have their families with them," Shaffer says.
Shirley Waxman, a fiber artist who also lives
in Maryland, fell into professional chuppah-
making by accident 10 years ago when her
engaged daughter asked her to make a
canopy. Today, she makes about 10 heirloom
canopies a year. Most are handpainted, em-
broidered silk; many feature three-dimen-
sional designs. A recent one, made for a pair
of musicians and writers, depicted a waterfall
that carried musical instruments and books.

"Ani le Jodi
ve dodi Ir is
inscribed on
this silk
chuppah,
made by
Maryland
artists Reeva
Shaffer and
Shoshana
Enosh.

Another chuppah includ-
ed a football emblem for
a man who loved the
sport.
"I think the sameness
of manufactured things
has gotten to people,"
says Waxman, who
charges from $800 to
$1,000 for her chuppot. "We live in such a
heavily populated world where so much is the
same that there's a hunger for that individu-
ality. People are coming for it and are willing
to pay for it."
Couples who don't want to shell out the
bucks for an heirloom chuppah can still have
a chuppah with a personal touch. Diamant
suggests using a tallis that belonged to a
grandfather, or a shawl or piece of fine lace
owned by a female relative. Some brides give
their grooms a tall is as a wedding gift and then
marry under it. The prayer shawl works par-
ticularly well symbolically because of its 32
bunches of tzitzit, or fringes. The Hebrew
word for heart, lev, equals 32 under Gematria,
the system in which every Hebrew letter is
assigned a numerical meaning. Moreover, the
tallis' 613 fringes represent the command-
ments the Torah requires Jewish adults to per-
form.
"It has nice symbolism as far as establish-
ing a Jewish home and respecting the tradi-
tion," Diamant says.

D

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