MACHANEH YAVNEH'S FIRST WEDDING CEREMONY UNITES FORMER COUNSELORS

BY JODI WERNER GREENWALD
Photos by Sage Studios Photography

Three years ago, as news of another bombing in Israel filtered among campers and staff at Camp Yavneh, counselors Saul Strosberg and Daniella Pressner sat on a bench outside the office and shared their grief. In that moment of tragedy, they found solace in one another—and something more. Love grew, and on August 26, 2004, not far from that very bench, the two soulmates became husband and wife.

After 60 years of camp seasons, retreats, b'nai mitzvot and reunions, Camp Yavneh can now add a wedding to its event roster. Saul, 26, and Daniella, 22, whose tenures, combined, include music director, unit head and counselor, were married beside the new Tzipori Amphitheater on the recently renovated athletic fields.

When planning the wedding, the couple specified that they wanted a Thursday simha so that their families could spend all of Shabbat getting to know each other. And where better to gather informally than at camp? "It's beautiful there, especially during the fall and late summer," says Saul. "Yavneh is a place that drew Daniella and me because of its pluralistic and inclusive community. That's basically what attracted us to each other and to camp."

Throughout the weekend, the bride and groom took measures to ensure that everyone in attendance felt comfortable. "We had wedding programs that explained the parts of a Jewish wedding, benchers that had side-by-side translations and a bus that came in from New York and went back after the wedding," Daniella says.

Thoroughly a camp affair, the wedding also featured guests lodging in adult housing and bunks; head chef John Upham catering the food; the Yavneh bus driver, Bill, doubling as a limo driver; Rabbi Dov Lerea, rosh hinuch (head of education) at Yavneh, officiating with Rabbi Avi Weiss; and 50 alumni, counselors and administrators donning Yavneh T-shirts and serenading the happy kallah and hatan.

"It's incredibly exciting to have the first wedding at Yavneh," says Yavneh Director Debbie Sussman. "That they met here and chose Yavneh is really special. It's a natural thing to have them get married here."

In typical camp fashion, the bride and groom artfully added numerous personal touches to their wedding. After receiving the ketubbah from Saul, Daniella, an artist, presented him with a painting of an open Torah scroll and a ladder leading to the heavens, interspersed with scenes of creation and words from the ketubbah and sheva brachot.

"As a legal document, the ketubbah highlights the real implications stemming from a marriage," she says. "The sheva brachot, on the other hand, represent ideals. As such, the painting is symbolic of the challenge to always maintain the real and the ideal in our marriage."

"Yavneh is a place that drew Daniella and me because of its pluralistic and inclusive community. That's basically what attracted us to each other and to camp," says Saul Strosberg.

During the reception, the groom, a talented pianist, played with Barock, the wedding band he performs with throughout the year. Brother Rami even joined in too, on the sax.

One of the most special aspects of the wedding, Saul says, was getting both families together. Having Daniella's three grandparents there was "a dream come true," she says. For Saul, simply assembling his five siblings was significant.

His brother Hershey, a soccer coach for the University of Virginia, came in from Brazil, where he was training; Rami, a rabbinical student, traveled from South Africa, where he was teaching music for the summer; Mindy, mother of five, visited from Israel, where she's in the grocery business; and Ruthie, former Prozdor Middle School director, now working at the Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies and the YCT Rabbinical School, made the trip from New Jersey. With the exception of Hershey, all siblings are Yavneh alumni.

"It was incredible to see the amount of love, support and communication that flowed between the two families," Daniella says.

Ruthie adds that throughout the weekend the families took walks together and swam in the warm lake water—a perk of the end-of-summer climate.

"They took a very big risk because of the weather, and it was the perfect weekend, just gorgeous," she says.

The celebration continued beyond the weekend, when Saul and Daniella traveled to Chicago for sheva brachot at the homes of family members unable to attend the wedding. A week later, the couple returned to their home in Riverdale, N.Y. Saul went back to YCT Rabbinical School and his commute every other weekend to a rabbinic internship in Washington, D.C. as assistant rabbi at the National Synagogue. Daniella returned to the Drisha Institute and her plans to pursue a PhD in comparative religion. A winter honeymoon is planned once things—and schedules—have settled down.

Saul performs in 75 weddings a year, and he says his own wedding included everything he likes about the weddings he has seen. The ceremony was intimate and elegant. "The badekken overlooked the lake, the huppah stood before the sunset, the tent sat on stretched green that ran into the forests on three sides," Daniella says. Decorations included white roses, tiki torches, tea lights and a white chiffon huppah created by the bride's maternal uncle, all of which "radiated a simple and elegant glow."

"You can still have elegance at camp," Saul says.

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