Archaic Jewish Wedding Rituals

The Marshalek.—His Duties.—The Serenade.—At The Bride’s “Main Quarters.”—The Reception at the Groom’s.—The Ritual of Seating of the Bride.—The Marshalek’s Improvisation.

The rituals and ceremonies at Jewish weddings are so numerous that performing them in logical order and according to tradition is almost unthinkable without a special director and guardian. The role of this guardian or master of ceremonies is ordinarily taken on by a so-called marshalek, who is put in charge of the entire wedding, since he genuinely does know everything that is required in the given instance by traditional custom, which suffers no deviations whatsoever.

In the narrow sense, the marshalek is only a shareholder in and director of the band of musicians hired “to play the wedding.” However, because of his special knowledge and many talents, he immediately becomes the soul and principal bigwig of the entire wedding, which in his competent and experienced hands becomes a single harmonious and sensible whole. He has to be multitalented because during the course of the wedding he, in turn, must don many different guises—master of ceremonies, speaker, improviser, singer, comic, magician, etc.—and similar freestyle artists. And since every profession and every art has its true artists and simple craftsmen, the art of marshalek is not without gifted masters and untalented bunglers who bore the entire wedding audience. And so the [parents organizing the wedding] are far from indifferent as to who is going to be marshalek at their family celebration—a talented man or an untalented dullard—and they spare no expense to obtain the former, “so that both God and men rejoice.”

After this introduction we can move directly to the wedding.

The groom and bride spend the entire day of the wedding strictly fasting, taking neither food nor drink from early morning on, since on this triumphant day for them the fate of their entire life is decided in heaven; moreover, both their own conduct and equally the merits of their ancestors, as written down in the heavenly books and who stand in front of the throne of the Almighty and pray for the well-being of their descendants, are weighed and taken into consideration. This, at least, is how devout Jews understand the higher meaning of the wedding day.

At about ten in the morning, the marshalek, accompanied by the musicians, appears first to the groom and then to the bride and performs a serenade (“good day”), which, moreover, is in rhymed prose; to the accompaniment of music he utters a greeting befitting the occasion. The marshalek and musicians are served a shot of vodka and a little spice cake—and this lays the foundation for that sea of drink in which these hardened drinkers are going to be swimming over the course of the entire wedding without losing their balance or the ground under their feet. However drunk they sometimes get, and however sleepy—though all they do is doze over their instruments—they nonetheless play everything required of them, on the beat and at the appropriate tempo. Such is the power of will and the craftsman’s routine.

Since “the groom is like a king [and] the bride like a queen,” then for the time of the wedding the rooms of the couple’s parents acquire the fancy name “principal quarters.”

The wedding begins to make itself felt earlier, in the bride’s “principal quarters.” There, at around noon, young ladies, dressed to the nines, begin arriving. They are received by the bride’s mother; the bride herself still hasn’t come out of her chamber, as she is busy with her toilette, in which she is assisted by her friends, who arrived nearly with the dawn. When the bride, in full wedding attire and surrounded by her friends, slowly and majestically, as befits a “queen,” steps into the dancing room, the marshalek proclaims in a sing-song—“in honor, in honor of our dear bride, as radiant as the dawn, delighting the eyes of her good friends, as well as strangers, strike the strings with a bold hand, and they will sing like a nightingale in the night!”—and the musicians begin to play a flourish, and the young guests rise from their seats and walk toward the bride with greetings and kisses.

The dancing begins. Despite the strict fast, the bride dances too, since she is obliged to dance with each and every girl present, or those overlooked will feel insulted. The dancing, with extended breaks, lasts for two or three hours. Meanwhile, the older guests start to arrive, including decrepit old women, so that little by little the room becomes so crowded that there’s nowhere for an apple to fall. The dancing stops of its own accord because there’s simply nowhere to dance.

In the groom’s “principal quarters,” the wedding is still barely noticeable. True, the large room has been decorated for the celebration. In the middle is a very long table covered with a snow-white tablecloth, but there are still only a few guests, sitting wherever they happen to sit, alone or in groups of two or three, and their whispered conversations are unrelated to the wedding. The groom, in his full wedding raiment, his hands clasped behind his back, stands in one corner and then another, glancing every minute at the wall clock, whose hands, it seems to him, are advancing too slowly. His parents are bustling around like mad, hurrying, giving orders and immediately canceling them, and are so scattered that they mostly answer the questions asked them nonsensically.

