Marriage Rituals Italian Style: A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Early Modern Italian Jews (review)

Roni Weinstein's book performs a great service. Weinstein has gathered together literally mountains of information and given us a full picture of the processes leading to a Jewish marriage in Renaissance Italy. His sources are most often manuscripts, which he cites amply. He has delved into a host of secondary material on parallel phenomena in non-Jewish society. Work on Jewish marriage in this period has not been abundant, but nearly all of what there is, Weinstein has read.

The topics discussed, in order of presentation, are matchmaking, finding a partner and making a formal agreement, kiddushin (the matrimonium), social control, gifts of engagement and betrothal, the reactions of youth, and activities on the wedding day. Together these form what Weinstein views as a prolonged ritual or marriage. Each of the topics is thoroughly surveyed, social, legal, and cultural perspectives fully discussed, which is no small achievement. For the reality was anything but neat. Indeed, what we are led to conclude from this study is that the best thing that ever happened to marriage is that it became a civil institution, at least in the West. Not that this promoted marital bliss or fostered strife, but at least it made the rules of marriage formation — and dissolution — clear. It did this because the state demanded, and demands, a monopoly. The rules of what constitutes a marriage, as well as who may perform a marriage ceremony, are indisputable. The steps leading up to this moment, the greatest source of confusion in the past, have become ones of choice. It is possible "to break an engagement" just by saying so — however hard it may be to get the words out. Betrothals, in the sense of real marriage, are formalized though civil sanction, never by way of clandestine or fraudulent maneuver. To claim having said "I marry you and you agreed" achieves nothing; once, to do so constituted Catholic marriage itself. Nor does placing a ring on a Jewish woman's finger in the presence of two witnesses and saying: "Behold, you are betrothed unto me" confer civil validity. There are other implications, too. In a society where all persons are legally equal and equally free to contract, does contractual civil marriage dictate the gender of the marrying parties? When marriage is a religious institution, gender certainly does play a role.

Jewish marriage, however, is no sacrament. It is at once religious and civil, complicating the marital process no end. These complexities Weinstein has set out to unravel. In sixteenth century Italy, these were especially enormous since Jews living there represented three, if not four, separate traditions, Italian, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and even southern French — all similar, but sufficiently different to create real headaches. Was a significant gift considered a betrothal (matrimonium), or was it the norm to cement an engagement? Engagement itself was a shadowy thing. In the halachah, it has no strictly legal standing. In Ashkenaz, one made an engagement, waited, and performed kiddushin (matrimonium) and the nozze, the wedding, under the huppah, the wedding canopy, in an almost continuous sequence, with no more than a few hours between each ceremony; today, the kiddushin always occurs under the huppah. But Roman Christians performed the matrimonium months before the nozze — and so did Roman Jews. The result was "doubtful kiddushin" on many occasions. By examining cases of this issue, explaining difference from group to group, community to community, Weinstein attempts to view intra- and intercultural interpenetration. This includes the extent to which Jews imitated or modified parallel Christian custom.

The most engaging chapter is that on youth culture in marriage. Did youth accept what parents wanted? The answer seems to be no. But may we accept Weinstein's scenario of rebellious youth and "disciplining" (Weinstein does not use this term itself) parents and their supposed attempt to restrain youth...