Jewish Wedding

Leslie Ventura
REL 100
Final Paper: Jewish Wedding Society today is made up of a mosaic of different cultures and religions. Visitors to the U.S. can see the incorporation of many traditions and rituals from other countries. Throughout history there have been many refugees who leave their homelands which has led to the spread of different cultures and traditions around the world. For Jews, the spread of Judaism was caused by diaspora, or dispersion of people outside their countries, which happened several times in history. Even though Judaism is widespread, there is a consistency in the basic traditions and holidays that are celebrated. Many rituals and traditions that are a part of Judaism are still preformed, like bar and bat mitzvahs,

A Jewish wedding ceremony, like all rituals, has particular actions and sounds. Prayers and blessings are said under a canopy, the marriage contract is witness, blessings spoken over a glass of wine, and finally the breaking of glass. All these motions and words spoken are what make up a Jewish wedding ritual. Rites of passage also occur through these ceremonies. During a Jewish wedding, the participants pass one status to another and become mindful of their new obligations and station. In, Marriage in the Jewish Tradition, by Blu Greenberg, a Jewish marriage “is a change in personal status. Neither sacrament nor mere legal transaction, it enjoys the trappings of…the richness of ceremony and rite” (7). The rite of passage of a Jewish wedding symbolizes the transition “between the couple and their families, and especially the separation of the girl-youth from her family and her joining her husband’s family” (Sharaby 41). The couple experience a moment where they are neither married nor single before they reach their new identity. In Van Gennep’s timeline of rites of passage, a Jewish wedding follows the three main stages. The pre-liminal stage, or the stage of separation where those getting married are disconnected from their prior social position. The second stage is the liminal or transitional phase. This stage is during the Jewish wedding ceremony where the couple has no defined status. The last and

According to Roy Rappaport who wrote, Ritual, Time, and Eternity, rituals “all "take time,"…during which one act or utterance…succeeds the one preceding it in established order” (8). Time and place are concepts humans create and bring into the world. Although time “may be founded upon natural processes—the circle of the seasons…the alternation of day and night—it is not established by those processes themselves” (10). The two concepts, sacred and profane, are opposites of each other. By combining the concepts of sacred and profane, time, and place, sacred time and place can be defined. There is sacred time and there is profane time “in which acts without religious meaning have their setting” (68). Sacred time “appears under the paradoxical aspect of a circular time…a sort of eternal mythical present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites” (70). In the Jewish tradition, the synagogue or temple is considered a sacred place. During a wedding, another place that is made sacred and has importance is the canopy that the bride and groom stand under for the ceremony. Sacred time during the wedding ceremony is when prayers and blessing are being said. The incorporation of sacred time and place within a Jewish wedding ceremony bring the couple closer to an unseen