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Taking a Chance on Love
Jaap van Wesel / Las Vegas
 (Avi Katz) |
"I will be delighted to marry you. When are you flying in? How much time do you have? You want the huppah on the same day of arrival? In our temple or in a hotel? Are you Jewish?"
The woman, calling from France, is flying to Las Vegas to be married under a huppah (the Jewish wedding canopy) by Mel Hecht, a highly competitive Reform rabbi in a Jewish growth industry at this paradise of gambling, entertainment and love.
About 110,000 people marry every year in Las Vegas, in 50 wedding chapels or hotels. Thousands are Jewish. The cheapest and simplest ceremony is the so-called drive-in wedding: a civil marriage sealed from a drive-through window. "The tunnel of love," it is called. It is like buying a hamburger. You don�t even have to get out of the car.
But no one offers a drive-in huppah. For a real huppah, Las Vegas-style, you have to go to an upscale chapel, a hotel, or a temple. Why do people want a huppah in Las Vegas? Because you can get a marriage license for $35 with no questions asked.
Rabbi Hecht does not ask many questions either. He has been a rabbi in Las Vegas for 20 years. He performs 60-80 weddings a year, most of them in his Beth Am temple or in hotels. It was no accident that the question whether the couple from France was Jewish came only at the end. "How do I know they are single?" he asks. "I don�t. How do I know they are Jewish? I don�t. But that is their responsibility, not mine. I will talk to them before the wedding, but ultimately it is their problem."
Not all Las Vegas rabbis agree. Conservative Rabbi Felipe Goodman only marries couples he knows. He says he wants to be sure he is marrying Jews.
Hecht and 11 Reform colleagues do it to supplement their incomes. There are even some "rabbis" who bought their diplomas from a "mail rabbinate" in New York just to be able to perform weddings. Hecht does not do the cheap chapel wedding because there is no money in it.
"What I charge comes off their profit," he explains. "The chapels are an in-and-out affair. They charge so little for a wedding that there is not a lot left for an outsider. Also, the chapels tell you how much time you get, usually 15 minutes. That�s something I want to determine for myself. For me every huppah is as if it is my first huppah."
Weddings in the big luxurious hotels are a different story, usually with a reception, a dinner, a video and a cake. "I bring the glass and the wine and a portable huppah," Hecht says. These are included in the package, which runs from $150 to $1,200. The whole ceremony takes between 15 and 30 minutes, including the prayers, the vows, the breaking of the glass and a speech by the rabbi.
A Los Angeles couple, Erwin Socol, 62, and Vicki Herman, 50, went under the huppah in the Hilton Flamingo Hotel at the end of August. Both had been married before, and they wanted a cheap and simple affair. It cost them $750, including a $200 fee for Rabbi Hecht and a $50 donation to his temple. "In Los Angeles it would have cost a fortune," says Erwin. "If you want something fast, smooth and simple, go to Las Vegas."
Another California couple, Larry and Cheryl Redman, were so pleased with their Las Vegas marriage 15 years ago that they go back every year to renew their vows.
A retired conservative rabbi, Louis Ledderman, performs more than 1,000 weddings a year in the luxurious MGM hotel, the biggest in the world with more than 5,000 rooms, a huge casino, restaurants, swimming pools and a shopping mall in the style of a film studio. Most of them are civil ceremonies. MGM has just completed a lush $2 million wedding chapel, which is conveniently located in the shopping mall, next to a Mexican restaurant, an optician�s and a clothes store.
Ledderman shows off the conference room with a number of wedding magazines on the table. Here he prepares the couples for marriage. There are also separate dressing rooms for the bride and the groom, where they can take a shower and a rest. No cheap paper towels, Ledderman boasts, but real expensive cotton.
The chapel is decorated with black and white pictures of such movie stars who pledged their troth in Las Vegas as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor. It looks like a courtroom, with a podium for the couple and rows of chairs for the public. No religious images, neither a cross nor a Magen David.
In the hotel, Ledderman is known as Dr. Ledderman, not rabbi. Otherwise, he explains, Christian couples might be put off. "But most," he says, "find it cool to be married by a rabbi." His civil weddings take 15 minutes for the ceremony, 15 minutes for the pictures. A video is ready for viewing right away in a special room.
Christian clients are generally content if he mentions the "heavenly father." If they insist on Jesus Christ, he will refer them to a chaplain. But that is the exception.
The ceremony does not have to take place in the chapel. Some couples choose the sinking ship on Treasure Island, or the top of a mountain. Every request, however extravagant, will be seriously considered. Relatives and friends don�t have to fly in. A hook-up to the Internet can be arranged, and they can join in from their computers at home or in the office.
Huppot are available for $205 extra in the hotel, $350 elsewhere. The kosher witnesses, required by Jewish law, are no problem: there are enough Jewish workers in the casino. Many Jewish couples take the civil ceremony, but want to break the glass to keep the pieces as a souvenir. That�s OK by Ledderman.
But the hotel rabbi doesn�t do weddings on Shabbat, which costs him a lot of money. "I could make a fortune," he says, "because Saturday is a busy wedding day." Instead he worships at one of Las Vegas�s two Lubavitch congregations.
He emphasizes that he performs weddings in the name of the State of Nevada, not as a former official of the Conservative movement. "I don�t care whether the cere-mony is Jewish, Christian or Muslim. There is no discrimination here. The wedding is universal. Love is the main thing."
Jewish World
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