Chapter 1: What unique customs are observed at Sephardic weddings?
Good morning, everybody. So I got a call from, or a text from a rabbi last week who was going to be a messiah of Kedusha at his first Sephardic wedding. So he wanted to know if there's anything he needs to know before he's a messiah of Kedusha at a Sephardic wedding. So there's a lot to know.
But two things that the first time I was at a Sephardic wedding that struck me as somewhat unusual, I thought I would talk about these two minhagim today. One is the minhag of Borei Minei Besamim. Anyone ever see this? Under Chuppah, that they call Samanah. with the bracha of b'samen. No, no one's ever seen it? No, you've seen it, okay.
And the other is a minhag that I think it's not only Sardim, other people have it as well, and that is that they wrap a talus around the chassan and the kalah. So I want to talk about each of these minhagim and see what it's based on. So the funny thing about bar mitzvah, the part that struck me as strange, was that it was after the bar priyagafa.
Now normally, we always instruct the chassan and kalah that this Bar Epi Agafen that we are reciting is for you. You're the only ones that are going to drink from this wine. And therefore, there cannot be any hefsik whatsoever between the Bar Epi Agafen and when you actually drink. So we have other brachos, but that's all part of the process of the wedding, right?
So you have a Bar Epi Agafen and the Birch HaSeresen, then you have a Bar Epi Agafen, and then they drink. Then you have a Bar Epi Agafen and the six other brachos, and then they drink. But to just stick something else in the middle... For an Ashkenazi person, it strikes us as a little bit strange.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Borei Minei Besamim custom?
So Sephardim do say the bracha of besamin under the chuppah, and the reason is it's meant to complement the bracha that they say as a way of praising Hashem, you know, for as many things as they can praise Him for in this very auspicious moment. Lest you think, well, wait a second, this is a hafzik, you can't do this. The Rambam in Hilchot Seishos, Paragir, Alachadal, the Rambam writes,
that there are some places that have a minaret that they bring a hadas together with the wine, that they say the first of the seven brachos, which is bar piyakafen, then they make a bar min ebi samin, and then they make the next six brachos of the seven brachos. The Torah quotes this in Nebuchadnezzar, the Shulchan Aruch Hamakutzer, which is Rav Yitzchak Yosef's Kitzer Shulchan Aruch,
I think, oh no, no, that's something else. Writes that the yemenite minag is to follow the Rambam directly, but the Syrians, Rabbi Mansour says that the Syrians say the bracha of Besamim between the Haggafen and the bracha of Birch HaSeirisin. I said Haggafen, not Haggafen, because by his father it's Haggafen also, they're not going to say it like that.
So that they do it, but also, after Rabbi Haggafen, but before another bracha, but not in the Birch HaSeirisin, but in the Birch HaSeirisin, And that's based on Rav Sadyagon. So essentially, two different Sephardic minhagim, both of which will make an Ashkenazi cringe, right? Meaning one with the Baruch B'Av, after the Baruch B'Av, and before the next six brachos of Shevar brachos.
And the other early, but also between the Baruch B'Av and the Birchas Ereson. So the Archa Shulchan writes, He says it's not our minhag, by Ashkenazim. He says it could be that they do this, because it should be only seven brachos, no less, no more. Now I'm not sure what he means by that. What's done by Kavanah? That Ashkenazim specifically don't have this minag?
Because then it would be eight brachos instead of seven? Or that Svard and Dafka do have this minag, so that it should be exactly seven brachos, not counting the part of Piagofen.
I assume he means that for Ashkenazim we specifically don't have this minhag, because if we're going to say Bar Prihagav and plus the six brachos that it says in the Gemara K'subas that you're supposed to say, that's already seven brachos, and we'd rather not have eight brachos under the chuppah. So that's one minhag. The other minhag is more widespread and has spread beyond Sephardic circles.
is to use a talis. Now, people use talisim differently under a chuppah. You ever go under, I'm under a lot of chuppahs. So you go under a chuppah, you look up. You always want to make sure there's a chuppah there, because a lot of times the florist, you know, made this beautiful floral arrangement, and the chuppah is very creative, but there's no actual chuppah.
Like, you know, like all of it was to, the idea of the flowers, I guess, is to decorate the chuppah and make it look nice. But there's got to be a chuppah. There's got to be something overhead. But there is a fairly common practice that people use a talus in some form or another. So some people wrap the talus around the chassan and the kala. Some people hold the talus up on poles.
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Chapter 3: How do Sephardim incorporate the blessing of Besamim under the chuppah?
Nowhere, not in the Mishnah, nor in Shas, does it ever tell you how to do Nisuin. And everyone agrees, you're not allowed to take her home until you do Nisuin. And nowhere does it say how to do Nisuin. So it opens up this huge discussion in the Rishonim. What is nisuin? Is it the brachos? Is it a talus? Is it a canopy? Is it going into a yichud room? Is it the badekin? What exactly is the nisuin?
So the Ramar writes in Avon Ezer Simmon, Even if the way they did Kiddushin was with Bia, which is not the Yeshivish thing to do, we don't do that anymore. But even if they did Kiddushin in that way, they're still not allowed to go home together until he does a Nisuin. And what is Nisuin? So the Ramah first says, he brings her into his house and they have Yichod together.
That's what we call chuppah. That's what we call nisuin. That's what the Mechaber says. Then the Ramah writes, No, chuppah is not yichud. By the way, just in case chuppah is yichud, as Schechter often points out, that they should go straight from the chuppah right to the yichud room.
There shouldn't be too much of a delay between the chuppah and the yichud room because all the brachas that they just set onto the chuppah are brachos on the nisuin. So you don't want to say a brachos on the nisuin, dance for a half hour, and then do the nisuin. That's a huge hafzik. So that's what Avshakta always says, that they should run. They should run as quickly as they could to the ikhrum.
No one ever does that, but I was at one wedding. Rabbi Michael Fagan, he spoke here one night, said his wedding, he's a bigger Avshakta Talmud, while they were singing Emesh K'chei, he grabbed the swastika and ran to the ikhrum. By the time we finished, no one knew where they were. They were already at the Yichud room because he was such a Talmud Rebbe Shechter.
He didn't want to have any hefzik whatsoever between the brachos and the Yichud room. But the Ramah writes that that's not necessarily what chuppah is. When he brings her home, that's chuppah. Chuppah is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person And some say the chuppah is that they spread a cloth over her head at the time of the bracha. What exactly is that?
So is that what we call the chuppah? Is that a talis? Is that a patekin? Something like that. Some say it's when she goes out in this special canopy. And some say it's when she goes out in this special canopy. says, what we call chuppah is a canopy that's held up by posts, by poles, and the chassim and kala go underneath that chuppah. So there are all these different opinions.
Well, chuppah is, one of them might be that they wrap themselves in the talus. Another reason for the talus, the kolbo in Simen Ayin He says that the minig of covering the chassim and the kala with the talus was to encourage them to do mitzvos in their marriages. And what better symbolism of mitzvot than tzitzit, because tzitzit represents all Taryag mitzvot.
So, in fact, why do we dafka want to associate tzitzit with a marriage? Because the Torah juxtaposes the two of them. The Torah in Devarim Perchav Be'iz, G'dilim ta'aselecha al arba kanfos k'suscha, asher ta'chaseba, that's the mitzvot tzitzit, very next pasuk, ki yikach ish isha, the pasuk. about kiddushin. So dafka, at the time of a wedding, we want them to have this symbolism of mitzvot.
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