After so many days ouf mourning, let us come back to the life…

Ewa Maria Slaska

Over the years I read many American books which mentioned privileged life in various country clubs. Club members enjoying playing golf, tennis, swimming pools, club house, social activities. Some of those country clubs charge initiation fee ranging from few thousand dollars to couple of hundred thousand. Monthly fees are usually high, plus members have to spend certain amount on dining at the club’s restaurants. But even having money doesn’t open you the door to the club if you are  not a proper person. And what it means: proper? In every book the answer was different.

So, as I said it already, I read a lot about country clubs, playing golf or tennis, dancing, dining and enjoying life. This expensive life style is often object of envy; public and affordable golf courses do not provide the same luxurious activities.

For three weeks I felt privileged to live in a Ramsey Golf and Country Club, observing and participating in daily activities, fascinated by golfer’s playing  next to our garden, amazing wild life like chipmunks, squirrels, deers, colorful birds.

One Sunday we were strolling through an empty club and all of sudden we saw the wedding gown photographed in different areas of the club.

It was Jewish wedding. We saw the basket full of snowy white yarmulka’s and a chuppah erected by one of the lakes. The grooms family name is Korczak; it is  embroidered into bride’s dress hanger: Mrs Korczak.

The color of the wedding is light and dark purple; very elegant.

The dress was modern, not at all traditional, as it should be. But also no modern fancies in a style of Meghan, what is now the number 1 of wedding trends:

Over-the-top embellishments appear to be a thing of the past, thanks to designers opting for a heightened sense of restraint and minimalism (read: thanks to Meghan Markle). Finally, clean styles the minimalist, uptown sophisticate, and even the effortless bohemian would gravitate towards can be found without an ounce of lace, beading, or appliqué. The simplest of designs can be the most challenging to create–there’s little place to hide when neither appliqué nor embroidery can conceal a design flaw–and your wedding is the time to invest in a design that’s all about the fine details.

Oh oh, as the Minions would say. Remember the elaborate wedding dress worn by so many generations from The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, a novel of Eve Harris? Dress covering not only arms but also the hands, with no cleavage, decorated all over with rich silver embroidery. The Marrying… is a book about a life of Hasidim in modern London. But it must be all over the world like that, everywhere where the traditional Jews are living. Also in New York. For example Menashe a movie of Joshua Weinsteins. Did you see it? 

Set within the New York Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Menashe follows a kind but hapless grocery store clerk trying to maintain custody of his son Rieven after his wife, Lea, passes away. Since they live in a tradition-bound culture that requires a mother present in every home, Rieven is supposed to be adopted by the boy’s strict, married uncle, but Menashe’s Rabbi decides to grant him one week to spend with Rieven prior to Lea’s memorial. Their time together creates an emotional moment of father/son bonding as well as offers Menashe a final chance to prove to his skeptical community that he can be a capable parent.

Shot in secret entirely within the Hasidic community depicted in the film, and one of the only movies to be performed in Yiddish in nearly 70 years, Menashe is a warm, life-affirming look at the universal bonds between father and son that also sheds unusual light on a notoriously private community. Based largely on the real life of its Hasidic star Menashe Lustig, the film is a strikingly authentic and deeply moving portrait of family, love, connection, and community.

Menashe should marry. He does not want. He is still bond to Lea. But he will. The marriage is inescapably waiting just behind the horizon of the movie’s end.

Also in Fading Gigolo of John Turturro (with Woody Allen!) a Hasidic wedding is inevitably. With a dress like that pictured below, like in Marrying…?

Compare it with the dress in “our” country club!

The couple who was getting married at the club was very modern…

The next married copule I meet in the… Grand Central Station in NY. They were Chinese.

They stood quite a long time not moving at all. And than they went out and on the other side of the street.

Good luck to all of you!

***

In Berlin we have an exposition

Hochzeitsträume (wedding dreams)

28.09.2018 – 28.07.2019
Museum Europäischer Kulturen