Ten years ago a delightful, illustrated children’s book entitled “The Wedding that Saved a Town,” focused on an obscure Jewish custom in Eastern Europe , known as a “Shvartze Chasuneh” (a “black” or “cholera” wedding). According to tradition, marrying off two orphans in a cemetery where their dead parents can intercede on the community’s behalf can bring an end to a cholera or typhus epidemic.
Dr. Hanna Węgrzynek, a research fellow at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw states that it was believed that epidemics such as cholera and typhus were the result of curses put upon communities as Divine punishment for collective sins. The Schvartze Chasuneh ceremony perfomed in the cemetery would curry favor with the dead and through their intercession, induce the Creator to halt the epidemic.
Yael Strom, the author of “The Wedding that Saved a Town” who is a violinist and Klezmer composer learned about this custom from a Jew in Ropschitz, Poland, when he visited that city.
Together with his illustrator, Jenya Prosmitsky he features in their book, two orphans – hardworking Shmuel and good hearted Shaindel Rifka of Pinsk whose Chuppah takes place in the cemetery of that city in Belarus. The wedding is arranged by Rabbi Yamferd who summons Reb Yiske with his Klezmer band to perform at the cemetery.
The entire Jewish community of Pinsk appears at the graveyard for the Chupah after which they dance until morning among the Kevorim and as a result, the cholera epidemic comes to a miraculous end.
Although the aforementioned story is fiction, history has recorded a number of Jewish weddings that actually took place in a number of Jewish cemeteries in diverse towns such as Bulgarai, Kamenetz, Lvov, Lublin, Chelm, Apt, Gorlitz, Plosnk, Podolia, Ryki, Zjarki, Berditchev and Volhynia, as well as in Yerushalayim.
In 1866 a a terrible cholera epidemic spread in Jerusalem. Eliyahu Porush in his Zichronos Rishonim, (page 39) describes the Chupah of Rabbi Yosef Lutziner (Danker) and his Kallah performed in the cemetery of Har Hazeisim as a segulah to stop the epidemic. It was attended by a tremendous crowd and was very joyful.
In the memorial book (Sefer Zichronos) of the town of Apt (Opatow) it is recorded how a rabbi was instrumental in saving the community during a cholera epidemic in 1892.
Every few days, more and more Jews of the community of six thousand would die from the plague.
When the people approached the Rav about the calamity, he replied, “Let’s try a wedding in the Jewish cemetery. Perhaps the departed will intervene with Hashem to help.”
A shidduch was made. The chosson was a young man who was supported by the community. His job was to clean the communal bath and keep the fire going in the mikve so that the water would always be hot. He lived in the hekdesh, a room where the Chevra Kaddisha kept the implements for performing the Taharas.
The Kallah was called a kalechdike yesoime, a round orphan, because she had absolutely no relatives. In exchange for a place to sleep by the furnace, daily bread, and a few hand-me-down clothes, she did the housework for a well-to-do family. She was agreeable to the Shidduch.
A notice was circulated in the shuls and Yeshivas that a Shvartze Chasune would be held in the cemetery at a designated time. Everyone was required to attend.
The epidemic subsided shortly after the wedding
The artist Mayer Kirschenblatt of Apt (1918-2009) put this story on canvas in his painting entitled “The Black Wedding in the Cemetery, ca. 1892, April 1996.[See Pix]
Kirschenblatt’s paintings serve as a window to Polish Jewry. He and his daughter Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett published in 2007 “They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood before the Holocaust” (University of California Press in conjunction with the Judah L Magnes Museum.)
Meyer Kirschenblatt’s paintings have been featured in the Magnes Museum of Berkely, California,and are part of a traveling exhibit to the Jewish Museum of New York, Amsterdam and Polin, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
The core exhibit of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw was designed by Mayer Kirschenblatt’s daughter, the aforementioned Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, a folklorist who is on the faculty of New York University.
Adam Kessler who created a blog entitled “Sefer Toldot Adam” brings several interesting sources about schvartze weddings.
In Sefer Gorlice: HaKehilla Bevinyana Vechurbana (Memorial Book of Gorlice, Its Establishment and Destruction), a Mordechai Weinfeld relates the following account in Hebrew entitled “Chupah Bavais Kevaros” (Chupah in the Cemetery).
“ A plague broke out in our city in 1896 and a segulah to stop the plague was to make a match between a couple with disabilities in the cemetery.
There was in our village an impaired young man by the name of Lazer’ka Wassertrager, a water carrier, who delivered buckets of water to homes from the well in Dvorzhetska. He was paired off with a disabled young woman and all of the Jewish townspeople joined together in happiness. They went out in a great procession; at their head was a row of Cossacks on horses escorting them to the cemetery to a chuppah that they had prepared for them there. After the chuppah they returned in a procession to a great communal meal for the couple and guests at R’ Yaakov Lang z”l’s home, and two large rooms in the cellar of the home of R’ Shemuel Aleksandroff z”l.
