Saul Rabinowitz, president of the Schnectady Jewish Center from 2008 to 2009, once told me his favorite responsibility as lay leader of SJC was presiding as officer on the bimah during a Shabbat service featuring an Aufruf ceremony. The Aufruf, which in Yiddish means "calling up," is a congregation's acknowledgment of an upcoming wedding. As is the custom in most Reform synagogues, both the bride and groom are called upon for an aliyah, a recitation of a blessing over the Torah. The Shabbat service is traditionally followed by a Kiddush of light refreshments in the synagogue's social hall, sponsored by the parents of the bride and groom. It was during the Kiddush after an Aufruf ceremony when Saul Rabinowitz would seek out the groom and attempt to scare the living kishkas out of him.
Nobody ever would call Saul a romantic or confuse him with a love-struck character in a Nicholas Sparks novel. To be sure, Saul adores his wife, Sadie, and everyone knows it, the lone exception being Sadie herself. In 2003, the Rabinowitz's grown children, Sammy and Sheila, rented the SJC social hall and invited over one hundred of Saul's and Sadie's closest friends (all blood relatives or SJC members) to a party in celebration of their parents' thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. After the plates of creamed herring and stuffed derma were cleared from the tables, Saul stood, with Manischewitz glass in hand, to toast his bride.
"To Sadie, my first wife, I wish you a Happy 35th Anniversary," he said. "So many times you have asked me, 'Saul, what are you thinking?' And my response is always, Sadie, if I wanted you to know, I'd be talking. Yes, Sadie, we've been together a long time. Had I killed someone thirty-five years ago, today, I would be a free man. But seriously, Sadie, I want to thank you for thirty-two of the happiest years of my life. Those three years we spent in Stuyvesant Town when your sister lived near us I could have done without. Still, if I may channel my inner Jackie Gleason, Babie, you're the greatest."
Saul swears there wasn't a dry eye in the social hall.
Trying to get Saul back on topic, I ask why he so enjoyed the Aufruf ceremony. He explains feeling an ethical duty to share and impart his worldly knowledge to a fellow man who is about to step under a chuppah to marry a Jewish woman. At just the right moment – which is usually when the only baked goods remaining are a few lonely pieces of raspberry rugelach and the oldest living member of Sisterhood begins stashing the Sweet and Low into her purse – is the time when Saul would seek out the naïve groom-to-be. Putting an encouraging arm around the poor sap's shoulder, Saul walks the young man to a quiet corner of the social hall to have a heart-to-heart talk.
"The Jewish wedding is a sacred ceremony, ripe with symbolism," Saul says, looking deep into the eyes of the love-is-blind fool. "The breaking of the glass is particularly symbolic. The old-school rabbis would have you believe the breaking of the glass symbolizes the destruction of ancient temples. This is a meaningful insight, but it doesn't drill down deep enough or provide any real-world lessons.
"The new-age rabbis," Saul continues, "will tell you the breaking of the glass symbolizes the fragility of the union into which you are about to enter; one false step by either one of you, and the marriage can shatter, its shards never to be put back together again. Now this insight," Saul adds, "has a message to which today's newlyweds can relate. Yet, for me, personally, there still remains a nugget of truth, a kernel of reality, a nagging suspicion of actual married life to a Jewess which the rabbis do not address."
The future groom is now hanging on Saul's every word.
"What is the meaning? What is it? What does it mean to break the glass?"
Seizing the moment, Saul waits a beat, and admits the secret of marriage known only to Jewish men: "Son," he says, "when you break that glass, it'll be the last time you'll ever put your foot down."
As the groom nods with a faint glimmer of understanding, Saul returns to the Kiddush table, gulps down the last three pieces of raspberry rugelach and drinks a cup of tea with no artificial sweetener added. His work here is done.
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