The Wedding and the Spanish Hombres! (My 2nd Thursday and Friday in Israel)

(that's Eli and Jordy at our place)
On Thursday 24th November, I went to a wedding in Jerusalem, where Eli was playing in the band. I was part of 'the band table'- which included the band and the guys who rig the stage and change the sound.. there would have been about 10 of us. The drummer also brought his cousin along... for no particular reason. And one of the guys' sister came to visit for a while. That's how weddings work here aparently. No one's really hung up on numbers. You set up enough places at tables for random people who will no doubt end up coming along.. invited by someone else who was invited... that's how it is. The hall was decorated amazingly. They had big tall jars in the middle of the tables, with about 4 goldfish swimming around inside, and one flower on a stem, completely submerged in the water, with a spotlight shining from above. Looked really spectacular. I need to somehow convince Alex and Danielle that this is what they should do for their wedding. Something tells me Alex won't be happy about goldfish being used for decorative purposes. I don't dare contemplate what happened to those goldfishes after the wedding...

Anyway, this was one amazing cultural experience I was very fortunate to be a part of. No tourist sees what I saw. I'll describe it in deatil: It was a wedding (about 300 people) where the bride was Moroccon and the groom was Ethiopian. The groom was 22 yrs old and obviously religious.. not black hat, but religious. He wore a tzit-tzit and he had lots of religious friends there- I noticed 2 tables with mehitzas (dividers) around them.. it was like they had their own private booth. Very weird. What was also weird was seeing men dancing around with guns stuffed in their pants. The bride was 28. Gossip quickly reached our table, that she was his teacher at school. Her family totally did NOT approve to their marriage and there was a big crisis where up until 4 days ago there was going to be no wedding. So- it was a very emotional night. More crying than usual, and not all tears of happiness.

The band were EXCELLENT. Extremely professional, very smooth and the singer (the band leader) is extremely charismatic. He had his cards laid out on the table next to the stage and I'd say 20 people would have taken his card. Weddings are a very good business here, and Eli's found himself in a very good band. They play Israeli music which even I recognise, and mainly Eastern music- ('Mizrachi' means Eastern in hebrew) lots of Yemen influence... as the singer is Yemenite. His name's Yeffi. He reminds me of some Arabian Prince. He is very charming. And he loves Eli.

Anyway, the order of the proceedings was nothing like I'm used to. People arrived.. an interesting mishmash of young people (the groom is 22, remember-) and old people, moroccons, ethiopians, yeshiva ashkanazi types, some russians, some black hats.... and everyone started to help themselves to buffet food.. entree sort of food. The food was also a mishmash of flavours... Loads and loads of it- they had a guy making stir fry in front of u whilst u wait, and crepes, they had Kebbe soup (my favourite!), and lots of chicken and herring and salmon and salads... and everything 5-star deliciousness!

Then after everyone's already stuffed themselves with the entree food, the chuppa takes place in the middle of the dance floor in front of the stage where the band play. The singer acted as the sort of MC for the evening, telling everyone when the chuppa was about to start, when to go eat etc... Everyone stood around. Not even in silence, people were chatting to themselves... some were still even eating... those who wanted to pay attention paid attention. They had an Ethiopian rabbi and a Moroccan Rabbi. Each of them did their thing... once the groom crushed the glass and they kissed, all the moroccan women started to do the 'lalallalalalalalallalalalalalala' thing loudly with their tongues.

In Ethiopia, many of the Jews were forced to get tattoos of Crosses and were forecefully baptised. So I saw some of the old Ethiopian women with tattood crosses on their foreheads and tribal tattoos on their necks. Very weird. Their sense of fashion is very bright and colourful, and of course their hair is often plaited in tight corn rows. A lot of people wore jeans.

I sensed there was a large portion of the bride's family missing. For aforementioned reasons. But there were still quite a few Morrocons. Basically, the food kept coming and coming and there was a big variety to choose from. I think I had 2 different main meals, plus the buffet stuff in the beginning and then pita and houmous and salady stuff for an in-between entree and main meal type thing.. plus dessert.

Dammit all my early morning jogging is going right down the drain!

Anyway, there was A LOT of dancing, and the groom kept singing songs for his wife which I thought was very sweet. At one stage he played the tambas (African drums) and sang. There were no speeches. There was a lot of her sitting on a chair in the middle of the dance floor and him dancing for her, infront of her and around her whilst everyone clapped and fanned him with the serviette cloths. Lots of dancing with serviette cloths, they made a massive skipping rope at one stage and everyone was jumping into it like primary school kids. Lots of chair lifting. And then... one of the most incredible things. There was an Ethiopian dance session, actually, there were 2 sessions- when the band took a break and put on some recorded music. Eli explained to me that it's been dated as one of the world's oldest trance music. It's just this fast beat that seems to go nowhere, and goes on and on, very repetitive and scattery, and ALL the Ethiopians get up to dance, in a womens circle and a mens circle. This involves mainly dancing with the shoulders, spasmodically moving them and up and down and the neck side to side... And they're all enjoying themselves- they danced like that til everyone was hot and sweaty, many had their eyes closed, but all of them smiling... even the old grandpa and grandma, and the young ones... it was so fascinating- brought back vague memories of Ubud in Bali and the cachak dance. Like something off Baraka. I keep reminding myself these people are Jewish. It's quite fascinating really. Check this out for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews

anyway, I danced a lot. Yeffy danced with me quite professionally.. very ballroom like. Eli seemed impressed and not so impressed at the same time. I loved it! I had an absolute ball. The band said they wanted me to go to all of their gigs if I promised to always dance so much. Needless to say, I had a very fun night :-)

The wedding was over by 12, we then went to Eli's Spanish friends' place in Jerusalem. There's 3 of them- a couple (Maria & Danny) and another guy (Jordy). All 3 are violinists. They all played in the orchestra in Spain and had an Israeli violin teacher there who they claim is one of the best in the world. So when this teacher came to the Academy of music in Jerusalem to take up his post there teaching, they all followed him. So they met Eli at uni. Their classes here are in English, so after 3 years of living here they still dont speak much hebrew. So we communicated in English. Their English is worse than Eli's. It was an amusing evening. Plenty of 'lost in translation' moments... Every second word was "thio" ('friend', i dont know how to spell it). I kept getting muddled up and calling one of them Theo... We went out til very late to some bar, and then Eli and I slept back at their place.

So on Friday we caught the bus back to tel-aviv with Jordy. He catches taxis and sheroots (which are like shared taxis in vans) everywhere. He doesn't do buses. So this was a big thing for him. I think his family must be loaded bc he hasn't had a job since he's been here over the past 3 years. They're paying for everything. And his parents are 64 and 73, his brother is 42. Yes, he was a mistake.

We had to walk through the Shook (the markets) to get to the station. Friday afternoons in the shook, before shabbat comes in, is one of the craziest scenes I have ever encountered. It occurred to me that last time I was here I don't recall being in the markets at this time. It was so insane. There were challahs and fish and mint... all being thrown about everywhere, including right over my head! It was sheer madness!

Anyway, we got here, and then one of our neighbours offered us a table. So Eli and I went to schlepp this table from her unit to our unit. It's a beautiful and excellent table! Perfect size, and it extends. We have another neighbour who knocked on our door several times to offer us an assortment of furniture- cupboards, shelves, mattresses... we took a mattress (we now have 3 spare), and then my friend, Ariella slept over the following night- so that was great timing!