When she became
engaged last year,
Renee Brachfeld
knew she wanted a
special, handcrafted me-
mento from friends and
family, something she
could hang up on the wall
and treasure always. But she
also knew it was unlikely her friends would
stitch her a wedding quilt— something that
was customary among many non-Jews in At-
lanta, Ga., where she'd lived since 1982.
So Brachfeld, a professional storyteller,
came up with the idea of asking friends and
family to contribute to a handmade chuppah,
or wedding canopy. She and her fiance, Mark
Novak, mailed out 20 12-inch muslin squares
before their July 4 wedding, asking guests to
decorate them. Later, they hired a seamstress
to sew the squares together.
The resulting patchwork chuppah was
"stunning, perfect in every way," says Brach-
feld. Guests chose a variety of ways to fill the
squares, from transferring a color photograph
of themselves onto the fabric, to writing po-
ems in glittery gold paint. A dark purple bor-
der around each square pulled the pieces
together both literally and visually, as did a
border of purple, blue and green fabric sur-
rounding the entire canopy.
"To be married under it really felt like be-
ing totally surrounded by love, because we
had the chuppah above us and our friends and
family around us," says Brachfeld, now a
Washington, D.C. resident.
As unusual as it might sound, Brachfeld
and Novak's chuppah isn't a complete anom-
aly, according to Michael Berkowicz, presi-
dent of the American Guild of Judaic Art.
These days, it's not uncommon to see chup-
pot made from such innovative materials as
ribbons. Or flowers. Or old wedding dresses,
or tablecloths, or ties. Or even a parachute at-
tached to helium balloons.
Indeed, when it comes to raising a wedding
canopy, the sky, it seems, is the limit. Artists
and craftspeople, and just plain people are turn-
ing their attention to this once-humble item
traditionally made from either white satin or
a tallis— and creating modern interpretations.
The results are often beautiful and original,
and most definitely personal.
Chuppot are "certainly going beyond what
we normally expect," says Berkowicz. "It's not
that anything goes, it's just that other ap-
proaches are being explored. This notion that

Alyssa Gabbay is a Pittsburgh - based writer.

we've been doing some-
thing one way for cen-
turies no longer means
that we have to continue
doing it that way."
The demand for
handmade chuppot
stems from a greater in-
terest in Jewish culture,
according to Potomac,
Md. artist Reeva Shaffer.
"People have more
leisure time these days;
more time to think
about who they are and
where they came from,
and this is a way to bring
Jewish beauty into their
lives and homes," says
Shaffer, who has made
colorful custom silk
chuppot for the past four
years.

ike most ritual ob-
jects in the
Jewish wedding, the chuppah is
chock-full of symbolism. Translated as "that
which covers or floats above," it represents
the home, a garment, and a bedcovering, as
well as the tents of nomadic ancestors, ac-
cording to Anita Diamanf s 'The New Jewish
Wedding." The covering also symbolizes
God's protective presence, while its openness
on all sides indicates that the love the couple
shares is not exclusive, but embraces the en-
tire community.
The chuppah can be traced back to Tal-
mudic times, when the groom's father set up

Six panels, one for each of the Gershen
family children, attach to this center piece
of a "family free" chuppah created by
Pennsylvanian Elsa Wachs. The names
and birthdays of each child are embroi-
dered in English and in Hebrew along the
perimeter. Below, a detail of a brightly
hued silk chuppah hand-painted by
Potomac artist Shirley Waxman.

a tent in the courtyard of his home. There, the
marriage would be consummated. In later
years, a covering was used during outdoor
ceremonies to "create a more modest and
sanctified space, separated from the 'market-
place,' " Diamant writes. And in the 16th cen-
tury, probably in
Poland, a "portable
canopy held aloft by
four poles came into
vogue." There are no
halachic requirements
regarding the chup-
pah; traditionally, how-
ever, it should be a
temporary structure.
And custom dictates
that wherever it is
erected, it creates a sa-
cred space.
Often, the impulse
to create a personal,
handmade chuppah
comes from a mem-

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