Tag #120100 - Interview #87381 (Simon Meer)

I didn’t organize my religious wedding at the synagogue, on account of the fact that I was an activist; instead, I organized the ceremony at my parents-in-law’s, surreptitiously, so no one would find out about it. The parnusa [parnose], as they say in Yiddish, meaning the job, making a living, the position, the work made you do all these things secretly. I invited my close relatives, the rabbi, we placed the chuppah inside the room, we circled around it. We performed the entire ritual, by the book. The bride and the groom stand under the chuppah, the rabbi starts to read the religious text, which is in Hebrew, and then, together with the close relatives, you turn 7 times under the chuppah, and while you do that, the rabbi recites the prayers. At the end, the rabbi takes a glass wrapped in a napkin, places it on the floor for me to break it. The rabbi said: “Step hard on it!” And I did, I broke it, and the broken glass remained inside that napkin. And you have to keep that broken glass all your life. I wonder why myself, but you have to keep it. And I kept it for a while, but I no longer have it. It’s because after I got married I kept moving here, there, and you lose things.

After the religious ceremony was performed, we went to a saloon for the party – back then, parties were organized in a hall inside the house of culture, that’s where we organized the wedding, the party –, where we had… oh my, countless guests, and no joke about it! For the chuppah ceremony, when we took the chuppah to my parents-in-law’s place, only close relatives attended, but we had guests from all over the city at the saloon party. There were around 150 people. And do you know what people gave as wedding presents back then? Enameled dishes. I got married in 1950, and I still have, to this day, pots and pans from my wedding. Since we had so many guests… My wife was actually telling me the other day: “Look, Simon. I still have this pan, and we received it on our engagement.” For we also had an engagement prior to this, and my parents-in-law’s neighbors brought gifts. And they would bring a pan, or a pot, too. We organized the engagement ceremony in the family, too, and we had the rabbi come over. For the engagement ceremony, he only holds a speech, in Yiddish, not in Hebrew, so that all present may understand. At the wedding, we received as a present from a group of people a metal stove complete with oven, kitchen range, as they made them in the old days, with wood as fuel.