Wedding – Page 2 – Don't Gel Too Soon

WEDDINGS, WITCHES AND JEWISH LIFE

Weddings are life markers – milestones on a singular journey. Every time, just like today, the two whose lives are joined know that their wedding is the most meaningful, the most special, of all. Every time, just like today, their family and friends smile and sigh, nod knowingly or watch in wonder. Most times, just like today, there is feasting and dancing, laughing and crying, present and past.

The couple in this picture are grownups with jobs, a just-completed dissertation and a real sense of wonder that they found one another and managed to make their way to this day. They planned the wedding, designed the exquisite chuppah (wedding canopy) that has been part of Jewish marriage for centuries, and worked to make the day special in every way (they succeeded.)

This is the third wedding I’ve attended this year and the third traditional observant Jewish wedding ever. That’s very unusual for someone my age but we’re blessed with friends who have made us part of their extended family and asked us to share these blessed days with them. Today, for the third time in a year I watched a groom led to his bride by a swarm of singing, dancing men; I’ve watched him lower the veil over the face of the woman he now knew for sure was his beloved. (Jacob was duped and married the wrong sister; at least 600 years old, this tradition evokes that story and acknowledges its power.) When I first learned of it it sounded barbaric to me. Men taking possession of property, I thought. Check out the goods.

Somehow though, in the years I’ve spent moving toward an observant life, it’s come to mean something quite different: a reverent bow to the centrality of a sound life partnership – not for everyone but certainly for those who choose to marry. Marriage is not just the economic and legal partnership so often described in political conversation, it’s an ancient entity with real resonance and a gigantic role in the preservation of a humane, loving and sometimes sacred society. It requires tradition carried on; it requires the presence of ceremony and ritual to link it to the couples of past generations.

On my favorite guilty pleasure, Charmed, rituals of birth and marriage are attended not only by those who share the lives and loves of the Halliwell sisters (yeah they’re witches and their story spent 8 TV seasons enchanting us all) but also by those who came before. They summon, "through space and time" all members of "the Halliwell line." Surrounded by these transluscent figures of past generations, today’s Halliwells celebrate marriages and new arrivals. Those fully and those ephemerally present conclude together "blessed be."

What does this have to do with Jewish weddings — or any other terrestrial weddings for that matter? A lot. Eight years on the air, the longest running show with female leads, it dealt often with travel through time and space and dominions never imagined. But when really important events arose, all the magic was supplanted by a single, simple spell that basically –well — brought the family together. For them it was across ghostly generations…it was a show about witches after all. But that really is what weddings do, and in my limited experience, the weddings of observant Jews are events with special power because they consider a wedding the "creation of a home" where Jewish life will be lived and celebrated. "Home" is represented by the wedding canopy, or "chuppah" under which the bride and groom marry, surrounded by loved ones of prior and subsequent generation: grandparents and parents, aunts and brothers, sisters and nephews.

This particular chuppah was built from branches rescued from a clearing near Boston and covered by a tablecloth that had belonged to the bride’s grandmother, who had died the year before. My husband’s and mine was covered by the prayer shawls of our grandfathers – mine near death and too frail to attend, his gone just a couple of years before. Again, instinctively, we, like this bride, sought connections over time.

I"m not saying this well but what I think is that we’re hardwired to want to be part of something "larger than ourselves" and faith and family are that something. For observant Jews, these connections are manifested throughout the ceremony and the traditions surrounding it. That timeless ritual and all that surrounds it bring the gift of place and meaning – the reminder that as we celebrate a marriage we join the circle once more, honoring all that has been given us and accepting the responsibility to pass it on.

A PICTURE WORTH 1000 WORDS BUT HERE ARE SOME WORDS ANYWAY

They’re all gone now – my mom and my aunts. Here they are at the wedding of Barbara, the youngest, who died this week. My mom, Jeanne, the oldest, gone since 1998, is the one on the right – that’s my dad next to her. On the left side of the photo is Bettie, and my Uncle Jim.

Growing up in the Depression, they were wartime girls – my mom worked for the Office of Price Administration — the agency that controlled prices and tried to prevent gouging and war profiteering. She met my dad there – his hearing loss prevented him from active military duty so he fought unscrupulous businessmen instead. Bettie was in the WAVES. Barb, the youngest, came of age closer to the war’s end; her husband Bob was a Ranger, decorated several times.

