With peak summer wedding season upon us, Jewish couples are preparing for marriage ceremonies that will conclude with the ancient part of the service known widely as “the breaking of the glass.” Many a groom’s heel will crush to pieces a small drinking glass wrapped in a handkerchief or other material.
Unfortunately, far too many couples do not know where this tradition comes from.
What drives so many Jews, even those who are seemingly detached from the community and may even be marrying non-Jews, to nevertheless want to break the glass?
Too many popular wedding blogs and other online sources that young Jews read often provide incorrect or nonsensical reasons that fail to capture the true beauty of this tradition.
The fact is, breaking the glass does not easily fit with the concept of being a fully acculturated American. It evokes separatism and attachment to a foreign land. We break the glass at our weddings as a sign to God, to ourselves and to our wedding guests that although our wedding is a day of extreme joy, we cannot enjoy complete happiness as long as Jerusalem and its Holy Temple are not yet fully rebuilt.
At many traditional weddings, when the guests shout “Mazel Tov,” the groom recites this verse from Psalm 137: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not make Jerusalem above my greatest joy.”
Nearly 2,000 years after the Romans destroyed it, we still mourn the loss of our Holy Temple. We grieve the destruction of the actual, physical building. We should not be at peace with what has happened over the last 25 years on the Temple Mount.
The website of the Temple Mount Sifting Project explains this abuse with remarkable clarity: “It began in 1999 when the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement conducted illegal renovations on the Temple Mount and disposed of over 9,000 tons of dirt mixed with invaluable archaeological artifacts. Though Israeli antiquities law requires a salvage excavation before construction at archaeological sites, this illegal bulldozing destroyed innumerable artifacts—veritable treasures that would have provided a rare glimpse of the region’s rich history.”
We also grieve over the fact that the Judaism we practice today is very different because a Holy Temple does not stand in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. No matter how many Jews live in Jerusalem, no matter how many yeshivahs flourish there, no matter how beautiful the modern city of Jerusalem is, Jewish destiny remains unfulfilled as long as we are without our Holy Temple. And that is why we break the glass.
A beautiful practice from the Yemenite Jewish community, which has since expanded worldwide, is to place a small amount of ashes on the groom’s head as a further sign of mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temple.
With Birthright Israel, gap-year programs and Israel trips for mothers, there are now more opportunities than ever for American Jews to visit Israel. These programs all bring their participants to visit the Western Wall (Kotel), though they seldom focus on the ways Jews have mourned the destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple each day through prayer and ritual.
Perhaps the time has come to consider investing in the relationship between young married couples and Jerusalem, the same way that Diaspora Jewry invests in Birthright.
Some artists preserve the broken glass in Lucite or other artistic forms. The verse “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem” on such a gift is more than just an investment in helping young Jewish married couples stay connected to the Jewish people. It is an investment in Jerusalem itself.
Israel’s national poet, Uri Zvi Greenberg [1896-1981], once wrote: “Whomever controls the Temple Mount controls all of the Land of Israel.”
