Abstract
The Jewish wedding is a religious ceremony that is an important part of Jewish religious life. Although the commandment to “take a wife” appears in the Torah, its description there is so sketchy that most of the nuptial ritual was established by the sages of the Oral Law and put in writing sometime toward the end of the 2nd century CE. However, it is obvious that the wedding ceremony of the sages bears only a distant resemblance to the one practiced today. During the almost 15 centuries that passed between the days of the sages and the crystallization of the wedding ceremony in the 16th century it underwent a long process of ritualization of customs: a process in which popular customs gradually acquire the status of sacred religious commandments. It is especially fascinating that during this process the orthodox wedding ceremony has absorbed numerous customs practiced by other monotheistic religion and turned them into integral parts of the orthodox wedding ceremony. The only feature of the Jewish orthodox wedding that has remained unchanged since biblical times is the total passivity of the bride and other women present at the wedding ceremony. However, during the last thirty years the orthodox wedding ceremony has been constantly challenged by its secular participants and by religious feminists. In this study I show how the impact of modernity in general, and feminism in particular, has gradually changed the apparently unchangeable Jewish orthodox wedding.
Presenters
Julia SchwartzmannSenior Lecturer, Multi-Disciplinary Studies, Western Galilee College, Israel
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Jewish religious feminism, Religious customs and practices, Jewish Orthodoxy
