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2003-05-23 Jewish Weddings Around World Argentina, China, France, Israel, Mexico, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom |
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| By Donald
H. Harrison Every wedding has its own flavor and special memories, perhaps all the more so for Jewish weddings conducted in a variety of countries around the world. Recently, eight San Diego couples— all married outside the United States Argentina When the bride Ruth Naomi Gater proceeded into the sanctuary of Congregation Bet-El in Buenos Aires on Dec. 24, 1967, she felt like the embodiment of a new generation of Argentine Jewish women. Unlike her mother's wedding, which had been conducted quietly in a rabbi's study, her wedding was being conducted in a public place— a sign that Jews were coming to feel more accepted in a country once known for dictators and nazi fugitives. Also, unlike her mother, who had been presented only with a ketubah signed by her groom, this bride had herself participated in the signing of a marriage contract. Ruth received a traditional ketubah from her groom, the rabbinical student Arnold Kopikis. In addition, the couple signed a ketubah in which they gave written guarantees to each other— symbolic of the changing status of Jewish women under Argentina's Masorti (Conservative) movement pioneered by Rabbi Marshall Meyers. "My great-grandmother immigrated to Argentina in 1885 with the first group who came to the colony from Russia," Ruth said. "I could imagine how she got married; I could picture the countryside in Argentina in the late 1880s on her wedding day." Three generations later, the immigrant family had become middle class. "I was born with the state of Israel (in 1948) in a community that was strongly Zionist. It was like the golden age of the Jewish community: the schools, the sports club. I had everything growing up." Although she had attended Jewish school in the evenings, it was not until she began dating Arnold, her former tutor, that she took great joy in the Jewish religion. As the girlfriend of a student of Rabbi Meyers, Ruth was invited to take advantage of the learning at the new Conservative rabbinical seminary in Argentina. "Marshall understood that wives and girlfriends of students at the seminary had to get involved," she recalled. "He sat with us and said we were partners. We should study with our boyfriends or our husbands. I spent eight years studying at the seminary." In Argentina, the summer vacation begins in December, so Ruth and Arnold chose Dec. 24 for their wedding, when Arnold, then a principal of a Jewish high school, could get time off. They forgot that, for most Argentines, their wedding evening was Christmas Eve. Try to find a caterer on Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires. "Dad had to pay double for everything!" Ruth recalled. The day also found Rabbi Meyers on one of his frequent trips outside Buenos Aires. The wedding was performed by Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg, who is today senior rabbi at Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. Another memory: Ruth loved orchids and dreamed of carrying a bouquet of them on her wedding day. The problem was that these beautiful flowers were out of season in Argentina. Not wanting to disappoint, her father arranged to import them from Colombia. Today, Ruth Kopikis works at San Diego's Agency for Jewish Education, while her husband, Rabbi Arnold Kopikis, serves as spiritual leader of Ner Tamid Synagogue. They came to San Diego via Mexico, where he had served as a congregational rabbi. Having officiated at many weddings here in the United States, Rabbi Kopikis notes at least one difference in customs between weddings here and in Argentina. In Argentina, he recalled, couples would invite the entire community to their wedding and share with them an after-ceremony cocktail. Later, in the evening, a much smaller circle of family and friends would attend the reception. In the United States, if one is invited to the wedding ceremony, typically one also is invited to the reception. The Gater-Kopikis reception was held at the Hebraica, a Jewish social center. China There was both poignancy and excitement in the air when Lea Ginzburg and Ya'acov Liberman were married June 22, 1948, at the Ohel Rahel Synagogue in Shanghai. A new era was beginning, not only for the couple but for the entire Jewish community of Shanghai. With China torn by a civil war pitting Communist forces led by Mao Zedong against the ruling Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and Israel having just been declared an independent state, the Jewish community of Shanghai decided to uproot itself and to proceed in ships to new lives in Israel. Ya'acov had been a leader, and Lea had been one of his followers, in the Betar youth movement. Under the chuppah, Ya'acov wore the uniform of this youth movement, which was aligned ideologically with the Irgun in Israel. The Irgun had been far more radical than the Haganah in its opposition to British rule, but now that Israel was independent, there was hope that the rival forces (as