New Jersey Jewish News
Life and Times Feature
Big love, Jewish-style
Five gold bangles and worlds of difference
The morning of my wedding day, my mother called me into her bedroom.
“Come sit with me,” she said quietly, patting the spot next to her on the bed.
I sat down, the softness of the mattress causing us to ease together, our shoulders touching.
She turned her face toward mine, looking happier than I had seen her look in years. I attributed it to the fact that her almost-30-year-old daughter was finally getting married. Smiling, she handed me a box.
“Open it,” she urged.
Inside the box were five beautiful gold-filigreed bangle bracelets of different patterns. The gold was unlike any I had ever seen. The bracelets were not new, their shapes altered from perfect circles to imperfect ones by the wrists they had adorned.
I turned them over and, one by one, slid them on my right arm. They were truly beautiful.
“Oh, Mom, I love them! Where did you get them?”
She answered by telling me a story about my great-grandmother, Jemilla Danino, who, at the age of 12, married a man more than three times her age to become his second wife. He was still married to his first wife; Jemilla became a member of his harem.
Born in 1882 to a poor family in Alexandria, Egypt, Jemilla had no choice but to respect the arrangement her parents had made. One afternoon, he arrived and within the week, she had gone with her new husband to live in Haifa, never to see her parents again. The bracelets on my arm were the ones Jemilla had received from her husband as a token of his commitment to marry her.
Living in the 21st century, it is hard to fathom Jemilla’s situation. I barely get a vote as to whom my own daughter dates, let alone a veto. And I cried for three nights when I sent her off to summer camp at the same age as Jemilla was when she left home forever. Knowing that I would never see my child or my grandchildren again — as Jemilla’s parents surely did know — is a thought I don’t even want to entertain.
It’s hard to believe that as recently as the early 1900s, my great-grandmother lived in a harem, marketing, cooking, washing, and cleaning side by side with the other wives who shared her husband’s bed. Yet for Sephardi Jews who lived in communities influenced by Islam — like those in Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, and Turkey — polygamy was an accepted practice.
Their situation was in marked contrast to that of the Jews of Eastern Europe, where a ban on the practice was decreed by Rabbi Gershom in the 10th century. Sephardi Jews did not accept the ban, however, and when the state of Israel was created in 1948, it faced the problem of what to do with Jewish immigrants with multiple wives. The Israeli government permitted such marriages already in existence but forbade future ones. Today, the ban on polygamy is universally accepted in the Jewish world.
The Bible is filled with stories about the problems of polygamous marriages: Sarah was derided by Hagar because she couldn’t have a child, Leah was jealous of Rachel because Isaac loved her more, and Solomon’s many wives brought idolatry into the land of Israel.
My great-grandmother suffered a similar fate when, at the age of 13, she gave birth to my grandfather amid women who could not bear children. A teenager herself, she learned how to care for her child in a home where her life was made miserable by the disappointment and bitterness of other women. What saved her during those difficult years — and throughout her life — were her wit, wisdom, and undying love for her son.
I treasure my gold bracelets for many reasons. They help me remember my great-grandmother, a woman whose courage, strength, and devotion carried her through a lifetime of struggle. They remind me also of my mother, who wore them as a young girl when she was raised by Jemilla as a result of her own parents’ untimely deaths. And they give me a sense of optimism about our future as Jews. For it is through the wisdom of our tradition and our ability to change and respond to laws that are patently unfair, resulting in hardship and injustice, that our greatest hope for the future lies.
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