for those of you who can see it on the screen, you can see exactly what book I'm about to shame. But it's a, uh, cautionary tale. A cautionary tale in, uh, in-- Ever since we started doing this share, we've collected a lot of Rebbe shiurtes, uh, and we've, we've collected them painstakingly. We've looked at many, many letters, many, many seforas to try

00:59 to get a very clear idea of what the Rebbe thinks about something, and every now and then, I'll explain one of these to somebody, and they'll tell me that they heard somewhere something that is the exact opposite. Now, in some cases, it's right? You gotta go look it up. In all cases, you gotta go look it up. But in some cases, it's because things get relayed really wrong, probably because of this broken telephone rule, that if you keep on saying things again and again, passing them down, whisper down the lane, as they said it when I was a kid, you sometimes lose the Rebbe shiurte in the mix. You probably are all aware, before I even show you the letters we're gonna look at today, that the Rebbe is not an enormous fan of wedding expenses. You probably know this, that the Rebbe doesn't want us spending tons and tons of money on a wedding. However, in a certain compilation, a well-known compilation of Rebbe letters on the topic of weddings, the opening letter is this one, and this is apparently a quote. It says, "To Igris Kodesh," in volume, that would be your Roman numerals. That is, uh, seventeen, page three oh six, says here, "There is absolutely no room at all for making a wedding in a skimping and parsimonious manner. No room for making small weddings. To stint and be tight-fisted with expenditures is oxymoronic to celebrating a wedding." Wow. "A wedding is to be suffused with joy. The joy breaks through

02:00 boundaries, attaining the ultimate degree of expanse, and this, this is the antithesis of frugality." Now, what does that sound like to you? That sounds like the Rebbe wants a big wedding. And, uh, guess what? The Rebbe never said anything like that. I don't know how this, I don't know how this got conveyed. Check out what it says in Igris. I looked it up in Igris right there, and in Igris it says that the person was complaining to that they were having difficulty arranging a wedding, and the Rebbe said, "I don't understand that you can say weddings are hard. Weddings are beautiful and big." There's not a single sentence anywhere in this letter saying that they should be expensive. There's not a single word in this letter saying anything about greed or about stinginess. It's simply what somebody's saying, but and then, uh, and then the Rebbe's saying, "I don't understand how you can say given that everything is and everything's gonna be okay." I, I see nothing in this letter suggesting that, uh, suggesting that the individual should not be stingy or parsimonious or whatever other synonyms they used up here for lack of greed. So if you wanna know how some things sneak into Lubavitch, uh, broken telephone, bad compilations, I don't know what to tell you, but, uh, don't believe everything you read. I went to look this up because I thought this would be a pretty good, uh, collection of letters, and this one, straight up wrong. The Rebbe doesn't say anything

03:07 like this in that spot there. Okay. Anyway, moving on to what we're actually doing today, which is the letters of what the Rebbe does say on this topic. I have one, uh, one that's originally in English. I think we'll start there. It's typewritten, so it's difficult to read. I said, "Can I make it any bigger?" I don't think I can. I think we're stuck with this. This was from, uh, does it say the date? Seventh of Tammuz, fifty-seven twenty-one. That would have been seventy-one. Nineteen seventy-one, yes. The Rebbe says, "I received your letter on the twenty-third of Sivan in which you write about the various plans where the wedding should take place, et cetera, et cetera." Sixty-one. Yeah, six- sixty-one? Sixty-one. Right, 'cause eleven wouldn't-- That's right. Sixty-one. Thank you. First of all, it's obvious that the wedding must be in accordance with Shulchan Aruch. We actually had a share on this earlier in the week. Mechitza, no mixed dancing, et cetera. Therefore, the plan which would not be in accordance with it obviously cannot be considered. Apparently, they'd sent the Rebbe more than one plan, and one of the plans was aser. I don't know what aser would be. My guess in nineteen sixty-one, mixed dancing or lack of mechitza in any event. Another point I wish to emphasize is that there's some misconception that a wedding must entail burdensome expenses, et cetera. People think that you have to take on incredible burden to make a wedding. For although our sages stated that it

