Perhaps the most impressive Yemenite event is a wedding, together with the prenuptial celebrations. About a week before a wedding, the bride and groom attend a "Henna" celebration. This tradition is common in the Middle East among Muslims, and is also observed by North African Jews. But no one does it as elaborately as the Yemenites. The bride and groom are dressed in elaborate costumes, both for the Henna ceremony and the wedding. The Talmud records that brides in ancient Israel were adorned with twenty four ornamental garments. The Kabbalah connects this with the twenty four books of the Hebrew Bible. The bride represents the Shechinah; the Divine Feminine, the supernal source of the Jewish People. The books of Scripture are G-d's ornaments for his "bride". The human bride must reflect this. (The custom of staying up all night on Shavuot, the day of the Giving of the Torah, is understood Kabbalistically as "dressing the bride" for her wedding at Sinai. Hence, Kabbalists are careful to study excerpts of all twenty four books, symbolizing the twenty four ornamental garments.) Henna is a leaf, that when crushed, is made into an orange paste. This paste is placed in baskets with candles, often adding bottles of Arak, a liquor used in many celebrations by Eastern Jews. The baskets are carried on women's heads, while ecstatic drum music plays. An older woman, usually the bride's grand mother, will then place Henna on the bride's hands and feet, often in elaborate patterns. The original idea behind this was to ward off the "evil eye", but Jewish tradition took it much further. In Song of Songs, there is mention of the groom giving his bride "eshkol hakofer" (a bundle of henna). RASHI comments that this symbolizes forgiveness. There is an ancient Jewish belief, recorded in the Talmud, that on one's wedding day, G-d forgives the sins of the bride and groom. It is a new start! In Ashkenazi tradition, the bride and groom fast on their wedding day in recognition of this. The custom of fasting for one's wedding is unknown among Eastern Jews. For Yemenites and North Africans the wearing of the Henna is the primary symbol. In addition, the word "henna", is seen as being an acrostic of the three distinctly feminine mitzvot; Nidah (the laws of family purity), Hallah (taking off a portion of dough when baking bread, originally given to the Kohen, and Hadlakat HaNer (the kindling of the Shabbat lights). Afterwards, all present have some henna placed on their hands. The orange stain remains on the skin for at least a week, and is therefore present at the wedding itself. An evening of feasting and dancing follows the ceremony I will discuss the wedding itself in my next post.
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