Mazel tov! An uplifting celebration of Jewish brides

If you opened up a book about 100 Jewish brides, what would you do first? 

I looked at the pictures, that’s what I did first. They are plentiful and surprising in this book. 

Second, I read the opening story. It’s by Peta Pellach, an Australian. She romps through generations of family weddings in the northern and southern hemispheres. She also describes a tradition of divorce in her clan and assures us that she will not follow that path.   

Third, I cried. And I kept crying, in almost every story. There are more than a hundred short, fast-moving pieces in this book about brides from places you've never imagined Jews lived. The stories are not sad, and they're not soppy. Some of the marriages worked out, some didn't. I cried either way. 

I cried because we are here, still. Jews, making weddings.

One of the book's editors, Shulamit Reinharz, told me she wasn’t in the mood to celebrate the book’s launching. She doesn’t know what to say at the events. She has launched dozens of books, but she said it felt trivial to be celebrating a book about Jewish brides at this moment.

“What?” I said to her, “Do you know nothing about Jewish history?” This was a rhetorical question. Shula is a professor emerita of sociology at Brandeis University who has done groundbreaking work on Jewish women. Her spouse is a leading historian of Israel and Zionism. She knows a bit about Jewish history.

But Shula was so busy editing this wonderful volume, saturated with sugared almonds and dowries, that she didn't focus on the reason Jews are still here: because of Jewish brides. Because women got under the chuppah and while standing there, agreed to start Jewish families.

As Jerusalem is being destroyed and Jews scattered, what does the prophet Jeremiah say to the exiles? He doesn't say to learn Torah or to pray. He doesn't say keep shabbat or kosher. He says: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may have sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease (Jeremiah 29:5-7).

Jewish brides are indispensable. And this book gives us a sumptuous feast of them. They are mostly from remote or extinct communities. Diversity is one beauty in the book, the other are the frames through which the stories are told. 

The book opens with, of course, the meeting. How did this unlikely pair come together? A Belgian woman boards the vessel Artza leaving the port of Haifa during Israel's food rationing. At the first feast on the high seas, the man next to her takes an extra helping of schnitzel (there’s no rationing at sea). They part. They study their separate studies in several countries. They marry in Israel a year later, and the waiter who had served schnitzel on the boat, serves at their wedding. The marriage lasted more than 60 years. 

How the pair comes together only matters because there is something after that, the courtship. It can last a few hours or decades. A woman walks out of the shul in Khartoum on Rosh Hashana. A man sees her, talks to his family, and they arrange a joint family trip to the country. After the trip, the couple becomes Betrothed. Sometimes one party needs to convert – mostly the woman. And sometimes the third marriage takes place right after the conversion, which is what happened to a couple in Nicaragua. First was a civil ceremony, second a religious ceremony not recognised under Jewish law, and a third after a formal conversion.

And if there’s a long and lovely preparation time, the invitation may be delivered by hand (which is more homey than WhatsApp).

Mikveh and henna are as much opportunities for celebration as the ceremony itself for some. A Mexican bride took 50 of her closest friends and relations (what must her bigger circle contain?), and after the Big Dip, each guest approached for a blessing which was followed by the blessing of chocolate.

The wedding venue may be a way to close a circle of history, as for an Austrian American bride, who at age 70 returned to the town her parents had fled in 1939. Others just want something sunny, and try Bermuda, discovering that sometimes it rains even in paradise.

The Ketuba, marriage contract has become an elaborate calligraphic decoration, but it may also be recycled.

The oldest wedding in the book is from New Zealand in which the bride recycled her Ketuba from a marriage to a man who died at sea. There were no scribes available in New Zealand, so they copied the older document. They remembered to change the name of the groom and witnesses, but forgot to change the bride’s status as a betula, a never-married woman. She became the widow who had never been married. 

The book expends energy on the wedding ceremony and beyond, which is the focus of most brides, and then winds back to arranged and forced marriages. Wartime marriages are one special topic, especially today as we watch Israel brides in military fatigues under the chuppah. Which leads naturally into the issues of weddings in Israel today, where religion and state are bound up one with the other. Some couples try to dissolve these political bonds as they bind themselves to each other. 

The book is a rapid flight through the many cultures in countries where Jews have celebrated their comings together. I was an uninvited guest, and you will be too. The book is scrumptious but you will not gain weight. You don’t need to get dressed or do your hair.

A salve and a comfort in this time of grief and uncertainty, this book reminds us that after war, we will recover, and we will get married. There will be Jewish brides, and those brides will beget more Jewish brides. 

And because of all the Jewish brides, in this book, out of this book, and in the future, we Jews will endure.

100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World is out now.