04:05 is a great mitzvah to participate in a wedding and to add to the joy of the bride and bridegroom, they certainly did not mean to say that it is necessary to spend excessive amounts of money, but only that the simcha itself should be a happy and hearty one. So we're not supposed to have a low-key affair. It's not supposed to be, uh, anything that's short of simcha, but it doesn't mean you're-- When it says in the Gemara and in other places that we're supposed to be spending money on weddings, it doesn't mean a lot of money. It just means enough to make sure that it's simcha. A further point to bear in mind is that if it is the general principle of Torah that all things should be done in a matter of friendliness and peace, it is certainly true in such a matter of a-- as a wedding. And as long as the problems are resolved in accordance with the Shulchan Aruch, all of the details should be carried out in a spirit of mutual conciliation. Now, what does that mean? I'm almost certain, based on the other letters, letters we're gonna look at today, that that means you can skimp a little bit on the expenses, but not at the cost of the happiness of the parties involved. A lot of times, you know, you'll have a, you'll have one si-- you'll have two sides. Uh, it, it takes two sets of parents in very many cases to make a wedding, and one

04:57 side will, uh, come down on the s- on the, uh, stingy side, the other one will come down on the expensive side. The Rebbe's saying in addition to this overarching rule that we don't spend too much on weddings, we certainly don't make fights over weddings. So, uh, as long as things are not violating Shulchan Aruch explicitly, you should try mutual conciliation. Um, regarding weddings, I haven't gotten a ton of questions from people, but a quite a number of people have asked me about bar mitzvahs, 'cause that's more the age group of people who call me for things. And, uh, and this is more or less the answer that I give them, uh, routinely, which is that on one hand, the Rebbe is not a fan of real big weddings, but on the other hand, unless there's a violation of Shulchan Aruch on the table, the Rebbe is really not a fan of arguments. So, uh, we avoid arguments unless Halacha's at stake. It's not a din you can't have a big wedding. So this is sort of a, a letter that I think does a good job of showing how the Rebbe kind of straddles this line. We're gonna see a lot more of that rather than reinventing the wheel. I must admit that Shulchan Menachem did an excellent job of putting Igris together for this, and when they put together Igris, you can trust them every time because they quote them directly. They don't, uh, they don't put any of their own words. They

05:52 just give you the letter and the source. So these are excerpts from letters on the topic, and they do cover just about everything. So we're gonna read through them. You'll find this in Shulchan Menachem in the Yeven Ezra secti- section in Siman Mem. Make the letters nice and big so we can read them. This letter is from Igress, volume nineteen, page three hundred and ninety-four. What you wrote to me about putting together a wedding in general, The Rebbe says, "I'm generally not pleased with wasting money on renting a hall and things like that." These are expenses that have no particular point to them. They don't even really have a point in Gashmiyus. I don't know exactly what he means by that. Even though of course, Chazal are very excited about making a Chassan and Kallah happy. Everybody is obligated to do this, we see explicitly. So you see that you get a lot more joy out of a Chassanah when you don't have to use a, uh, office. That's like, uh, that's a, that's a very high amount of money, a, a large amount of money in order to rent a hall or to take care of the things that you think you need in Gashmiyus, which is maybe what the MeReB means up here, that even there's not even a in Gashmiyus because practically people aren't happier in bigger halls. Maybe that's what he means. Weddings instead should be done in a way of, and this is the of Chazal in Mesectah Shabas that

07:13 means the less, the better, the simpler, the better. Excuse me. The simpler, the better. Nonetheless, it is understood Nonetheless, you must remember that all of these sorts of things need to be done in a pleasant manner and with the agreement, or the complete agreement, the complete agreement of both parties. And this includes the ideas of the women who are involved, and it's int-- and it's easy to understand, the Rebbe says, and he sort of leaves it there. What he means is that a lot of times, you know, men can come in and say, "We're too Chassidish to have a pretty wedding," and the women will say, "You're ruining our wedding." So in that event, obviously, it's important to take care of the sensibilities of everybody involved, including the women who might, might wanna spend a little bit more. And in that case, the Rebbe is saying, "Sure, spend a little bit more." The idea being that although we don't do big weddings and we don't, and the Rebbe is not a fan, the Rebbe says, "Generally speaking, I'm not into the waste of money involved in these very expensive weddings." The Rebbe is really not into making arguments over it unless, of course, as we saw in the previous letter, is at s-- is at stake. So it has to be done As is explained in Chassidus, that is how do you dance specifically in front of the Kallah, which is something that tells us that the Kallah's opinion, the bride's opinion on a wedding