The Depression had been hard on them. My grandfather was unable to bring in much. It was so traumatic that once, when Bettie started to talk about putting cardboard in their shoes to cover the holes, my mother cut her off. We were in a car, the three of us, and Bettie was just kind of spinning yarns. But to my mother she was raising things better left alone. I have always understood that these three sisters – so lovely and happy here — went through plenty. I also understood that they were not alone; no one their age was untouched by the Depression and the war.

I’ve come to realize over the years that my parents’ Depression experiences had a profound effect on me. Not only did I read menus from the price to the item – and check dangling price tags before examining clothing on a rack. That was the obvious stuff I inherited. Beyond it though was a sense of sadness for them all. My mother, who was an artist, got a scholarship in education, so she because a teacher. My father, who wanted to be an architect, got a scholarship to law school so he became a lawyer. My Uncle Bob was to be a veterinarian but his wartime injuries impaired his movement too much for him to be able to lift the animals so his dream died too. That was just how it was.

In some ways, they were the lucky ones; all three sisters and my father and uncles — were able, on scholarships, to go to college. All three marriages, despite tensions and tough times, survived with a real friendship between spouses for most of their lives. Each had three children who were smart, interesting, and self-sufficient. Even so, the bounty of choices they gave to us was so much more than they had had themselves. The young women in this photograph, and their husbands, never had the luxury of dropping out of school to campaign for Eugene McCarthy or majoring in music or theater or spending years doing trauma medicine a couple of months a year to pay for a life of mountain climbing and exploration. There was no give, no leeway, in the lives of those whom the Depression and the war that ended it – had stamped forever.

None of that shows here, of course. It’s a wedding. There’s no hint of all the scars the Depression had left on them, no hint of the loved ones and friends lost to World War II, no indication of the profound pain of watching a father who couldn’t support them and a mother who was permanently enraged. Nope. This was a wedding day and a lovely one at that. Tonight – well tonight I’m thinking of what it must have been like as the third sister, the baby sister, married. Who, I wonder, was missing – lost to the war. Who, I wonder, were the absent friends lost to the jolt of economic inequality when their parents retained a steady income and my grandparents could not. What are the stories my sisters and cousins and I will never know?

When we cleaned out my mom’s apartment I found the strangest thing: the Phi Beta Kappa key of the husband of one of my mother’s best childhood friends — a woman whose first husband had died early in the war. Why did my mother have it instead of her? What, if anything, had been between them when they were young? To me, the key is a symbol of all that was never said – the reserve of this brave and noble generation who didn’t want us to know how tough it really was. One picture and so many random thoughts — probably self-indulgently cobbled together here.

I’m writing this at the beach — the ocean slamming against the shore just steps away. This little barrier island on the Jersey shore has been a family destination since I was little –well more than 50 years — so I’m probably more available for all this nostalgia as memories rise up unfiltered on the sidewalks and sand dunes and ice cream parlors. But that’s not all it is; these thoughts are never very far away and when my sister sent this photo tonight many rose to the surface. I so wish I had asked more questions and said more often “You guys were great, so brave, so remarkable.”At my mothe’s funeral I said something to an old friend of hers about their role as “the Greatest Generation.” He laughed. “We weren’t great Cindy. We just did what we had to do. If you have to, so will you.”

Look at this photo and think of all that touched these young women and their families. If, as they did, we faced more than a decade of economic and political upheaval, wiould we be as strong, as determined?

So long girls. I know we always loved you, but appreciate all you were and all you never got to be? No we didn’t do that. At least not enough.

HER WEDDING, AND MINE

I am a huge admirer of Mir – whose blog Woulda Coulda Shoulda bears a rare warmth and humor. She’s an amazing writer and an even more amazing person. I learned, late, that several people were writing about their own weddings as a kind of virtual bridal shower. Because of my affection and high regard for her I thought I’d come along. We got married on a boat on the Monogehela River in Pittsburgh in 1971. We’re still married. I wore an Israeli Bedouin wedding dress and flowers in my hair; Rick wore a navy blue suit and a fancy tie. He spent hours in the Library of Congress researching Jewish weddings and wrote the service; I inserted quotes from William Saroyan, a speech about our families and another about the Vietnam War. Margot Adler sang Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream. My sisters and college roommates were bridesmaids. Lots of our best friends, family and even a few people you’ve probably heard of were there. It was a wonderful day. As Jenn offered a quote about marriage, I offer one from the Wlliam Saroyan speech that opened ours. In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it. Be happy Mir.

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….