well as another radical group called Lehi) could come together. Irgun's leader was Israel¹s future prime minister, Menachem Begin, who sent a telegram of congratulations to Ya'acov and Lea. Earlier in 1948, Ya'acov had left a new job in Taiwan as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. Studios to return to his home in Shanghai in order to be in place, if needed, "to bomb British shipments if the British didn¹t leave Palestine by May 15," as they had committed to do under the United Nations resolution creating a Jewish state. The British honored their commitment, so Ya'acov began preparing to move to the new Jewish nation. Marriage to Lea, with whom he had sustained a romance by mail, was a first order of business. Lea recalls that the Orthodox rabbi at Ohel Rahel required her to go to the mikvah before her wedding, "my first and last time." About 600 people attended what turned out to be one of the last big Jewish weddings in Shanghai history. Afterwards, there was a reception at the Jewish club, a big bash paid for by Liberman's father, who then was living in Cuba. He had told the bride and groom that he would either pay for the reception or give them the money. They chose the reception, which featured speeches and cables from all over the world, and a band that had learned horas and other new Israeli melodies. Most of the gifts to the new couple were chosen with the thought in mind that they soon would be voyaging from China to Israel. They were given "unbreakable things — silverware, not glassware," Lea remembered. Their wedding night was spent at the Cathay Hotel on the Rue de Lafayette, and then they went on what was supposed to be a three-day honeymoon in Hanchow. However, in the new state of Israel, Haganah forces shelled the Irgun arms ship Altalena, and a cable from the Irgun summoned Ya'acov back to Shanghai to lead a protest demonstration. Ya'acov subsequently was selected to lead an early contingent of immigrants to Israel aboard the former Liberty vessel Wooster Victory. Lea, pregnant, negotiated the 52-day voyage quite well, perhaps one reason why the couple's son, Tovik, so enjoys the water today. France Under French law, a couple desiring a religious wedding had to have a civil wedding first. So, after going to the mikvah on Thursday morning, June 18, 1968, Jacqueline Nataf met David Gmach at the Paris City Hall. With family members in attendance, they heard themselves pronounced man and wife— but they didn't really so consider themselves. The Jewish wedding still was three days away. After a polite kiss from David, Jacqueline was whisked away to prepare for her henna, a pre-wedding ceremony in which the bride-to-be, in colorful array, is presented to her fiancé. According to the tradition of Jacqueline's family, Sephardim from Tunisia, the bride decorated the palm of her hand with henna, put a gold coin in her palm, then tied it with a pink satin ribbon— "the symbolism being that the coin will give you prosperity and wealth." Typically, the hand of the bride then is placed in the hand of the groom by the mothers. Another tradition was that "the man receives a watch from the family of his bride-to-be— the idea being that the tradition and the time would go on together, forever," Jacqueline said. The couple got back together the following evening at the Temple des Vosges for Friday night Shabbat services. They separated again following the service, reuniting once again on Saturday morning for an Ashkenaic aufruf,at which the congregation offered its best wishes. The Shabbat service was officiated by Rabbi Charles Liche, who had survived the Holocaust death camps. Later, there was a dinner at the home of one of David¹s aunts. An aunt of Jacqueline, unfamiliar with the gefilte fish so loved by the Ashkenazim, commented quietly to her family that the hostess must have been so busy "she forgot to fry the fish." After the dinner, the couple again separated, and Jacqueline and David undertook fasts that lasted until they met under the chuppah. "Like for Yom Kippur, you do it to become clean and fresh," Jacqueline said. On Sunday, David signed the ketubah, which was then brought to Jacqueline, who was sequestered in a separate room. The dress she wore had been made only one week before— the belief being that to make the dress any earlier would be to tempt the evil eye. As she was escorted down the aisle on June 21 by her father, perhaps as a result of the combination of emotion and fasting, "I felt like I was going to faint," Jacqueline recalled. A big feast after the wedding restored her, but because David's mother had died two months previously, there was neither music nor dancing at the reception. There was some accidental merriment. Jacqueline's father put his hand on the shoulder of David¹s uncle and called him khuya, which means "my brother" in Arabic. Unfortunately, David's uncle spoke Polish, a language in which a homonym of the word is a big insult. The uncle became very pale, but the misunderstanding was explained and matters were smoothed over. Finally together, the couple drove in a car covered with lace to a wedding night at a French country inn. Unfortunately, they