Weddings are supposed to be happy occasions celebrating the love and commitment of two individuals who choose to spend the rest of their lives together. And yet for some reason, bands play songs which are completely incongruous with the theme of the day, and incredibly they do so often at the couple’s request.

AskMen listed 10 Wedding Songs to Avoid where people think these songs are romantic but have obviously never listened to the lyrics. While many Jewish weddings don’t usually play secular music in full, every now and again the band will play a riff or two from rock songs just to shake things up a bit. And here too many of the selections can seem a little bit strange.

I first commented on this a while back, and noticed it again at the first wedding I officiated. Since I hear new things all the time I’ve decided to keep a running list of all the well intentioned but probelmatic songs I’ve actually heard at weddings. To narrow things down, I’m just focusing on songs in which the lyrics don’t fit in with the spirit of the day. For example, while Get Down Tonight might not be the most romantic or subtle song in the world, it still makes sense in its own way. On the other hand, the ones listed below are a little more difficult to explain.

• Live And Let Die
• Od Lo Ahavti Dai
• Mrs. Robinson
• Angry Young Man
• Beat It
• Stairway To Heaven1
• Baker Street – The sax solo doesn’t mitigate the song’s meaning
• I Will Survive²
• Desperado
• Added 3/7/2010 – Yesterday
• Added 1/10/2011 – Cats in the Cradle
• Added 1/10/2011 – The Boxer
• Added 6/19/2011 – Brown Sugar
• Added 6/19/2011 – Private Dancer

I’m sure I’ll be adding more in the future – especially if I get married myself.

1. Though in fairness, Robert Plant does refer to Stairway as a “bloody wedding song.”
2. For Jewish weddings, note that the “Yiddin” dance fits perfectly.

You might remember the post we did a while back on extravegant Bat Mitzvahs. Today’s Fark links to a cameramen’s detailed account of the $10 Million Bat Mitzvah held at New York’s Rainbow Room last November. Quoth the cameraman:

This wasn’t a concert in a restaurant. This was a f—–g arena show tucked into a closet. This was overkill. This was excessive. This was a rich man’s fantasy concert, not a Bat Mitzvah.

Hard to argue with the assessment given the entertainment:

• Eagles Don Henley and Joe Walsh
• Stevie Nicks
• 50 Cent
• Tom Petty
• Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry

I can’t imagine what her wedding will be like, but if it’s also going to be in NYC, I’m available.

One of the perks of living in America is that religious institutions are exempt from several taxes. Of course, there are rules for such things and of course, they’re not always followed.
Take this recent example from the Jewish penal colony known as Rockland County. A multiple family house owned by a shul was granted a property tax exemption under the pretense that it would house the Rabbi and two assistant rabbis. The problem is that there were several illegal conversions to the building and there was no proof that the other rabbis actually lived there.

Gedalia Oberlander, who identified himself to the Assessment Review Board as the rabbi of the congregation, said he lived in one of the apartments, and two assistant rabbis lived in the others.
“I feel that not having a certificate of occupancy shouldn’t interfere with having the exemption,” Oberlander told the board at its meeting Thursday.

Even more comical is that they’re having trouble finding the shul itself:

“There was no CO (certificate of occupancy) and we’re unable to confirm the location of the synagogue itself, seeing that it wasn’t in that location,” Shedler said yesterday.

And for the coup de grace, the name of the shul?
Congregation Merkoz Halacha

It seems like ages ago, but we once discussed college rankings, and how YU fared much more poorly by standards other than those used by US News.
On that note, Washington Monthly has a new ranking system aimed at determining the educational value of the universities, a metric which is unfortunately overlooked in choosing a college and nearly impossible to define based on most ranking systems.

But what’s missing from all the rankings is the equivalent of a bottom line. There are no widely available measures of how much learning occurs inside the classroom, or of how much students benefit from their education. This makes the process of selecting a college a bit like throwing darts at a stock table. It also means that colleges and universities, like our imaginary mutual-fund managers, feel little pressure to ensure that students learn. As anyone who’s ever snoozed through a giant freshman psychology 101 lecture knows, sitting in a classroom doesn’t equal learning; knowledge doesn’t come by osmosis.

Although there are tests out there to help guage students’ collegiate academic progress (CLA, NSSE), most universities apparently keep their results to themselves. So, WM devised their own system which focuses on the university’s social impact.

And so, to put The Washington Monthly College Rankings together, we started with a different assumption about what constitutes the “best” schools. We asked ourselves: What are reasonable indicators of how much a school is benefiting the country? We came up with three: how well it performs as an engine of social mobility (ideally helping the poor to get rich rather than the very rich to get very, very rich), how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research, and how well it promotes an ethic of service to country. We then devised a way to measure and quantify these criteria.

How does YU measure up? Despite ranking 45 in US News’ survey, YU weighs in at an embarrassing 200 of 245 schools.
In fairness, WM’s methodology took military and peace corps service into consideration, neither of which are areas which are conducive to perpetuating an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. Furthermore, many YU students do in fact enter communal service, bet it as teachers, social workers, psychologists, and the occasional Rabbi. However since these professions serve a relatively small and exclusive community, these contributions would likely be overlooked.
Still, it might be nice for Yeshiva University to look beyond the 4 cubits of the Jewish world. Although there have been notable exceptions, most students I’ve known are either not interested or ideologically opposed to contributing to the non-Jewish world. We’ve covered some of the drawbacks of taking federal funding, and it might be a nice idea to contribute something to the society at large. Not only would probably help in kiddush hashem and tikkun olam departments, but it may also have other significant religious benefits.

Work just sent out an e-mail informing us that one of our employee perks is a 15% discount on Michael C. Fina. I don’t anticipate taking advantage of this benefit in the near future, but I did poke around their website to see what’s actually being sold and just how expensive everything is.
I got distracted by the following product description:

Vera Wang’s dinnerware collection is inspired by the contemporary bride. Dishwasher safe, it is meant to be used every day.

I just found the juxtaposition of “contemporary bride” and “dishwasher safe” to be particularly amusing.

Menachem Butler has an excellent post on the current non-existence of Hamevaser. Having been involved with Hamevaser during a significant transitional period, I’d like to add a personal perspective as to the how’s and why’s Hamevaser is no more.

SIW is reporting on Orthodox mayors and not surprisingly, good ‘ol Springfield, NJ gets overlooked once again. Not only have we had an Orthodox mayor in Clara Harelik, but a female Orthodox mayor who has served several terms1 and recently won the Mayor of the Year award for Union County.
Who knew Springfield could be so progressive?

1. For some wacky reasoning you don’t vote for mayors directly in Springfield, but for a five-member Township Committee who selects the mayor from among themselves.