Wedding---Part III

Alright, I am *really* going to try to finish this now. There are so many other things to write about, so....

I Left off at Mr. Uzan lecturing me about moderation, in English that he hadn't used in probably 7 or 8 years (at one point, his wife came over to say hello, and remarked, "Oh no! Not in English!"...I am not sure whether she was disappointed that I still can't speak Hebrew very well, or if the sound of the language brings up bad memories).

All of this was still in front of the Chupah (the wedding canopy). After a while, I had totally given up hope in following which part of the ceremony they were in, though I did catch some of the part of the "hakafot", or the bride walking 7 times around the groom to, apparently, symbolize how the groom is the center of her universe [note: I find this idea absurd]. I was trying to get a look at the bride, but the veil did its job, and, to be honest, I never actually got to see her: as soon as they broke the glass, before everyone could yell "Mazel Tov!", Tzvi and Rechele were wisked off to the "Yichud Room".

What is that? Well...according to Jewish Law, for the wedding to be completely Kosher, it needs to consumated...so to speak. Back in the day, they provided a place with some privacy ("yichud" is hebrew for "alone") in which to do this. I am told that these rooms are no longer used for this function, and that the bride and groom use this time to have a breather, have a few drinks and a few bites to eat before they have to go out again and entertain all of their guests. Of course, since I have not had a marriage myself, this is all hearsay.

For the next 45 min....we ate. Contrary to warnings from my Modern Orthodox friends in Jerusalem, the food was not bad at all...it was really amazing, actually....

Let me stop here and note that, up until this point, there has been nothing very different in my discription of the wedding from other religious Jewish weddings (besides the huge, Hollywood camera constantly blocking my view of the action).

Let me fill in the rest of the story:

I cannot remember if I mentioned it (and I am too lazy to check), but Bnai Brak (the city where the wedding was held) is not only the most relgious city in Israel, but it is also the poorest. Walking around the city after the wedding, I could really see how...slummy...the city seemed: very crowded city blocks, houses with makeshift walls/roofs, dirtiness, etc. I only note this because, although the wedding hall was a veriable diamond in the rough (it was *very* fancy), probably due to poor utilities maintanence in the area, there were "rolling blackouts" all throughout the wedding: every 25 minutes or so, all of the lights in the place would go out, the band's music would stop (besides the drummer and horns, for obvious reasons), and, most importantly, the air conditioning would shut down.

This is the most important because, even though the weather in Efrat is basically a perfect 67-80 every night/day, on Israel's Mediterranian coast (where Bnai Brak is located), it is about 95 there during the day, and pretty hot even at night. And in a room full of about 400 people, air conditioning matters.

Needless to say, after the food had been served, I headed for the Bar to see what they had in terms of cold beverages, and found Sam and Yisroel there with some Goldstar's ("The Beer the Chosen People Choose"). I joined in, and some more conversation took place that it would probably be better not to publish here. After a few rounds (and about 3 blackouts), Tzvi was ushered into the wedding hall on the shoulders of dozens of black-suited Yeshiva boys, who only wished they were in his position [note: there seems to be some taboo about recently married religious Jews attending weddings, because it seemed pretty clear that almost none of the guests his age were married, even though it would be safe to assume that many of his friends are, indeed, married]. This is when the serious dancing started. By serious, I mean SERIOUS. Besides your routine groom-on-chair dances, circle dances, fast-circle dances, really-fast-circle dances, really-really-fast-circle dances, there were plenty of the "perfom-for-the-groom-silly" dances, "dress-up-like-a-clown-silly" dances, "weird-pseduo-worshiping-the-groom" dances, dances with fireworks, and the list goes on. Impressively, Tzvi never really stopped dancing, which annoyed me a little since I never got to congratulate him. I mostly watched while the dancing was going on, commenting on the different dances with Sam, and occassionally joining in myself. At one point, Sam was asked to dance, but refused, pointing to the huge semi-automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. After a few more beers, someone prodded him again to join in, and he decided that he would need to get at least one dance in at his cousin's wedding...so he left me holding the standard Israeli issue M16. I will probably never hold a gun that big for the rest of my life (at least I hope I never have to).

(By the way, I forgot to mention that the ENTIRE wedding was seperated into male and female sections---even for eating. Though most Orthodox weddings lack mix dancing (and, no, what happens in "Fiddler on the Roof" does not actually happen at any weddings I have been to...I doubt Perchik would be able to fool any modern day Rabbis into dancing with the bride...or that they would take it with as much of a sense of humor as the Rabbi does in the play/movie), it is highly unusual for the eating part of the wedding to be seperate. I honestly think this is silly for many, many reasons, but the biggest two are the following: being at a Jewish event, where there is lots of food and happiness, is really, really awkward without having women there to put the men in their place. Sitting at the table, trying to make conversation...is just really weird without women there. I can't put my finger on it...but....whatever. Also, I feel that having more natural settings for ultra-Orthodox bachlors and bachlorettes to meet would not be a bad thing at all. Clearly, they feel that it is.)

Oy. Rather than spend countless more hours describing the wedding in an effort to convince you that this wedding was stranger than anything I will probably ever attend (besides, I imagine, how strange my own wedding will be...), I will try to wrap it up in a few more paragraphs.

The dancing DID NOT STOP, even when most of the guests were beginning to leave. Finally, Shawn emerged from the black mob that was the dance floor, and informed me that we had 12 minutes to get to another bus stop across town that would take us back to the Yeshiva. We hailed a cab, and got there just in time.

The busride back! Oh my...if you can imagine how funny the busride there, try to imagine what it was like to be on the same bus with about 80 WASTED Yeshiva students. As I sat down (next to a kid from Johannesburg, who was not impressed with my advetures in his own country that I regaled him with later), the guy sitting behind me was this British Rabbi (very, very drunk), who started asking me all types of questions. I would certainly classify this guy as a "happy" drunk, as every thing I said to him led to a new blessing on my head, and a few requests for blessing from me ("Your name is Star? You should be as important and bright and close to G-d as the stars in the sky!" and such stuff). I could only handle so much of this, and I passed out after about 10 minutes of this conversation.

Shawn was nice enough to let me stay at his Yeshiva for the night, since I missed the last bus back to Efrat.

Whew! That is all. Now I can get back to updating you on the day-to-day accounts of what is going on here. Hope everything is going well back home. Also, please don't worry about all the news items about Israel. Though everyone in the country is praying for the safe return of the kidnapped soldier (Gilad ben Aviva), everything else here is status quo.


Michael