Sheva Brachot Speeches to Make Single People Feel Like Idiots

by David Kilimnick

After spending the wedding without a plus one, as you must sit alone like a loser as a single person at a Frum wedding, they start giving speeches that you have to hear. This is called the Sheva Brachot.
The Sheva Brachot are seven days after the wedding where we celebrate the Chatan and Kallah (groom and bride) by telling them how much better they are, to let single people know they're not wanted. They give speeches to remind you, you were never married. Here are some speeches given at every Sheva Bracha to remind you you’re a loser.

The Half Person Speech
'Before you met you were not people. Now, that you're married, you're a whole, a person.' And then everybody looks at the single loser sitting there, trying to figure out if they're actually a person or not.
Discourse ensues and the Maskana agreed upon is that the single loser is not a Halachik person. And then the single person goes home, watches Jerry Maguire and feels worse.

You Need Man and Woman
'Without both man and woman there is no Gd. You take out the letter 'Yud' (י) from man and the 'Hey' (ה) from woman and you have a single person with no hope. A heretic who Gd doesn't love.' I think that is how the speech goes.
'Single people are pointless and they have no connection to Gd. They can't.' They added that part for emphasis.

The You Weren't Happy Speech
Big Sheva Brachot, this one begins with how the 'Chatan and Kallah were not happy. Then they met.'
They go on about how both the Chatan and Kallah had a hard time in elementary school, as they were not married yet. Fifth grade recess had them questioning their Yiddishkeit as a single Yid. The forty-year-old single is sitting there in agreement, smiling.
Years later, at around the time of the divorce, this speech turns into, 'You were happy, then you met.'

You Were A Bachur
'Now you're a man... You get married, you are now a man and a woman.' They want to make it clear that the single forty-year-old is a child and the eighteen-year-old who just got married is a man. The girl is now a woman, and the forty-three-year-old single lady sitting at the end of the table who just got rejected by another Frum guy last week is a little girl.

Bayit Ne'eman
That is the goal. A house of believers. 'You should merit to build a Bayit Ne'eman in Israel,' which is the Five Towns. Then the single person goes home and questions their faith.

There Was a Fifty-Year-Old I Knew
This is a speech given to the single person at the table, as somebody empathizes. They see you all alone and they don't want you to give up hope, now that you're a forty-three-year-old single child and your eighteen-year-old niece is a grownup. So, they lean over and tell you a story about a fifty-year-old they knew that was down and out, depressed, alone, no hope, like you. 'Then a Shadchan called and told them they have no hope unless if they meet this guy. An eighty-year-old Bachur. And they met and she is happily married.'
Finally, at fifty, this loser of a child got married. The twelfth marriage to this eighty-year-old. 'And it can happen to you. You never know.' They always end with 'you never know,' to give you hope that even somebody as pathetic as you has a chance. 'Miracles happen. Nissim.'
Message: Don’t give up. I knew an eighty-year-old who got married.
Lesson: Empathy is the most offensive thing that ever happened to me. And then he gave me a deck of cards to play Solitaire.
And then you have to pay $1,200 dues at the shul where the family membership is $1,500. 1,200 for the single, and 1,500 for the family of eight.

Then they give the speech about how she is always right. I don't know how that is supposed to offend single people. At least it gives a married guy a chance to get out his anger about having no say in his house.
I hope this helps prepare your single fifty-year-old cousin for the next Sheva Brachot. This and schnapps should help.