A man who had once hosted me for a Shabbos meal approached me on Sunday and invited me for Friday night. I accepted.

This morning, after shul, he came over to me on the street, said that he hadn't known how to contact me since he didn't have my number, but that he had to withdraw his invitation for tonight because his wife had invited a single woman, and either the woman and/or the hosts wouldn't be comfortable having us both over at the same time.

He asked me if that was a problem. No, why would eating alone on a Friday night be a problem?

I can see someone canceling because his wife went into labor, but canceling because someone is afraid to have two single people in the same room is complete and utter nonsense.

There's no way I'll ever accept another invitation from this guy again.

We see who wears the pants in THAT family. It's probably for the best that he snubbed you....

What a jerk. I would not want anything to do with this person.

That's really jerky. It's ok to cancel an invitation if you really need to, though, just not for THAT reason.

Where do you live?! You travel in some bizarre social circles. I have never heard of the weird things that you always post about (shidduch/social etiquette.)

Wow. That's low. However, as we have a mitzvah to be dan l'kaf z'chus, I would venture the possibility that what actually happened is that Friday night turned out to be mikvah night, and the did not wants guests in the picture, but obviously they couldn't say they outright so they made up a baloney story (though I could think of many much-less-insulting stories to make up). Not likely but you never know....

That dan l'kaf zchus doesn't work because he was invited Sunday night, so the prospective host should have known about mikvah night already (unless his wife keeps these things to herself and doesnt' tell him till the last minute).

I think it's a pretty obnoxious thing to do. It's being holy on someone else's cheshbon.*


*Not that I need to define cheshbon for anyone but I was waiting for a chance to try out this glossary thing.

I agree that being dlz is a good idea, but Bezalel said he was invited on Sunday morning. If it was MN they would have known already by then, so that's not it.

It's mean to cancel last minute, especially without a valid reason (this doesn't count as valid).

If for any reason I have to cancel a guest, I would never leave him with nowhere to go; I would always fix him up with someone else. Sometimes we get invited to our own kids during the week, and especially if I am tired, I don't like tying myself down to have to make Friday night and having guests. This week for example we have a guest staying over for almost a week; we're invited to our son's for Friday night so I asked my DIL if we can bring him along. I would never leave anyone stranded.

Same here.

It could be that the single woman coming is deranged and would make B seem very uncomfortable, but I Definitely think it would have been more appropriate to try and find a place for him (even if B decided to opt out and eat alone)

What is your damage?


Just lucky, I guess.


If he hadn't run into me on the street this morning (on my way home from shul), I wonder what he would have done (since he doesn't have my phone number). Would he just have waited until I appeared in shul tonight (when it would have been too late for me to microwave my Shabbos meal) and told me that I was uninvited?


Yeah, he said something like, "Is this okay?" What was I supposed to say, "No, I insist on coming even if it will make you and/or your guest uncomfortable"? I just said it was okay. He then said that he could find someone else to host me, but I declined. If he'd said, "I couldn't reach you, but I made plans with a friend earlier in the week for him to have you over," that might have been better. But I don't want someone to be saddled with me at the last minute, and then look down on me as though I'm the troublemaker.

I think it is absurd to retract a shabbat meal invitation at the last minute and to leave a guest high and dry for that stated reason [wife invited an opposite gender and chas veshalom two unmarried people of opposite genders should find themselves at the same shabbat table], and hence the eyeroll. That's my opinion. You are free to disagree, but I think it's absurd.

ETA: My damage: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v336/mel...nt=DSC02986.jpg

I think having someone find a place to eat for you is even more uncomfortable. If someone had to cancel on me then I could accept that. If they canceled and told me I could go to some random stranger's house instead I would be uncomfortable.

Ah, I thought you were laughing at my predicament, or thought I was inventing this story.


Someone threw a box of Kleenex through the rear window of your car? That is cruel.

No, I was expressing an eyeroll at the invitation retraction.


Amazing, huh? I heard that guy can also kill someone at 50 feet with just a paper clip.

The way I would go about this is asking my neighbor/friend and saying 'I invited a male over and won't be able to host him...I was wondering if I could offer that if he still needs a meal he can eat over at your house. However, for all I know, he will just opt out completely so I don't want you to go out of yoru way, but if a) you cook tons anyway having guests anyway,etc. and don't mind, that would be great' or something similar.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the man who retracted the invitation is a jerk or whatnot, but I do understand the host’s side and the guest's side.

I'm often a guest, and this issue does pop up quite a bit. It irks me, really, but I can understand where they're coming from. It's the accepted practice in the community, and some people like sheltering themselves and others for the benefit of their neshamot. Hey, that's great for them, but where does that leave us guests?

