Chapter Text
On this year 5780 to Creation, two days ago, a Black Chuppah took place on the soil of the Holy Land, first time in many years. Or, alternatively, on March 18th, 2020, in modern, yet dire times, stuff got real.
Imagine that, the Corona virus dragging even the rarest of Jewish customs out of the boydem.
Basically the custom dates back to unknown times a midst the Jewish diaspora, both eastern and western. The custom is a S'gula, meaning – a “specialness, unique quality; talisman; supernatural cure, folk remedy" of great positive quality – and in this case, is specifically used to counter a plague.
A Black Chuppah – which I’ll be just referencing to as a Black Wedding now and onward – dictates that the afflicted congregation is to wed an orphaned boy and an orphaned girl (I would presume of the age if 18, as this is the Jewish age for marriage, but that rule has been unfortunately eroded dramatically over the last 2000 years and affected by neighboring cultures, so it is now unspecified) under a black Chuppah clothed in black garments, in a graveyard under the open sky.
(An alternate version is a wedding of a couple who died close to their wedding day, or if the groom or the bride died before the wedding could’ve taken place. See Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride” to indulge in the imagery of putting a ring on the finger of a dead bride – something that took place in modern times when the bride was murdered in a terror bombing of a coffee shop in 2002, and the groom symbolically took her as his bride as she was lowered to the grave by placing the ring on her shrouded body.)
First of, I would like to explain the rational behind the custom.
In ancient times, and not so ancient, too, wedding is considered the most joyous event, the union of two young people to do what they came to do on this earth – to form a family and bring new life. As such, it’s a huge big deal involving many ceremonial acts and dowries, and since we are talking about a society that is based on matchmaking, disabled, bastards, youth of “bad named” heritage and orphans are all “damaged goods” and would have a huge problem to marry (since they have nothing to their name). Especially orphans, since there is no one to “wed them” - no father, no mother. And so, to wed off an orphan is a great Mitzvah – an act that is “a great good did” of religious magnitude: you are doing something for a person that he would never be able to do for himself, and thus, giving him the chance to perform “an act of great good did” by forming a family. It’s twice the positiveness and then some.
The graveyard part is to “laugh in the face of Death” - as to remember we all die at the end and are not scared off by the omnipotent presence of Death, and will be doing good and marry as long as we live. Other possible interpretation is another great Mitzvah in Judaism: attending the funeral of an unknown person. The act of attending the funeral of a someone you never knew is considered an act of great good did since this is something you can never be repaid for by the deceased. Obviously. So if the plague is at its peak, and during that wedding someone dies, and the whole congregation is their to mourn him, whether they knew him or not – it would be an act of great good. (To this day, whenever a lone soldier dies in Israel, and has no one to attend his wedding, there would be a nationwide broadcast made to call for whoever wishes to attend the funeral of the young person. It causes unbelievable traffic jams and is always thoroughly covered by the media.)
Now, for some examples. The last documented occurrences of the custom in these parts, as depicted above, took place in the year 1865, in walled up Jerusalem. Cholera was raging through the Ottoman Empire back then, people died like flies. Of all the residents of Jerusalem – 20,000 people – 9,000 were left standing. The Funeral Of Orphans (another name for the Black Wedding) took place in a graveyard by the Kidron river. Unfortunately, the young couple, they say, died practically immediately. In 1909 another such wedding took place on Mountain Zeytim (also Jerusalem, Cholera, again). Some 100 years ago same thing happened in Cholera stricken Jaffa, too. Many such weddings occurred during the Holocaust in various ghettos across Europe to ward off typhus and such.
Now that a plague, a disease, is raging through the modern world, people seem to not only hoard toilet paper but to also remember some very, very old and rare customs. A Black Wedding is a measure of last resort, an act of desperation. No one, not even the most unfortunate of the poorest in society would want to be a part of this, to remember his wedding as a morbid ritual, born out of grim causes. And it is what it is – a ritual, witchcraft, warding against disease in times of great crisis. It is an end-of-times occurrence. We indeed live in interesting times.
This introduction is PART 1, since it is historic in its nature, and I would like to keep it apart from my other feverish meta stuff, out of respect to the deceased. But since I’m trash, and this meta is what it says on the tin, you are welcome to proceed to PART 2, and humor the idea that Sacrifice – was not just overall wedding imagery in abundance, but also an actual Black Wedding.