Today the custom of mitzvah tantz is still widespread and has even reached new communities. We caught up with five top international badchanim, who share their experiences and perspectives from the very heart of the Jewish wedding
Based in Bnei Brak
Badchan for 30-plus years
Travel abroad is not easy. I try to travel the day before, but many things are out of my control. Delays happen, strikes happen, and sometimes you arrive just in time to put your little suitcase on the stage next to the musicians’ equipment and start to sing. Once you accept a booking, you have to be there, at any price, and in a good mood, whatever it takes out of you. The family mustn’t feel any of your stress.
Often, a mechutan asks me not to praise him, or at least not excessively. But once, a father came to me and told me that under no circumstances am I to include any praise about him at all when I call him up. He seemed so determined that I asked him why. He replied, “Because if you speak highly of me, then you will speak highly of the other side too, and I can’t stand hearing that. The mechutan is a real rogue, and I am not moichel him, so just don’t say any praises of anyone!” I’ve come across ill-feeling within families occasionally, but I can’t hurt people by taking them down or embarrassing them. As a badchan, maybe I can give someone a little more honor than he deserves, but I can’t dishonor a person. You can’t dance on someone’s spilled blood.
Every chasunah, every new home built, is emotional, although there are certain circumstances that stand out. I did a wedding in Bnei Brak where the mechutan, Rav Avrohom Lemberger, suddenly took ill and passed away three hours before his son’s chuppah. A vast levayah was held that day instead of a wedding, and the chasunah was a week later..
Then there was the baby from Boston. Years ago, I was in Boston with my father who was hospitalized there, and I met a family from Yerushalayim whose tiny baby had a heart defect and needed a specialist and very costly treatment. To offer them some good cheer, I said that I would be delighted to badchan at the child’s chasunah im yirtzeh Hashem. Nineteen years later, they called me to the wedding in Yerushalayim — the tiny, frail, baby from Boston was getting married.
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