Forgotton Whinsy Tara Thiel

on his right side. I researched the customs for a Jewish wedding and discovered her actions were a symbolic action to God building the world in seven days and a feeling of Title wholeness. From the balcony, I couldn’t hear, nor could I understand the language, but like my own wedding, a form of prayer or blessing appeared to take place. Author

We were mesmerized by the ceremony. Our eyes followed the kallahand chatan when we noticed two cups. From the distance of our balcony, I struggled to hear the rabbi speak but, when he began, I immediately perked. I listened to him as he spoke an ancient language--I couldn’t understand the words but I felt the holiness of the meaning. After his blessing, the couple drank from the cup. I admired the beauty of this scene. I was fascinated, too, by the language and the custom. In my fascination, I discovered the cups housed wine, and wine is precious in Jewish tradition for it symbolizes joy--an association with kiddush, the sanctification prayer. A Jewish marriage, kiddushin, is the sanctification of a man and woman to each other.

I smiled at my husband and I remained silent when the chatanturned toward the kallah. There was a breath of quiet before I heard the chatanspeak. Based off my research, he slid a simple gold ring on his kallah. In a traditional Jewish wedding, the chatandeclares to the kallah, “Behold, you are betrothed unto me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel.” Unlike my own wedding, where my husband placed my wedding band on my left ring finger, the chatanplaced the ring on the kallah’sright forefinger and the couple was fully married. A glass was placed on the floor, and the chatanshattered it with his foot.

It was hard to imagine what the future would bring for us--the newly married couple, and my husband and I expecting our first child. We waited until the newly married couple disappeared into the hotel, the yichud room, before we returned to our room. I learned that beauty and life exist where I least expect it—in this case, that beauty rests in the memory of a Jewish wedding. A short moment later, we heard music playing from the courtyard. I slightly pushed back the curtain and stared down, the couple entered for a mitzvah, a celebration of joy. I walked away from the window taking this memory with me, as if in the short time I had somehow come to know this newly married couple.

Story

Mountain Hare, Saddleworth Moor

Simon Zonenblick

Where the moor is cleft Into a gulleyed curve I see you spring Emerge electric-nerved From a corridor of cottongrass Fur white as the chalky clouds Fat in this February sky You dip and flip mid-leap A bending quaver Tumbling of jumps Through humps of heather draped In snow and crowberry, Thick, rain-gulping mosses Cobbling the clough Gorse golden as a spiky sun Svelte frost-wanderer Rippling through fallen leaves Your winter pelt looks soft as swallows' down As you forage through the frigid vista Of the owl's eyeline The hungry heartlands of the hawk Misted sleetscape, winter-stitched in scrawls Of brittle branches, reed and rock. You dart at angles, Waxy-eyed Stop to sniff an air Which stinks of danger Pause as still as a stopped clock Lurch into undergrowth And your coat of milkwhite mint Melts into the moor.