The Nature of Love

Chapter 3

Copyright (c) 2014 Phyllis Zimbler Miller

All rights reserved.

 House and Senate approve a bill requiring a health warning on cigarette packages. – June 1965

Jennifer's Story

1965

          The Mendelssohn wedding march filtered through the closed doors facing the hall in which I stood, the hotel caterer's representative adjusting the train of my wedding dress. The others in the bridal party had already taken the short walk along the red carpet to their rehearsed spots under or alongside the chupah – the Jewish wedding canopy of tulips and daisies.

         Now my parents would be halted halfway down the aisle, waiting for me. The caterer's representative would swing open the double doors as the cue for me to begin the march that would change my life forever.

          The representative did not open the doors. Perhaps she wanted the music to crescendo while Steve stood at the chupah, wondering if he had chosen the lady or the tiger.

         Steve Silberman. My intended.

         He had not been so the second time I met him.

        It was the annual Michigan-Michigan State football game with the usual fierce competition between Michigan and Moo U. I had gone with my roommate and some others to sit in the worst section of the stadium, the freshmen section. Marjorie, of course, had a date with a sophomore, so their tickets were closer to the action.

        I was bored with the game; the players seemed to spend more time in time-outs than in playing. And you could only watch the color section for so long, the students' hand-held placards spelling out various words in ripples of encouragement.  I offered to ravage the concession stand for everyone.

          As I turned from the counter, each hand balancing a flimsy cardboard container, I swung into the back of a tall boy still in line.

          Steve Silberman pivoted, his face a vine-grown tomato red.  Then he smiled.

          "It's not only your cousin who makes a practice of bumping into boys."

          "What?"

         "You use the same ploys too."

          "Why you conceited pig!" Anger flash flooded my body. "I had trouble balancing all this food."

          "That's what they all say."

          I did not smash the two food containers over his clown face. I just killed him with my eyes.        

         And now in a few minutes I would be Mrs. Steve Silberman.

      "Jennifer, it's time," the representative whispered, propping open both sides of the double doors. The woman stepped behind me and tugged the train into position.

         "Oh, God," I whispered, "please help me get through this without making a fool of myself."

       Yet even as I placed one white satin shoe on the red carpet, I knew I wasn’t referring to the wedding ceremony. It was the institution of marriage with all of its expectations.

       Minutes later the rabbi said, "Now that Steve has recited the traditional Jewish wedding formula I want to say a few words."

        I stared into the rabbi's face. His purple velvet yarmulke contrasted with his grey-streaked hair. He had known me all my life, naming me a few days after birth during the Shabbat Torah service and conducting my Bat Mitzvah at age 13.

       He had wanted the wedding in our Conservative synagogue, but Steve's family pumped for a fancy hotel. "More elegant," his Philadelphia mother said. "More prestigious," his lawyer father said.

       Through the sleeve of Steve's morning coat I could feel his arm supporting my body. My legs trembled under the layers of petticoats. The last few minutes did not exist. I could not remember how I had come to be standing here, how I propelled my feet one after another down the length of the carpet and took my place next to Steve under the chupah.

       I looked at my left hand hooked over Steve's arm. The plain gold wedding band that Steve would wear now rimmed the index finger of my left hand. I must have held this finger up as required by tradition for the witnesses to view the token of value that sealed the marriage contract.

       After the ceremony I would give Steve this ring and wear the wedding band with six small diamonds that he had chosen to go with my diamond engagement ring. A Jewish custom, more a superstition, said that rings with stones are not used for the actual ceremony. Only plain smooth rings are used so that the marriage may also be a smooth one. Which of course our marriage would be.

        "Jennifer has always had an interest in Judaism," the rabbi said. "Besides attending Hebrew school and having a Bat Mitzvah and confirmation from Sunday School, she attended Jewish camp in the summers and in her senior year of high school was president of the synagogue's youth group. I know that with Steve she will create a Jewish home emphasizing the sanctity of marriage."

       The sanctity of marriage. My ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract signed before the start of the ceremony, stated my entitlement to food, raiment, and sexual relations.  Rabbis who lived hundreds of years ago even established how often those sexual relations need be: only once a week for husbands working in such smelly endeavors as tanning hides, more frequently for scholars.

       The Torah, the first five books of the Bible, clearly stated Judaism's view on another aspect of the sanctity of marriage – adultery.

        The punishment?

       Death.

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