Let’s hear it for newspaper wedding announcements! Those carefully crafted mini-bios, crammed with the low-down on couples I don’t even know, are such fun to read.
I look at the pictures of the brides and grooms in my local paper and am always delighted (though sometimes amazed) to find that yes, the Midrash is true. “God does find partners for everyone.” These couples — after months, maybe years, of planning — have tied the knot and here they are, in black and white, aglow in their 15 minutes of fame. A blessing on their heads, mazel tov, mazel tov!
Reading wedding announcements about high-profile couples is great sport, too. Couples, for example, whose nuptials are noted in the New York Times or pictured (with cut line) in Town and Country Magazine or chronicled in W by Suzy. In these cases, the 15-minute rule can stretch to hours, even weeks, depending on the amount of buzz created by the narrative skills of the reporter assigned to describe the fashion, flora and food to those of us who did not make the wedding-list cut. This type of announcement, not surprisingly, demands strategic advance planning — sometimes even the aid of a publicist — plus a degree of family yichus (pedigree) few of us possess.
Of course, the wedding announcements and continual connubial coverage of high-wattage celebrity couples throws the 15 minutes of fame adage into a cocked hat. Even after all these years, who can forget Wallis and Edward? Bogie and Bacall? Lucy and Desi? Mickey and Minnie?
Still, for unions of legendary, even mythic proportions no one can beat the stories of our Biblical ancestors.
Abraham and Sarah!
Isaac and Rebecca!
Jacob, Rachel and Leah!
David and Bathsheva!
We’re talking waaaay beyond 15 minutes of fame, here, folks. We’re talking millennia! And all without so much as a banner headline announcing any of these matches.
The Torah, in fact, is downright stingy with biblical wedding blurbs, offering up only a few tidbits about our ancestors’ marriage ceremonies. We’re told that Isaac married Rebecca; she became his wife and he loved her. Period. David and Bathsheva go from a rooftop sighting to “Oops!” in four terse verses. And even though the Torah reveals that the bride wore a veil and it was dark, we’re still left scratching our heads, wondering how the heck Jacob could spend his wedding night with the wrong woman and not realize it till the next morning!
Now, since the Torah does not supply specifics on biblical couples, we must get the real skinny from another source. Namely, the rabbis. Like good investigative reporters, they had a need to know. So, they turned the Torah text this way and that way. They looked for clues that explained who did what to whom and why and then — through artful midrash — they filled in the gaps, wrote between the lines and always found God in the details.
So, let’s pretend there’d been a newspaper called the Midrash Mirror back in ancient days. Then, let’s take existing rabbinic commentary, add some contemporary spin and “extra! extra!” The announcement of the Very First Wedding might have read like this:
Couple wed in garden ceremony
The Garden of Eden was the scene of yesterday’s wedding of Adam and Eve, who moved only recently to the area. God, Himself, pronounced the blessings and performed the ceremony, which was celebrated with a degree of pomp and splendor never seen — before or since — in the entire history of the world.
The couple was attended by myriad angels, cherubim and seraphim who danced and played flutes, timbrels and lyres as the couple walked, hand in hand, down the grassy aisle toward 10 bridal canopies. These 10 resplendent chuppot, personally constructed for Eve by the Almighty, were festooned with gold, pearls and precious stones.
The bride — descended from the Ribbone family and known to her intimates as Chava — wore a flesh-colored gown designed by the Creator. Her braided coiffure was arranged by the Divine One, who also created the bridal bouquet, the topiary trees and floral arrangements that lined the wedding path, as well as the birds of paradise centerpieces in the banqueting hall where the post-wedding salad buffet was served.
Ribbone earned advanced degrees in behavioral science and interpersonal communications from the Holy of Holies where she currently serves on the faculty of the zoology department’s reptile division. She is also a research fellow in culinary arts and is pursuing a doctorate in early childhood development. After her marriage, the bride will keep her own name.
The groom — informally known as “Red” — has been credited with perfecting the art of writing and is the inventor of 70 languages. Well respected for his generosity of spirit, Adam recently donated 70 of his own years to the future King David, thereby reducing his own life span to a mere 930 years. The groom oversees massive land holdings both here and abroad and is universally recognized for his groundbreaking work in the fields of agronomy and soil management. Adam plans to use his skills as a preservationist to establish the Environmental Protection Agency.
His first marriage to Lilith, with whom he had no children, was dissolved under mysterious circumstances.
The groom and his new bride will take a delayed trip to a yet undisclosed destination.