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Friday August 21, 1998

Bay Area couples savor yichud as oasis during hectic festivities

NATALIE WEINSTEIN
Bulletin Staff

For Jonathan Carey, the favorite part of his wedding ceremony wasn't the exchange of rings or the breaking of the glass.

It was yichud, the traditional seclusion for a groom and bride immediately following their public ritual.

"You know how weddings can be such a blur. This carved out 20 minutes for us to be alone...It was our chance to privately share what we were publicly celebrating," said Carey, an Oakland resident who has been married for nearly two years.

The yichud, which originated in biblical times, once served as the time when the couple would have sexual relations for the first time.

Centuries ago, the rabbis rejected the concept of using yichud as the time to physically consummate the marriage. And today it's highly unlikely that couples use yichud for anything more physical than hugging or kissing.

Still, Jewish tradition refused to give up the custom of private time for brand-new newlyweds.

Rabbi Ari Cartun, spiritual leader of Palo Alto's Congregation Etz Chayim, has been recommending yichud to brides and grooms throughout his 25-year career. He estimated that 99 percent of them have taken him up on the suggestion.

"It keeps the glow of the chuppah with them longer," the Reform rabbi said. "It's fun. It's terrific. It's a chance to be with your spouse" and "to spend your first married moments with each other, instead of with the maddening crowd."

Anne Medved had never heard of yichud until Cartun suggested the custom. But a year after her wedding, she is still pleased she and husband chose to include it.

"Yichud tied us closer together," said Medved, a Mountain View resident. "It interrupted the flow a little bit, so we could reflect on what was happening."

Generally, the ritual seclusion lasts 10 to 20 minutes.

If the wedding takes place indoors, the couple will enter a private room, and traditionally, two witnesses are posted outside the door to ensure the couple's privacy. The room can be the rabbi's study, a synagogue classroom or a library.

If the ceremony takes place outside, yichud can take place anywhere away from the ceremony site.

Couples who have been observing the customary wedding-day fast -- and even those who haven't refrained from eating -- can use the time during yichud to take a few bites of food. That, in and of itself, can be extremely important because most brides and grooms never find the time to eat a full meal during the reception.

The couple can eat anything they want and may choose to feed each other -- a symbol of their mutual support.

Despite the ritual's deep roots in Jewish tradition, not every Jewish American couple incorporates yichud into their ceremony.

Cartun says that older Reform rabbis, for example, might not recommend it.

"They want the weddings to seem as American as possible," Cartun said. "A lot of them find the traditions to be distasteful. But I find them to be enriching."

Like Cartun, Rabbi Harry Manhoff of San Leandro's Temple Beth Sholom has been recommending yichud for the past 20 years.

Couples need to "take the time to unwind," said Manhoff, who is ordained Reform but serves a Conservative synagogue. "It's a very emotional time and people get all wound up...There is a lot of stress around weddings, and this is an important release from that stress."

Most, if not all, of his couples have agreed to include yichud.

"It doesn't mean they've all done it. Sometimes the wedding coordinator gets to them before I do. That's reality," Manhoff said.

And once a couple gets whisked off to a receiving line, they'll never have a chance for the yichud.

Others, like Carey and Amy Schoenblum, included yichud and later formed a receiving line.

The Oakland couple, who wed in November 1996 in a suburban New York hotel, decided to incorporate yichud into their wedding after reading about it in Anita Diamant's book "The New Jewish Wedding."

"It was our choice," Carey said.

Their point person at the hotel arranged for them to slip away to a small banquet room down the hall from their ceremony site. The new couple fed each other challah, hors d'oeuvres and wine.

"The rest of the time we were sort of looking at each other in amazement that we'd been through this all and that we were here together," he said.

Schoenblum also felt intensely emotional and joyful during the seclusion. For her, it was the only point during the day when she wept.

"It gave us a time to laugh and cry and just look at each other. I don't remember saying anything specific. I just remember being together."

She also felt like yichud "connected us to all the Jewish couples that have come before us."

For Ben Medved, who married Anne outside Portola Valley's town hall in June 1997, the yichud was an oasis.

The newlyweds spent 20 to 30 minutes in the town hall's exercise room. The equipment had been moved out and a sofa had been moved in. Champagne and a plate of lox, bagels, fruits and chocolate awaited them.

They spent the time, he said, talking about how the ceremony had come off even better than they had hoped and treasuring "the ineffable bit of heaven we had shared under the chuppah."

The Medveds got so caught up in their yichud that finally someone had to intervene.

"My younger brother knocked on the door and said, `Hey, we've got some hungry people out here,'" Ben Medved said with a chuckle.

Medved also recalled that yichud prepared him for the reception's "raucous" and "insanely joyous" dancing, singing, joking and eating.

"It was a chance to really be quiet and enjoy the intimacy and quietness of the moment with my wife."

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