What's with breaking the glass?

After all the prayers and blessings and sips of wine, the rabbi pronounces Ric and I married...again...Ric will stomp on a glass wrapped in cloth and break it, and the room will erupt in shots of "Mazel Tov." I should have known 25 years ago that we do this again. Ric missed the glass. OK, to be fair, my brother put the wine glass stem under Ric's foot, and Ric broke the stem, but not the glass. A little thing, a silly thing, but another oddity in that strange day.

This is a very old custom, at least 1000 years old, with layers of interpretation. There is a story in the Talmud about a rabbi breaking a goblet when his daughter's wedding was getting a bit too rowdy. This is a bit ironic since in modern weddings the breaking of glass is a signal to start the frivolities.

The first explanation I ever heard was that the breaking glass was a reminder of all the losses suffered by the Jewish people. Just as we remove drops of wine from our Passover glasses to diminish our joy in memory of the plagues and loss of Egyptian life, we remove a moment of joy from the wedding in memory of Jewish anguish through the centuries.

The shattered glass also represents a change that cannot be undone. We cannot mend the glass, it is forever changed. In the same way the bride and groom are forever changed by this ritual, this covenant, of marriage. In Jewish writings we find the covenants are "cut" in some way. At a circumcision the flesh is cut. At Sinai the tablets were smashed. At a wedding the glass is shattered to seal the promises.

OK, maybe there were some other mystical meanings, like frightening away demons with loud noises. There might be sexual connotations, such as making sure no one else can drink from this glass, or a release of sexual separation, or maybe a symbol of the groom's sexual prowess (I have to talk with Ric about this)

Whatever the spiritual, mystical or traditional meanings, the sound is a signal that the serious part of the wedding is over. It is time for laughter and fun. How odd that we only smashed the stem of a glass the last time, and how appropriate that we get a re-do of this ritual.

In case you are wondering, we might use an old wine glass of my grandmother's. All others in the set are broken because the glass is so thin. Rather than keep in on the shelf, or use it and know that it might break, we can use it to honor her memory under the chuppa.