Lauren & Rebecca || October 9, 2004

CHUPPAH

Kippot || Havdalah || Processional || Ketubah || Chuppah || 7 Blessings || Haray Aht
Breaking the Glass || Yichud || Reception

So, you wanna learn about our simcha (celebration), huh?
We don’t want to bore you with the whole history of Jewish weddings, or even why we decided to have one -- if you’re interested, just ask, or pick up a copy of The New Jewish Wedding by Anita Diamant -- but we did want to provide you all with some information about what to expect at our Jewish ceremony.
Also, please be aware that we’re only sharing with you the aspects of the Jewish ceremony that we have chosen to incorporate. There are many more traditions that we didn’t feel were appropriate to our relationship or our beliefs that you will not find on this page.
Here are some of the things you’ll see:
Kippah (pl. kippot)
The kippah is the headcovering Jewish men -- and many women -- wear in the synagogue. We will be providing a box of them for anyone who wishes to wear one, although it isn’t necessary if you’d rather not.

Havdalah
Havdalah is the name of the service that marks the end of the Jewish sabbath (Shabbat) and the separation of Shabbat from the rest of the week. It takes place on Saturday nights after sundown -- when 3 stars can be seen in the sky. This will be the beginning of our evening, as Jewish weddings are not performed on Shabbat in order to give both the sabbath and the wedding their full due as celebrations in their own right.
Havdalah is a short and beautiful service -- one of our favorites, actually. It consists of three prayers: the blessing over the wine, which symbolizes sweetness; the blessing over the spices, which revive us after the loss that occurs as the most special day of the week ends; and the blessing over the candle, which is braided with a double wick, and which symbolizes the beginning of the work week. During these blessings, the wine is tasted, the spices are smelled, and the candle is lit. By doing this, we use our senses to recognize what is special about this separation.
Often, Havdalah ends with a song called “Shavua Tov”, which means “a good week” and refers to the week to come. Even if you don’t know this song, feel free to join in when we sing it -- the only words are “shevua tov” and the tune is easy and repetitive!

Processional
Processionals in Jewish weddings are very similar to Christian weddings, with a few visible differences. In Jewish tradition, both the bride and groom are escorted down the aisle by both parents. Grandparents usually also walk down the aisle as part of the processional. Also, it is considered in poor taste to choose either of the two most popular processional music arrangements, as the two composers (Mendelssohn and Wagner) were not exactly friends to the Jewish people.
For our wedding, we will not be having a processional. Because we’re going to do Havdalah before the ceremony, we’ll already be amongst our community when it’s time to begin the ceremony.

Ketubah signing
Traditionally, the ketubah was a legal marriage contract that was created to promise women the right to be well taken care of by their husbands. They were written in Aramaic and said nothing about love, Judaism, or God.
More recently, Jewish couples have begun adapting the ketubah to be a contract of love, commitment to each other, and commitment to a Jewish home. Instead of being a simple piece of paper with no decoration, ketubot have become decorative pieces of art. These modern ketubot are often framed and hung in a couple’s home, especially in their bedroom. Baal Shem Tov, the creator of Chassidic Judaism, recommended that when couples fight, they should read their ketubah aloud to each other to remind them of their commitment and the feeling they had under the chuppah.
Some couples choose to sign their ketubah in private. However, we’ve chosen to sign ours at the beginning of our ceremony, in front of everyone. We’ll be doing this after the Havdalah service, and Rabbi Gordon will read it aloud.

Chuppah
Jewish wedding ceremonies take place under a canopy called a chuppah. In fact, this is so important that the wedding itself is often referred to as the chuppah.
The chuppah symbolizes the couple’s home, their shelter. The sides are open to indicate hospitality and openness. There are no instructions as to what the canopy itself looks like because Jewish tradition includes a concept called hiddur mitzvah (beautification of commandment) that dictates that joy should be celebrated with beauty, and therefore, whatever is most beautiful to the couple enhances the day most.

