(AP) _ More than 30,000 guests celebrated the wedding of a Hasidic prince in Jerusalem Tuesday.
Police closed off the Kiryat Belz neighborhood where Aharon Mordechai Rokeah wed Sara Lea Lemberger, 18, in an arranged marriage.
The 18-year-old groom is the only son of Rebbe Yissachar Dov Rokeah, head of the Belz Hasidic dynasty, nearly wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust and resurrected in Israel.
Belz spokesman Yisrael Eichler said being able to celebrate in such large numbers was itself a victory over the Nazis - ''It's the sweetest revenge there is.''
The Belz communities of Ukraine were eradicated in World War II and many followers died in the Treblinka death camp.
About 6,000 guests came from abroad. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres attended.
Staunchly observant Jews, the Belz require women and men to celebrate separately. Eichler said closed-circuit TV was set up in 11 neighborhood halls so women could watch the dancing and festive meal served male guests by more than 800 waiters.
He refused to estimate the cost of the wedding.
The male guests celebrated in a tent measuring about 460 feet by 265 feet, Israel television said.
It said 130,000 meals and 100,000 bottles of soft drinks also were prepared for the poor. Jewish tradition decrees that no wedding-crasher be turned away.
The recent wedding celebration of the heir to the Hasidic dynasty of Belz was probably the biggest ever held in Jerusalem. But this being Israel, it was also fraught with religious, political and even culinary significance.
Thirty thousand people stood not so silently by as Aharon Mordechai Rokeah, the only son of the Grand Rabbi of Belz, Yisrael Dov Rokeah, wed Sara Lea Lemberger, widely described here as an outstanding student at a Belz high school who has not nearly the impressive rabbinical lineage of her new husband.
Both are 18. It was an arranged marriage; the couple met only three times before the big day.
A joyous atmosphere prevailed on the closed streets of Kiryat Belz, the Jerusalem neighborhood where the wedding was held the night of Aug. 3. There was singing and dancing and flag waving through most of the night.
The guest list ranged from the meekest of the Grand Rabbi's followers to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
For the Belz, the wedding was a public celebration of great importance. Children by the newlyweds would mean the continuation of a European dynasty handed down from one generation to the next for almost 300 years.
The Israeli press delighted in recording every detail: 3.1 tons of potatoes, 1.5 tons of gefilte fish, 20,000 eggs, 7,000 chickens and 200 security guards. . . . as Many Stomachs . . .
Several months ago, the organizers of the Belz wedding approached the American Company for Ice Cream Manufacture, the Israeli franchise for Ben & Jerry's, with an order for dessert for 30,000 people. "They wanted us to produce a pareve version of our ice cream," Avi Zinger, head of a local franchise, told The Jerusalem Report, a magazine. Pareve ice cream is made without dairy products so that it can be eaten with meat or chicken, in accordance with kosher standards.
"But we couldn't do that, because we can't manufacture Ben & Jerry's without the essential dairy ingredients," Mr. Zinger added, apparently referring to milk and cream.
Instead, his franchise began to produce on its own pareve ice cream in three flavors -- vanilla, chocolate and strawberry -- and labeled it especially for the Belz wedding. But it wasn't to be. "When the logistical nightmare of serving ice cream to 30,000 guests became clear, the whole idea was dropped," he said.
The guests ate cake instead. . . . and a Few Ill Wishes
Not everyone was happy with the Belz wedding.
The Satmar Hasidim, a rival that often criticizes the Belz's willingness to cooperate with the secular Israeli Government, expressed its outrage in posters hung in the religious neighborhoods the groups share.
"We strongly protest the wedding made by the Belz Hasidim, who invited and honored evil ones and seated at the head table those who continue to blaspheme the ways of the living God," the unsigned posters declared.
The posters also castigated Belz for allowing "unclean and banned" television to cover the event, and for allowing Belz followers to be interviewed on television about the wedding.
