Weddings come in as many flavors as the brides and grooms at their centers. A couple planning a Jewish wedding ceremony has more to consider than the usual attire, food and venues. Here are four key things to think about.
“I sit down and have a conversation with them and find out who they are and what they’re about,” said Rabbi Nisan Andrews of Lake Park Synagogue. During that initial conversation, Andrews informs the couple regarding wedding protocol.
“Any wedding I perform,” he said, “I perform to normative Orthodox practices. So we go over the various legal obligations a husband has for his wife and the obligations a wife has for her husband, as well as talking about what it means to have an Orthodox wedding.”
Andrews ticked off a list of requirements that include a ketubah, witnesses, blessings and, he said, whether both parties are Jewish. While not directly connected to the ceremony, Andrews said another concern is whether the food served at the wedding is kosher.
“Some rabbis have a difficult time joining a couple at an event that doesn’t welcome (the traditions) of the religion the wedding is coming under together,” he said. “Another consideration is whether or not they are a mixed couple, for example a Jew marrying a non-Jew. Orthodox rabbis do not officiate at mixed marriages.”
At subsequent meetings leading up to the wedding, Andrews works to ensure that the couple understands that the ceremony and reception are the beginning moments of a life-long commitment to mutually support one another.
“Men and women sometimes speak and talk and act differently,” he said, “and it really behooves a responsible rabbi to sit down with the bride and groom and talk. You have a fairly long and protracted conversation over time about what it’s like to be married, and what, exactly, it means to be devoted to an individual other than yourself.”
The Mishnah lists the ketubah, or marriage contract, as a wedding requirement. Written in Aramaic, it spells out the groom’s obligations to the bride to feed, clothe and engage in marital relations with her. It also details how much she is to be paid if she becomes a divorcee or widow.
“Most brides get engaged and start looking at wedding dresses,” said Cantor Lauren Phillips of Congregation Sinai of Fox Point. Phillips and her fiancé Daniel Fogelman are planning a September 2016 wedding in New York.
“The thing that kept me up at night was looking at pictures of ketubot. I’m overwhelmed by the variety and not sure how we’re going to make a decision on design.”
That was no surprise to Cindy Benjamin, a local artist who began designing ketubot in the early 1970s. Back then, most North American Jewish ketubot were mass-produced and pulled from a rabbi’s desk or file drawer prior to the ceremony. That began to change with the revival of American folk art in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“People were taking classes in quilting and weaving, and like a lot of Jewish art, it paralleled the art of the country,” Benjamin said.
Since then, she said, technology has opened up a world of options between mass-produced and the one-of-a-kind ketubot she used to create.
“Many artists have blanks so an artist can fill in fonts and names, and people can fill in blanks so the piece looks like a complete original.”
Benjamin shared a useful tip she used back when working with a couple who were struggling to figure out a color scheme.
“I’d send them to their closets and say, ‘Pick something out that you really love,’ ” she said, adding that her brides and grooms would express surprise at discovering how much of a particular color they owned.
Those getting married elsewhere (or those with a DIY bent) have plenty of options. They can create a traditional chuppah – a tallit held up by four poles. If they want something different, there is an overwhelming variety of handmade chuppot online. For one local couple, a wedding decorator was the answer.
Lindsay Gorelick and Matthew Taylor turned to Lisa Lynn Loosen at Heavenly Creations in the run-up to their August 2015 wedding at Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel.
“We brought in a swatch of fabric,” said Lisa Gorelick, Lindsay’s mother, “and Lisa made us a beautiful chuppah.”
The outer band can be engraved as long as it’s solid; the inner band should not be engraved. The unbroken band symbolizes eternity.
“When we were shopping for engagement rings,” Phillips said, “I was searching with an eye for a ring that would go with a plain Jewish wedding band.”
When trying on engagement rings, she paired them with plain wedding bands.
“I wanted to make sure whatever I chose would look and feel right,” she said.
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