Arts & Culture
5 Jewish Wedding Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)
By Tamar Fox / June 25, 2008
Ah, wedding season: Weekends fill up with nuptials as our friends and relatives (and maybe even a few of us) march down the aisle and get hoisted up on chairs to wave napkins and hope they don't get dropped. Weddings are beautiful and fun, but as anyone who has ever watched Bridezillas can tell you, they rarely go off without a hitch. Here are some tips for anyone who wants to avoid common Jewish wedding disasters.
- Check Your Hebrew: If you’ll be having any Hebrew text on your invitation or program, and if you’re not really comfortable with the language, have the text proofread by someone who can catch typos, grammatical errors, and other miscommunications. I’ve seen invitations where ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’ became ‘My father is my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’ because of a typo. And a ketubah where ‘bride’ became ‘easy girl’ because of a spelling error. Don’t trust the artist or printer to be your Hebrew language expert.
- Read Your Ketubah: If you’re going to have a ketubah, read the translation ahead of time to make sure that you’re both okay with it. As I’ve written before, it’s kind of a bizarre document, and many couples are uncomfortable with the traditional text. This is the kind of thing you want to talk about months before the wedding, especially if you’re having a ketubah made just for you. You don’t want to hear it read at the wedding and think, “That’s not very romantic.” Be prepared.
- Test Drive the Glass: There are few things more embarrassing than watching while a groom haplessly stomps on a napkin over and over until the crowd finally hears a satisfying crunch. If you want to use a glass, try a very thin champagne flute. Or cheat and use a light bulb. Remember to save the shattered glass so you can have it made into a mezuzah for your home.
- Find Chairs With Arms: You will be hoisted into the air, and if you have arms to hold onto, you’re less likely to fall or feel unsteady. It’s also good to have some strong friends and relatives on hand.
- Choose Seven Friends: The seven wedding blessings need to be said under the chuppa following the grace after the meal. You may want to give the honor of the first seven to various family members, and the second seven to good friends. Just make sure whoever you ask is comfortable reading Hebrew out loud in front of a lot of people.
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I was at the dinner table of a family whose father is originally from America, whose mother knows a passable amount of English, and whose eight daughters and one son know almost no English at all. Naturally, then, speaking Hebrew was the only option.
The thing about Hebrew is, its morphology and grammar is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, because everything is based on roots, slight changes to those roots can produce a myriad of words. For example, ???? (boreg) is a screw, ?????? (l’havrig) is to screw, and ???? (bireg) is to unscrew. ???? (okhel) is food and to eat, ????? (ma’akhil) is to feed, etc. So the language is very powerful; often, even if you don’t know a word, if you know a word with the same root meaning, you can create your own word, and usually, you’ll be right.
But at the same time, this means that if you get one detail slightly wrong, you’ll say the entirely wrong word. In English and many other languages, for example, you can mispell a word, but as long as the first and last letters are correct, people can still read the word. But with Hebrew, if you move one letter, the word becomes something entirely else. ??? (shahad) is a bribe, but ??? (hashad) is to suspect; ??? (zeman) is time, while ??? (mazon) is sustenance.
At some point, I was saying something about my mother’s cooking. But because I had to speak at a normal rate and couldn’t take my time to carefully think, I slipped up. As soon as the words left my mouth, all of the daughters burst out laughing. I suddenly realized that instead of saying that my mother ????? (bishlah – cooked), I had rather said, ????? (bushlah – was cooked). Change the sound "iy" into "uh", and suddenly, my mother changes from chef to main course.
Tamar, you know how to put the Id back in Yid, you got yourself an Israeli husband.
Helen, you are too funny :) I am open for a biblical arrangement.
Yes, absolutely. But–and I hate to bring this up because I know Jewish girls have a reputation of being demanding and high maintenance–ideally I think we should date, you know, for a week or two, and do some serious making out (at least) before the actual nuptials. Just so people don't think we're rushing into things.
Hey Tamar, will you marry me?
Love the Hebrew errors — classic!
Also:
Check spelling of names on benchers. We know a case (for a bar mitzva, but the issue is the same) where "Zeev" was spelled without the alef, which means "ooze" or (worse) "gonnorheic."
Instruct the chair-hoisters to make sure that they lift the front of the chair higher than the back. You really don't need to have the bride or groom slide off the chair.
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