Marry Thy Neighbor

Marry thy Neighbor. Sounds almost like a biblical commandment.

With Sukkos coming to an end, wedding season will once again soon be upon us. The lockdown expects to present challenges to people planning to get married. I am not sure why it is different than in the previous lockdown when people held small weddings all the time on porches and in backyards, but this lockdown will at least affect some couples for the first few days after Sukkos and possibly longer, if it will be extended.

No exception was granted form the lockdown regulations for weddings. So, it turns out, only "neighbors" can marry each other during this lockdown. 

the only way two people can get married is like a VENN diagram - as long as they both live within 1000 meters of the wedding location, they can get married. If either party lives farther away, the wedding will be illegal.

People need to start dating only neighbors, considering how unknown the future looks right now.

Another difficulty is the rabbi officiating at the wedding. if it is your private rabbi or rosh yeshiva, he too must live within 1000 meters of the wedding location. The only way out of that problem is to have an official city or neighborhood or regional rabbi officiate the wedding. An official rabbi holding a position from the State is granted an exception to perform his various services throughout the city, as all city residents are his charges.

source: Haredim10, Hameitiv

This lockdown is affecting many people in many different ways, and people are upset and inconvenienced by it. That's life under a lockdown. Maybe if more people kept to the rules of the lockdown we could possibly get out of it a bit quicker. But so many people insist on having their freedom and not following the lockdown rules, it will likely take a bit longer to get out.

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