Many Jewish wedding customs derive from the Bible

Jewish wedding customs embody some of the paradoxes of Judaism and Jewish life.

On the one hand, Judaism takes marriage very seriously. In fact, it regards getting married as a commandment, not simply an option; and even calls it kiddushin, sanctification.

And yet you will look in vain in the Bible itself for any description of a wedding ceremony. Certainly, the Bible contains many stories about marriages, especially those of the patriarchs in Genesis. Yet within all the Torah’s detailed descriptions of so many other rituals, especially sacrifices, one never sees any description of how a wedding should be conducted.

Nevertheless, many, though not all, of the customs and rituals found in the Jewish wedding as it is celebrated today supposedly exist because they are inspired by, or are to be reminiscent of, many Bible passages and verses.

For example, the most distinguishing feature of any Jewish wedding ceremony is that it takes place under a canopy, called in Hebrew a chuppah.

Rabbi Abraham B. Witty and Rachel J. Witty in their 2001 book “Exploring Jewish Tradition” say this custom comes from the Bible’s book of Ruth, where Ruth tells her future husband Boaz to “spread your robe over” her (Ruth 3:9).

The Wittys also suggest that the custom also derives from the stories of the Patriarchs, who lived in tents. Getting married under a canopy suggests the passage “Isaac brought [Rebecca] into the tent… and she became his wife” (Genesis 24:67).

The right one

They also write that “the traditions of the Jewish wedding can be likened to the events leading up to the Revelation on Mount Sinai.”

They cite the great medieval commentator Rashi as having pointed out that in Exodus 19:17, “God went forth to meet the Children of Israel like a Bridegroom who goes forth to meet his Bride.” Therefore, before the ceremony, it is customary for a groom to be escorted to the bride.

This part of the ceremony also involves the groom placing a veil over the bride’s face, a ritual called in Yiddish the badeken. This apparently is supposed to recall two Bible passages from the stories of the Patriarchs.

First, Rebecca covered her face with a veil when she first saw her intended husband, Isaac (Genesis 24:65). Second, and the reason most often given for the custom, this is supposed to allow the groom to make sure he is marrying the right woman; it recalls how Laban tricked Jacob into marrying older daughter Leah instead of the younger daughter Rachel that Jacob actually wanted (Genesis 29).

This done, a procession forms to go to the chuppah. First the groom enters, then the bride. The Wittys say this reflects Genesis 2:22, where it says that God “brought [Eve] to Adam.”

Then may occur a curious practice that not every Jewish wedding follows, but many do. The bride goes under the chuppah and walks in a circle around the groom seven times.

This writer seen several different Bible-based explanations for this practice. Rabbi Mordechai Becker in his 2005 book “Gateway to Judaism” says this corresponds to the seven days of creation in Genesis and “symbolizes the fact that the bride and groom are about to create their own new world together.”

The Wittys, however, say the custom comes from Jeremiah 31:21 – “Return, maiden Israel” – and the seven circuits recall the seven expressions God used to betroth Himself to the Jewish people in the book of Hosea 2:21-22: “And I will espouse you forever; I will espouse you with righteousness and justice, and with goodness and mercy, and I will espouse you with faithfulness; then you shall be devoted to the Lord.”

Rabbi Benjamin Blech in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Judaism” says the seven circuits stand for “the seven times in the Bible where it is written ‘when a man takes a wife’”; and the bride also “symbolically shows that she has ‘captured’ the heart of her beloved just as Joshua captured the city of Jericho by marching around it seven times” (Joshua 6).

Once that is completed, the bride stands at the groom’s right side for the ceremony. According to the Wittys, this comes from Psalms 45:10: “Erect stands the queen at your right…”

During the ceremony, seven blessings are recited, often recited by people that the couple wants to honor. The texts of some of these blessings recall biblical events and passages, from the creation of human beings in Genesis to the prophets’ visions that the Jewish people will be restored to the land of Israel.

The wedding ceremony concludes with another most distinctively Jewish practice, the smashing of a glass. All the sources I’ve seen say that this custom is supposed to be a way of reducing the joy of the event by remembering the destruction of the Temple, both the first as recounted in the Bible (II Kings 25) and the second destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.

And yet at every Jewish wedding this writer has ever seen, the smashing of the glass actually results in an explosion of “mazal tov” yells and often the playing of joyous music. This has led some, like Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in his “Jewish Literacy,” to suggest that maybe the glass should be broken in the middle of the ceremony rather than at the end.

Finally, while virtually all religions and cultures celebrate weddings in one way or another, in Judaism doing so is also a commandment.

While this commandment does not come directly from the Bible, a Midrash text, the Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, comments on Genesis, saying that God and the angels rejoiced when Adam married Eve.

Moreover, the Talmud in several passages commands rejoicing at a wedding and claims biblical warrant for doing so. “Anyone who benefits from the banquet of a bridegroom and does not make him rejoice violates the spirit of the five voices,” says Talmud Tractate Berachot 6b.

And what are the “five voices”? They are the sounds that Jeremiah 33:11 prophecies will return to Jerusalem – the sounds of joy, gladness, the groom, the bride, and people thanking God.

“According to Rashi,” write the Wittys, “those who do not rejoice with the groom show no regard for any of the five sounds of rejoicing that God promised to grant Israel. Thus, we learn that we are obliged to rejoice with the groom, because by doing so, it is as if we studied the entire Torah.”