No, but a Jewish wedding, where the men, women, and girls wore the Sabbath and holiday garments in which they went to Shool; a wedding where you whet your appetite with sweet-cakes and apple-tart, and sit down to Sabbath fish, with fresh rolls, golden soup, stuffed fowl, and roast duck, and the wine is in large, clear, white bottles; a wedding with a calling to the Reading of the Torah of the bridegroom, a party on the Sabbath preceding the wedding, a good-night-play performed by the musicians, and a bridegroom's-dinner in his native town, with a table spread for the poor.
Reb Yitzchok-Aizik Berkover had made a feast for the poor at the wedding of each of his children, and now, on the occasion of the marriage of his youngest daughter, he had invited all the poor of the little town Lipovietz to his village home, where he had spent all his life.
It is the day of the ceremony under the canopy, two o'clock in the afternoon, and the poor, sent for early in the morning by a messenger, with the three great wagons, are not there. Lipovietz is not more than five versts away—what can have happened? The parents of the bridal couple and the assembled guests wait to proceed with the ceremony.
At last the messenger comes riding on a horse unharnessed from his vehicle, but no poor.
"Why have you come back alone?" demands Reb Yitzchok-Aizik.
"They won't come!" replies the messenger.
"What do you mean by 'they won't come'?" asked everyone in surprise.
"They say that unless they are given a kerbel apiece, they won't come to the wedding."
All laugh, and the messenger goes on:
"There was a wedding with a dinner to the poor in Lipovietz to-day, too, and they have eaten and drunk all they can, and now they've gone on strike, and declare that unless they are promised a kerbel a head, they won't move from the spot. The strike leaders are the Crooked Man with two crutches, Mekabbel the Long, Feitel the Stammerer, and Yainkel Fonfatch; the others would perhaps have come, but these won't let them. So I didn't know what to do. I argued a whole hour, and got nothing by it, so then I unharnessed a horse, and came at full speed to know what was to be done."