If you’ve ever wondered what an Australian Hasidic wedding looks like….well, it’s not exactly like this, but it comes pretty damn close. The people might be less yellow, but 16-year-old Menachem Aron gets the tics, intricacies, and idiosyncrasies of Hasidic weddings perfectly. A little too perfectly, actually.
You’ll have to have a little patience for the groom shockeling as he prays in the beginning, and the thirty-second video stall. If you’re feeling impatient, skip straight to the bride’s reception (4:15), stepping on the glass (6:20) or — definitely the highlight — the dancing, which starts at 6:45. Little touches, like the tree mechitza, are uncannily dead-on. And if you’ve never been to Melbourne, the production is so exact that even the buildings in the background match up perfectly. On one hand, it’s unbelievable that a teenager did this. On the other, it’s so brilliant that it could only come from a teenager. (And click here to see the original draft, which he did when he was 11…)
Hasidic
Pronounced: khah-SID-ik, Origin: Hebrew, a stream within ultra-Orthodox Judaism that grew out of an 18th-century mystical revival movement.
