“Before that, people were walking with their heads down, hiding their Jewishness,” he said.

“She was born just before the revolution, in June 1991,” Rabbi Lazar told me after the ceremony as he, his wife and their new machetunim paced nervously outside the yichud room, where the bride and groom go to spend a few minutes alone.

They were all there because Blumi’s father, Berel Lazar, is the chief rabbi of the Russian Federation, and because right up until the minute before Blumi was born, just a week shy of 20 years ago, such a gathering - a cruise-ship-sized celebration of a religious Jewish wedding in a park that once was the czar’s falconry grounds - would have been impossible. MOSCOW (Tablet) - Blumi Lazar’s wedding was not an intimate affair.Ī thick white dek tichel completely covering her face, Blumi stood under a massive raised chuppah of indigo velvet and gold fringe, swaying ever so slightly next to her groom, Isaac Rosenfeld, before some 1,500 invited guests.Īmong the sea of black hats and sheitels gathered in Moscow last week were Jews of all stripes: Israeli expats, American expats, wealthy Jews, less-wealthy Jews, secular Jews, half-Jews, Jews who had never left Moscow and Jews who had left and come back.

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