Belz followers, not wanting to diminish the community's joy, went about pulling down the signs soon after Satmar Hasidim put them up.
Suppose they threw a wedding and everybody came?
Well, that's just about what happened when more than 30,000 guests celebrated the wedding of a Hasidic prince in Jerusalem.
Police closed off the Kiryat Belz neighborhood where Aharon Mordechai Rokeah, 18, wed Sara Lea Lemberger, also 18, in an arranged marriage on Tuesday.
The two had met only once before, at their engagement party. The groom is the only son of Rebbe Yissachar Dov Rokeah, head of the Belz Hasidic dynasty, nearly wiped out in the Holocaust and resurrected in Israel.
Belz spokesman Yisrael Eichler said that being able to celebrate in such large numbers was itself a victory over the Nazis - "It's the sweetest revenge there is."
Staunchly observant Jews, the Belz require women and men to celebrate separately. Eichler said closed-circuit TV was set up in 11 halls so women could watch the dancing and festive meal served to male guests by more than 800 waiters in a tent measuring about 460 feet by 265 feet.
Israeli TV said 130,000 meals and 100,000 bottles of soft drinks were also prepared for the poor.
Jewish tradition decrees that no wedding crasher be turned away.
So now they tell us!
In 1993 60,000 people attended Aharon Mordechai Rokeach wedding in Jerusalem, making the world’s largest wedding.
The couple is part of two famous families in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community named Belz.
Aharon Mordechai was born to Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach and Sarah Hager, after 10 years of marriage. His birth was a cause for great celebration in the Belz Jewish dynasty, as it meant that the dynasty would continue to be passed down within the Rokeach family.
The wedding took place in the great Synagogue in Kiryat Balz, Jerusalem.
Although 60,000 people attended the ceremony – “only” 30,000 people were invited to the wedding reception.Decoration, food and drinks tend to be minimal in such large scale events.
More than 30,000 guests celebrated the wedding of a Hasidic prince in Jerusalem yesterday.
Police closed off the Kiryat Belz neighborhood where Aharon Mordechai Rokeah wed Sara Lea Lemberger, 18, in an arranged marriage.
The 18-year-old groom is the only son of Rebbe Yissachar Dov Rokeah, head of the Belz Hasidic dynasty, nearly wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust and resurrected in Israel.
The largest wedding ever held in the modern history of Israel ended joyously at dawn Wednesday, as the last of 30,000 guests departed from the 429-ft-long tent erected for the occasion in the Jerusalem Hasidic suburb of Kiryat Belz.
Aharon Mordechai, 17, only son and heir of Yissachar Dov Rokeach, the rebbe of Belz, had taken as his bride Sarah-Leah Lemberger, daughter of a devout but little-known rabbi, Shimon Lemberger, from the northern township of Kiryat Ata.
“She is her own ‘yichus’,” jubilant Belzer Hasidim told outsiders, referring to her family heritage. “Our rebbe wanted a student at one of our seminaries, who has all the qualities and merits.”
Sarah-Leah and her new husband were married by the groom’s grandfather, the 84-year-old rebbe of Vishnitz, on a huge platform-chupah under the stars.
Rabbi Eliezer Shach, 94, leader of the non Hasidic fervently Orthodox Jews in Israel, came from Bnei Brak to bless the young couple under the chupah.
For the Belz Hasidic community, the second largest in Israel after Ger, the wedding marked the high-point in a process of rapid — in the Hasidim’s view, miraculous — recovery from near-total annihilation in the Holocaust.
The previous rebbe, Aharon Rokeach, escaped to Palestine through Hungary, a broken man, to head a sect that had been reduced from tens of thousands to a few hundred.
Now the wedding brought together thousands of Hasidim from Belzer branches around the world and many thousands more in Israel itself.
One-and-a-half tons of gefilte fish and 39,000 gallons of soft drinks were among the items on the caterer’s menu in what was surely the largest meal eaten in the city since Temple times.
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