Chuppas, Kallahs and Spiderman

Today I went to a wedding – the first in the new building donated to the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation for its work helping to rebuild Berlin’s Jewish community. This is the bride (Kallah) and groom. Here are a couple more:

The bedeken – where the groom lowers the veil over his wife-to-be’s face in recognition of the ploy that led to Jacob’s marriage to Leah when he thought he was marrying his beloved Rachel —

Men dancing in celebration.

This was the first Orthodox wedding I’ve ever attended – and since almost everyone was from someplace in Eastern Europe- especially Russia, – it had an exotic flavor anyway. I have lots to say about it but I wanted to post the photos now because I have to think a bit about how to describe the intense feelings it evoked.

Strangely – we decided this evening to go see SPIDER-MAN 3 in German, since it wasn’t playing in English except way downtown. It was just such an interesting contrast – a quiet reverence and sense of something sacred at the wedding, and brash, crashing violence and special effects at the movies. I speak almost no German yet only had to ask Rick what was happening maybe 2-3 times since almost none of the exposition was verbal. It does make you wonder how to understand one’s modern self as respect for old, old traditions grows with understanding.

I’m grateful for days like today, when my life lives up to the title of this blog — never gel. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Another, more attractive (at least to me) movie hero said that….