HORA,HORA, HORA

The most exciting cultural event of my life was my Catholic son’s wedding to a Jewish girl from New York.

My Catholic mother, AMD, hyperventilated when I announced that the wedding was to be held at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta. Breathing rapidly and faking the vapors, she screamed, “He’s getting married in a HOTEL??”

“Mom, it’s the Ritz Carlton,” I said. ‘The bride, groom and respective parents will stand under a chuppah as the rabbi conducts the ceremony. You and Dad will be seated on the front row. Please do not embarrass me.  This is the most important day of your grandson’s life. Do not ask him to confess his sins. Do not tell him he’s riding a heat seeking missile to hell. Do not wear sackcloth and ashes. The ceremony is very beautiful and historical. Just hold your breath and buy a pretty little flask that looks like a tiny water bottle.”

She muttered under her breath, “As I said, he is not going to heaven.”

My parents live in a French Catholic Cajun village in southern Louisiana, population 300, twenty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The largest structure in town is the cathedral-like Catholic Church smack dab at the center of the one mile stretch of Main Street. Everyone driving by the church forms the sign of the cross and whispers a quick prayer . . . every time they ride up and down Main. When the church bells ring at noon, you can hear the collective masses in the mills, stores, and cane and rice fields reciting the Angelus. After mass on Sunday morning, everyone files into George Andrus bar to drink coffee, beer, or cokes. In this town, Catholicism is a cultural attitude as well as a faith.

I recall the hoo-rah generated when a Baptist family moved into town in the 1950’s. My mother organized a novena group to pray for their damned souls. I had never met persons of another faith, and I wondered if they threw snakes into the air as they spoke in tongues. AMD reminded me that stepping into that church was a mortal sin that I would be obligated to confess to Father ......., who my sisters and I nicknamed Father Sleepyhead because he snored in the confessional.

Feeling a need to educate my Louisiana friends and family [who I knew had seldom laid eyes on a person of the Jewish faith], I created a booklet explaining the significance of the Chuppah, a symbol of Abraham’s tent, the stomping of the glass  symbolizing the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem [which induced cries of “Kawww!” from the Louisiana delegation], and at the reception, the cutting of the braided Challah symbolizing the manna falling from the heavens to the starving Israelities, and the Hora, a traditional dance performed in a counterclockwise circle. I even discussed  the importance of the yarmulke worn by Jewish men as a respectful head covering. My husband’s Cajun buddies snickered as they secures their “beanies” with fancy barrettes and paper clips.

My son’s fiancé, petite and an Audrey Hepburn look-alike, wore a fitted white gown emblazoned with crystals, pearls, and bugle beads. But her veil was different. I helped her to shop for that veil, and I watched as she purchased a short, fingertip length illusion veil.

This veil was at least twenty feet long. Remembering that I related to her our local Louisiana tradition of pinning money on the veil, suddenly this all made sense. She hoped to accumulate wads and wads of cash and checks to pay off their mortgage. I knew then that she and I would become very close and corrupt each other with our financial excesses.

Standing under the Chuppa was certainly a first for me. I was enthralled with the beautiful traditions being played out. My 80 year old mother wore a stunning beaded long sleeved gown, and my dad looked dapper in his tux.

Turning my head slightly during the ceremony to catch a glimpse of AMD, I froze. She held, close to her breast, a rosary with beads the size of golf balls. The gigantic Mother of Pearl rosary pooled on the floor near her feet. She cast a wicked smile at me and mouthed the word, “POPE,” which I feared meant she had bribed a cardinal in Vatican City to Fed Ex a rosary blessed by the Pope.

I heard snickering from the men on the Louisiana side of the ballroom and wondered if they were tossing those yarmulkes into the air. I didn’t dare look.

The glass was stomped, the wedding ceremony ended, and everyone filed into another ballroom to be seated at elegantly appointed tables. As his ex wife and young trophy wife glared at each other, the bride’s father spoke sincerely of his hope for a wonderful future for his daughter and my son.

Music for the Hora blared, and The New York crowd seated on the bride’s side of the room, burst onto the dance floor, formed a huge circle, held hands, and danced counterclockwise taking three steps forward and one step back. My mother asked everyone at our family table if that was a Wiccan ceremony. “Don’t those English witches dance backwards that way at the full moon?”

The wine tasted expensive, but I stuffed a $20 bill into the pocket of a cute server with a tight butt and requested he bring me a double dirty martini—quickly. Little did I know that the night would get longer and crazier.

             By this time the Cajuns have taken over the dance floor. Pumping pastel Mardi Gras umbrellas the ladies form a single line, and the men  wave white handkerchiefs to the beat of Second Line music, a rousing funereal hymn sung by Blacks in New Orleans as the lined up behind the casket to escort the deceased to the cemetery.

            After the bride’s dance with her dad, she and my son dance, then they are both tapped on the shoulder as other men and women dance with them and pin cash and checks on the bride’s long, long, long veil.

During The hora dance song "Hava Nagila" which in Hebrew means "Let us rejoice," the bride and groom were raised on chairs during the dance to increase the festivity of the celebration. It is considered a mitzvah (a commandment) to bring joy to the bride and groom on their wedding day.

After they were removed from the chairs, the parents of the bride and groom took turns being lifted in the chairs. I was a bit leery about this ceremonial gesture, but I was more worried that the skinny Jewish guys lifting my husband would drop him on his head.

As they circled me around, I noticed a group of men lined up in order of height. Horrified, I realized that I’d forgotten to explain the ceremonial chair thingy in my wedding brochure. Those Cajun boys were lined up to ride the chair! What to do! I signaled to one of my my sisters to do something to disperse that group before the fancy New York crowd noticed. Close call.

Guests and wedding party walked outside to see the bride and groom depart in a Bentley to ride around Buckhead before beginning the honeymoon. The crowd dispersed and everyone migrated to their rooms or drove home.

By that time I was exhausted and very tipsy. I walked up to the elevator with my best friend. We exited at my floor. Noticing a elegant damask Queen Anne bench slapped up against the wall in the lobby, I sat, then reclined, then fell asleep. I awakened the next morning in our hotel room with the romantic notion that leprechauns had carried me gently on a cloud of angel dust back to my room.

Several months later when my husband, son, his wife, and I visited Louisiana, we met friends at a local hometown bar decorated as a man cave with all sorts of petrified animal heads mounted on the walls. As I stood at the bar visiting with the ninety year old barmaid, Toy-ah, I noticed that the ossified deer all wore hats on their antlers. OMG! The yarmulkes!!  Was this a sign of disrespect for another person’s religion? A jibe at Jews? I apologized to my new daughter-in-law who said to me, “Can we come back to Robert's tomorrow?”  At that point I knew we would become great friends as well.