However, when the afternoon starts to head toward evening, the groom’s father, having sent his spouse off to see the bride, returns to his guests, whom he is only now beginning to welcome and greet, as befits a hospitable host.

“Welcome! Welcome!” he lavishes right and left, bobbing up to first one and then another of the guests, whose numbers are now growing by the minute, firmly shaking hands with one, embracing another. “Evening is here, isn’t it time to get going?”

“It’s time! Of course it is!” come the responses on all sides.

“In that case, gentlemen, I invite you to the table.”

The guests stop asking and sit down around the table. The groom, having put his outer clothing on as well, sits in the place of honor, between his sponsor fathers. In front of them is placed a large saffron and raisin kulich¹ covered with a colorful napkin. At the host’s beckoning, large trays set with colorful drinks in crystal decanters and sweet snacks on china saucers appear on the table. The guests quickly begin paying the offered refreshments their due—drinking, eating, toasting, and congratulating the heroes of the occasion—while the groom only licks his lips and swallows his saliva because the fasting is still not over for him. In wedding language these refreshments are called the kabolas-ponim, i.e., the reception, the audience which his majesty the groom-king gives to the “folk” he has invited to his wedding.

When the marshalek, bored at the bride’s “principal quarters,” learns from the courier who has come racing up to him that the “audience” has already begun at the groom’s, he instantly livens up and is filled with efficient and effective fervor, aware that the time has come to act. And he begins to act. Rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, he raises his sinewy arms upward, waves them like oars, and begins crying out as hard as he can:

“Quiet now! Women, seat the bride! Light the candles! Step lively! Musicians, your instruments!”

An unimaginable hullabaloo starts up because the room is crowded, crushed with guests, some invited and some not, and noise and talk reign. The bride should be seated in the middle of the room, but there isn’t a single foot of free space there. However, the marshalek begins to move his fists and elbows energetically and a small space is freed up. Here they set a dough tub upside down, place a pillow on top, and cover it with a rug.

To this symbolic seat, which is supposed to bode the wedding couple good “sprouts,” the honorary matrons guide the bride by the arm. She sits down, covers her face with her scarf, and begins to weep. Custom demands that the bride have a good cry on her wedding day so that she will laugh and rejoice her whole life.

The room is lit by many candles. The godmothers surround the bride on all sides, holding a lit candle in one hand, and with the other, a plait of the bride’s hair.

The marshalek climbs on a stool so the whole room can see and hear him, and he starts in rhymed prose to improvise a speech in which he explains to the bride the importance of this solemn day for her entire life, the possibility of bitter disappointments, the necessity of enduring them without a murmur, in full submission to Providence: “Which, what it does, knows, does not offend anyone in vain, only punishes for sins but rewards virtue. And so complaining about Providence is a sin that arouses laughter in the righteous and brings with it punishment in that the person will have a bad time in the world to come and in this current one. For the sake of this, my dear bride, weep, may your tears flow from your eyes at a gallop, plea, beg the Lord God, who punished Gog and Magog, may He give you a good heart, a forgiving, gentle, virtuous heart, so that you do good skillfully and give charity compassionately, for charity brings you closer to God, saves you from misfortunes and illness, and frees you from the torments of hell.” He goes on to lay out before the bride the duties she will face as a spouse, mother, and housewife, heavy duties, laid upon her not by the tyranny of men but by the will of God and the proscriptions of religion, which are sacred. Woe to the woman who shirks her duties or performs them carelessly. In the next world it will be exacted from her a hundredfold; she will repent, but it will be too late. On the other hand, what glory will shine upon her when she assiduously and conscientiously performs the duties that rest on her! May she liken herself to that valorous wife whose praises were sung by wise King Solomon and whom all daughters of Israel should emulate.

The marshalek delivers his entire improvisation in sing-song, in a minor key, and with the appropriate grimaces and gestures; his recitatives are accompanied by a violin and a muted bass, which lend them even greater warmth.

The bride sobs violently, and all those present weep as well, including the little children. The marshalek concludes his improvisation with words of consolation. The music starts playing a march or a waltz, and the elegiac mood of those present disappears.