You know, the long lost family friend (LLFF) that went to uni with the bride’s mum and reappears sporadically at functions that involve free food? (She’s often wearing a pantsuit from the late 80s. The same one she wore to your older brother’s bar-mitzvah.)

And yet, despite the tenuous family connection, she dives into the festivities head first, literally throwing herself into a private dance with the bride at the centre of the hora circle!

I love the LLFF. They bring a little colour and amusement to every simcha. I think they should be mandatory. You should be able to hire a posse of them, the way some ethnic groups hire people to cry at funerals.

Philip – I think that business could be your calling! It would also be an excellent way to overcome your horror of the hora. (Har, har.)

I think you’re missing the point. As far as I am aware, at Anglo-Australian weddings, there is no hora/circle dancing, so it doesn’t apply.

I find your analogy to Japanese culture interesting, but I’m not sure how ‘Jewish’ Philip’s sentiment is. In Australian Jewish wedding culture, I would think of reticence to join the middle circles as more of an Anglo-Australian sentiment than a Jewish one, and am not sure that there really are such rigid heirarchies in the dancing circles.

The fabric of Japanese society is often described as being a set of concentric circles, where one has different social obligations to others depending on what circle they fall in, relative to one’s own circle.

However, as revealed by your question, while these concentric circles may be an abstract notion in Japanese society, they are actually physically manifested in Jewish society in the form of the hora that takes place at a simcha.