A Jewish wedding

 So last week, when I talked about my wedding our friend Dora asked if I had a Jewish wedding.

The answer is an emphatic YES.

We got married in a kosher catering hall.  Drew didn’t really care, his family wasn’t very religious, but my grandmother would not have attended if the food wasn’t kosher.  I had known the Rabbi who married us since I was a child, he’d presided over my bat mitzvah.

We had a fairly old fashioned, traditional ceremony.  Jewish wedding customs are different, they are unique.

The first part happened before we walked down the aisle.  We signed a ketubah, a marriage contract.  Back in the shtetl, when parents arranged marriages, the contracts were very elaborate and dealt with dowries and property and etc.  In modern times, the contract is symbolic, where each party promises to be a good spouse.  While modern couples exchange promises and both sign the contract, all that is required under Jewish law is for the husband to sign the ketubah and hand it to the wife in the presence of witnesses.  The document is considered the wife’s property, to be held by her for the duration of the marriage.

Next came a ceremony called a bedecken, the veiling of the bride.  Remember the Biblical story of Jacob and Rachel and Leah?  How Jacob wanted to marry Rachel but was tricked into marrying Leah? A Jewish husband puts the bride’s veil over her face to ensure that he is marrying the right woman.

Speaking of walking down the aisle … at a traditional Jewish wedding, the groom’s mother and father escort him down the aisle.  The bride’s mother and father escort her down the aisle.  

The ceremony takes place under a chuppah, a canopy.  It is symbolic of the house where the bride and groom will reside as a married couple.

If you’ve seen the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof you saw the bride walk circles around the groom. Most modern couples skip that part.

The Rabbi reads the ketubah, the couple shares some wine, and the groom places a ring on the bride’s finger.  The ring goes on her right index finger.  He then recites, in Hebrew, “Behold, thou art consecrated unto me according to the laws of Moses and Israel”.  Most modern brides will move the ring to the left hand after the ceremony. 

That’s all that is required for a marriage to be legal according to Jewish law.  But in the modern world, men wear wedding rings, too.  So at this point the bride will put a ring in the groom’s finger and will recite something —perhaps a verse from the Song of Solomon — in which she expresses her love for the groom.

Some prayers are said, the Rabbi offers some words of wisdom. 

At the end of the ceremony, the Rabbi will wrap a glass in a napkin, and the groom will stomp on the glass and break it. (At my wedding, we used a lightbulb.) The guests shout mazel tov!

Afterwards, there is a third ceremony, called Yichud, where the couple symbolically cohabit.  At my wedding, Drew and I went back to the bridal room where I’d gotten dressed for the wedding.  That’s where I bustled up my train and took off the gauntlets.  We stayed in the room for a short time before joining our guests at the cocktail hour. Then, during the main part of the reception, we were introduced to our guests as a married couple.

There’s a lot of redundancy in Jewish wedding customs.  You really don’t need the ketubah or Yichud, you’re considered married once the groom puts the ring on the bride’s finger.  But you’re also considered married when you sign the ketubah. You’re considered married if you cohabit and hold yourselves out as a married couple, even without a ceremony. Any one of the three will suffice to to establish a marriage under Jewish law.

If you got married according to Jewish law, you also need to get divorced in accordance with Jewish law if you want to get married to someone else. But that’s a story for another day.

Here’s the scene from Fiddler.  Not so very different from my own wedding.