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Photo by Lesley Pearl

DETROIT Im°"•••"mmim""'

Natalya and Igor Moldayskay under their chuppah.

Soviet Couples Remarry
In Religious Ceremony

AMY J. MEHLER

Staff Writer

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S

ofia Breverman snuck
inside her cousin's
Leningrad apartment
more than 30 years, ago to
watch a Jewish wedding.
That was the first and last
time Mrs. Breverman saw a
chuppah — until last Sun-
day.
Bella and David Pugach,
who left Minsk two years
ago, never attended a Jewish
wedding. Their wedding
Sunday was their first.
Both were among nine
Soviet Jewish couples who
remarried Sept. 1 in an out-
door, Orthodox Jewish wed-
ding at the new Charlotte M.
Rothstein park overlooking
1-696.
Mrs. Breverman and her
husband, Shlomo, married
the first time in a simple,
_ Russian civil ceremony. But
Sunday, more than 35 years
later, the pair were as ex-
cited as newlyweds.
"This time is special be-
cause it is religious and Jew-
ish," said Mrs. Breverman,
who wore a white, filmy veil
and a creamy, silk chiffon
gown.
Sandy Schore, who
adopted the Breverman
family through the Family-
to- Family program, escorted
Mrs. Breverman to the
chuppah. Each couple stood
beneath their own canopy
and were married in-
dividually by nine separate
rabbis.
Mrs. Pugach and her hus-
band, David, married 40
years, said they remember
signing a piece of gaper and
going home.
"It didn't make the mar-
riage holy," said Mr.
Pugach, 67, looking proud in
a new suit. "I always wanted
to get married in a Jewish

wedding like my father and
his father before him."
The couple, who have two
married daughters and four
grandchildren, hope their
children follow their exam-
ple.
"In America, they don't
have to wait as long as we
did," Mrs. Pugach said.
All the couples spent the
last seven months learning
the laws of taharat
mishpacha, religious family
law. The night before the
wedding, all the brides went

"This time was
special because it
was religious and
Jewish."
Sofia Breverman

to the mikvah, the ritual
bath, in accordance with
Jewish law.
"Although the couples
were married in civil
ceremonies in the Soviet
Union, religious oppression
did not allow them to wed
according to Jewish law,"
said Rochel Kagan, spokes-
woman for the Detroit
chapter of Friends of Refu-
gees of Eastern Europe,
which sponsored the wed-
ding.
An Orthodox Jewish wed-
ding isn't valid without
chuppah and kidushin, a
bridal canopy, two kosher
male witnesses and a ki-
nyan, the giving of some-
thing of value, usually a
ring.
"The whole community
came out to see the wed-
ding," Mrs. Kagan said.
"You don't usually get to
feel like machatanim, family,
at a strangers' wedding.
Marriage is the foundation ,
of all Jewish life, said Rabbi
Elimelech Silberberg, ex-