After the ketubah was signed we would stand up and face each other, and I would say I go to prepare a place - no, no. I would say will you marry me? And of course she would say at that point - you've done too much work - she would say yes. Then I would say I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there you may be also, and she would say well when you come back to receive me under yourself? I would say I do not know the day or the hour, but when my father approves the wedding chamber I'm building then I will come back and receive you under myself. Does any of that sound familiar? It's all wedding talk. All of this was happening all the time in weddings. It's all wedding talk - so I would go away and I would build the wedding chamber. Then my father would approve it and then we'd come back and we'd get her. We'd take her to the wedding, which is where step five is and that's called chuppah, chuppah.
Now there were two chuppahs. There was chuppah at the wedding altar - you guys know what a chuppah is? It's a marriage altar. Have you guys seen Meet the Parents? Oh come on, don't be so - nooo, we have never seen that. Remember the friend, the rich friend in Meet the Parents? He made the handmade chuppah? Yeah, it was a wedding altar. In western cultures we have lattice, like you have an archway kind of thing, yeah, that's chuppah. What it meant was, it meant to be covered in God's presence. So all everything that's fixing to happen, God - because to have a covenant which marriage is a covenant, so to have a covenant you have to have a deal and you have to have witnesses. So all of this was happening. That's why we do weddings today; you're making a deal in front of a group of people who are going to hold you accountable to that deal. That's what's supposed to happen, but that doesn't happen in western culture because we're too private. We don't want people to know everything and part of that's good, part of it's not good.
So the people who witnessed your wedding, they have no right in western culture to hold you accountable to the deal you made, so you could start acting like an idiot and everybody just says well that's their life, they need to work it out and they're in covenant so you have to put up with whatever. No, see in Hebrew culture if one or both started acting like an idiot the whole community banded together and held them accountable; you signed a ketubah. We were there. You're breaking your ketubah - and it was in front of us and it was in front of God. You can't break your deal. So you would make this deal; they would read the ketubah and you'd have this whole wedding thing. They'd read the ketubah and basically do you? I do. Do you? I do. Then they'd have the salt ceremony where the groom would have a baggy of salt, the bride would have a baggy of salt and the priest would have a big empty baggy. They'd take the groom's baggy of salt, they'd take the bride's baggy of salt and then he would take it and he would mix it together. He'd go what God has joined together, let no man tear asunder. Then he would take the mixed up salt and sprinkle it on their hands. It was called the Covenant of Salt.
So after the wedding, after the wedding's over then we go to the second chuppah, which is my personal favourite! [Laughter] The second chuppah was in the marriage bed and it was this. They would take the four stakes and they would make a canopy with this over the marriage bed, so this is what would happen. The groomsmen would march me and my new wife to the door of the marriage chamber I'd built, and then I would catch my bride up. Do you guys do that here? Like it's a good plan for some, it's not so good for others. [Laughter] So I would catch my bride up which was called rapture. [Oh! Laughter] Okay, the word rapture means to catch your bride up alright, it's where we get the word rapture from okay. So I would catch my bride up, I would walk her into the marriage chamber. The groomsmen would shut the door behind me and they would wait outside [laughter] while we consummated our marriage under the chuppah. Like they weren't near as ashamed of their sexuality as we are, like if you read particularly the Old Testament, they wrote things about themself that I thought I wouldn't have shared that. [Laughter]