ran out of gas along the way. A truck driver stopped, siphoned some gas from his vehicle to theirs, then merrily refused payment, saying "this is my wedding gift to you." Israel Nesya Keisar, a member of a Yemenite Jewish family, met Erez Strasburg, a member of a Polish Jewish family, while both worked as tour guides in Israel. With love of travel a common denominator, Erez (today the Israeli shaliach assigned to the San Diego's United Jewish Federation) remembers, "we went to Turkey as friends and we came back a month later as a couple." Marriage, however, waited until after Erez graduated from a course in hotel management at the University of Haifa and took an assignment at the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem. A henna ceremony a month before the wedding honored the ancient Yemenite tradition of family and friends holding a farewell party for the bride. In ancient days, notes Nesya, brides would leave their homes to live in the towns of their husbands, sometimes many miles away. Originally, she said, the ceremony was for women only, with the mother singing songs of farewell and blessing. "Being queen for one day, the bride was dressed up with a unique costume, and lots of heavy jewelry," Nesya said. "Thus she could barely stand up, and had to sit down most of the evening. The guests, only women, surrounded her, singing and dancing." The woman covered the visible parts of her body — hands, feet and hair— with henna, a plant that becomes a green paste when mixed with water. The effect "is considered very sensual by both men and women," Nesya said. At Nesya's more modern henna ceremony, the party was attended by friends and relatives of both genders. Erez also wore a Yemenite costume. It was a time for his family, who are Ashkenazim, to learn about Sephardic customs. The wedding on June 3, 1992, was performed by an Ashkenazic rabbi. "As people who were tour guides and who loved nature, we dreamed of a wedding that would be outside in nature," Erez said. It was decided to exchange vows atop a mountaintop called Masrek, which means "comb," because the pine trees atop the mountain give the area the appearance of a comb. In deference to guests who might not be able to take the nature walk, it was decided that the reception after the wedding should be held at a restaurant at the entrance to Jerusalem. When Erez arrived at the site in the mountains, "the problem was that two days before the marriage it was Lag B'Omer, and there had been a bonfire at the same spot where we wanted to get married... So we went and collected flowers— I even cut my hand doing that— and it gave such a beauty to the place later on. Besides, we brought a violinist and someone who could sing. "When the rabbi wanted to write on the ketubah the name of the place that he brought us together in marriage, there was no specific name of a town, so he wrote 'the mountains of Judea.'" It was a unique picture: bride, groom and their attendants dressed in formal clothes, walking over dirt trails to the wedding site. "I remember worrying about breaking the glass on the dirt; I was afraid that it wouldn't break," he said. Following their wedding, they traveled to the Upper Galilee to stay at a vegetarian village. Then they joined his parents on a journey to Eastern Europe to retrace his family roots, a bittersweet trip because of the memories of those lost in the Holocaust. Today, Nesya likes to tease Erez about their honeymoon in Poland: "Other husbands take their wives on their honeymoons to Hawaii or the Caribbean. Where does he take me?" Mexico Nidje Israel, the synagogue in Mexico City where Ana Rachel Levine married Jose Galicot, is preserved today as a museum where the history of Mexico City Jewry is traced. Ana and Jose, better known in their adopted home of San Diego as Hanche and Pepe, were married in that synagogue on March 19, 1961, in the expectation that they would soon become settlers in Israel. The couple had been active in Zionist affairs— she in an Ashkenazic Zionist youth group; he in a Sephardic counterpart. After inviting his group to a dance where the boys and girls of the two communities comingled, she persuaded him that the two organizations should join forces. It took Hanche many more years to persuade herself, much less Pepe, that they personally should join forces. Her parents wanted her to marry another Ashkenazic Jew who, like her family, traced his roots back to Lithuania. But she decided instead in favor of Pepe, whose mother was born in Mexico City and whose father came from Constantinople. Weddings in Mexico City typically are conducted late Saturday nights, beginning at 10 p.m. The bride has much to do before then, dressing and having the photographer take pictures of her and her attendants, so the time flies by quickly. Eventually, she is brought to the room where the wedding will occur, her family, friends and guests holding lit candles as they wait for her. Seated, as if on a throne, she awaits her groom, who, after assuring himself that she is his betrothed, takes his place with her under the canopy. At Hanche's and Pepe's reception, the new Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was