Room #8

We gather outside Room #8 like so many girls waiting for a free check-up. After T and I opened our tik nisuin - marriage file - at the Rabbinate a week earlier, the Rabbi had instructed me to go to Room #8 to set up "my appointments" with the Rabbanite. I did as I was told. The Rabbanite, I then learned, is the female Rabbi who would tell me everything I needed to know about getting ready to get married. I didn't know there were things I needed to know (aside from whether I wanted to marry T). 

Apparently there were. The first order of the day was to attend a 10 am lecture with the Rabbanite for brides-to-be. Wait. That was me.

I am one of the first to arrive and as the pack grows it starts to feel like a special little clique. Maybe it's the quiet milling about. Maybe it's just me. Indeed I'm one of - if not the - oldest among us. Everyone is wearing a diamond ring on the finger that's meant to declare our engagementhood. Ironically today is the day I've forgotten mine. 

Despite my missing ring - and my relatively advanced age - I feel an overwhelming sense of belongingness here. A sense of having gotten into grad school. Or passing the audition. In the near 2 months that have passed since T proposed I am still basking in the aftershock glow of the sudden turn my life has taken towards bilateral, unconditional romantic love. This was not the script I thought had been written for me. Then somebody decided to give me another. So here I was. Waiting for our 10 am lecture with the Rabbanite to start.

When she opens the door at last at 10:20 am (this is Israel, after all), we pile in and find a plastic seat around her desk. The Rabbanite is a tall thin woman, pale with pointy features and wide, clear blue eyes. Brown bangs peak out from beneath her beige head wrap and pale forearms jut out from her rolled-up beige sweater sleeves. She is not wearing any makeup and is not particularly pretty but she is a commanding presence at her small schoolteacher desk. When she speaks her thin body vibrates with emotion.

The Rabbanite begins with a hearty, heartfelt mazal tov! to us all then gets down to it. We are told that everything we are about to hear has been passed down for 3324 years. We are told that according to the Torah, there are three mitzvot - commandments - specific to keeping house in the Land of Israel. One is the lighting of candles on Shabbat. The second is the keeping of a kosher home. The third has to do with relations between husband and wife.

She tells us real love is something we will only truly experience once we are married. Because that's when the real work begins. We are told maintaining our purity = good gynecological health for our husband as well as ourselves, and that practicing abstinence during our cycle only kindles the sexual fire (Disclaimer: I am loosely translating her Hebrew). She tells us everything we ever wanted to know about paying a visit to the mikveh.

Most of us stare at the Rabbanite as she speaks. I am the only one taking notes (albeit for this blog). Some girls nod their heads in apparent agreement with some of her finer points. Only one girl is alternately studying her painted fingernails or some magical horizon on the white wall before her. Everyone is secular but most everyone looks pretty serious about this.

I find it all fascinating. These traditions. These laws about love and age-old practices meant to help preserve a marriage. I am not religious but I am not dismissive either. I know married people sometimes need all the help they can get. I also know that, since moving to Israel, the fact that I am Jewish is probably more important to me than it's ever been. Sitting in the Rabbanite’s office with 13 other girls I feel the strange, unexpected thrill of belonging to something bigger than just me.

A Jewish Wedding in 1903

And here I was thinking that getting married was all about me.

When the lecture ends the Rabbanite calls us each up by name to receive a small package. It is something resembling a Jewish How-to-be-a-Bride Kit, complete with helpful pamphlets, blessings for the bride, and a list of mikvehs in the Tel Aviv area. I sheepishly also request a copy of the CD she recommended earlier of some famous rabbi’s talks, telling her I thought it sounded interesting.

Outside I fiddle with the lock on my bike while a young man on the bench beside me loudly coordinates a meeting with someone on his cell phone. He interrupts himself as I get on the bike to ask me whether I’d just come out of the building and whether I am about to get married.

“Yes?” I half-answer half-question, on the verge of laughter.

He’s already speaking into his phone when he replies, “Mazal tov."  

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Picture: Painting by Jozef Israeli (1824 - 1911), courtesy of Wikipedia