2026-06-11: Joshua and Gabriella Huppah - Part 2

[00:00:00]What amazing energy >> tonight celebrating Mazaltov Joshua Gabriella on this amazing amazing Sima.

[00:00:16]Let me share with you something that happened about 20 some odd years ago up in heaven.

[00:00:24]God decided to send down a very special soul.

[00:00:29]And when God made that decision to sh send that soul down into this world, as our cabalistic masters share with us, he divided that soul in two. And he put one half into the Razia family.

[00:00:48]And they decided to name that beautiful soul Joshua.

[00:00:53]And 20 some odd years ago, the other half of that soul was put into the Samander family, blessed with the beautiful name of Gabriella.

[00:01:06]And 20 plus years later tonight, each and every single one of us here tonight gets to have the honor of seeing two halves of a beautiful soul come back together in the most amazing union complete.

[00:01:25]You know >> there was this professor who was talking to his class and he asked his class he said can somebody please share with me the difference between complete and finished.

[00:01:41]And one of the students get nobody could guess the answer. Eventually the professor says I'll share with you the answer between the difference between complete and finished. If you marry the right person, you're complete.

[00:01:56]If you married the wrong person, you're finished.

[00:02:01]When the in-laws get involved, you're completely finished.

[00:02:08]Not in this case, the professor.

[00:02:13]>> So, I sat a couple days ago and I thought, what am I going to share at such a amazing celebration?

[00:02:21]And as a rabbi, as a Jew, we open up the Torah. We open up to the para that we are reading in shul. And the para that we just came from was God's beautiful mission to us to light up the world. And we look at Gabriella and we look at Joshua and we say to ourselves, are these not the epitome of lights onto the world? Gabriella and her way as I was hearing tonight at Adelfi all the good work that you do on Torah spreading Joshua and his way at Hofra and as I this thought was percolating was thinking through in my mind timing was only perfect because if you're a friend of Joshua he must have sent it to you in the last two weeks. If you didn't get a WhatsApp from him ask him for it.

[00:03:11]Joshua sends me a WhatsApp. He was on some podcast. Everybody's doing podcast today. So Joshua sends me this podcast that he was on. And what's Joshua sharing on this podcast, a beautiful Torah thought, a Torah thought that comes from our rabbis that share with us an amazing idea, an amazing concept, which is a candle.

[00:03:32]In Judaism, light is so important to us. We have Shabbat candles. We light up our house.

[00:03:38]We have holiday candles. Every holiday we light up our house. We have Kanuka candles. We light up our house on Saturday night. We saydah the verse that we all say is God. The biggest prayer that we ask of you is that our lives be filled with true light. And Joshua was sharing on this podcast that one of the things that inspired him was this Torah thought, this idea that a candle has this unbelievable attribute to it. A candle can share light with those that it comes in contact with.

[00:04:12]and has this attribute that it never loses any of its own light. By sharing light to every candle that it comes in contact with, his own light doesn't get diminished.

[00:04:28]And as I thought about that podcast and looked at the para this week, the idea that this is the deepest model of true love >> because >> because so many times people think that if I give something of myself away to somebody else, it diminishes me. If I continue to put myself out for other people, I'm going to be less of a person. I'm going to be less less is going to be left for me. In marriage, it doesn't work like that. In true marriage, in a good marriage, it doesn't work like that. The more you put yourself out for somebody else, the better person you become. The more you put yourself out for the other partner, the greater potential you're able to reach as a human being and as a beautiful partner in the marriage.

[00:05:18]There's a there's a funny story told of the mouse who's walking down the road and he sees this big celebration and he asks what's going on. So they tell him the lion's getting married.

[00:05:32]So he goes to the hoopa and he goes over to the lion and he says, "My brother, congratulations."

[00:05:41]And the lion looks at this mouse and says, "Brother, what are you? What are you saying like that?" So the mouse taps the lion on the back and says, "Don't worry. Before I got married, I was also a lion.

[00:05:57]>> I told you >> this is not the Jewish way, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:06:03]The Jewish way teaches us that when we give, we become stronger and we become better. We create a better foundation for our very homes. There's an amazing story told of a old person who would travel two hours to a memory care facility to visit his wife every single day. And he would take a train and then a a bus and would take two hours for him to go visit his wife. And one day the nurse comes over to him and says, "Mister, it's amazing commitment that you have to visit your wife every day.

[00:06:36]She's lost her memory. She doesn't remember you anymore. You don't need to come every day. Your wife is in good hands." And he says, "My wife might not remember me, but I remember her."

[00:06:48]This is the idea of the model of being a candle in our own marriage. The more we give, the more we get. The more we give, the better our relationship comes. This is the model. This is the idea. This is the thought. I'm not sharing my I'm sharing what Josh shared with me. I'm giving it back to him at the night of his wedding as a blessing for him and Gabriella. But then I looked at the para and I added to that two different beautiful ideas. God tells us we have an obligation to light the candle. And then Rashi tells us we the obligation that Aaron the Cohen had to light the minora wasn't just to light the minora, but the mitzah wasn't done until it was lit by itself. It would had to be lit in a way that it didn't need the candle lighting it anymore. It would be self-sufficient. And this is the type of marriage. This is the type of blessing that we want as we go into marriage and as we have the attitude that we have with our spouse is that we want to see them self-sufficient. We want to see them blessed. We want to see them successful. We want to see the most amazing partner in our spouse. And then the final most beautiful idea of the minora as the Torah tells us there were seven candles on top of manora. But the manura itself had to be made out of what? Out of one piece. It had to be a solid block. It couldn't be made out of multiple pieces. And this is the most beautiful lesson of marriage. Marriage doesn't mean two people coming together and eventually fusing themselves into thinking the same way. There's seven candles. I'm going to think one way.