the subject of conversation among many of the guests. "We were very politicized," Hanche recalls. Besides discussing what Castro might mean to Cuba, they talked, as they almost always did, about Israel. "We were young and didn't care about money; we cared about ideas, and how to redeem the land of Israel and to redeem our people," said Hanche. Pepe's father, who had driven down to Mexico City from Tijuana, was involved in a car accident on the day of the wedding, smacking his head in the collision. He wore a hat to the wedding so no one could see his wounds. As is typical in Mexico, the reception featured two orchestras playing music continuously through the wee hours of Sunday morning, with breakfast being served to the guests at 5 a.m. By 7 a.m., guests began to go home to recover from the festivities. For three days afterward, Pepe and Hanche remained at her parents' home, where "I was sleeping in my room and Pepe was sleeping in his room" while waiting to catch a ride with Pepe's parents to Mazatlan, where they were dropped off for their honeymoon. The couple later traveled to Tijuana to await tickets from the Jewish Agency to make aliyah to Israel. . However, as Pepe's father became ill, they kept putting off leaving Tijuana. Eventually, they found themselves making a life in the Tijuana-San Diego area, where both continue to be strong friends of Israel. South Africa There is a tradition among many Jews favoring weddings on Tuesdays, the third day of the week. On that day, God surveyed His creative work, noting twice that it was good. Tuesdays, accordingly, are considered doubly propitious days to begin a marriage. For Bessie Woolf and Morris Wainstein, Tuesday, May 31, 1955, was also symbolic in the South African context. It was Union Day, marking the 45th anniversary of the unification of four separate colonies— Cape Town, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal— into the Union of South Africa. In that Morris lived in Johannesburg in the Transvaal, while Bessie resided in the Cape Town suburb of Wynberg — then some 28 hours away by train — their wedding seemed to reflect the aspiration for national unity. They had met less than six months before on a triangular section of beach in Cape Town known as Snake Park, which he found while on vacation and where she went to meet friends. He gave her a lift home, asking if she would like to go out with him that night. She replied that it was Shabbos and that, instead, he should have dinner with her religious family. That very same day, Morris asked Bessie if ever she would "consider" marrying someone like him. She allowed that if ever she did decide to marry, someone like him might be quite nice. When he got back to Johannesburg, he told his parents he had met a girl who met all their requirements: Jewish, Lithuanian, nice family. Bessie told her parents too, and her father immediately boarded a train to visit the chief rabbi in Johannesburg. He inquired what the rabbi knew about the Wainsteins. He didn¹t care about their financial worth, but wanted to know if they were menchen (good people), Bessie recalled. The rabbi assured her father they were. Meanwhile, his parents were contacting friends in Cape Town to inquire much the same thing about the Woolfs. Luckily for the couple, who now were exchanging increasingly amorous letters, the two families found each other more than acceptable. Everyone from Johannesburg stayed at the hotel in Wynberg, which was within walking distance to the Wynberg Shul and to the Woolf residence. "Everything in Wynberg was walking distance," Bessie recalled. Wynberg was a close-knit community, and between 300 and 500 people attended the wedding, officiated by "Reverend" Gordon (as rabbis were then titled). Bessie's mother and father conducted her to the chuppah, where Morris was waiting. A feature of the reception in the hall adjoining the sanctuary was a large wedding cake that had been shaped to resemble an aron kodesh. Morris took Bessie back to Johannesburg via a honeymoon at the Ubongah Resort in Durban. They went by the ship Edinburgh Castle and, alas, Bessie was so seasick that she refused to travel by boat ever again. However, she recuperated nicely at the resort, where the couple met other honeymooners who have remained lifelong friends. Although Bessie worried about being away from the friends and family she had known throughout her entire life in Cape Town, the couple thrived in Johannesburg, eventually pioneering a successful health food line of products called Honey Crunch. The Wainsteins, who moved to San Diego a few years ago from South Africa, have four children, including two who live here, and 11 grandchildren. Ukraine Although the fifth line on their passports said that Alexandra Sklovsky and Vitaly Drapkin were of Jewish "nationality," no Jewish wedding was possible for the couple when they were married July 18, 1987, in Kharkov. There were no synagogues in town. One was not to be established for another two years until after their wedding, Alexandra said. "To be Jewish was to be together, to be a little bit different," Alexandra said. "I remember every Pesach there was this old man