Coordinación de opciones de grado

At a traditional Jewish wedding, the bride encircles her bridegroom seven times, under a canopy suggestive of both the hovering Presence of the Holy One, and the home that the new couple will build and inhabit together. Once the bride has 340

completed the circling she enters into the canopy (the chuppah הָפֻּח) and formalises her vows with her beloved in the presence of witnesses. The bridegroom places a ring, a symbol or a visible sign of the union that is taking place, on the index finger of the bride and as he does so promises to treasure his bride as one would treasure the most valuable jewel. The promises or vows exchanged between the bridegroom and the bride under the canopy are then codified in a written Hebrew document, a

ketubah, which delineates the terms of the union and ratifies it as valid and binding in the eyes of the community.

BDB, 293-294

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In relation to this almost intractable theological issue between Christians and Jews, the Synod of

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the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland advocated the avoidance of the term “new” in relation to Scripture, primarily due to the implications this has for the Jewish people. Part of the 1980 statement entitled “Towards Renovation of of the Relationship of Christians and Jews” emphasised perceiving of ‘the unbreakable connection of the New Testament with the Old Testament in a new way…’new’ means no replacement of ‘old’…Hence we deny that the people Israel has been rejected by God, or that it has been superseded by the church’. See Document 17, “Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland” (FRG), in The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People, 92-94, and 158. See also Berkowitz, Torah Rediscovered, 55-57

Ashkenazi Jewish tradition emphasises the circling must be completed seven times, symbolic of

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completion and fullness, with the number seven holding particular significance. Sephardic Jews tend to circle three times. All Jewish traditions however have the tradition of the bride circling the bridegroom before the stand under the chuppah together and sign the ketubah. See Steven M. Lowenstein, A Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 108-112

The Hebrew root verb for writing is katav, בַתָכּ, and the first time this verb is used in the Torah is, interestingly, during the Sinai episode. From Egypt through the Fertile Crescent and ancient Levant up to Ur, (all geographical places alluded to in the Torah prior to Mt. Sinai), the use of the alphabet had long been established. In the Torah 341

however, the particular verb katav, ‘to write’ is not made use of at all, until Mt. Sinai. In Israel’s collective and religious memory this indicates that a very special 342

type of writing took place (in traditional thought, the first time a Hebrew verb is used influences its interpretive usage later in the text,) during the exchanges and encounters of the Sinai experience, the type of writing that specifically and uniquely, is associated with a wedding.

According to the Hasidic masters, a type of ‘wedding’ between God and Israel took place at Mt. Sinai, such is the significance of the Sinai event. The Cloud which 343

brooded and hovered over the exchanges between God and Israel was the canopy, cloaking the community in a type of ‘holy fog’ or sacred mist. The Sabbath, the unique identifying sign of the exchange, was the ‘wedding ring’ as the symbol or sign

See Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 BC (Blackwell History

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of Ancient World, 3rd Ed.,) (New Jersey: Wiley and Blackwell, 2015) for more on the multicultural civilisations of the Ancient Near East and specifically on the development of writing.

The rabbis held that the Torah’s apparent lack of concern for exact chronology reflects the

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perspective of the community for whom it was written (we value chronology for the purposes of establishing historicity in a way the ancient simply did not - this does not make something more or less valid however). More importantly, the inconsistency on chronological sequence undergirds and highlights for the rabbis the Torah’s position within Israel as the teacher - what the community needs to hear will be repeated in the sequence it is needed to be heard, for teaching is the ultimate goal of the Torah, not a chronological history. For more see Abraham J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations, 241-243

See Berkowitz, Torah Rediscovered, 3-7, and Aryeh Kaplan, Made in Heaven, (New York: Moznaim

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of the promise, encircling those who remembered and protected her with shalom. 344

The Torah, then, was the ketubah, the written testimony witnessing to and codifying the special nature and terms of the unique relationship between God and Israel that had been actualised through the sacred imagery of Sinai, reticent with traces of fiery volcanic movement offsetting the transient coolness of the hovering cloud. Whilst this is a more mystical understanding of the Torah, it helps to underscore the deep spiritual and covenantal attachment between the Torah and the Jewish people. In addition, while it is theologically applied differently, ‘wedding’ imagery is familiar territory in Christian theology, as Christ is married to the Church. What is common to both formulas, whether Jewish or Christian, is the idea of a covenantal contract, consummation and celebration. 345