[00:08:19]You're going to think the other way.

[00:08:20]Everybody thinks completely different.

[00:08:22]You know, they tell the story of the husband and wife who's sitting around one night and the wife says, "Honey, I want to bake a cake. Can you go out to the store and get me a carton of milk and if they have eggs, get me six." And he comes back home 20 minutes later with six cartons of milk. And she says, "What are you doing?" He says, "Well, they had eggs."

[00:08:43]Everybody thinks differently. I think my way, you think your way. But the idea is ultimately to have a foundation that's one. To have a foundation that's together. At a Jewish wedding, the bride and groom don't face each other. The bride and groom are side by side because they are not competing with each other or they're not going at at each other.

[00:09:06]They're on a mission to walk together.

[00:09:08]They're on a mission to build the most beautiful amazing life side by side as the Torah tells us from the very first creation of Kava, as we were going to say in the Shabbat in a couple of brief moments connect my wife is my right hand as the wife Gabby stands on the right hand of Josh and Josh is the right right hand to Gabby. This is the Jewish attitude as partners as beautiful visionaries in the life that they are building tonight. So tonight, as we celebrate this union, I wish Joshua and I wish Gabriella the greatest light in your home. The light of Torah, the light of mitzvot, the light of health, the light of happiness, the light of healthy children, the light of for 120 years. May your home be filled with the most most amazing light for you, for your children, for your grandchildren. And God willing in 50 years when you look back at this night, it shouldn't just be the night that you got married, but the night that you created the most amazing minora together, the most amazing foundation together. May your lives only be filled with braha and simha.

[00:10:33]Jewish tradition when a bride and groom gets married, it's called kidushin. It's called holy. This is the most holiest thing that one can possibly happen in our lives to see the beautiful union of husband and wife.

[00:10:52]Elohim.

[00:11:34]Amen. Amen. Right there.

[00:11:53]Yeah.

[00:12:07]Good.

[00:12:12]Oh my gosh.

[00:12:40]Kadat is Give it to Joshua.

[00:13:36]Talit covering both the katan and kala symbolic of the home that they are now building and the protection that Joshua will forever be to Gabriella.

[00:14:08]We now move on to reading of the Kuba.

[00:14:12]The kutuba is a beautiful contract close to 2,000 years old written in protection of and in respect of Gabriella tonight the wife of every household. It's the katan's obligation his commitment to look out to protect and to care for his wife for 120 healthy years.

[00:14:48]Old Westbury, New York.

[00:15:15]Court of Colorado.

[00:15:30]for sure.

[00:16:17]Gabriella Asher Benavid signed by our dear Yeshua Ben Yakov.

[00:16:45]That's a go.

[00:17:14]Thanking God for this amazing occasion.

[00:17:17]Thanking God for this beautiful katan and kala and thanking God for all of the blessings that we have. We move on to the shaot.

[00:17:28]for the first of the Shabbot.

[00:17:31]Brother of the groom Daniel Raziev, please honor us with reading the first blessings.

[00:17:48]Amen. Amen.

[00:17:54]Amen.

[00:17:54]>> Amen.

[00:17:58]Okay.

[00:18:01]>> Dad of the groom, father of the groom, Jacob, please honor us with the reading of the next blessing.

[00:18:24]Amen. Amen. Amen.

[00:18:34]Fourth blessing. We'd like to honor the uncle of the groom Yoram Fazil with reading of blessing number four.

[00:19:03]Peter Razv, please honor us with the reading of the next Braha >> sauce.

[00:19:36]Amen.

[00:19:37]>> Amen.

[00:19:44]>> Brother of the bride Jacob, please honor us with the reading of the next blessing.

[00:19:51]I just sis foreign.

[00:20:26]>> Amen.

[00:20:51]You say Adonai.

[00:21:06]>> Amen.

[00:21:08]>> Uncle of the bride, Steve, please honor us.

[00:21:16]That's the next one. The next Sami, Sami, a tasima.

[00:22:00]Amen.

[00:22:00]>> Amen.

[00:22:02]for the final and most beautiful blessing. Tonight we have the honor of the grandfather of the kala honoring us with reading of the prayer.

[00:22:40]Shalom.

[00:22:43]Adonai. Elohim.

[00:22:52]Call.

[00:22:54]They call.

[00:22:57]They call Amen. Amen.

[00:23:48]Because we love to give blessings and we love to receive blessings. ings. One of our oldest blessings in our Jewish tradition is the birkat kohanim. So we would like to invite up Sam Coenov together with Aaron Davidson Salmon and Salar Yousef la as kohanim to bless us to bless the katan and the kala and Jacob Kayenov. Please Jacob come with your dad. Don't be shy.

[00:24:25]>> You already know.

[00:24:38]>> Give it away.

[00:24:55]Shalom. Amen.

[00:24:59]Amen.

[00:25:08]Heat. Heat.

[00:25:39]We pray every word.

[00:25:48]Lord escal.

[00:25:58]I hear him.

[00:26:24]Amen.

[00:26:32]And you sh Ali Zimash.

[00:27:12]Alash mad.

[00:27:18]Ali al ladies and gentlemen with the power with the energy that's here tonight as Jews we pray to God for a day that Jews around the world will see true peace.

[00:27:51]That we hear only good news coming out of Israel and that we hear the chauffeur of Msiah ushering in the building of the beta mikdash and only happiness and goodness for Jews around the entire world.

[00:28:10]Shalim alim.

[00:28:13]Wait.

[00:28:25]Let's do it.