Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2014
Ever since the question was first posed during the time of the House of Hillel and Shammai, there has always been an issue about how one dances before the bride. The action of Rabbi Aha who took the bride on his shoulders and danced with her exacerbated the problem seventyfold for other rabbis asked if they too could dance with a bride on their shoulder. Rabbi Aḥa actually reawakened the question and raised it to a new level: Does one even dance before or with the bride at all?
By turning to examples in the different Jewish communities including the Babylonian of the fourth century where Rabbi Aḥa lived, the European communities of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and also in Israel today, several different ideas as to how to dance before the bride emerge. These examples are to be found in various written sources such as the Talmud, the Shulḥan Arukh, Responsa literature and books by rabbis, as well as memoirs. The Talmud, written in the first half of the third century, is of great value for the study of Jewish history, law, theology, ethics and folklore. Examples of dance also appear there. Dance descriptions also appear in other commentaries by later rabbis, such as the definitive sixteenth century code by Rabbi Joseph Caro, the Shulḥan Arukh. Responsa literature too, provides us with dance information though it is a special genre of literature embracing every aspect of Jewish life, usually responses by rabbis to legal questions posed by individuals and communities. It is rarely an organized or systematic body of writings and of the several centuries when this vast body was produced, only a few hundred survive. Nonetheless, dance and questions of behavior during dancing at weddings are in evidence.
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