Motel Michelson in the Yizkorbuch for the Jews of Płonśk (Sefer Plonsk v’Hasevivah Neistat ) p. 135, describes the terrible cholera epidemic there: “The situation continued for several months and when prayers did not help, the village elders decided to take more drastic measures: erecting a chuppah in the cemetery. The chosson was Michel,the cripple, who sat all of his days in a pile of rags next to R’ Hirsch Kalman Tzvirczadlo and the Kallah was Tamar from a distinguished family in the town but she had suffered from the disease of miscarriage – both of them were of advanced age. The Chuppah was arranged in the cemetery at noon and nearly everyone left alive participated, except for those in quarantine. The wedding ceremony and party were celebrated with great pomp at the lumber warehouse of Kasman and Zilberfnig next to the study hall of R. Yitzchok Kohen. From the boards and planks for sale there, they assembled tables and benches.
It seems the plague subsided soon after but Motel Michelson ( a seemingly apikoros) does not attribute this to the wedding. He writes: “I am skeptical as to whether the wedding of Michel helped somewhat in slowing down the plague. It is reasonable to me that the autumn air lowered the intense heat of the summer and thereby brought incrementally a conclusion to the plague that had struck down hundreds of Jewish victims in our village.”
Kessler informs us that there was a special prayer recited at a wedding that takes place in the cemetery. He quotes a Yaakov Koretz who transmitted the nusach of a special Tefillah.
“Avinu bashamayim, Bezechus Hazug Hatzair Batel Mei’Alienu es HaGezeirah Hara’ah. Dai, Teiatzer HaMageifah! Shlach Lanu Yeshuah Ve’geulah.”
“Our Father in Heaven, in the merit of this young union… nullify the evil decree that has been issued against us, enough, stop the plague! Send us salvation and redemption…”
.There is even a Teshuva relating to the “Schvartze Wedding” Rabbi Sholom Mordechai Schwadron, the grandfather of the famous darshan by that name has in his Sefer “Shut (She’elot Utshuvot) HaMaharsham” a Teshuva to a Rabbi Dov Berel Brimmer. The latter wanted to know if it was permissible for a Chosson who was a Kohen to get married in a section of the cemetery that had no graves yet. In order to try to combat the terrible plague of Cholera, the Maharsham permits this “Schvartze wedding,” where the Chosson is a Kohen.
Special wedding invitations sent to leading rabbis illustrate that this custom was a hallowed one.
It is interesting to note that the Library of Congress has three paintings which are different views of the same scene, a “Schvartze Wedding” on Har Hazeisim. See Pix
In a May 22, 2014 article posted on Arutz Sheva, entitled “Funeral or Wedding?” its author, Lenny Ben-David discusses the aforementioned three paintings found in the Library of Congress which titles do not depict their true event, a wedding on Har Hazeisim,.
In Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe by Glenn Dynner, there is a chapter entitled Shvartze Khasene- Black Weddings by Polish Jews, written by Dr. Hanna Wegrzynek.
Dr. Wegrzynek quotes the Sept. 1, 1892, Gazeta Lubelska which had described two Jewish weddings that had taken place the previous day in Lublin’s Jewish cemetery which activities were taken to halt the typhus epidemic raging in the city.
She highlights another article published more than two decades later in early March 1916, in Dziennik Nardowy (National Daily News) of Piotrkow Trybunalski. The article seems to have been written by a Polish anti-Semite.
“Yesterday something occurred in our town to the truly shocking ignorance prevailing within the local Jewish population. Among the Jewish masses in provincial towns in 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 by Jews 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 who did not know each other before. Both are poor. Several hundred rubles was collected from the local Jews and a wedding was organized. From this amount 200 rubles were set aside as 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’ towards staving off the epidemic”
Hanna writes the same report appeared in two more Polish newspapers, in Cracow and in Posen.
It is not certain when the custom of “black weddings” originated but it is believed that sometime during the Chlemnitzki massacres (1648).
The term “black wedding” had an additional usage. It also referred to a ceremony for a bride who had died suddenly. The dead Kallah had a right to the ceremony which was supposed to bring joy to her soul.
The first documented Schvartze wedding is believed to have taken place in Berditchev in 1771 and were still being practiced during the Holocaust.
The following is a February 12, 1942 entry in the diary of the Warsaw Judenrat head, Adam Czerniakow:
“Yesterday I was inoculated against typhus a second time. My blood test showed a negative reaction, which meant that I could fall ill with typhus. A few months ago the rabbis proposed to me that a wedding should be celebrated at the cemetery. In their opinion this would help combat the epidemic. The scientists who test the blood say that neither a positive test nor a negative test is authoritative and that they are to help as much as the rabbis mentioned above.”
One of the last recorded black weddings took place in the Jewish cemetery of Zelechow in early 1942, in the hope of halting the terrible typhus epidemic in the ghetto. Members of the kehillah led the chasan and kallah to the cemetery. According to local custom, aside from the chuppah they also buried sheimos, scraps of old holy books. Afterwards, refreshments were served and music was played at the office of the Judenrat.
Nowadays “black weddings” aren’t held anymore. Fortunately, with the advent of modern medicine and vaccines, the segulah is no longer necessary, and has been relegated to the dustbin of history.
By Pearl Herzog
17 IYAR 5778 | MAY 2, 2018
Ami Magazine