Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe

Shvartze khasene

Shvartze khasene Black Weddings among Polish Jews Hanna We$grzynek On September 1, 1892, Gazeta Lubelska described two weddings that had taken place a day earlier in Lublin’s Jewish cemetery. The ceremonies sparked interest not only because of their morbid location, but also because they included a mysterious ritual: four young women were harnessed to a plough and made to plough around the town limits on the Biskupice side.1 These activities were intended to halt the typhus epidemic that was raging in the vicinity.2 Additional strange rituals were undertaken by local Lublin Jews. The water from the local pond was secretly (and illegally) released, and the chains of the ponds’ barrier were buried at the cemetery.3 That same year, a similar wedding was held in a cemetery in Opatów.4 In addition to the ceremony itself, the feast and celebration, including the dancing, took place in the town’s cemetery. According to local lore, the epidemic subsided a few days later. Similar cemetery weddings from that period are mentioned in the Memorial Book (Yizkor Bukh) of the Ryki Community.5 Over twenty years later, in early March 1916, Dziennik Narodowy (Piotrków Trybunalski) reported on another cemetery wedding: Yesterday something occurred in our town that clearly attests to the truly shocking ignorance prevailing within the local Jewish population. Among the Jewish masses in provincial towns of the Kingdom of Poland, the superstitious belief has survived that any kind of epidemic may be combatted by holding a wedding at a cemetery. This superstition is held also 56 Hanna We$grzynek by Jews here in our town, and since the typhus epidemic is spreading almost exclusively in the Jewish neighborhood, the decision was made to make use of some salutary means. And whom to marry off? A young couple was found. They did not know each other before. Both are poor. Several hundred rubles were collected from the local Jews and a wedding was organized. From this amount, 200 rubles were set aside as a dowry, and the rest went to cover the cost of the wedding. A crowd of several thousand people set off for the cemetery-wedding celebration. A canopy was erected and the cemetery fence was measured off with a white cloth, which was then handed to the “bride.” Bed linens and underclothes for the newlyweds were to be sewn from this material. When the measurements were finished, the wedding ceremony was conducted, after which the crowd returned to the town, secure in their belief that they had taken “the only [possible] step” toward staving off the epidemic.”6 TheceremonyprobablyoccurredinLublin.7 Thereportwasreprintedin twoadditionalnewspapers,Czas(Cracow)8 andDziennikPoznański(Poznań).9 All three papers had a Polish nationalist orientation; thus, their main intent wastoexposethebackwardnessandsuperstitionprevailingamongtheJewish population. Yet the original account contains valuable information. The 1916 ceremony differed in some respects from the 1892 ceremony: the marriage was concluded more quickly, both bride and bridegroom were poor and had not known each other previously, and the cemetery was “measured” with white cloth, to be used for the newlyweds’ bed linens and underclothes. Memorial Books from Biłgoraj, Kamieniec Podolski, as well as an individual account by Eli Zborowski regarding Z[arki, mention similar weddings during or after the First World War.10 A cemetery wedding involving local elites was performed in Lwów in April 1920.11 We do not know many details; however, a typhus epidemic had resulted in many deaths in Lwów and there was a fear that the epidemic would continue to spread.12 In this case, special invitations were printed in order to ensure that leading rabbis and other important local personages would take part, an indication that such weddings were not restricted to the common folk. In fact, it was a hallowed custom: it was to take place “according to an age-old tradition to appease God’s anger when pestilences are raging.”13 These journalistic accounts and the extant wedding invitation may represent the earliest first-hand sources confirming the existence of a tradition Shvartze khasene: Black Weddings among Polish Jews 57 known as shvartze khasene, or Black Wedding, a ceremony performed in a cemeterytocurryfavorwiththedeadand,through their intercession, induce the Creator to halt an epidemic. It was believed that epidemics—in these cases, cholera or typhus—were the result of curses put on communities as divine punishment for their collective sins. The betrothed were sought out from...