We’ve all been there. The music swells and fills the room. The chuppa stands, white and pure, at the head of the long aisle. The seats are filled with friends and family, expectantly waiting for the chosson and kallah. The doors open, the chosson walks in flanked by his parents. Arm in arm they escort him through the final stage of his youth. Step by step he proceeds towards his future.
Waiting under the chuppa, the chosson looks eagerly to the back of the room as the doors open once more and his kallah comes to him. Step by step, arm in arm with her parents, she goes shining into her future. Into their future together, establishing a new home for the shechina.
But that perfect vision is not always reality.
Sometimes it’s a man alone; beaten down but not broken, who strides alone to his destiny. It’s a woman who has chosen her own path; the path that leads to that home for the shechina.
Such is the case with Yaakov and Rochel*.
For him it’s a second marriage following a difficult divorce. She is a baalas teshuva as well as a yesoma.
Neither of them has the financial or emotional family support that is so necessary at the beginning of a new life together. For this young couple, we are all their family. We must all be there beside them in place of the family support that they lack.
Let us open our hearts (and our wallets!) and help make this home for the shechina a reality.
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