Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Stern has issued an emotional public appeal on behalf of a bride and groom, both orphaned of father and mother, who are preparing to marry with no family or financial support. He said he knows the family personally and described the situation as especially heartbreaking.
In his remarks, Stern said, "In the dear family in our area, which I know closely, a bride is getting married without parents!! An orphan bride without parents, leaving the yeshiva dormitory to the chuppah without a father and without a mother! The pain is very great, she is marrying an orphan groom as well, orphan without father and without mother!" The article says caretakers describe the case as "double orphanhood".
The bride grew up in a boarding school and is now heading to her wedding alone, without parents to guide her or provide even the minimum needed to set up a home. To help fund the wedding, the charity Kupat Ha'ir has opened a special campaign, number 5778.
The public is being asked to donate 400 shekels, 100 shekels for each of the four losses, the bride's father and mother and the groom's father and mother, to cover the heavy wedding expenses and the couple's first steps as a married pair. Stern closed with a blessing, saying that helping to marry off an orphan and an orphan is a sublime deed that earns one's share in the world to come and, in his words, "cancels very severe decrees and brings great blessing to the individual and to the public."