08:25 is given more weight in Halakha. Her opinion on the Simcha of the day is given more weight than anybody else's. So we see something very similar to what we saw in our English letter here in Lashon HaKodesh, which is the Rebbe doesn't like big weddings, he doesn't like expenses in weddings, but he also doesn't like arguments over expenses in weddings. So, uh, so if it's possible, you try to convince all parties to tone down the affair, and if not, it sounds like you don't make a fight. This letter is from Igress, volume sixteen, page forty, and the Rebbe says, The person wrote to the Rebbe saying that they're struggling because there are all sorts of expenses that are associated with a big wedding. The Rebbe says, The Rebbe says, "I do not understand why you're pushing yourself to spend a lot of money to make a big wedding specifically," "when you really should be worrying about making sure the wedding is qualitatively big, not just quantitatively big." That is, that it has Techeit into it. When, uh, it says that Avraham Avinu made a , that means that the that means that Hashem was there. So a , the definition in Halakha, if you will, in Druosh at least, of a of a big celebration is not that it is physically big, it's that it's the celebration that God would want to come to. The big one attends. That should be clear from the wedding, from the way that the Chassan and the Kallah act,

09:48 from the resolutions that the Chassan and Kallah make for the future, that the that Hashem himself would agree to what they're doing and to their wedding. And that they will merit to have the Shechinah between them. So the Rebbe is saying here, work-- worry more about the quality of the wedding and ensuring that it's a wedding that God would want to come to, than worrying about the fact that there's a big enough hall or that the celebration is expensive enough. The Rebbe says, "It should be obvious that making sure the wedding is fitting for God to attend does not mean that it needs to be fancy. That has-- doesn't have to do with physicality." With one exception, that is, it should be a big wedding when it comes-- a big physical wedding when it comes to giving out Tzedakah. But that is of no-- not considered an expense. So the Rebbe says about this, that, uh, he's quoting Chazal, that, uh, Tzedakah expenses are not considered expenses because when you spend on Tzedakah, it's really an investment. If you spend on Tzedakah, you end up getting much more back. And the Rebbe says, "Test me on this issue." I don't know what that word is, but it's a . Anybody know what that word is? Tara-ta-- It might be like a tarararam. A tararam? It means, uh, . Yeah, but is that, like, supposed to be the sound of a trumpet, like a tarararam? Oh, that could be. Tararam? Yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah, like a

11:05 tarararam. Anyway, the Rebbe says it should be understood that, uh, that what people call a big wedding, uh, is, uh, with, with all sorts of, uh, fanfare. You know, tararam is literally fanfare, so there you go. With all sorts of fanfare, does not make sense for many reasons. So the Rebbe explains here why he doesn't feel weddings should be expensive, why he feels you should be putting your efforts in other areas, why he does feel that if you are going to invest-- spend a lot on a wedding, it should be in the area of Tzedakah. That is, in a lot of weddings, there's an ancient custom to make sure that there's also a meal, a meal for poor people. That part should be expensive. But as far as the expenses, the Rebbe is not a fan. At the same time, I have to keep on reminding you that what we've seen in the English letter and also this letter up here, we see it in quite a few letters, is the Rebbe saying you can't force this on the couple. You can try to explain this to the couple. You can try to explain this to the parties and convince everybody to tone down their weddings. But the idea of actually forcing people to have smaller weddings and for them not to be happy because of it, the Rebbe is not a fan of this. The Rebbe doesn't want it forced, but he does want you to understand that this isn't the way a wedding

12:03 should be ideally. Um- In union bechlal. This is a letter in Igeres Kodesh in volume twenty-seven, page eleven. Ein yidin bechlal lavaz mizmas achei al atzei zachasna. There is no inyun at all to waste money on the expenses of a wedding. Valavai sheyizku lehadres de'ach havrechei anash ushiychiu. Uh, halavai that they would merit to see the way that the proper anash do things. Asher chasna chassidis-- chassidusis, which of course, chassidishe chasna. Heida bearchava bechol yoniya ve'ruchni bearchava amitais. That i, I wish you could see a Hasidic wedding, the Rebbe says. I wish you could see the way that anash do weddings, which should probably embarrass a lot of us. But he says, I, I wish you could see the way that anash do weddings. That an anash wedding, I guess he's writing to somebody who's not a member of the Chabad community, that the, that a proper Hasidisha wedding is expansive, it's enormous, but when it comes to spirituality, it's expansive and enormous. Archava amitais, that's a real expansiveness. Veyakom am yisrael lishtamash bai. The Jewish money is very dear. We do all sorts of things in Halakha to avoid losing it. Levei shelehadres lifleimi sheka haiprachim gashmim yesh meshech pleimi v'keyetz l'zeh. The existence of Jewish money is to do good with, not to prove that you can make nicer flowers than someone else. That's the Rebbe's lashon here. That here, there are prettier flowers than this person had at their wedding. Ki im she'yirbu a chasan ve'kalah mitzdaqa b'niach chasan ve'asmana. If you

