Jacob Graff is Rich

Bad, bad tan! Dropping off the face of the earth yet again.

So I will start with the awesome that, to my jaded mind, work surprisingly turns out to be. I say surprising because, of course. work at Gigantic Car Company often ignored the fact that as a chemist, something kind of, y'know, chemistry related would be nice. Whereas at Tiny Cute Company, they have me doing chemistry stuff all the time. Mostly by playing with supercritical fluids. For some reason, they are orange O.o

Also, MW has successfully achieved gainful employment \o/ She was starting to get mopey and depressed, but I had faith. Now we are presented with a new problem, which is to say that no one has an appreciable "after work" to cook in. Does anyone have any quick, delicious recipes? We needs 'em.

But I did not reappear from the aether to explain about the jobs, no I did not. I came instead to talk about the wedding of Meir (about halfway between may-ear and mayor) Graff to his now-wife, Itta (eat-ta). Itta is so thin I'd worry about anorexia, except that she'll have babies soon.

Now, as we all know, the wedding is supposed to be funded by the bride's family. Meir, however, is the only son of Jacob Graff, and he certainly wasn't going to let the wedding of his son his son his only son be anything less than a a Graff Affair. It did not disappoint.

The pre-wedding "snack" included, in addition to a full-size sushi bar and a Mongolian barbecue (with beef!) to entire dead animals to a tandoori oven.

During what I will for the sake of humor call snack time, we had the bedecking. This is a quaint Jewish tradition that has his origins in that biblical fiasco when Jacob agreed to work seven years and then marry Rachel, and his father-in-law Lot decided to substitute Leah instead, thus forcing him to work another seven years. Therefore, a short while before the wedding, the groom and his entourage dance on over to the bride and her entourage, so that the groom can check that this is, is fact, the woman he agreed to marry. (She was).

So everyone marched to the place where the khuppa (no equivalent English sounds) was set up. A khuppa is a canopy, like a tent with four poles but no walls, under which Jewish couples marry. This one was decorated with white roses, and was very pretty. I am given to understand that, usually, the groom's family sits on one side of the aisle, and the bride's on the other. At an Orthodox Jewish wedding, it is boys and girls instead. Seats were found, music played, the groom waited for his bride.

And waited, because the (very extended) Graff family had to walk up the aisle first: Meir with his parents, Jacob and Pnina (you do say the p); all of Meir's married sisters, and their kids; all of the bride's married siblings, and their kids; and finally, the bride with her parents.

Then a quite famous and honored rabbi read the ketubah (keh-tuba). A kehtuba is a written wedding contract, in the legal sense of what the husband paid for the wife and what they owe to each other. (That is, above and beyond the fact that the husband owes the wife home, food, clothing, and conjugal rights. Yes, Jewish women can divorce their husbands for not getting enough. It is in the Torah.) Signing it in the presence of two reliable witnesses constitutes a marriage. Just as a point, the ketubah was signed beforehand. This was just a rabbi reading the thing at the ceremony.

Next came the seven blessings. These are . . . well, blessings. The first one is the blessing over the wine. Because at a Jewish event, there is always wine.

The rest of the blessings are things like "may the couple experience all joy together" and "may they make tons and tons of Jewish babies together." Okay, I made that last one up, but the gist is there.

Finally, they broke their cup. This is a Tradition: you break a glass cup. Their love is to fade when the glass is repaired. I've never personally seen the difficulty - it's glass, just melt it and make a new one if you really want to - but there it is.

So, okay, the wedding was over. To celebrate, there was dancing, including the always-terrifying chair dance. This is when the bride and groom each sit on a chair, which a group of friendly schoolmates of the groom lift into the air and dance around with. Yes, while there are people sitting on it. Like I said, terrifying.

And what can I say of the food?

First we got guys running around handing out bread to everyone who wanted. I wanted tea, and I got my own (cute!) little teapot, a box full of the good kind of tea bag, with actual leaves inside, and a tiny little jar of honey. Every time they brought me more tea, I got another honey jar. Although it is sad that my Crohn's precludes imbibing alcohol, and so I could not take advantage of an open bar stocked with every alcohol ever, this very nearly made up for it.

Next there were the straw onion things in the salad, which have now replaced bead sprouts on every recipe ever because they crunch but taste like mushroom as opposed to bitter. There was this tiny little shot glass thing, but it contained gespatcho. There was a miniature quiche, topped with cherry tomatoes tossed in balsamic vinaigrette. That was the "soup and salad" portion of the meal.

To describe the main portion of the meal, I must ask that you imagine a marshmallow. Now imagine a beef. Now imagine that the beef and the marshmallow had a beefmallow baby together. I ate the beefmallow baby, along with carrots and green beans and pan-fried potatoes. Nom nom.

More dancing! I went and talked to various relatives that I hadn't seen in forever, including one I had not seen since Cool Cousin Tamar's wedding. Cool Cousing Tamar's daughter is now preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. It was great good fun.

Then dessert: Mini pies! Mocha mix not-ice-cream! Moussettes (shot glasses full of mousse)! Mini flans topped with gold foil! Mini cheesecakes! Sheets of brittle so thick there were hammers with which to break it! Tiramisu! Pudding! Every kind of fruit! And more!

( Every Kind of Fruit )

Then, stuffed, we went out. On the table that, on the way in, had held our seat assignments, there were now stacks of Khumashim (khoo-mah-sheem), which are books containing the Pentatuach, Haftorah, and other annual readings. As it's a nice book, with the English translation on the page opposite the Hebrew, and complete with commentaries, Panda took one.

Morning today came much too early, but it was all right. We'd been to a Graff Affair, and those are Always Worth It.