Joy comes in the morning, the psalmist tells us, but this pandemic feels like a never-ending night—indeed, a nightmare—and certainly not a time to celebrate a wedding. And what kind of celebration is a wedding in a cemetery?
Yet a shvartze chasene—a wedding in a cemetery as it is called in Yiddish—is precisely what East European Jews sometimes organized when cholera, typhus, influenza, and other epidemics would strike. A black chuppah (wedding canopy) was set up in the midst of the graves in the town’s cemetery, the rabbi performed the service, and the townspeople rejoiced and brought gifts of everything the new couple might need to set up a household.
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