13:10 really wanna show off your gashmius, show off just how much tzedakah the chasan and kallah gave before their wedding and during the wedding, v'eid v'eid. So if you wanna show off gashmius, that's also available to a Yid, but it involves showing off you are the biggest macher when it comes to giving tzedakah, not when it comes to having flowers. Uh, this letter is in Likutei Sichos, chelek yud daled at the end, but it's not really in Likutei Sichos. These are letters printed in the back, so since then, maybe, I don't know, the Shochan Aruch was pretty new. They probably aren't in Igeres yet. Las is chasan gedolah baruchniyas. The Rebbe says you should make a big wedding in ruchniyus specifically. Al pi rei, zeh kashat mikatnis ha'chumriyus. And generally speaking, says the Rebbe, this involves scaling back the physicality. It's an interesting observation that there, there are cases where you can have very fancy things in physicality that also match very fancy things in spirituality. We had a Rebbe like that. The Rebbe Maharash was known for being covered in gold, but at the same time, you know, obviously a Rebbe. But as the Rebbe says here, accurately of course, that in most cases, uh, ex-- big spirituality comes with smaller physicality. So generally speaking, you make a real lavish wedding, you're unlikely to also have a very spiritual wedding. Al pi rei, zeh kashat mikatnis ha'chumriyus. Generally speaking, this is tied to, to scaling back the chumriyus. L'hidder olam, la'asher haolam basa. That when

14:15 you take away the olam, when you take the worldliness, world is a word that means in Hebrew or is related to the word in Hebrew for things that are hidden, that the worlds exist to hide over spirituality. So generally speaking, if you invest in what the world considers, uh, physically beautiful, physically large as far as weddings are concerned, you end up getting in the way of the, of the ruchnis. V'azmin bamen, and also they waste money. Al avam chazal, ateret chasan u'menim shel Yisrael, which is of course something that Chazal is worried about. This is a point we actually haven't seen in the letter before. One of the points we've seen repeatedly is this last, is this last line, that we don't waste money on things like this. It's a waste of money. But here what the Rebbe is saying is, "I'm concerned that if you make a fancy wedding, you're going to destroy the ruchniyus of the wedding," because in a lot of cases, when you do something in gashmius enough, you end up pushing away the ruchniyus. Now, I know that this is something that in our generation, whenever Chassidim hear this, they get triggered. Uh, Chassidim do not like the idea that it's possible that their gashmius might be infringing on their ruchniyus because they've gotten it in their heads for some reason that is absolutely beyond me, 'cause it's not in the Rebbe's Torah, I think they made it up, that the Rebbe wants everybody to be a Baal Teshuva who's

15:10 invested in gashmius completely and somehow to elevate it to ruchniyus. That's not what the Rebbe means. The Rebbe just doesn't turn us away from gashmius the way that prior generations might have. In any event, the Rebbe's saying here very clearly, people who find themselves buried in gashmius usually have a real difficult time having archav and ruchniyus, and that's something I think to remember outside the context of weddings as well, and something perhaps to repeat to individuals who are under the impression that somehow the Rebbe introduced a new Shulchan Aruch where we're supposed to be materialistic. Materialism is never part of Chabad, and material almost always is a stira for the spiritual. Now, uh, this is also printed back in Likutei Sichos. Gadol zechus v'zechus ha'chasan ve'kalah sheyichlu miya'azu b'takanas vedei Yisrael bazeh l'chugei anash sheyechi l'chovonei Yisrael sheyechi. It would be a great zechus for the chasan and kallah if they would return to the takanas of the gedolim and that anash always kept. Eydei herasos m'dikmas hamchaya, v'zeh oteiv simcha tov l'evav. V'yehi b'shateiv mitzvach chassid. The Rebbe's giving a beracha. He's saying that if the chasan and kallah will consent to making their wedding smaller in line with the tradition of the Jewish people, that we don't focus on the physicality and we focus on the spirituality, they will get an incredible zechus for this. Why is the Rebbe saying this? First of all, 'cause it's true. Second of all, because of the rule we keep on seeing. Gaavi v'darkei nem darkei shalom.

