century,
marriages were arranged, dowries prepared and elaborate ketubahs created.
Parents of the bride could breathe a sigh of relief. A daughter had been married
off. Parents of the groom would hope for an heir apparent, a son, a pasha.
In the United States, in New York, in the Greek Jewish
communities of the Lower East Side, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, initially,
for at least the first generation, the old world traditions would continue and
spouses chosen from within the community.
These customs, however, were short-lived. The Holocaust would
decimate most of Greek Jewry and, in the aftermath, weddings took on even more
significance. They were a sign that the Jewish community of Greece, though
fragmented, would continue, and that the flame had not been extinguished.
In the United States, assimilation slowly erased the distinctive
customs of the Greek Jewish world. The children would make their own marriages,
for better or worse. Greek-speaking Romaniotes would marry Spanish-speaking
Sephardic Jews and, even, Ashkenazim.
“Something Old, Something New,” an exhibit on weddings in Greece
and within the Greek-Jewish communities of New York, celebrates a time long
gone, a time sweetly remembered.
First, a brief explanation about the alphabetical arrangement of
these pictures and a word of thanks to the hundreds who sent in precious photos.
The pictures are alphabetized (in most instances) according to the Greek (Romaniote
or Sephardic) surname. If one married an Ashkenazi, our apologies, or, as we
say, “ti na kano?”.
Most of the pictures were taken in the United States. When the
weddings took place in Greece, a special notation has been made.
File 1 - Pictures alphabetically A - C
File 2 - Pictures alphabetically C - E
File 3 - Pictures alphabetically E - L
File 4 - Pictures alphabetically M - N
File 5 - Pictures alphabetically N - Z