The Sheva Brachot (Seven Wedding Blessings)
There are 7 blessings that make up the “meat” of the Jewish ceremony. Rabbi Gordon will read them in Hebrew, and we've asked some of our family and friends to read the blessings in English. Here is the translation we've selected:

Blessed are You, God, Source of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine.
Blessed are You, God, Light of life, who created everything for Your glory.
Blessed are You, God, Spirit of all things, who has created the human being.
Blessed are You, God, Foundation of every life, who fashioned humanity in Your likeness and prepared for us a shape and form in Your image, from one generation to the next and for all eternity. Blessed are You, God, who has created human beings.
Israel will surely celebrate and exult in the coming together of her children. Blessed are You, God, who brings joy to Israel through her children.
Give pleasure to these beloved companions as You did to Your creation in the Garden of Eden so long ago. Blessed are You, God, who makes the hearts of this couple rejoice.
Blessed are You, God, Source of the universe, who has created each of these two people, their delight and their happiness, their rejoicing and singin, dancing and festivity, love and friendship, peace and pleasure. O God may the voices of this celebration be heard in the streets of our cities and the hills of our countryside. May the words of this couple go out with gladness from their wedding chuppah, and may the music of their friends and guests surround them. Blessed are you, God, who brings joy to the hearts of this couple.

The ring/Haray Aht
The haray aht is the “with this ring, I thee wed” of Jewish ceremonies. Traditionally, the groom says to the bride, "Haray aht m'kudeshet li b'taba'at zo k'dat Moshe v'Yisrael." Translated, the phrase means, "By this ring, you are consecrated to me, in accordance with the laws of Moses and Israel."
One of Rebecca’s favorite things about Judaism is called gematria. Gematria is a type of Jewish mysticism -- the calculation of numerical equivalences of letters, words, or phrases and the interpration of the relationships between words and ideas. If you’ve seen the movie Pi, you know what this is. The haray aht is an example of this -- the Hebrew spelling of this phrase consists of 32 letters. In Hebrew, the letters that correspond to the number 32 are called lamet and vet. When lamet and vet are put together, they form the word lev, which is Hebrew for “heart”. In this way, when the groom says the haray aht to the bride, he offers not only the ring and the promise, but his heart as well.
This is the time in the ceremony for the exchanging of rings. Our haray aht will be a little bit different than in a traditional ceremony because of the changes in the gender of the Hebrew words, but the message is basically the same.

Breaking the Glass
Every Jewish child we know has been told something different -- or several somethings different -- about why we break a glass at the end of the ceremony. The most common interpretation is that we break the glass to remember the temple in Jerusalem that was destroyed, because even in times of joy, we should remember that there is suffering in the world.
Traditionally, the groom is the one to stomp on the glass. In our situation, with no groom, we will both be stepping on the glass. After our celebration, we’ll take the shards of the glass and put them inside our mezuzah, the marker we place on the left doorpost of the entrance to our home.
Finally, the breaking of the glass serves another important role in the ceremony -- it is your indication that the ceremony is over! After the breaking of the glass, everyone shouts “mazel tov!” (literally meaning “good luck” but more often used to mean “congratulations”) and the recessional begins. Please feel free to join in yelling this at the end, even if it’s not familiar to you!

Yichud
After the ceremony, the couple typically takes some time alone, usually ten to fifteen minutes. There are various reasons that couples may choose to do this, and most sources encourage the couple to eat a little something during this time. We’ll be taking this time to ourselves to take in everything that happened during the ceremony and reflect on the change in our relationship. So there’s no need to wait around for a receiving line, because there won’t be one -- just go on inside, find your seat, and help yourself to some food!

The reception
Our reception is going to be a lot more secular than our ceremony. There will be no blessings over the meal, no kosher meal (although there will be vegetarian options for those who keep kosher at home but eat dairy meals out of their homes), and NO chair dance (got that? NO CHAIR DANCE -- you will NOT be lifting us up!). If you’ve always wanted to give the hora a try -- that’s the dance where everyone is in a circle and you cross your steps and spin around and have no idea what’s going on -- you’ll have to request it over in the music request area of the event page.