Traveling to the wedding in Susiya took over two hours. We dropped off our driver's daughter in Kiryat Arba, as she was attending a wedding in nearby Hebron.

The young couple had chosen the courtyard of the ancient synagogue of Susiya for their wedding.



"My friend insisted that her wedding was to take place in the Tomb of the Patriarchs," she grinned.


Bringing the ancient past and the present together at joyous occasions of bar- or bat-mitzvahs, weddings and circumcisions has become popular among our religious youth.
Susiya, an ancient Biblical city recently excavated, is in the south Hebron Hills. The young couple had chosen the courtyard of the ancient synagogue of Susiya for their wedding celebration. The bride and her family are from Gush Katif. The groom and his family are from the new settlement of Susiya built adjacent to the archaeological site of the Jewish city created after the destruction of the Second Temple. One can still see the cisterns, the wine and olive presses.


The synagogue boasts a magnificent mosaic floor. A niche facing Jerusalem once held the Torah Ark. The wedding canopy was built in the courtyard of this ancient edifice. White satin curtains flowed from the roof of the canopy, with attached golden sunflowers giving a most poignant backdrop as the sun sank slowly into the rocky, barren hills of Hebron.
Today, the blooming settlement of Susiya stands close by. The young groom's family lives in Susiya, the bride did her National Service there. They met, they fell in love, and that evening the ancient and the new joined together to create this glorious wedding. The groom, wearing a prayer shawl under the canopy, seemed remarkably similar to his father in law - two red-bearded men.


As the parents escorted the groom to the wedding canopy, the young yeshiva students danced and sang. Flute music accompanied the bride and her parents, with her friends singing joyfully behind her. Her aisle was not a white carpet, but rather the stones and pebbles of this Biblical site.
We were told to wear comfortable, heavy-soled shoes and to bring warm jackets. The desert hills of Hebron are cold in the mornings and evenings. The days are hot.
The breaking of the glass reminded us of the destruction of the Temple. The entire crowd of wedding guests began to sing "If I forget thee, O' Jerusalem." The melody seemed to echo through the hills. Our bride had come from the destroyed communities of Gush Katif. The groom came from the re-establishment of a once-thriving Biblical city


How exquisite it is to watch our young men and women.

now in ruins. The story of Israel - from destruction to re-establishment - was reflected in the glowing faces of our young bride and groom.
We met under a tent for a festive meal. The people of Gush Katif sat together enjoying these moments of being once again close to one another. We are a dispersed community and each happy occasion brings us together for hugs, kisses, to tell a story.
How exquisite it is to watch our young men and women demanding to be married in places where once our forefathers trod. The past and the present, the ancient and the new. There are those who say we have no claim to these lands. Our young people with their traditional lifestyles are the proud Jews who reclaim that which is ours.