16:14 If you don't get the consent of the chasan and kallah, no deal. So the Rebbe's trying to sweeten the pot by informing them that in addition to the fact that this is the right thing to do, that wasting money is a bad idea, that spirituality usually doesn't, doesn't match, uh, expansive physicality, he's also telling that you'll get incredible berachos if you scale back your wedding. And if that works, great, and if the chasan and kallah still say, "We need a giant hall," I don't think the Rebbe says to push them. I don't see that in the letters. What I do see is the Rebbe saying, "Try to convince them." This is in Igeres volume thirty, page thirty. The Rebbe says, Yuda daati sheeint zarach la'az v'amanal shel Yisrael. You know that it's my opinion that you're not supposed to be wasting the, excuse me, you don't have to waste the money of the Jewish people. Afi lo ashirim b'aman rav. Even when it comes to rich people, this is important. A lot of times, the way that we explain this is that everybody needs to make a wedding according to their station, right? So according to their status, if you have a multi-billionaire who makes a wedding in a closet, it's gonna look bad. The Rebbe says, "I don't agree. I think even very, very rich people should not be wasting their money when it comes to chitzonius, when it comes to external things." Which-- And again, I, I, I, I, I know I referenced

17:09 this a moment ago and just went on a little rant, but I gotta do it a second time, second rant in a row. Uh, for everybody who keeps trying to convince me that, uh, that, that by Chassidim, everything that is involved in materialism is not chitzonius, the Rebbe is specifically describing the, the expenses of a wedding, which is a spiritual endeavor, as being ultimately chitzonius. We should just lay out chitzonius to chitzonius, and certainly not chitzonius of chitzonius. So for everybody who is under the opinion that somehow the Rebbe supports the idea that we need to be deeply invested in materialism in order to elevate, and when a Chosid gets involved in the material, it is spiritual and it's not chitzonius by us if we use it for good, I, I-- Nehefeh taysah, first of all, and second of all, here is a letter. Take that. Uh, afi lo ashirim b'aman rav. Even people who are very, very rich, who have all the money that they need, should not be wasting money on external things because they get in the way of spiritual things. Im tiheke divai im yano hashechel ufnimiyus, yodin et kami ya'al le'achrei yesh makim bachol hakavan. And the Rebbe says, "And if you are telling me that you need extra money to make your wedding more spiritual, not more physical, but more spiritual, tell me exactly what that would be, and if I think you're right, I'll send you money." So the Rebbe says, "If you're telling me that, like, you

18:08 know, you think you need a, a prettier chuppah, or I don't know, you think you don't have enough money to feed all the poor people who are going to come, we can talk about spending money on it. But if you're gonna tell me that you think that somehow making a bigger hall is spiritual, you're out of your mind. It's not just chitzonius, it's chitzonius dechitzonius." But this is a letter that we saw before, although again, it doesn't really have anything to do with money. It's just a-- don't complain about weddings is what the Rebbe means here. Don't complain and say it's so hard to put a wedding together 'cause you should understand that simchas pair it together, and weddings have nothing to do with difficulty. This last bit I wanna show you is probably the most important part, and that is that there are several letters where the Rebbe explains how much he thinks you should spend on a wedding. We're gonna look at two of them, and then we're going to stop this series right here and do one more letter before we're done. The Rebbe says in Igeres volume ten, page one thirty-one, that when you're arranging the wedding, trying to figure out how many people to invite, et cetera, sounds like you're gonna go into debt doing this. The Rebbe says, First of all, I don't think you should go into debt for a wedding. So the Rebbe's first line is, you have to make a way big wedding, you feel like

