Runaway Kallah Turns Up With a Veil Over Her Head

BAIS BAILA, BROOKLYN — [TheKnish.com] Moish “Steeny” Steenowitz was in for a surprise as he stepped up to his chupah earlier this evening, escorted by his parents and the videographer. He thought it would be a normal, uneventful evening, besides, of course, for the fact that he was getting married and the slight possibility that his evening would end with a six-foot fall off an unevenly supported chair carried by his close but sweaty friends. But as he stood as still as he could and tried to decide what to do with his hands, he slowly came to the realization that the girl circling him was not the woman he wanted to marry. It was her sister, Leah. Leah’s incessant crying at weddings gave her away.

Pandemonium instantly erupted among the 600 wedding guests. (This was not an Agudah-approved wedding, although several member of the Agudah were in attendance.) Rumors flew about on the disappearance of the bride, ranging from being kidnapped by her hairstylist and forced to commit acts of mousse on her hair after it was wrecked during the bedekin, to the people who thought they saw her get on a bus headed across the country to Teaneck. This brought up the very real possibility that the kallah, whose actual name people had forgotten, had gotten cold feet and run away, never to be seen or heard from again until she ran out of money.

“This is not good for shidduchim,” said the kallah’s father, who had cheerfully walked Leah down the aisle moments earlier. When asked about this, he replied, “So long as one of my daughters gets married tonight.”

“I’m not going to marry my future sister-in-law,” Steeny insisted in a press conference held in lieu of the chupah. “I am commited to marrying my kallah. I like her eyes. And there’s also the fact that she…” Steeny was forced to stop at this point, when half the press broke into a chorus of Od Yeshamah.

“I’m just here for the chosson anyway,” said Menachem “Orzo” Orzowsky, who was invited for the dancing. “Is there still going to be dancing?” Orzo said he’d spent the entire week getting psyched up (by which we mean drinking heavily and pretending to dance to no music) for his favorite wedding dances, namely the “Walking Around in a Densely Packed Circle and Stamping Your Foot While Hundreds of People Keep Joining the Circle, Which Never Really Gets Bigger”, which has managed to keep its popularity since the Eighties and the “Dance Which is Supposed to be a Hora Except That Some Overenthusiastic Father Brings in His Four Year Old Who Trips Every Time the Circle Changes Direction and Everyone is Afraid of Stepping on Him”. This reporter was not really invited at all, but routinely crashes weddings as “Press” so that he could get some free food until TheKnish.com starts paying him.

Other guests started attributing things they should probably have noticed before the disappearance but didn’t say anything until they could ascribe it to hindsight. “I saw the kallah earlier today, and she was mumbling and shaking violently,” volunteered Ida “Bergy” Bergmanstein, who volunteers way too much for a mikvah lady. “But I thought it was just the tehillim.”

This reporter also spoke to Chani Shani Lefkowitz, who’s been the kallah’s best friend since their mothers had their sonograms in the same room twenty years ago, and was supposed to be keeping an eye on the kallah, so she would not run away or be accosted by demons (which has also come up as a possibility by the one kabbalist on the Agudah). Chani Shani spoke to this reporter entirely in questions:

“I don’t know why?” Chani Shani asked, “She would do something like this? It’s so unlike her? Except for one time? In camp? …” Chani Shani is probably still asking us questions, but we have to finish writing the article.

In the end, though, the kallah showed up, veil and all, ready to walk down to the chupah, all the while mumbling something about trying to use a public bathroom stall in a wedding dress. Or she could have been saying tehillim, who knows.

So it was a false alarm, although Artscroll has offered to do a book on the kallah’s life story using their ever-popular fill-in-the-blank biography mad libs format.

Though Leah seems to be taking it pretty hard.

Writer

Mike Schmutter wrote this article way behind deadline, because he was attending the wedding of his sister-in-law Leah. Needless to say, he was not the chosson. He also had to write a ten-minute sheva brachos speech, the jokes of which nobody caught, because of the air conditioners. You can contact Mike at mschmutter@gmail.com.

More articles by Mike Schmutter

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