Get Down!
Not Everyone Loves Being Lifted on a Chair
By Lenore Skenazy
When Sara Schwimmer Marcus, founder of JewishWeddingNetwork.com, gives her brides a pep talk, it always includes this: “Hold on tight, enjoy the ride and try not to make that face.”
By “that face,” she means try not to make the grimace that tells it like it is: “Help! Helllllllp! Get me down off this chair!”
Marcus had to follow her own advice three years ago, as she grinned through gritted teeth above her own wedding hora, but my question is, why? Why has the chair lift become so ubiquitous, not just at weddings, but at bar and bat mitzvahs, too? And not just the lifting of the happy couple or proud 13-year-old, but also the mother, father, sister, brother — everyone but the family cat (which at least could enjoy it, knowing it was going to land on its feet)?
Even at my own wedding, the lift seemed like fake festivity — a tradition that owed more to Marc Chagall paintings than to my own suburban upbringing. My parents hadn’t been lifted up at their wedding, so why were we suddenly acting as if this thing came straight from Moses — one long, unbroken chain of newlyweds desperately clutching slippery catering hall chairs? Feh!
Then it came time for my son’s bar mitzvah this past spring, and darned if this wasn’t the thing he was most looking forward to. So, despite my tradition of disliking this tradition, up he went — and loved it. A bar mitzvah high point. Literally! Could I have been wrong about its heinousness?
As it turns out, the chair lift is the most divisive issue in Judaism (if you don’t count… everything else).
“To me, it’s always been a central theme in all weddings or bar mitzvahs,” said Robert Firestone, a big guy who happens to be a judge in New York City as well as a compulsive chair hoister. “It’s exciting! It’s an honor! In a way, you sort of connect to the people in a different way.”
That being said, Firestone’s wife, Laurie Milder, recalled her own wedding. “They got me 2 inches off the ground, and I said: ‘Okay. That’s enough.’” Down she came.
Their daughter, middle-schooler Arielle, who had never heard this story before, looked alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” her mother added. “It doesn’t mean we’re not married! I was just concerned they were going to drop me.”
Turns out, that concern has a basis in reality. Richard O’Malley, president of The O’Malley Project, oversaw about 1,500 bar and bat mitzvahs in his days as a party planner (now he procures discount items for big events). “I’ve seen overzealous friends who’ve had a few launch a dad — and I don’t just mean out of his chair; I mean across the dance floor. So he flew from the chair and they picked him right up and, like, crowd-surfed him back to his chair. I’ve also seen a very unfortunate occurrence where the guests used a folding chair and the chair closed on the mom when she was sitting on it, and it trapped her.” With only her head and arms sticking out, he added, “she looked like a moose head.”
Happily for all concerned, the mom survived just fine and had the wherewithal to joke about it that same night, earning everyone’s admiration. But did she even have to go through with this ritual to begin with?
No. The chair lift at bar mitzvahs seems to have become popularized only in the past generation or two. “I think that DJs who don’t know any better have worked weddings, seen the chair lift and maybe figured it was just a ‘Jewish thing’ and brought it to bar mitzvahs,” said Lisa Kanarek, a mom and home office maven in Dallas.
As for where the tradition comes from at weddings, the National Jewish Outreach Program’s associate director, Rabbi Yitzchak Rosenbaum, says there is a story in the Talmud of a Rabbi Acha who danced with the bride on his shoulders.
Clearly this raised some eyebrows — or whatever — and other men were interested in doing the same, so the rabbi drew up some caveats. You can do this lifting, he said, only if, to you, “the bride is like a piece of wood.” (You want poetry? Read Song of Songs.)
The tradition of both bride and groom being lifted may have its origins in Eastern Europe, where this way they could “dance” together even if men and women were separated by a divider (and the couple’s hankie made it even more kosher). But the truth is, a lot of different ethnicities do the chair thing, including some Muslims. And in Mexico, sometimes the bride gets bounced on a blanket.
Perhaps TV writer/producer Bill Grundfest has discovered the real truth: “The tradition of having out-of-shape Jews lift overweight Jews up in chairs was popularized by a personal injury attorney in Bayside. He foresaw the falling and breaking that followed, and cleaned up.”
Then the attorney realized that he could get them to do it at bar mitzvahs, too, and the rest is hernia. Er…history.
Lenore Skenazy is the author, most recently, of “Who’s the Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name?: The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — but Can’t Remember Right Now” (Penguin).
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That's absolutely wonderful, Lenore. Yes, I have wondered about the chair lift in our shul, but I never thought seriously about it. However, I will make sure that the members of our executive see it. (If my name seems familiar to you, that is because I wrote to you a number of years ago as a result of a story of yours in The Gazette newspaper in Montreal, where I worked for many years, in which you talked about mothers overprotecting their children.)
Raise then move the person sideways horizontally in a slower circle, not bouncing up and down like a carousel horse or John Travolta in Urban Cowboy on the bull.
This reduces chances someone will lose their dinner from on high.
