What’s a tish?

You may have noticed on the invitation that the event starts with the bride’s and groom’s tishen. We know what you’re wondering: what’s a tishen? That’s easy — “tishen” is the plural of “tish.”

Oh, wait — you actually want to know what a tish is?

Yeah, we didn’t know what it was either when we began planning our wedding, but our rabbi, Jhos, got us really jazzed about the idea, so here we are.

“Tish” is the Hebrew word for “table.” (That doesn’t help you much, but it’s interesting to know.) Basically, the tish is a joyous pre-wedding ceremony in which traditionally the men and women are separated (it’s Orthodox in origin), and the two tishen are quite different. In ours, you’re free to go to whichever tish you want and can go back and forth if you so desire.

In the bride’s tish, traditionally women gather around the bride, and there’s much singing and dancing. Each woman has the opportunity to have a moment to receive a blessing from the bride, who, because she’s getting married, is overflowing with positive spiritual energy.

In the traditional groom’s tish, the groom gets up on a table and attempts to give a teaching (a “drash”) on the week’s Torah portion. The people who are gathered around him heckle and roast him and generally make it impossible for him to get through his lecture.

During the tishen, to make sure everything is properly chaotic, a jester character called a badchan (that’s the Hebrew ch, like in “Chanukah” or “chutzpah”) runs around, stirring things up. When Jhos told us about the badchan, we both thought immediately of the only person it could be: Sarah’s brother Martin.

The badchan is also the one responsible for gathering everyone up at the end of the tishen and bringing bride, groom, and everyone together (this will be the first time all day that the two of us will have seen each other) in a massive throng for the signing of the ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract. Then everyone takes their seats, and the procession can begin.