19:08 you need to take out loans, don't do it. I think probably . I, I can't imagine he said Rabba Mazal. I don't know. Don't forget, Rabba says that generally speaking, do the middle ground thing. People of extremes only exist when they're in the process of doing teshuvah. But for generally sp-- general people, the general public, people should do what is done on average. And also, don't forget the which stretches all the way from the very bottom to the very top. It's the highest of the sefiras in a certain way, specifically because it's in the middle, and it is between the, uh, between two extremes. The Rebbe's point being that the middle of the road is the one that we are supposed to take. So he's not saying to make a wedding in a closet. He's saying that you should look around at what the average wedding looks like and do the average thing. Not bigger than the average, not smaller than the average. And you see this in a couple of letters, so I do think this is the maskana. Here's another letter like this. This is in Igeres Kodesh volume twenty-one, page two thirty-three. The Rebbe says, It's true that it does say in the Gemara that there should be no limit on the spending that you do for a chassan and kallah. And although that is in theory correct, you should know, however, that our Rebbeim did not do things this way. That the way that our Rebbeim did things is they always

20:27 did things in an intermediate fashion. And certainly, the Anash in your area-- in, in that area also did the same things. The Rebbe's saying although you could make the claim that when it comes to a chassan and kallah, there's no limit, and therefore these things should be expensive, the Rebbe says in we don't see this. In we see people doing the middle ground approach, so people should do that which is average. So what we're getting from these letters is a couple of big themes. One of them is the Rebbe is not at all happy with spending money-- spending a lot of money on weddings. He doesn't want expensive weddings. He explains at length why he doesn't want it. He doesn't like Jewish people wasting their money. He also doesn't like the idea that in very frequently when people get involved in chitzenius, and when they get involved in the physicality even of a wedding, which is being used for a mitzvah, it's still chitzenius. And when they get involved in that chitzenius that cloud, that clouds over the ruchnius, the Rebbe says this applies no matter how much money you have. It's frankly a waste and frankly getting in the way. He offers berachos for a chassan and kallah who do not do such a thing. But he keeps on saying in a lot of these letters, "You gotta get the consent of the chassan and kallah, and if it's going to be a fight, we don't make a fight over this." Let them have

21:19 their big wedding rather than, rather than ruining their wedding day does seem to be the maskana. There's a, uh-- I'm, I'm not gonna read this, it's long, but I did send it in the WhatsApp group. Uh, Nisan Nemonov had a yechidus with the Rebbe where the Rebbe described at length what he thinks a wedding should look like for a Hasidim, how much he thinks you should spend, not in money, but what, what he thinks should matter and what shouldn't. I don't think we have time to read it today, but I put it in the WhatsApp group. You should read through it. It does-- It's a-- The Rebbe said to publicize it, and, uh, it's a yechidus from Nisan Nemonov, so it's quite reliable. It's in his Zichronos, and it has there the Rebbe really describing what he thinks about weddings. One thing I do wanna conclude and show you is that this has not been printed yet in Igeres. It's in the year תשמ"ב. A ma'amar that the Rebbe wrote. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe asking, "Maybe we should make a takanah. I mean, enough with this. People are making giant weddings. You've said repeatedly you don't want giant weddings. Let's make a takanah. Let's make a community rule that there will be a limit to how much you're allowed to spend on a wedding or a limit to what kind of hall you can have. Let's make standards in Lubavitch that we don't have these giant weddings." And the Rebbe says, "Absolutely not. Not

22:12 interested at all." Certainly, a simchas chassan kallah In any event, what the Rebbe's saying in this final ma'amar is that, uh, in response to your request that we make a takanah that people can't have giant simchas, the Rebbe says that's not how we're going to do weddings. Weddings aren't done b'tzimtzum. We're not going to say that there are limits on how people can do things. That's the opposite of the idea of a wedding in the first place. It is really the entire, uh, a contradiction to the entire idea. So, uh, in response to those who would like there to be community standards that prohibit big weddings, the Rebbe's not getting behind it. But, uh, we do, I think, have a very good idea of what the Rebbe thinks about expensive weddings. He's not a fan. He's not ready to force the chassan and kallah, both because, as we said, we need bedarkah and haverdakah shalom, and because, as the Rebbe says in this ma'amar, that, uh, that we're not, that we're not going to start off people's lives that are supposed to be bara khavah at a wedding that's supposed to be bara khavah by making specific rules about it. At the same time, I think it's very clear the Rebbe would like us to make these affairs as small as possible in gashmius and as large as possible in ruchnius. Okay.