As the public aspect of a central institution of Jewish-Israeli society – marriage, weddings – reflect on and mirror the commonly held view of Israel as a family oriented society. Weddings feature significantly in mainstream Israeli culture and a whole industry, based on an economy of mutual obligation and exchange, but equally a desire for conspicuous consumption, for indulgence and sensuous display, has evolved around the Jewish-Israeli wedding, scripting a mainstream popular mass cultural text that is taken as a yardstick against which to measure one’s own good taste and thus to position oneself in Israeli society. Israeli Bene Israel Transnational Spaces and the Aesthetics of Community Identity 31
weddings are, however, not only sites of conspicuous consumption, but also sites at which issues of identity and community are explored and reflected upon through embodied aesthetic performance. Indeed the events surrounding the institution of marriage are a means for exploring an imaginary past as a sen-suous display of performed knowledge and aesthetics, tradition and popular culture. And clearly this is a key moment in which cultural and diasporic memory are mobilized and embodied. Particular wedding rites, often a variation of or resembling local practice in the diaspora, are also included in the Israeli wedding pantheon. These cluster, in particular, around the pre-wedding henna ceremony. Ceremonial rites of this kind are performed throughout the Middle East and South Asia and the Bene Israel also have their own particular version of the henna – the mehndi– which is practiced widely in contemporary Israel.
The enthusiastic involvement of the Israeli-born Bene Israel generation in what may be referred to as “ethnic” ritual raises, in my view, a number of interesting questions. Weil noted in the 1970s that themehndi, which she de-scribed as highly Indian in flavour, was persisting in spite of its apparent
“anomaly” in the context of Israeli society. In particular, she thought it sur-prising that themehndipersisted in view of the fact that it was not based on Jewish religion (Weil 1977: 226). It seems mistaken, in my view, to conceive of the mehndias an anomaly within contemporary Israeli society, unless one wishes to make a political statement that only purely “Jewish” (based onHalacha) tra-ditions are acceptable. It seems rather that the mehndimay be regarded as a henna party of a distinctive kind, with henna ceremonies being performed by many Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern, North African and Asian descent).
Moreover, most immigrant groups in Israel have customs and traditions which are not necessarily rooted inHalachictraditions. And as expounded in a book on the Christian effect on Jewish life, there has been plenty of cultural borrowing over the centuries among European Jews as well, a fact which is often either ignored or suppressed (Hilton 1994).
Marriage is a significant event for Bene Israel families and it may well be regarded as the most popular joyful ritual occasion celebrating “happiness” and
“joyfulness”. To elicit these desirable emotional states, a whole array of ritualized acts and sequences, both traditional-diasporic-, and contemporary-modern-Israeli, are drawn on. The ritualized activities and scenarios are taken from domains that are beyond the experience of everyday life as lived in Israel, though some genres may be consumed or performed as part of an everyday life. The cultural memory that is mobilized during wedding celebrations derives its magic from an imaginary diasporic past, while the magic derived from more modern themes is based on romance, modern fairy tales and western pop star culture, as well as from Indian TV shows, soaps and in particular commercial-ized Indian popular cinema, often in the form of Bollywood and its various Gabriele Shenar 32
cultural products. In my view it is precisely because these domains need imagining, that they are in a sense beyond the reach of everyday life, means that they are imbued with the “magical force”, that is, they need to be staged in a performance that has an affecting presence.
Bene Israel families usually opt for a mainstream Israeli wedding reception party, which is modelled after the western style “white wedding”, in one of Israel’s popularolam shmahot(entertainment halls). The actual marriage cer-emony may be performed either in an Indian synagogue or at the venue of the wedding reception party. In some cases, this may be related to the limited number of seats available in a small synagogue building, but when a Bene Israel marries out of the community, this also offers an agreeable solution to both families, since they will not need to decide in which of the ethnic synagogues the marriage ceremony should take place. While many of the wedding celebrations resemble mainstream Israeli practice, and are based on the script provided by the venue, an Indian wedding reception party is nevertheless often interlaced with the performance of Indian music or dance. An especially appealing feature of Bene Israel weddings is the performance of the wedding song Yonati (my dove) which depicts the bride as a dove whose splendour is praised. The song is a love poem written by Israel ben Moses Najara (1555 – 1625), which is sung to an Indian tune (Isenberg 1988: 135). A Bene Israel groom is expected to sing the song solo standing on thebimah(central podium in a synagogue) with the bride walking slowly towards him, but wedding guests often join in the song, mainly because of its huge popularity. The song may also form an integral part of Bene Israel wedding anniversary celebrations in Israel. While some wedding re-ception parties feature classical Indian dance, it is, however, more often the Bollywood genre, performed by local Indian-Israeli performers as well as wedding guests, that predominates.
