January 28, 2017
Linda
and I arrived at the synagogue in Pueblo Nuevo a little before 1:00 for the big day. It was December 25th. Etz Hayyim
is a cinderblock compound on a side street that Daniel, who is Moshé’s father
and the founder of the community, bought some thirty years ago. Daniel and his
four sons (there are also three daughters) are all carpenters and bit-by-bit, doing
all of the work themselves with the help of the community, they have turned the
rough structure into an elegant synagogue. A wooden door, carved with the name
of the community, opens from

the street, and there is a large mezuzah on the doorpost. Just inside is
a patio, an atrium, really, half covered by a tin roof and half open to the sun,
that occupies half of the space and serves as a multipurpose area. On one wall
the Hebrew alphabet has been painted in both cursive and block letters,
probably by Moshé, who seems to be the most accomplished calligrapher in the
community. The opposite wall holds a whiteboard for lessons and announcements. On
the third wall are Jewish themed posters and paintings. The several long tables
and a few dozen folding chairs allow the space to be a school, a dining hall, a
work area, and a dance floor, as needed. In the uncovered portion of the patio is
a basin with a spigot for washing, a small structure that serves as a bathroom and,
flanking the door to the sanctuary, two small raised beds that have been
planted with flowers since our last visit. Presumably for the wedding. Moshé is
the youngest of Daniel and Rivka’s four sons, and the last to be married, and
the community has gone all out.
We greet
the half dozen people who are putting the finishing touches on the patio space.
All heads are covered, the men’s with straw hats or kipot, the traditional Jewish
yarmulkas, the women’s with scarves or knitted caps. Linda came prepared
with a lacy shawl that she finished knitting a couple of weeks ago. We can hear
music in the sanctuary where Elishá, one of the middle sons, is playing the
synthesizer. Over the next few minutes another twenty families or so arrive,
and the street fills with cars. Though the members of the congregation are for
the most part not affluent, and many are artisans and part-time farmers who
live in the craft villages in the valley south of Oaxaca, everyone appears
well-appointed. The women wear long dresses, or embroidered huípiles and wear makeup and jewelry.
None of the men wear ties, but white shirts and formal trousers seem to be the
norm. Some have jackets. Three or four are bearded, and one man’s face is
framed with the long, elegant side curls that are common among some Hassidic
sects. Most of the families arrive with children, and a dozen or more of the
toddlers run around whooping it up while their older siblings look bored. The
only people who are not members of the community are ourselves and another
American couple, Laura’s English teachers, who speak almost no Spanish and
haven’t a clue what is going on.
Oh, and Laura’s family. They are
not part of this community of self-proclaimed Jews either, and —presumably
Catholics, like most Mexicans— do not seem to be intending to join. But they
love their daughter, and she loves Moshé and is going to hitch her life to his,
so they have committed themselves to participating in this Jewish wedding ba lev shalem, wholeheartly, de plena corazón.
In the atrium a photographer
circulates taking pictures of the gathering crowd. Outside in the street Laura
sits with her family in their car, waiting to make her entrance when she gets
the signal. It is almost time, and the guests crowd the area around the door,
smart phone cameras at the ready. The music sounds, the car door opens, Laura
adjusts her veil, and the wedding begins.
When I first came to the synagogue,
it seemed to me very churchlike. There was a raised area in front, with a
central niche on the front wall for the Torahs, although all the community has
is a small replica scroll that they keep in the niche. On either side of the
raised area were reader’s stands (as for the two readings in every Catholic
mass), and between them a table to hold a few ceremonial items: candlesticks,
the wine bottle and glass for the kiddush,
and a large ram’s horn shofar. Six
long benches, in a row, faced this makeshift altar.

But Daniel
and his sons read a lot, talk to people, search the web, and build their
ceremonial environment according to what they find and how they interpret what
they encounter. In the last few months they have reconfigured the interior
synagogue space in the classic Sephardic tradition. Now there is a raised
reader’s box, a bimah, more center
than front, surrounded by a railing, with room for three or four people to
gather around the table that serves as a reader’s platform. Four of the
benches, or pews, have been repositioned, two to each side of the reader’s box.
The layout recalls that other Etz Hayyim, in Amsterdam, or the synagogue in
Newport, Rhode Island.
We all
stood as Laura and Moshé approached. Four members of the congregation held the
groom’s tallit, his prayer shawl,
spread wide over the doorway like the traditional Jewish wedding hoopah,
as Moshé and Laura ducked their heads and entered. As Elishá played a slow
march, they processed down the center aisle, climbed the three steps to the bimah and sat facing each other on the
two chairs that had been placed there.
The
service itself was both traditional and idiosyncratic. The bride marched seven
times around the bimah as the groom,
who could not suppress his broad grin, tried to sustain decorum. They rose,
sat, exchanged vows and rings, and listened to Daniel’s lengthy sermon. He
spoke about how Judaism requires marriage. That single people are incomplete.
That having children to perpetuate tradition is obligatory. And that the duty
of the congregation is to sustain the couple through good times and bad. Those
four points, with emphases, took nearly an hour. Then came the reading of the ketubah.
The ketubah—literally the written
contract—is the formal marriage agreement between the bride and groom and their

