In Ste. Agathe, a very public wedding story

Resort town hosts Hasidic ceremony; Age-old ritual conducted in the open to demystify ultraorthodox Jewish sect

JEFF HEINRICH
The Gazette

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

"As water mirrors a face, a heart responds to another."

- Proverbs 27:1

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The veiled bride wore a long white gown, the bearded groom wore a big black hat, and with 300 friends, relatives, dignitaries and curious onlookers gathered by the lake yesterday in this Laurentians town, the two were married in an unusually public Hasidic Jewish ceremony.

By custom and fundamentalist religious belief, Hana Sellem, a French immigrant, and Moshe Barouk, an American visiting from Florida - who met only several months ago, through a matchmaker - hadn't seen each other for one week before the ceremony. They had also fasted and studied the Torah to prepare for their big day.

Their ceremony was meant not only for them but for Ste. Agathe. Despite close to a century of Jewish presence, the town has been under a cloud lately because of an incident two weeks ago in which a visiting Montreal Jew was attacked and assaulted by a gang of local youths while walking to synagogue.

With uniformed security guards watching discreetly, Sellem and Barouk yesterday solemnly observed the rituals of their tradition, so strange yet so fascinating to the non-initiates who watched from the lawn of downtown Place Lagny on the shores of Lac des Sables, where the early evening wedding took place under a tiny raised canopy beneath balmy late-summer skies.

Inside a reception room of the park's pavilion, provided free by the town, the groom first brought down a veil over the bride's face, a symbol that she's now off-limits to other men. Then the knots on the groom's clothing were untied, emphasizing the couple's new bond of holy matrimony.

Bride and groom and their entourages then proceeded outside to the canopy, singing in Hebrew and carrying lit candles. There, Sellem and her family circled the groom seven times, symbolizing the number of days the devout believe it took God to create the Earth.

Readings and blessings in Hebrew followed, kosher Israeli white wine was sipped, witnesses were called to attest to the procedures, and finally the groom placed a simple gold band on the bride's right forefinger.

The marriage contract was then read out in Aramaic, more blessings were read, a second glass of wine was sipped, and a glass was broken under the groom's right foot to remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Her veil finally lifted, and with the crowd whistling and cheering before the setting sun, the bride and her husband then retired to a private room in the pavilion, first stepping over a silver spoon on the threshold, and spent a few minutes together to break their fast and live their first moments unobserved by others.

The wedding was deliberately public. By doing it in the open, Sellem, an educator and administrator at a local Jewish girl's seminary, had hoped to demystify her Chabad-Lubavitch brand of Jewish ultraorthodoxy in this otherwise nominally Roman Catholic town.

To that end, guests yesterday were handed a wedding guide in English and French explaining the rituals and their meaning.

Mission accomplished, it seems.

"I hope this event will inspire others - it should have been done a long time ago, because it's so necessary to bring our nationalities together," said retired nurse Marie Fortin, who lives in a condo complex next to the park and whose downstairs neighbours are Jews from Texas.

Like many of the onlookers, this was was her first Jewish wedding.

Now it'll be up to the new couple to make something of their new life together. But it won't be in Ste. Agathe.

In the coming year, they'll move to Florida to start a home and have children - "lots of them, God willing," the 26-year-old bride said with a chuckle.

jheinrich@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

The Hasidic Jews: Finding joy in piety

May 19, 2008

Despite the severity of their dress—black from skullcap to shoes for men, ankle-length skirts and head scarves for women—the Hasidim are not a somber people. The founder of the movement, the Baal Shem Tov, taught that God wants his creatures to approach him with enthusiasm and joy. His followers (Hasidim means "the pious") put singing and dancing at the core of their ultra-Orthodox worship.

Disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, who lived in the 18th Century, spread his message in little villages, shtetlach, of Eastern Europe where the bulk of Jews then lived.

Wherever a rabbi settled, a dynasty was founded bearing the name of the village—Lubavitch, Satmar, Belz—names that survive in the movement's branches. The communities vanished in the Holocaust, though some rabbis escaped to refound dynasties in Israel and the United States.





Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

A Thank You

My mother-in-law, Hayya Basha bat Menahem Manis, passed away Thursday afternoon. The levaya was Friday morning at Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe זצ''ל is buried. Since few people were expected, and in accord with my wife's family's modest tastes, a simple graveside service was planned. It was raining heavily. I was expecting difficulty getting a minyan. Since we do not have a car, the funeral director sent a limousine to transport us from our home to the cemetery. I asked the limo driver to stop at the ohel, the small building housing a beit midrash, that one passes through to see the Rebbe's grave, to see if we could scrounge up enough men to make a minyan. He agreed, but not enough people were there; the place is usually packed. I returned to the waiting limo, almost giving up hope of having a minyan for my father-in-law to say Kaddish, when an Israeli hasid came running up with his cell phone, gave me the number and asked me to call when we got to the graveside. Then the limo driver informed us that he would not be able to transport the hasidim from the ohel to the grave, as company policy allowed him to go only from home to grave and back. The Hasidim, doing us a favor, would have to arrange their own transportation. We stopped at the cemetery office to fill out the necessary paperwork, and the funeral director informed us we would not be able to wait for additional people once we got to the grave. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I called the hasid's cell phone from the office and told him we would be at the graveside (Block 80, they would have to get a map in the office to figure out where that was) in a few minutes. When we arrived, the non-Jewish cemetery workers wheeled the casket from the hearse to the grave and lowered it down. This caused me much mental anguish (click here) but we only had four men, including the officiating rabbi and my elderly father-in-law. I and my son began to shovel earth into the grave. Suddenly six hasidim materialized. They had walked from the ohel to the cemetery office to the grave. Not only did they complete the minyan (along with my shul's interim rabbi who went out of his way to be there), they actually took shovels in their hands and helped us fill in the grave! They, along with me and my son, did not stop until the tzurrat ha-kever was completed. Neither the cemetery workers nor their bulldozers had any part. My father-in-law said Kaddish, and only then did the hasidim leave the scene, on foot in a pouring rain.The hashkafa problems we have with Habad are well known and need not be belabored here. But when you need them, they are there. The Rebbe's name was Menahem; כשמו כן הוא . The name fits. The Rebbe comforted me before my Bar Mitzvah (click here) and his hasidim comforted me, as they comfort countless others, last Friday. Tizku l'mitzvot - what you do will hasten the arrival of Mashiach, whoever he is.