By contrast to the wedding reception party, the Bene Israelmehndi, like other henna parties in Israel, too, is a more private event for family and close friends.
Many Bene Israel families in contemporary Israel opt now for only onemehndi party, although some will insist on separate venues for bride and groom and in some cases two ethnically different henna parties, for example one Moroccan and one Indian, are performed at the same venue. The Bene Israelmehndimay vary in length and intensity, but follows a basic script which includes themalida, the wedding procession, the dressing up of bride and groom as king and queen, which includes the blessing of silver chains as well as the sherra (wedding crown), the actual henna ceremony, various acts of gift giving as well as the blessing of the bride and groom with money and the throwing of rice grains over the shoulders of the couple to keep evil spirits away. These ritual procedures are followed by a festive meal as well as plenty of merry making, often according to Bollywood tunes. At a Bene Israelmehndi, the bride always wears a green sari, Bene Israel Transnational Spaces and the Aesthetics of Community Identity 33
including brides who marry into a Bene Israel family, and the henna is applied on the index finger, rather than on the palm.
During the Bene Israelmehndi, the couple is ritually elevated to the status of queen and king for one night before they enter the reality of marriage. The custom of dressing up the bride and groom in the manner described above is obviously reminiscent of Hindu (and Indian Muslim) weddings. However, while the theme of queen and bride is obviously derived from Hindu or, more gen-erally, South Asian customs, it ties in with the position allocated to children in Israeli society, too. Kehimkar reported that at the end of the 18thcentury the custom was dying out among the Bene Israel, mainly because the Cochini and Baghdadi Jews in India had condemned the practice as pagan in origin. In defence of this traditional practice and quoting Psalm 45, verse 13 – 14, Ke-himkar suggested the possibility that the Bene Israel wedding adornments may have been inspired by biblical readings.
13 The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace
Her clothing is woven with gold
14 She shall be brought to the king in robes of many colours.
Still, he conceded that the flowers hanging over the bride and groom’s faces are not directly mentioned in Psalms (Kehimkar 1937: 141 – 142). It seems a sig-nificant reflection to the power of aesthetics that even though the practice was reported to be on the decline in India at the end of the 18thcentury, it is still widely practiced, and indeed forms an integral part of the Bene Israel henna ceremony as it is celebrated in contemporary Israel.
Indian-wedding suppliers cater for the special requirements of an Indian henna party, providing decorations, palanquins, tents as well assherras (wed-ding crowns). Business cards of local Israeli suppliers often feature Bollywood stars such as Aishwarya Rai rather than a traditional Bene Israel bride in her green sari. Members of the immigrant generation often note that some of the ritual sequences, as well as some of the ritual objects, such as, for example, the palanquin in which the pride and the groom are carried during the procession, were not actually part of the Bene Israelmehndiin India, but were only used in Hindu weddings. Moreover, guests and performers at themehndiwear different styles of South Asian garments: sari, shalvar, kameezas well as other, often Bollywood-inspired, garments. Indeed far from being a mere traditional dia-sporic complex, the Bene Israelmehndihas undergone several changes within Israeli society, not least because its aesthetics and ambiance is increasingly inspired by transnational and globalized flows of commercialized Indian pop-ular culture, in particpop-ular as derived from poppop-ular Hindi cinema. It seems not Gabriele Shenar 34
farfetched, in my view, to claim that the Bene Israelmehndiin Israel has to some extent undergone a process of “Bollywoodization”. This also reflects, to some degree, contemporary changes in the aesthetics of weddings among India’s middle class, as well as current trends among Indian diasporic communities around the globe. Moreover, the Bene Israelmehndihas become an integral part of Israel’s wedding industry alongside other Mizrahi-style henna parties, and this is reflected in the fact that themehndiis now often referred to as “Indian henna”.