When I first started picturing our ceremony, I wanted to get married under a tree with origami cranes. However after looking over our venue, there was no perfect tree (think Goldilocks, too big, too small, etc). To be honest if there had been a tree, I would never have thought about using a chuppah. However as there is no tree, I felt that we need something to define the ceremony space.
There are two symbolisms given by MyJewishLearningof a chuppah. The first is that a chuppah “symbolizes the new home to which the bridegroom will take his bride. In this context, the appearance of the bride and groom together under a huppah before an assembly who have come to witness the event is in itself a public proclamation by them that they are now bonded together as man and wife.” The second is that a chuppah refers to “The tent of … Abraham that … had entrances on all four sides to welcome wayfarers, so that no traveler, no matter from which direction he came, need be burdened searching for an entrance door. The huppah, with four open sides, is thus a symbol of the Jewish home filled with hesed (acts of love), an important component of which is hakhnasat orhim (hospitality to strangers)”
In order to understand what a chuppah, specifically this chuppah, means to me there are two things I have to explain about myself.
The first is that while the majority of my family is not very religious, I attended a yeshiva (a Jewish Orthodox Day School) from preschool through 8th grade. For those who don’t know, at yeshiva half of your day is taught in English and half is in Hebrew. The dress code is strict, with no pants allowed, knees, collarbones, and later elbows covered. In 4th grade, boys and girls took separate classes and in 6th grade the girls moved to a school a couple miles away. It was very hard attending yeshiva because I had to lie about the rest of my life so that my friends wouldn’t know I wasn’t as religious as they were. During 8th grade, I told my mother I couldn’t take the school anymore. For high school, I attended a public magnet school. At that point we joined a conservative synagogue and I gradually came to be active to the point where I joined USY (United Synagogue Youth) and became our chapter president. My senior year of high school, I went to services every morning, had my own tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin, and read from the Torah on some Saturday morning services.
Because of my Orthodox schooling, I have a very hard line view of what I want my religion to be. I want services in Hebrew and sermons to be about things directly discussed in the Torah. When I went to college, I went to a service and the sermon was about the falling leaves, which as a little too new agey for me. I tried to go to UMass’s service, but it was far and I didn’t really feel like I fit in. To be honest, I never felt as if there was a God listening to me when I prayed. Those last years of high school were a difficult time for me and the routine ritual of prayer was something to hold on to. By not finding a community when I started college, I drifted away from the religion. By the time I was a sophomore, I no longer felt that I had a place for religion in my life.
By the time I met J in my Junior year, I no longer considered myself Jewish. So while I am technically Jewish, I don’t consider myself as part of the religion. And since I have a hard line view, I didn’t feel right using a chuppah during our non religious ceremony. I am not judging other people’s ceremony choices. Obviously this is just my opinion and I don’t care who uses a chuppah and for what reasons. Every one’s ceremony is there own and I believe that whatever you find meaningful should be included.
The second explanation is about this specific chuppah. I was raised by a single mother, so I have only ever had one set of Grandparents and I was also the only grandchild for 5 years. Obviously, everyone loves their grandparents, but I was very close with mine. I spent at least the month of August with them, if not the whole summer, every year. Some of my earliest memories involve my grandmother. She was a quilter and I can remember cutting up brown paper grocery bags for her patterns. Whenever a child was born in the family, she would design and create a mural quilt. Mine was a garden, my female cousin’s was a pond scene (with a frog on a lilly pad in swimming trunks), and my male cousin’s was a harbor. She made the chuppah we will be using for my Uncle’s wedding and my mother was also married under this chuppah when I was in high school.
My grandmother died of ovarian cancer shortly after my mother’s wedding. Obviously I have missed her, but during this past year, planning our wedding and knowing that she won’t be there has been harder than I anticipated. Originally, since I had not planned on using a chuppah, I was going to buy ovarian cancer rubber bracelets and make a donation in her honor in place of a favor. However I couldn’t find any bracelets that actually gave more than 30% of the cost to charity, which seemed ridiculous to me.
When I first asked my grandfather if he still had the chuppah, I hadn’t decided to use it yet. However, my grandfather called it a wedding canopy, removing the religious symbolism. By my grandfather using a secular term, I was able to separate the traditional usage from the object and finally feel comfortable using it. We are getting married under a chuppah, but it doesn’t have the religious meaning to me now. I like to see it as a way to have my grandmother present at the ceremony. As a chuppah is supposed to represent the couples’ first home, I like to see it as my grandmother watching over us and blessing us. I cannot think of a better way to honor her and I am so grateful that she created an object that is so integral to a wedding.
And pictures:
photos from previous family weddings
Thanks for sharing your story of deciding to use a chuppah. Ginger and I are also planning to get married under a chuppah, with close friends/family holding each pole. We plan to use a shawl (instead of a tallit) from her grandmother over the chuppah. The chuppah that your grandmother made is gorgeous, and so meaningful. It made me think of this line I ran across in the book Celebrating Interfaith Marriages: “The roof of the huppah symbolizes the importance of what is beyond ourselves and the presence, in our hearts, of those whom we love who cannot rejoice with us today.”