Five years have passed since the COVID pandemic began, time enough for meaningful reflection. Among the many aspects of life that COVID disrupted, one area continues to weigh heavily on my mind: how we celebrate our semachot—our weddings, bar and bat mitzvas, and other milestone events.
In the years before March 2020, our community witnessed an unchecked progression toward increasingly lavish celebrations. Events that once centered on family and meaning had transformed into grand productions, often involving expenditures that strained or even broke household budgets. Stories—not apocryphal—circulated about individuals who fell into significant debt merely to afford weddings that lasted hours but cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite occasional communal initiatives to impose guidelines, like takkanot capping spending in certain communities, the trend continued virtually unabated. Apart from minor shifts, such as the growing acceptance of digital invitations, the communal appetite for extravagance showed no signs of diminishing.
Then came COVID. Suddenly, large-scale events became illegal, declared unsafe, and functionally impossible. Celebrations of all kinds were canceled, postponed, or dramatically reimagined. Some families understandably chose to wait until restrictions eased. But many others, recognizing the importance of the moment, adapted immediately. They held intimate ceremonies with immediate family, backyard weddings, and Zoom bar and bat mitzvas. Meals were pared down to a handful of close relatives. Ceremonies became shorter and more heartfelt. Dancing was understated, if it happened at all.
What proved most remarkable and deeply moving was how these COVID semachot were received. They were often described as more beautiful, more emotional, and more genuine than their pre-pandemic counterparts. (While these adjustments were undoubtedly difficult for many families who had envisioned different celebrations, they were generally met with understanding and even a surprising degree of joy and satisfaction.) I recall attending weddings and bar mitzvas during that period where the emotion in the room was palpable, the meaning inescapable. Stripped of elaborate venues, endless courses, and professional entertainment, the essence of the simcha shone through: family, connection, joy, and holiness.
It seemed, at least to me, that we had stumbled upon a profound revelation. I thought this might represent a lasting correction. Perhaps, even after the pandemic ended, we would carry these lessons forward. Perhaps we would realize that we don’t need the trappings of wealth and spectacle to make a simcha beautiful. Perhaps our community would re-center its priorities, celebrating milestones with sincerity and simplicity.
I remember expressing this hope to others, both privately and in public forums. I recall naively saying that even when COVID ended, we would never fully return to our old ways. We had witnessed too clearly how powerful a simple simcha could be.
But I was wrong.
I first began to sense it even before the pandemic ended, during my own experience of making a simcha in the midst of COVID. A few years earlier, we had celebrated the wedding of one of our children under normal circumstances. It was our family’s introduction to the world of contemporary Jewish weddings. We did our best to focus on what mattered, but it was immediately clear how strong the pressures were—the expectations, the norms, the endless ways that simplicity seemed to require justification.
Then, during COVID, we made another wedding. In theory, the limitations imposed by the pandemic should have naturally pushed celebrations toward simplicity. Venues were restricted, guest lists were slashed, and many familiar trappings were simply impossible. And yet, even then, I sensed the subtle but steady pull—an instinct that if certain features were absent, we had to “make up” for them in other ways. It was not only about practical realities like inflated costs, though that played a role. It reflected something deeper: a communal muscle memory that even a pandemic could not erase.
The emotional pressure was real. Families wanted to express their joy, vendors wanted to provide their services, and friends and relatives wanted to celebrate. All of it created a gravitational pull back toward the familiar patterns. Even amid lockdowns and uncertainty, even with so much stripped away, there was a yearning—sometimes quiet, sometimes not so quiet—to hold onto elements of grandeur and spectacle.
At that point, I first began to worry. I realized that if these instincts were still so strong, even under such unusual circumstances, then perhaps the communal change I was hoping for would not come as easily as I had imagined. Yet even then, I remained somewhat hopeful. I thought that once the instability of the pandemic passed, once people had time to reflect more calmly, we might recognize the beauty we had rediscovered. I thought we would remember how genuine those smaller semachot had felt. I believed—or at least I wanted to believe—that we would not simply return to the old ways.
But as restrictions lifted and normal life resumed, it quickly became evident that there would be no enduring shift. If anything, the trend toward larger and more elaborate celebrations intensified. Weddings grew even grander. Parties became more opulent. New levels of extravagance emerged that had not even been the norm before 2020.
Anecdotally, and I acknowledge I have no hard data to support this, it appears our community has doubled down on its previous habits. Semachot are now as lavish as ever, perhaps more so. We absorbed no lasting lesson from the COVID experience regarding the nature of our celebrations. The opportunity for meaningful, systemic change came and went, leaving behind only faint memories of backyard weddings and intimate family gatherings.
This realization is deeply sobering. It feels as though we were given an extraordinary opportunity, one that came at an immense cost and with real suffering, to reflect, recalibrate, and shift our communal culture. And we let it slip through our fingers.
