2003-07-25 Yoni Peres-Sigal Shalev wedding
 |
 Israeli
Cities
|
|
|
Sigal's 'prize: Peres wedding is sign of devotion to family and Israel's future |
|
2003-07-25 Yoni Peres-Sigal Shalev wedding |
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
| By
Donald H. Harrison TEL AVIV— When Yoni Peres and Sigal Shalev were married Tuesday evening, July 15, in an outdoor ceremony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, they not only made vows to each other, they also fulfilled two promises expressing love for family and determination to keep building Israel. Yoni, son of Sonia and Israel's former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, reminded nearly 500 guests at the Sham Mayim Terrace at Charles Clore Park in Tel Aviv that the adjoining Dolphinarium property had been the site of a suicide bombing on June 1, 2001, that had killed 21 young people and wounded 120 others. Neither the wedding guests nor the country at large will be deterred by terrorists from living their normal lives, he said. Sigal, daughter of Dalia and Yehezkel Shalev, matched her traditional white wedding dress with white shoes that Yoni had presented to her at a hinna ceremony exactly one week before at the Center for Babylonian Jewish Heritage in the Tel Aviv suburb of Or Yehuda. That hinna ceremony had been especially poignant for Sigal because it was a way of demonstrating that the customs so important to her late maternal grandmother Sabichah Gamzou were being observed and would be continued. Gamzou, an immigrant to Israel from Iraq, had died three weeks before the hinna ceremony. A well-known custom at Jewish wedding ceremonies is for the groom to break a glass under his foot— as Yoni in fact did — symbolizing remembrance of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and Jewish belief that even in times of joy we must not forget our tragedies. In more contemporary fashion, recalling the victims of the Dolphinarium bombing and the passing of Sigal's grandmother also were ways to "break the glass" during otherwise festive celebrations for Yoni and Sigal. At both the hinna and the wedding ceremonies, Shimon Peres kept as low a profile as can be kept by a man who has government-assigned body guards trailing in his wake and who is asked by guests to pose for photographs and to sign autographs. There was strict ceremonial parity between the parents of the bride and the groom at the wedding — a testimonial to the strength of Israeli democracy. Yoni was escorted to the chuppah by his father and Sigal's father, Yehezkel, a former management assistant for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. Sigal, similarly, was escorted to her waiting bridegroom by her mother Dalia and Yoni's mother Sonia. Both sets of parents then stood at their children's sides during the entire wedding ceremony, which was officiated by Rabbi Menahem HaCohen, a former Labor member of Knesset and author who travels to Bucharest once a month in his capacity as chief rabbi for Romania. HaCohen also is the rabbi for the moshav movement in Israel. At the conclusion of the ceremony under the chuppah, Sigal's cousin David Dalah sang a Sephardic rendition of some of the blessings that had been recited under the chuppah. During the reception that followed, Yoni's niece Noa Walden sang Livelach, a Hebrew song meaning "For Me And For You." As the Peres family has its origins in Europe and the Shalev family came from Iraq, the hinna and wedding represented a blend of Sephardic and Ashkenazic customs, such marriages having become more or less commonplace as representatives of these two streams of Judaism came to know and love each other in the years since Israel¹s establishment in 1948. The shoes that Yoni had presented to Sigal, according to Iraqi Jewish custom, symbolized the fact that he would be a good provider for her. Both Yoni and Sigal wore caftans for that hinna ceremony, in which they were led by a belly dancer in a procession to the stage of the Center for Babylonian Jewish Culture. Once the betrothed couple was seated in front of a low table, a mixture of henna was placed in their palms as well as in those of their parents and other guests. This folk tradition, adopted by Jews who had lived in Muslim countries, is intended to bring good luck and to keep away evil spirits (who evidently are repelled by the henna's aroma, which is pungent but not unpleasant to humans). Halkum, marshmallow-like candies, are placed on each of the fingers of the wedding principals in another custom that symbolizes the hope that their lives together will be covered in sweetness. An officiant then removes the marshmallows from the fingers and tosses them to the admiring crowd, some of whom happily gobble up the goodies in the desire for more such sweetness in their own lives. Seated on the floor of the stage in front of Sigal, her nieces Shelly, 13, and Sapir Lazar, 11, daughters of Dorit and Avi Lazar, unfurled a scroll containing Arabic phrases that were special to Sigal, as they were sayings often spoken by her late grandmother. Sigal incorporated these sayings into her speech, in which she also made a pleasing pun on Yoni's family name. In Hebrew, words often are written only with consonants, and thus Peres and pras (meaning "prize" in Hebrew) are written the same. Sigal said that, for her, the Peres family is a prize. She also suggested that the differences between Ashkenazic and Sephardic foods are not so great. Iraqi Jews eat kuba, a kind of ground meat topped with fried crushed wheat. "Gefilte fish is also a kind of kuba," Sigal quipped. Yoni, 50, a veterinarian (and occasional correspondent for Heritage), had met Sigal Shalev, 32, while she was working at the Consulate-General of Israel in Los Angeles and he was spending time in Southern California as a representative of the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind. Besides family members, a wide array of friends attended the wedding. Among them was Meirav Eilon Shahar, who had served as the consul for communications in the Los Angeles consulate during the time of Yoni's and Sigal's courtship and now is assigned to the U.S. congressional liasion branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. Yuval Rotem, Israel's consul-general in Los Angeles, telephoned during the wedding reception to extend the best wishes of other staff members of the consulate. Also attending from Los Angeles was Zahava Israeli, an Israeli-born activist who correctly interpreted Yoni's growing interest in Sigal and encouraged their romance. Yoni's colleagues from the guide dog center (including at least two guide dogs) were also attendees of the wedding. They included Noach Braun and Orna Braun, respectively director and puppy-raising manager of the guide dog facility in Bet Oved, Israel; Norman Leventhal of Warrington, Penn., president of the the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind; fundraiser Helena Galper of Coronado, and such utilizers of guide dog services as Itzik Ben David, Moti Barzilai and Aviva Stern. Tempo, a miniature pinscher adopted by Yoni after the dog's rear leg became crippled and its original owners abandoned him, also made an appearance at the reception following the ceremony under the chuppah. Cradled in turn by Yoni and Sigal, and admired by the guests, Tempo yipped his approval of all that he surveyed. |
