My tichel party

So first things first: a tichel (pronounced with the gutteral 'ch' sound, as in chutzpah) is a hair covering.

Most orthodox Jewish women cover their hair in some way after they get married. It comes down from the Torah that a woman married in accordance with Jewish law should cover her hair.

The way women choose to cover their hair depends on what their community standards are. Some women wear wigs, others wear hats, others wear scarves... there are thousands of possibilities, but mostly it depends on their communities.

At the moment, I'm not going to go into all the details of hair covering, except to say that although I find it to be a beautiful concept -- saving a beautiful part of myself for only my husband, as well as a clear symbol of being married -- I also find it very difficult.

During my ugliest years, and due to life circumstances, I felt there were many of them, the one thing I always understood was beautiful about myself was my hair. I remember liking getting my hair cut -- not just because of the head massage, and definitely not because of what my hair looked like afterward (it has a mind of its own) -- but because the hairdressers would always ooh and aah over my hair.

But as of yesterday, I was one week away from beginning this special mitzvah, and some of my amazing, holy and beautiful girlfriends came together and brought me scarves and scarve and scarves... and told stories, and laughed, and sang, and experimented with how different scarves look on my head.

It was an amazing and special evening, and I felt really blessed to have such awesome people in my life.

And once again, time slides away from me...

I really did mean to update here a bit more often during the course of wedding planning, but here I find myself seven days away from our wedding, G-d willing, and realize I haven't updated in like, three weeks.

Oops.

So here's the sitch:

Thank G-d, it looks like we've passed the bureaucratic obstacle course. We picked up the ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) on Thursday.

And as long as we have the groom, the bride, our families, the rabbi, the ring, and 10 Jewish men present one week from today, we're getting married in, oh, 172ish hours. Not that I'm counting. ;-)

Because we're doing a speedy engagement, even slightly speedy by Israeli standards, it means that there are people who are still now finding out we're engaged... and I'm sure that for a long time after the wedding, I'll be coming across people who had no idea I was even dating anyone, let alone engaged. That's what happens for keeping things so quiet, I know, and I hope that some of the people can and will forgive me for not having been in touch with them over the course of this period of time.

There are huge blessings all around us right now... things are coming together... I'm getting to know a cousin I barely knew... I love my job more than ever, because I'm finally working in a place where our Judaism (yiddishkeit) takes precedence over all else, so everyone there is thrilled for me, and ready to cut me some slack for being brainless nowadays. I love my chatan (groom) more than ever, also for being ready to cut me some slack for bring brainless nowadays ;-) I love my family more than ever, for being ready and willing to throw their entire lives out of whack to come join us for our wedding, and not complaining when we did it at what could possibly be the least convenient timing for them. I love G-d more than ever, for helping me through all of this craziness, and putting my future husband (no jinx) and I together at this point in time.

Life is freakin' awesome.