Meaning of black wedding | Babel Free

Definitions

A 19th century Ashkenazi ritual involving a wedding between two orphans that takes place in a graveyard, intended to assist in ending an epidemic.

Examples

“On the eve of the wedding of Hekht's protagonist, Isaac Seltz, war breaks out, his future father-in-law dies, and an epidemic begins. Seltz would prefer to put off the wedding but the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter do not allow it: When Seltz heard it, he was horrified, but he did not speak out. The news of the black wedding already spread in the town. They were looking for beggars, but they had all fled from town.”

“For another description of such a wedding, see Kirshenblatt and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, They Called Me Mayer July, 13–14, where a cholera epidemic in 1892 inspired a shvartse khasene (black wedding) between a poor bachelor whose job it was to clean the communal bath and young woman who had lost both parents and was therefore a kalekhidke yesoyme, or “round orphan.”

“The unusual Jewish custom of the shvartze chaseneh or “black wedding” goes back to the shtetls (small towns) of Eastern Europe in the days when cholera and other diseases were epidemic in humid summers.”

“Some did not want to hear such rational explanations, and on 1 October, Odessa bore witness to a black wedding.”

CEFR level