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Friday January 25, 2008

Traditional Jewish wedding comes to Cyprus

by tamar runyan
chabad.org

Last year set a first for Cyprus. The Mediterranean island was the setting for a traditional Jewish wedding.

Every year many Israelis make the short trip by air to Cyprus in order to elope and circumvent laws stipulating all marital unions occur according to the dictates of Jewish law.

But the November 2007 wedding of Chaim and Segal Harrari was a traditional ceremony, adhering to all of Judaism’s strictures. Presiding Rabbi Arie Zeev Raskin, director of the Cyprus Jewish Community Center in Larnaca, says it was the first one he knows of to take place on the island.

He had the chuppah for six months, having no idea if it would ever be used. “I bought it just in case,” he said.

Chaim Harari, a businessman, met his bride during a visit to Israel. “I met someone I felt was a friend I hadn’t seen for 30 years, a life partner.” A year later he proposed, and in the course of telling Raskin the good news, the rabbi suggested a date two months later.

“They closed the circle at the Chabad House,” Raskin said.

At the ceremony, a visiting Israeli couple in the area walked the bride and groom down the aisle after they revealed that the male of the pair was descended from the Kohanim. Fifty other guests watched the wedding take place just outside the Chabad House.

“In my dream of dreams, I could never have imagined such a wedding, a Jewish wedding according to the tradition of Moses,” said Chaim Harari.

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