Wedding Weekend!

Fasten your seat belts. Keep your hands and feet inside the car as we prepare to exit the station. Here we go. It’s wedding weekend.

If somehow you missed the news, my daughter is marrying an officer and a gentleman.

So cutting to the proverbial chase- many of you have been asking how to send gifts and support the wedding. At some point along with many other topics, I owe you an article on banking in Israel especially if someone is receiving out of the country payments. It is not simple. In fact, it is down right baffling to me how, banned for centuries from owning land and participating in many professions, the Jewish people have survived via the business of money, including setting up and managing systems for empires. Yet for reasons beyond comprehension have the glitchiest, most complicated banking system.

Today you will have to take my word for this. What seems incredibly simple in issues of sending, receiving and moving funds in the majority of the world as we know it, well, it’s just not here. In fact, I was asked for another writer how to set up Substack for paid subscriptions or donations when the Stripe system doesn’t work with Israeli banks. If that applies to you, here’s a how-to note.

In Israel no doesn’t mean no, it means maybe if you find a way around. Somewhere an enterprising person made a wedding registry that’s not a registry so money instead goes to the bride and groom. After countless hours on it, I ended up finding that this site, also, would not work to send gifts to my daughter’s Israeli bank.

Since we are literally in the weekend- if you wanted to send a gift or support to be a part of the wedding, please use my Gabby’s Place one time donation link here and write on WEDDING.

The couple met, dated and are now making a wedding in the middle of a war. He was leading a battalion in Gaza the entire war, she was in her second year of national service. As Torah observant Jews, young people generally wait to date until they are ready to get married. So my daughter decided she was ready to get married and decided to start dating. I’ll just go ahead and air the dirty laundry: she told me she was going to try one of the Jewish dating apps. And I said, “oh no, that’s not for you.”

What I didn’t know was that at that same exact time a beautiful Yemenite commander also decided it was time to get married. Only he had been in Gaza the greater part of these last two years. So he thought, “Maybe I’ll try an app.”

And somehow during the infrequent breaks in duty, they managed to meet, fall in love, and plan a lifetime adventure.

Planning a wedding (well, planning anything) in the middle of an active war (where, yes! we are still getting bombed and attacked every single day despite whatever ceasefire MOU or other nonsense you read in the western press)… this particular set of circumstances comes with its set up challenges.

For example: at 82 years young, my father was preparing for his very first trip to Israel. Trying to divine the possible likelihood of any daily event being accomplished versus being cut short by a ballistic missile or drone from any one of seven fronts is a very complicated series of checking between WhatsApp groups and English and Hebrew media while trying to unscramble BIG STATEMENTS from the U.S. Commander in Chief which are then bounced through a scrambled de-scrambler of Members of the Knesset and emergency councils of various nations with no stake other than Jew Hatred. I have a system, but it’s neither simple nor perfect And you thought asking me “Hey Gab, what’s happening there right now?” Was a simple question!

In the middle of these mental gymnastics, my father arrived at JFK National Airport to board his first ever flight to his Promised Land at exactly the same moments when the U.S. started bombing Iran again. And if you haven’t followed- when the U.S. bombs Iran, Iran “retaliates” by bombing Israel. When Iran doesn’t like what happens in Lebanon (meaning their jihadist latchkeys are losing) Iran bombs Israel. So it was really really a question of whether the skies would stay open to enable my father to get home. After a nail biting night, he arrived and my daughter was with me to meet him.

I even had the high level of foresight to make the ubiquitous Welcome Home sign on the back of a paper bag. I’m fancy that way.

And I’ve been trying to pull off a wedding when I’m at my most nomadic. Another story that I owe you is how I ended up not spending a summer in holy holy Tzvat but holed up on a basement AirBnb, nursing an injured ankle and waving a lot of imaginary sage (what’s with sage waving anyway?) hoping my ankle would heal enough that I could dance at my daughters wedding. What little I have is sort of strewn across multiple spare bedrooms and maybe maybe still a container in the port of Ashdod? So all I am saying is: there have been logistical issues!

But here we are. And I want to help make you a part of this as much as I can swing with somewhat limited bandwidth. This is such a special special couple and regardless of the bombs and the buffoons, I’m so so happy and honored to be living in this exact moment in time as a part of this specific story of love and resilience and hope. This wedding is the story of Am Yisrael. The story of me. The story of you. The story of this beautiful couple who know the ending before the beginning credits start: we will not only survive, we are the people of the longest kept promise in history.

We live. We love. We build. We dare to do the unthinkable in a world that will show us and tell us and send VERY IMPORTANT messages on Truth or Dare Social that we have no basis, no right, no reasons to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the impractical. And yet we do:

We hope.

Am Yisrael Chai

XO Gavriella