Personally, I don't think sitting at a Shabbat table with an unmarried person of the opposite gender will bring any harm to anybody. The worst that can happen, in my opinion, is that good table conversation will come out. There's nothing harmful in eating at the same table as someone, and chances are you'll probably be eating or talking with the host so much that there won't be much of an opportunity for interaction anyway...

I don't agree with it, but I respect it as something that communities do.

you respect a perversion or your religion?

I respect other people's decisions to safegaurd themselves. If that's what they feel is necessary to keep themeselves tahor, then by all means let them, who am I to judge?

sometimes mikvah nights get moved back.

I've never been in a community that was so monolithic that I'd say segregating the (single) sexes was the accepted practice. I've been a guest in many homes in Florida, Pennsylvania, and now New York where there were also single girls present. Furthermore, these people don't appear to be so yeshivish. Perhaps their other guest is, or maybe she's a nutcase as someone suggested.


Do people not eat Shabbos dinner on a Friday mikvah night, but instead just come home from shul and rip all their clothes off and then have relations on the dining room table (in front of their young children) for hours on end?

First of all you have to ask, what are they safeguarding themselves against?
Second does preventing people from communicating cause sinas chinam (sp)?

I'm sorry but I will most certainly judge. It's one thing to be "tahor" but it's another to dis-invite a guest and leave them hanging.

Yes. I would say in this case, the possible shame and discomfort to the disinvitee outweighs the possible shame and discomfort of the other guest who has to sit in the presence of an unmarried male.

Or chas ve-shalom the "shidduch crisis" may be lessened. But the OPS doesn't want that.

In your opinion, do the OPS (I don't know what this means) want to segregate the sexes so that it is only possible of oposite gender for people to meet via their (rabinically controlled) method. Or is it really because there is something wrong with unmarried men and women speaking to each other?

Does a personal safeguard trump the actual mitzvos of kind acta and providing for guests?


What case could this be? If the host asked within a week of Shabbos then he knew what day the mikvah would be.

You say it as if it's a bad thing.

In my opinion, enough of the former that there's an element of truth to it.

what i don't get is why the male guest had to be uninvited and not the female guest?

is it whoever was invited second? it seems that Bezalel was invited pretty early in the week, so that means that if the female guest was invited first, the husband would've known about it and still invited Bezalel. if not, then Bezalel was invited first so the female should get uninvited.

The OPS endorses this
http://www.makeashidduch.org/strikeAMatch.php

I'm not advocating that it's a good thing to do, just that it's better to see this from both sides. I suppose the reasoning behind not having two unmarried people t your Shabbat table is because theres this idea (Which I personally think is silly) of not allowing interaction between people f the opposite sex,. But then again, if that's how they do things, then fine.




Yeah, I do agree that it's rude to uninvite someone the day of just because of this. I was only bringing up the part about the reason, not the part about the actual uninviting. I don't agree with the uninviting last minute, I think that's rude and that it could have been handled differently, in a nicer way.




It shouldn't, it should have been handled with more care, for sure.

You're trying to give reason to unreasonable people.

That's nice. I wish them every success.

Dude, admit it. Are you the guy who invited Bezalel tonight?

Only if you admit you were the guy peeing with the door open, adjusting his toupee.

I think it's much worse to "uninvite" someone you know will end up eating alone on erev Shabbos than to have a single man and woman sitting at the Shabbos table together.
For those who are saying that maybe the other guest asked him to uninvite B, I think that's incredibly rude. I can't imagine going somewhere as a guest and dictating who else my host may or may not invite.

what if it was a guy you had seriously dated and broke it off with him the night before you were supposed to get engaged and you learned he was invited on Thursday? What would you do?

Queens...guess there are worse places to live than brooklyn.


Not go.

They are both equally hellish places to live

Getting back to the question, I think that’s shameful. They must not remember what it was like to be single and arrang Shabbos every week.

What Shuli said. If I don't want to be there, that's my problem, not the other person's.
(However, if it was that stam some guy was going to be there, I would still go, since backing out as a guest Thursday night isn't the best thing to do either IMO.)

That is false holiness indeed and it will not get them any brownie points "upstairs." Like the people who daven shemoneh esrei for hours on end in the shul corridor, so no one can pass by and get to their seats.

In other words, what does it mean if the man discovered after inviting me that Friday night was mikvah night? Couldn't they still have a guest for dinner from 6:00 p.m until 8:30 p.m., wish him goodnight, put the kids to bed, before doing whatever it is that married people do?

This situation is so outlandish - did it really happen or is it just hypothetical?

I davened at the shul last night. The guy didn't inquire if I'd made alternate plans. I went home, made kiddush, ate a couple of hamburgers and a potato knish, read for a while, and went to sleep at 9:00. At least my lunch host didn't cancel, and it was pleasant.

Well first of all what married people do is not that mysterious. Second, yes they wait. It's not that big of a deal.