two families. While it endorses union, and encourages foreverness, it also
details a framework should the union fail and forever should prove finite. It
spells out, traditionally in Hebrew but in this case in Spanish, with great
specificity, what each party brings to the table. How much money, in pesos,
each family is committing to the couple. Who provides the house, and its value.
The furniture that Moshé and Laura each bring to the household, and the
material value of each piece. And so forth. The point is, that although
marriage merges the resources, if the marriage dissolves, the couple’s
resources are divided in proportion to each party’s original contribution. After
the long ketubah reading finished,
the bride and groom signed the document, and six witnesses added their
signatures: the bride’s father and mother, the groom’s father and mother, and
two independent witnesses from the congregation, David and Linda. Linda signed
in Latin letters. I signed in Hebrew, which put a big smile on Daniel’s face.
(The other American couple present,
also Catholics, who were using my muttered translations and explanations to
follow what was going on, could not believe their ears when they heard the ketubah. I later tried to explain how
this was an ancient strategy to protect the bride and her family in a
patriarchal world ruled by men, but I don’t think they bought it.)
Finally it was time for the kiddush, the blessing over the wine. The
words were said, the wine was drunk, and the glass, wrapped in a napkin, was
smashed under the groom’s foot. Hugs and congratulations all around.
Out in the atrium it was time to
dance. Two chairs were produced, and Laura and Moshé, were dragooned, despite
their
weak protests, to sit in them. The brawniest members of the congregation
were called forth to hoist the novios
into the air. And to bouncy Israeli music, round and round they went, the novios hanging on to the chair bottoms for
dear life, and everybody else giggling and laughing and shouting out
congratulations. After twenty minutes of hilarity, it was time to go to lunch.
Back in the car, Linda plugged in
to her oxygen concentrator. She’d been off it for nearly two hours, and it was
time to pump up for a bit. Our little R2-D2 sits on the floor in front of the
back seat, with the hose extending comfortably to Linda in front. But it was
clear that there were more people than vehicles, so we were commandeered to
take another couple with us to La Higuera, the reception venue. Linda got in
back, and the couple with—surprise!— their three half-grown children,
shoehorned themselves in as best they could, and all of us, taking care not to
breathe too expansively, set off. Behind us came a pickup with another ten
people standing in back, braced so as not to soil their clothes. Fortunately it
was only a ten-minute drive.
We parked in La Higuera’s shaded
lot, and made our way to the dining room. On the porch were blown up formal
portraits of Laura and Moshé, in gown and tux, at Hierve el Agua, a spectacular
Oaxacan state park where calcium-enriched water has created travertine pools
and white stalactites that cascade down a cliff.
Since the young couple had told us
that many of the guests would be contributing dishes (the potluck trial balloon
that we had floated in our earlier negotiation?), Linda had prepared six trays
of a sweet carrot pudding, enough for the eighty or so guests that we had expected,
and saw, at the ceremony. But tables at La Higuera had been set for about three
hundred people. Oops. And no one else was bringing food. Oops. And lots of
people were bringing in large gift boxes, all of them wrapped in white. Oops.
Well, Semi-Oops on this last point, because Linda had hand-sewn a book of
handmade paper for their wedding photographs, and had given it to Moshé and
Laura earlier in the week.
We all
sat down. Made small talk. Got up and circulated and made more small talk. When
the bride and groom arrived, the gift bearers lined up bearing their gifts and
presented them to the novios, white-wrapped
box by box, with hugs and good wishes, each presentation immortalized by the
wedding photographer.
A meal was served, kosher-ish, meaning
none of the foods prohibited to Jews but still recognizable and comfortable to
the general public. A soup, something like a pozole, probably chicken based, with vegetables. A meat, with a dab
of beans, and rice. Wine, sweet, was offered, as well as jamaica and soft drinks. Mescal was passed.
Then we saw Moshé and Laura, Daniel, and some of Moshé’s sisters, passing around small trays of . . . sweet carrot
pudding. For desert. Courtesy, said the announcement, of David y Linda.
Moshé
had told us that the families had negotiated hard over the wedding reception.
Daniel and Rivka wanted serious religious dance music and only moderate
drinking, since, after all, this was a serious religious occasion. Jorge and Gisberta
wanted the traditional Mexican wedding blow-out, loud, bawdy, and wet. Their
solution: two receptions, of which this one, at La Higuera, was per Moshé’s
family.
And it went as planned. The music,
canned, was Israeli. Mostly up-tempo versions of patriotic songs and religious
themes gleaned from some of the most common parts of the liturgy, all in easy
Hebrew, well-enunciated. As in designed for export precisely for occasions
such as this one. The dancing was constant and intense: mostly circle dances,
like horas, not partner dances. Men
with men, women with women, and after a while long chains that mixed both,
snaking in and out around the tables.
We lasted about an hour and a half,
with one brief time out with R2-D2, but then our old-folks genes kicked in and
we retired to the quiet of the Casa DaviLinda. We missed the follow-up
reception, sorry to report, but expect that it ran to type. We have experience
with the wedding reception extravaganza —at Rigoberto and Jéssica’s wedding for
example, as well as during three-years full time and fifty-seven years
off-and-on time in Mexico— and enjoy them immensely. For an hour or so. Maybe
they aren’t old-folks genes at all, just the way we are and seemingly have
always been: committed to excess, but only in moderation. Alas.
Los padrinos . . . .