Great article Lenore! I was happy to be quoted. One thing though - the name of the website is spelled wrong in the article - it is http://www.JewishWeddingNetwork.com without any dashes.
I've suspected that the migration of the chair-lifting tradition from its wedding associations to bar/bat mitzvahs has a lot to do with American Jewish anxiety that the children will not marry Jews. In the anticipation of no wedding to "lift" the bride or groom, families and communities rush this "elevation" to an earlier stage in life. Can't "prove" this, of course, but I do think that this practice emerged in the US (as opposed to other Jewish communities worldwide) at exactly the time of increasing assimilation and intermarriage.
Our rabbi said that a lot of things that used to be part of weddings only - including the large and expensive party - have been moved back to the Bat/Bar Mitzvah. He thought it had to do with people marrying and having children later in life, wanting their parents to be part of it all, and being concerned that Bubba and Zayde would no longer be around when the child married. Hence, the big party when the child is young.
This is a huge huge story, bigger even than global warming. I'm surprised the mainstream media aren't picking up on this...
What does this article have to do with "Wither Israel’s Middle Class?". Is the link wrong or the picture? Where is the Frontside Article?
When I got married, our band leader gave us advice that served us well: Make sure the chairs you use have arms. It makes it much easier to hold on.
I loved being lifted in the chair, and treasure the photos of my husband and me, both aloft, with our friends and family surrounding us.
I have a theory. Back several generations ago, (maybe ten or more), people did have some excitement in their lives, but it did not come from artificial "modern inventions" such as bungee jumping or roller coasters, or watching horror movies, or adventure movies, or sports on TV (where there might be playoffs at stake, or -- at least -- "bragging rights" on the line), etc. Of course, back in the olden days, just [worrying about] arriving safely to or from some other town, was probably enough [danger, etc.] to generate some excitement. Also, each person probably spent some time thinking about what "might" happen, with some future events that were uncertain, but such that he [the day-dreamer] cared about the outcome -- maybe because it could affect his life. Maybe one of the "possible" (good or bad) outcomes, involved a career event -- (like getting hired or fired by a certain employer); or a life event, like a wedding or funeral. Most of these, typically (I'd guess) did not necessarily involve physical danger, but they probably did tend to involve something important to the person (the one doing the worrying).
. . . and as far as the "modern invention" of "recreational drugs" as a source of enjoyment / excitement in a person's life, -- I don't think that happened much. I mean, OK, I was not there "in person", but I think that kind of drug use was "almost" unheard of. (Maybe there were some exceptions -- rich people, probably?)
Getting a sudden injection of adrenaline: I seem to remember my own wedding -- and maybe some other occasions when I got chair-lifted (events where I was paying the "caterer" bill...) I was already very excited just by the occasion, and by the large numbers of relatives from out of town, etc. I think my adrenal glands were already working overtime. They were getting a work-out, "with or without" any "chair lifting". I seem to remember -- for me at least -- (YMMV), the extreme rush of adrenaline; in fact, it seemed overpowering at the time.
The muscle-y guys below me obviously had no intention of dropping me, nor causing me to fall. (also, I was pretty sure they were [nearly] sober). I knew that on a "conscious" level; but there are circuits in the brain (or the endocrine system, or something like that) (let's call them the "scaredy-cat" dept.) that can sometimes "ignore" such facts, which may be known to be true, [who has time for "being philosophical"! -- when looking down from up high?]; and instead they [those "scaredy-cat" dept. circuits] just "kick in" with their "knee-jerk" reactions.
So I figured that someone, generations ago, had figured out a fairly low-tech way, to give a bride or groom (or some other "honoree") an "injection" of adrenaline, without having to first worry about sterilizing -- (or even having) -- any needles. To me, at least, it was exhilarating, but it definitely was NOT the type of experience that I could get 'used to', much less something that I would like so much that I would repeat the experience often (even if I could) -- like some persons do, who ("too often") enjoy drinking alcohol, or eating chocolate, or some other pleasurable activity where there is such a thing as over-doing it. In fact, it is possible to over-do it so much, that the person who over-did it, actually sincerely regrets having made that decision! ...and not just because of letting down their friends, family, or co-workers; (although it might "also" be due to that); but sometimes the regret is due to actual physical pain. (or, nausea).
Today, in the modern world, sometimes a person might spend way too much time with video games, or watching movies or sports on TV, or drink too much, (or eat too much), etc., and their own will power might sometimes be just about all they have, to rely on, to stop it from getting excessive. At least in the past (several generations ago), if you asked your friends to give you a "chair lift" often, they would probably give you some good advice instead -- at least after the first few times. Maybe that was good! Maybe it helped prevent a situation of some poor schlemiel liking the "adrenaline rush" so much, that he went "overboard", and something bad happened (like, a stunt that was supposed to be "safe", going awry and resulting in some injury; OR, like someone becoming "addicted" to whatever it was, that he "went overboard" with). Just my 0.02.
A chair...meila. The one thing I DON'T want is to be lifted up on a table. Of that, I've heard about some nasty endings.
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