CHAPTER FOUR - The Question of Marriage

A: BACKGROUND

10. The jewish wedding – summing up the symbolism

This lengthy survey of the specific components of the marriage ceremony and ritual in Judaism began with an emphasis on the public, communal aspect of the wedding through the ceremony of the “Aufruf” or the Shabbat Chatan.

It concludes with the week of the sheva brachot, another community celebration.

Throughout the survey of the elements of Jewish marriage, the personal, the communal and the national-collective elements of marriage ritual have been thoroughly intertwined. Perhaps that is one of the most telling aspects of the Jewish wedding.

In a very deep and important sense, the wedding is a personal celebration, which involves the whole community, past and present, where echoes of the Patriarchs of the past and the Messiah of the future are intertwined with the present situation of the new couple.
It is also a ceremony where situation of the two individuals, in one place at one time, is strongly bound up in the community experience of those that surround them, as well as the communal situation in times past.

That is Jewish ritual at its most powerful and meaningful.