Just got back to our hotel in San Francisco from attending the wedding of our good friends Danya Ruttenberg and Nir Avni (you can look him up yourself, media shy star mathematician). Held at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens, even on an overcast day it was really beautiful. It did not take much to turn the Redwood grove into sacred space (as it was already) befitting a Jewish wedding, just the couple, the guests, and wonderfully elegant huppa (wedding canopy) of four wood poles and pure white tallit. All pretty typical, right? Now let me go into some details.
Danya is a fourth year rabbinical student at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. Nir is [now] a post-doc at UCLA. They met dancing on Emek Refaim in Jerusalem. Nir comes from Haifa, from a family that is not at all spiritually inclined, and professes to follow in that tradition (but remember, he just married a rabbi in the making...). Under the huppa, the bride wore a kippa, the rabbi officiating wore a kippa, but the groom did not. The bride's father, who identifies as member of a Reform shul, wore a kippa, as did the bride's brother. The groom's father did not wear a kippa, nor did the groom's brother. But the Episcopalian Minister friend of the bride did wear a kippa.
Nobody from the family lives in the Bay Area, the wedding was here because...we live in a globalized world. Danya lived and worked in the Bay Area for several years, but was born and bred in Chicago. Nir grew up in Haifa and lived in Jerusalem. The guests came from all over. The wedding preparations were done largely by email, and we all answered the virtual call.
All I can say is, May Danya and Nir be blessed to enjoy many many years of real and virtual events together with family and friends all over the [real] world.
Wel, i tell you these weding parties are some place you can enlighten yourself emotionally and physicallly
Posted by: Survive your partner's affair | January 17, 2008 at 08:28 PM