Reply to Rabbi/rebbetzin making parents feel bad about bar/bat mitzvah parties

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The thing that really jumps out at me is that the rabbi and his wife are verbally making ad hoc passive aggressive remarks to individual congregants regarding something that is really a broader policy issue. I think that is improper.

IMO it's well within the reasonable rabbinical range of opinion to disapprove of certain styles or degrees of parties, but such opinions should be carefully considered, thoughtfully articulated, carefully qualified, and tactfully communicated. If a policy is established (e.g. maximum number of guests), same goes for the policy. The rabbi and his wife should not be making the issue personal by reacting grumpily to individual congregants' celebrations.

Is this issue representative of the Rabbi's approach to other issues?[/quote]

OP back.  Yes, it is.  Rabbi's contract is over in so many years and clearly is ready to retire and feeling disenchanted and so is his wife.  Anyway, I emailed the wife already saying that I am sorry that it is viewed as a sign of egotism when I didn't view the Rabbi's efforts to get more people to Rosh Hashanah with signage inside and out in the same way.  It was passive aggressive.

But I also disagree that it is the reasonable for the rabbi to be constantly expressing his opinion on parties and Jewish celebrations.  He is vocal about disapproving about parties and all sorts of public things, including when we wanted to visit our child's classroom to teach about Hanukkah, but he is pushing away many congregants. Personally we had asked our child about doing the ceremony in Israel to save a lot of money, including the expected high "contribution" to the rabbinical discretionary fund, and our child's motivation for making this commitment was the party.  As a reform Jew (with a reform rabbi) I am fine with it and don't want my teenage child harshly criticized here.[/quote]

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