Canopy, Bridal

Ḥuppah, or Wedding-Baldachin, Among Dutch Jews, Seventeenth Century.(From Leusden, "Philologus Hebræo-Mixtus," Utrecht, 1657.)

A Hebrew word signifying a canopy (Isaiah 4:5; Lev. R.; Eccl. R. 7:11), especially the bridal canopy. Subsequently it became also the term for a wedding. Originally the ḥuppah was the chamber in which the bride awaited the groom for the marital union; hence the Biblical statement that the sun comes out of his tabernacle in the morning "as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber [ḥuppah]" (Psalms 19:6 [A. V. 5]; comp. Joel 2:16). The bridal procession—a festal affair in which the whole town participated—culminated in the ushering into the ḥuppah of the bride and bridegroom, this act signifying the actual surrender of the daughter by her father to the man who was henceforth to be her lord as well as her husband (Tobit 8:4; Ḳid. 5a; Yer. Ket. 4:7,28d; Maimonides, "Yad," Ishut, 10:1-2). Before entering the ḥuppah the bridegroom had to recite the seven nuptial benedictions (Tobit 8:5; Ket.7b; "Yad," c. 4; Shulḥan 'Aruk, Eben ha-'Ezer, 34, 1). Outside the ḥuppah (in former times inside) the groomsmen and bridesmaids stood as guards awaiting the good tidings that the union had been happily consummated with reference to Deuteronomy 22:17 (see Yer. Ket. 1:25a; Tan., Ḳoraḥ, ed. Buber, p. 96; Pirḳe R. El. ), while the people indulged in dancing, singing, and especially in praises of the bride (comp. John 3:29; Matthew 25:1-13). The bride had to remain in the ḥuppah for seven days, as long as the wedding festivities lasted (Judges 14:15); hence the name of these festivities, "the seven days of her" or "of the ḥuppah" (Pesiḳ. 149b).