I often think back to the conversations we had during that time. After these smaller weddings and bar mitzvas, it was common to hear guests—and even hosts—speak with a certain awe. People would say, “There was something so real about tonight,” or “This is the kind of simcha I’ll remember forever.” There was a widespread sense that we had stumbled upon something precious, something stripped of all the extra layers that so often obscure the essence. Without huge crowds, orchestras, and elaborate décor, we could actually feel the heartbeat of the simcha itself—the kedusha of kiddushin, the pride of a parent reciting a bar mitzva speech, the unfiltered joy of family and friends who mattered most.
For many of us, those moments were not merely acceptable substitutes; they were transformative experiences. They offered a glimpse of a kind of joy that was deeper, richer, and closer to what authentic Jewish simcha is meant to be. People spoke about wanting to “hold onto this”—about never wanting to lose the simplicity, the focus, the depth.
And yet, as soon as restrictions lifted, the pull toward old habits proved stronger than the memories. The emotional clarity of those backyard weddings faded faster than we would have imagined. Without consciously realizing it, many of us allowed ourselves to be swept back into the current. The simplicity that once moved us so deeply came to be seen, again, as an unwanted compromise rather than an ideal worth preserving.
Perhaps this is one of the most sobering lessons of all: that even profound experiences can slip away if we do not make a deliberate, determined effort to preserve them.
This is reminiscent of an idea I heard close to 30 years ago in the name of R. Elya Svei zt”l, Rosh Yeshiva of the Philadelphia Yeshiva. He reflected that the extraordinary wealth many segments of the Jewish community enjoy today may itself be a Divine test, though, as he noted, without prophets among us, we must be cautious in making definitive claims about Divine intent. We can only reflect and learn as best we can from the patterns we see. Historically, for most of the two thousand years of our exile, the Jewish people lived in profound poverty. Whether this material deprivation was punitive or simply a consequence of our exilic existence, it certainly served as a necessary correction for a spiritual failure.
The Torah warns about this dynamic explicitly in Parashat Ha’azinu, where it describes what would happen when the Jewish people settled in the Land of Israel: “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick, you became corpulent” (Devarim 32:15). According to this warning, material prosperity would lead to spiritual corruption—indulgence, arrogance, and ultimately rebellion against Hashem. As a consequence, the people would be expelled from the Land. Exile, with all its attendant poverty and hardship, would serve not only as punishment but as a form of rehabilitation, stripping away the excess that had led to spiritual decline.
Now, as the process of redemption slowly unfolds, we see material blessings returning to large parts of our community. R. Svei suggested that this blessing carries with it an implicit challenge: Hashem is giving us another chance. Will we use our newfound prosperity to strengthen Torah, to live with humility and responsibility, to honor His name? Or will we again fall into patterns of indulgence, competition, and spiritual forgetfulness?
This idea struck me deeply, and during the early days of COVID, it became even more vivid. Here was the test laid out before us: celebrations stripped of excess, families rejoicing with sincerity and simplicity, communities reconnecting to the essence of simcha. It felt as if Hashem was showing us, “See? This is possible. This is what true joy can look like.”
Yet five years later, we find ourselves largely back where we started, if not further entrenched in a culture of overindulgence.
I recognize that communal change is not simple. Social norms are powerful forces, difficult to resist. When so much communal energy flows in a certain direction, it is extraordinarily difficult for individuals to chart a different course.
It is important to clarify that my purpose is not to offer practical proposals or solutions. That conversation, if there is interest, will have to come later, and I would be eager to participate. But before we can think about action, we must first be willing to look honestly at where we are. To acknowledge the opportunity that COVID presented, and the extent to which we, as a community, have allowed it to pass us by.
Perhaps it is not too late. Individuals, families, and communities can still choose differently. We can still embrace the vision of simcha that prioritizes meaning over display, holiness over extravagance.
Imagine a wedding celebrated with heartfelt dancing, simple but delicious food, meaningful divrei Torah, and genuine simcha. Imagine a bar mitzva where the emphasis rests on the young man’s davening, leining, and words of Torah, rather than on the extravagance of the party.
We glimpsed this reality during COVID. It was authentic. It was possible. And perhaps it still is.
Choosing new paths is never easy. It requires courage, intentionality, and a willingness to swim against the tide. It means risking misunderstandings, disappointing expectations, and foregoing certain forms of recognition. But the reward can be immeasurable: celebrations that are not only financially sustainable but spiritually elevating; moments that our children will remember not for their glitz but for their warmth, sincerity, and connection to family and to Hashem.
As we look back five years later, let us not merely mourn the missed opportunity. Let us ask ourselves how we can, even now, reclaim some of what was almost within our grasp. We do not need to return to backyard tents or masked chuppahs to reclaim what we nearly discovered. We are no longer bound by the physical restrictions of those days, but the spiritual clarity they offered still remains within reach. We can choose to build celebrations that reflect the same sincerity, the same depth, the same unfiltered joy that so many of us felt during those simpler semachot. We can honor what was almost within our grasp by carrying it forward—freely, deliberately, and with the strength to remember what truly matters most.
This article originally appeared as part of the “COVID+5” series, found here: https://traditiononline.org/covid5-series-introduction/
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