It
should come as no surprise to anyone that growing up in the Bronx and in an
Ashkenazi family, did not prepare you me for a Henna ceremony, let alone
prepare me for creating the obligatory Kallah
Henna basket.
Let's
start at the beginning; actually two beginnings. The first is that my eldest son married
(Mazal Tov!) a lovely Moroccan girl. The
second is that a Henna ceremony is an integral part of the Moroccan (and other Sephardic) marriage traditions.
A
month or two before the wedding my daughter dropped the bombshell! I must bring a Kallah Henna basket to the
Henna ceremony. In my naiveté I thought,
I've made hundreds of Purim baskets throughout the years – what's the big
deal? WRONG!! It is a big
deal. The preparation for the basket –
should begin months before the Henna ceremony when one should begin to search
for the obligatory presents such as jewelry, silver, crystal, negligee. The basket also includes a host of small
trinkets i.e. hamsas, tehilim, bride's prayer, chocolates and the list can go
on and on and on. As I would find out
later, the type of presents given the bride has as much to do with the bride as
it does with the groom's family (that should be read =
"mother"). I felt like Alice
in Wonderland, with the landscape growing larger and scarier with each new
discovery.
Just
ever so slightly hysterical by this point, I got a list of obligatory presents
from my daughter. My daughter let it fly
that the present search and find mission, usually takes several months. Nice.
I didn't have "several months" – I had weeks and it would have
to do.
My
search and destroy mission to find each present on the list lead to the inevitable gift-giving questions:
What color will she like? What size? What style? What if she already has
it? What if she hates it? Of course "merchandise return
slips" (in my mind, these little beauties are one of the most significant
inventions of the modern era – up there with the "mouse" and the
"un-do button") solves many of these dilemmas.
Now,
if you are like me, you would assume that the next step is to wrap up each
present in shiny paper and a big bow, put them in pretty bags and cart them off
to the celebration. Once again, my
innocents, this line of thinking is WRONG! While a Henna ceremony is a lovely and lively
celebration of life, love, friends and family.
It is also a celebration of "see how much I am giving" and
"see how much I have". Three
words that can easily describe any Henna are Shiny, Bright and Loud. The presents are no exception! Here again, my daughter's invaluable
knowledge helped .and I learned that the presents had to be shown-off and
showcased in something big and ostentatious.
At
this point I used my handy-dandy internet. I googled the death out of key words
like henna baskets and Henna ceremonies (in Hebrew and English). I found plenty of examples! I found pictures of large baskets filled to
the brim with all kinds of shiny goodies.
I even found pictures of presents that were masqueraded as wedding
scenes (the earrings and necklace were the bride and groom, the watch in its
box was the chuppah and on and on), towels and robes that looked like wedding
cakes and so on. I also noted that the color choices were not subtle or coordinated;
they were loud, profuse and striking. It
seems that Henna baskets take the American "More is More" approach very seriously!
With
my new-found knowledge, I searched the stores for the largest basket I could
find! When I found my basket – as large as
a baby's bath (but not as deep) - I knew I was on my way. I bought rolls of organza and shiny
paper. I continued to minutely examine
the Henna basket pictures online, trying to decipher each shape and bulge.
A
kind and discerning client understood my obvious cultural handicap. She told me that chocolates (large wrapped
ones), hamsas (good luck charms in the shape of a hand – sometimes with an eye
in the middle), the brides prayers
and tehilim were usually added to the mix.
Once
again, I went out on my shopping mission, looking for – well – anything
"shiny" and colorful. I bought
hamsas, miniature tehilim books, silk flowers, miniature Moroccan shoes with
long upturned toes, chocolates, strings of shiny beads and fake pearls, large
decorative candles, ribbons and so much more.
The brighter and shinier - the better!
When
I began my Henna shopping project, I put the carefully wrapped items I
purchased in a corner of my bedroom. As
the list grew and the items piled up, I moved my treasures to a corner of a
guest room. By the time I finished my
project, the items were piled high on a double bed.
One
of my sisters-in-law came in from the USA for the wedding. The delicious "H" was now my comrade-in-arms for this important of missions.
Just days before the Henna, she bought the fixings and fillings for her own Kallah basket.
Now
came the day of the Henna celebration.
Early that morning we prepared for the – "dressing" - the
dressing of the baskets. We laid out all
our presents, goodies and trinkets on the shabbas table and began to work in
earnest. Referring again and again to
the internet pictures, I began to understand that each large gift needed to be seen by the admiring crowd of
Henna invitees. So began the unwrapping
and rewrapping. We staged, placed,
replaced, moved, wrapped and unwrapped, hung, strung, laid and draped the
presents and goodies in their respective places – each in a strategic place in
the basket. Some placed higher. Some placed lower. Some draped in small trinkets. Some stand alone in their importance. All nestled in a giant bird's nest of
transparent paper and organza. The
basket itself was then draped in beads and hung with good luck symbols.
After
an hour or two, we became a "little" slap-happy from the fumes of the
glue and epoxy (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!). From that point on, every two or three
minutes we would take a step back from our work and ask the all important
question "Is this too much?"
As we worked the "Is this too much" question transformed from
a serious decorating question, into a sign that we needed to reposition and
re-dress a gift with even more trinkets.
We were like kindergarteners gone wild with finger paints – no space
should be left untouched, "no white space" (if you know what I mean),
no color combinations too outrageous and, most importantly, no one there to
stop us!
At
a certain point we lost the ability to stop ourselves from
"improving" our baskets. It
took all of our will power and threats that we would never get to the hall on
time to force us to STOP and finally proclaim that our baskets were indeed
'stage ready' and we needed to get
ourselves to the hall.
The Henna celebration is
a blog all by itself, but I will say that only when we reached the hall did we
find out the importance of the basket displays and their larger-than-life
presence. Our baskets and those of
others were placed and displayed in a long row, along the main wall of the
hall. Surrounded by the opulence of a
dressed room in draped Moroccan finery, the baskets indeed needed to shine –
literally – in order to compete with the glitter around them. So to answer my own question: where the
baskets "too much"? NOT AT ALL!
Do you have questions about a Jewish wedding, its customs, traditions and practices? Please feel free to contact me today!