who brought matzoh to our family. We didn't know exactly what to do with this, but we knew that it was matzoh on Pesach, an apple on Rosh HaShanah, and on Yom Kippur you can't eat." Her grandfather was a doctor, who had feared for his life after dictator Josef Stalin accused a group of Jewish doctors of plotting against his life. A high-ranking friend in the communist party warned the grandfather to hide, so "it was a miracle for us." A pianist, Alexandra said because she was Jewish she knew that "I had to be a perfect student; otherwise, I could not go to the Academy. My mom wanted to be a doctor all her life, but because she was a Jew she couldn't go to a medical institute. Vitaly wanted to go into a specialty, but because he was a Jew, he couldn't. "I can¹t say that we felt this anti-Semitism all the time; that would not be right. In Kharkov, it was pretty good for Jews, but we knew of this; it was always there for us." Their wedding at a government bureau of vital statistics was the dry and pro forma affair that they had watched so many of their friends go through, even though they went to a branch office hoping for some variety. They and their witnesses filled out some paperwork, stood in a drab room before an official who recited to them a passage about how families in the Soviet Union must consider themselves part of the greater community, and were pronounced to be man and wife. Except for the dark satiny roses her father and her husband coincidentally both purchased for her — from separate stores—and of course the exchange Nevertheless, there were some indelible memories associated with the wedding, if not with the ceremony itself. The wedding party had no money for limousines or taxis, Vitaly recalled, so "we just stopped a bus, all of us got on board, and we got there." Afterward, her parents' friends gathered at their apartment for dinner and to wish the bridal couple well. Meanwhile, their own friends gathered at her parents' home for an after-dinner party, featuring guitar playing, singing and, well, maybe a little drinking. Her best friend, Natasha Kuzmis, told them that she had been scheduled to travel to Estonia with some other people, but the plans fell through. She held up three tickets. Why didn¹t they all go together? And so they embarked on a honeymoon, not realizing that the accommodations were for three to a room. The wedding couple slept in one bed; their friend in another, so the arrangements were hardly conducive to conubial bliss. "I was very upset, but I got used to it," Vitaly said. They were all friends; they had fun sightseeing, and, as Alexandra explained, she and Vitaly "knew we had all of our lives before us." Early during their courtship, Vitaly told Alexandra that he wanted to emigrate to Israel, where, he felt, he could build a career for himself. Alexandra, not wanting to leave her family, hesitated, but three years later, with the encouragement of her mother, he prevailed. They settled in Haifa, where he went to work for Qualcomm. Her parents visited them, and later followed them to Israel. A short while after her parents died, Qualcomm asked Vitaly to transfer to its headquarters operation here in San Diego. The couple and their two young daughters— who speak Russian, Hebrew and English quite proficiently — now live in Tierrasanta. When someday they marry, Alexandra says, "I hope they will get to take part in these beautiful Jewish traditions." United Kingdom When Marian Segall and Ralph Barnes were married at the Norrice Lea Shul in London on June 11, 1950, it was the hottest day Ralph remembers. Whether this was because of the weather, or because of his emotions while standing under the chuppah, is not known, but he remembers: "I was wearing a top hat and the sweat was pouring off my forehead. Fortunately, I had ears or the top hat would have slid down my head." Besides wearing formal clothes for the wedding, it is customary in England for the bride and groom to be driven to shul for the ceremony. The only problem, he remembers, was that "I lived down the road, and she lived around the corner. I could have walked, but I had to ride around the block." Appearances, you see — which, alas, didn¹t last long for Marian. After the ceremony, the couple stayed behind for the formal signing of the ketubah while the other guests gathered outside a Town Hall ballroom where the reception would be held. "To reach the reception area, we had to go up an imposing white staircase," Ralph related. "When we got there, the majority of guests were already there. In those days, they didn't have liquor before the reception; they had tea, sandwiches and little pastries. "We were greeted at the top of the stairs by one of my mother-in-law's gushing friends, who spilled a cup of coffee right down the front of Marian's wedding dress. Before anyone could see the splendor of her dress, there was coffee down the middle of it." The couple had met in 1941 during World War II, when the Germans sent near-nightly bombing raids over London. "Our parents wouldn't let us go very far from home, so we met at the youth club at the shul," Ralph said. "She was literally the girl from around the corner." |
