We just love it when a couple really makes their Jewish wedding their own – and that’s exactly what Chicagoans Ranana and Binyamin did.
They chose the Chicago History Museum as their venue, in honor of their shared love of art and history, and artistic bride Ranana designed the invitations herself – taking inspiration from the Frank Lloyd Wright window in the room where the chuppah took place. She also did her own ketubah art, featuring night and day water scenes inspired by Chicago’s Lake Michigan.
An egalitarian ceremony was important to the couple, and their officiant, Rabbanit Leah Sarna, helped them design one that was both Orthodox and incorporated many feminist and egalitarian touches. Ranana and Binyamin also wrote their own brit ahuvim, a document using liturgical verses to outline their values and commitments to each other outside of the more legalistic language of the ketubah.
We love that, rather than having traditional floral arrangements, Ranana and Binyamin opted for mini orchids potted in tea tins (which they collected leading up to the wedding) on the tables, allowing them both to save money and celebrate their shared love of tea!
The couple’s photographer, the spectacular Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Eliana Melmed Photography, captured the day so perfectly. In Ranana’s words,
We knew Eliana from our synagogue community and when we met with her about our wedding we knew we wanted to hire her because she was someone we could imagine spending hours with on the day of our wedding, having fun. Also we knew she would 100% understand what was going on in our very traditional, very feminist Jewish wedding, which was not something we could take for granted with our other (mostly non-Jewish) vendors. Not to mention her photography is beautiful – colorful, joyous, true to life. She was the best! (Ranana’s dad is still raving about how well she handled our big family during the torrential downpour that happened the day of our wedding.)
We’ll turn you over to Ranana for the rest of the story!
How We Met
Ranana, the bride: and Binyamin, the groom: The simple answer for how we met is “in our synagogue.” In reality we had met a year prior to Ranana moving to Chicago (and joining the same synagogue as Binyamin) at a Shabbat lunch in Jerusalem, hosted by a former teacher of ours (for Ranana from middle school, for Binyamin from grad school). Once Ranana moved to Chicago she and Biny recognized each other and became friendly acquaintances.
True friendship blossomed during the pandemic and we began learning Daf Yomi (the practice of studying a page of Talmud a day) together. That gave us an excuse to talk all the time and eventually we moved from being chevrutas (study partners) to dating. Ranana is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago in religious ethics. Biny is the Director of Jewish Life at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School in Deerfield IL.
