Tag Archives: Druze

Bring The Bride!

Original: “جلب العروس“

Transliteration: Jalab El Aroos

Translation: “Bring the bride”

The informant is one of my family members who is married and has been raised in Lebanon for most of her life. She discusses instances in her childhood and moments with her family that are the most significant to her culture and upbringing

Context:

She states that “Lebanese heritage lies mostly within special occasions such as weddings, which is one of the most important moments of every Lebanese individual’s life as it brings most of the family together to practice passionate traditions that can only be done on these rare occasions” conveying the importance of culture within Lebanese Culture. She states that “This certain grand gesture is mostly practised by the Druze religion and is the process of claiming the bride from her family home” The Druze religion is the smallest religious group in Lebanon that have a certain manner in performing wedding ceremonies specifically. The process involves “driving from the groom to the brides home with a traditional Lebanese ‘Zaffe’ which includes a band and dancers dressed in traditional Druze wear” which the informant states have been done at her wedding in a vast manner. She ends with “The groom and family must dance and sing until they reach the bride to claim her from her parents and take her back to his home” The informant has specifically stated that this process is accurate at all Druze weddings and is a part of the ritual of their marriage.

Analysis:

The formal use of the title of the gesture highlights how sacred this element of the wedding is to the culture and religion. Although the Druze community is not the largest religious group in Lebanon, it is still indicated to be the country with the highest Druze population, therefore, having such a theatrical part of the ceremony allows them to celebrate their culture in a day with the entirety of the community. The dance is the main element of the gesture highlighting the culture that is taught into daily life in the ceremony so that every individual has the chance to celebrate and bring their culture to light at this heightened moment of celebration together. Incorporating the traditional outfits of the religion allows the community to be seen by the rest of the country as they are the smallest religious group. Although the ceremony may not have religious scripture or performance elements incorporated such as Christianity or Islam, this is how the Druze community incorporates their culture into formal celebrations and rituals. It also portrays the unity between the families as it is not an aggressive ‘claim’ but instead an agreement to allow the couple to continue to thrive in a joint manner in the Druze community.

A Tame Sort of Trance

During high-school, my dad studied abroad in Brazil for a year. He stayed with a family of Lebanese immigrants who showed him both Brazilian and Lebanese traditions, and always included him in everything. Growing up, I heard tons of stories from his time there. The Brazilian stories were relatively tame – beaches, clubs, schools, etc. But the Lebanese culture was of particular interest.

Driving home from lunch one sunny afternoon, I ask him and my mom if they have any stories that I could use for my folklore project.

“I was just thinking about my experiences when I was a teenager in Brazil with a family of Lebanese immigrants who were Druze, and had the belief of many paths to the mountaintop. But they also had a uh.. a spiritualist element. And after I’d been there several months, they let me go to a family ceremony which was on a Sunday. One of the uncles would go into a trance and kind of channel spirits and try to get insight into some of the issues facing the family. So he would stand there and close his eyes, and appear to be communing with the spirits. And everybody would be quiet and sitting around, um, and then he would speak to them. But that was all in Arabic so I didn’t understand a word. Um.. But other than that, then they would say he’s asking about some problems we’re having with the business or this or that, and he would get some direction. They…they had these kind of sessions where one or more of them would kind of be in a sort of trance-like state. So I remember viewing that and thinking that was sort of interesting.”

Whenever I think of communing with the spirits, I picture ouji boards or fire-and-brimstone preachers in the deep south flailing around with snakes on their arms. I picture people getting real serious and asking about life’s deeper questions. It’s quite funny to picture this fairly frequent occurrence, where a member of the family would go into a trance and just ask advice for everyday problems. Obviously, the whole thing was treated seriously, as my dad had to earn a certain amount of trust before he was allowed to attend. But even so, there’s a lightness to it that is not normally associated with channeling spirits.

 

Commonplace Reincarnation

During high-school, my dad studied abroad in Brazil for a year. He stayed with a family of Lebanese, Druze immigrants who showed him both Brazilian and Lebanese traditions, and always included him in everything. Growing up, I heard tons of stories from his time there. The Brazilian stories were relatively tame – beaches, clubs, schools, etc. But the Lebanese culture was of particular interest.

Driving home from lunch one sunny afternoon, I ask him and my mom if they have any stories that I could use for my folklore project.

“And they also believed in reincarnation. Very strongly. Cause my – the Brazilian father of the family I was with never talked about it, but his wife said as a boy growing up in Lebanon, uh, when he was a young boy he started remembering his death as another person. His life. And he kept remembering more and more about it. And he was a young guy and, uh, a middle aged man or something, and there was a feud going on with another family.  And every year he started to remember more about this past life.  And uh, one day he remembered going to the water and he was bending over, washing his face, and looking up in the water and seeing one of his enemies behind him swinging something down. And he remembered his own murder. And after that he never talked about it. But it was common knowledge in the family, when he was growing up, as a kid he remembered this other life. So they all, they all believed in reincarnation. But it was interesting because, I would never have imagined this serious businessman recounting past life experiences. But he was a boy. But there was some story of him going to the house of the person who had been killed when he was twelve years old. And he knew the family and he told the family. And he knew where things were hidden in a drawer and things like that. Yeah, cause he remembered from his.. from his past life. So, but – the family – I was going, ‘weren’t they amazed’? But when they were telling me this story – it was the old uncle Rashid who was telling me this – and he said, ‘oh no, it happens all the time in the Middle East, it’s no big deal’. Like it’s common. ”

Holy cow this story is incredible. I’ve only ever read about these sorts of reincarnation stories online, but to hear it from my dad was a whole other experience. In America, stories such as these are usually scoffed at and forgotten in a matter of hours The same is true in the Middle East, however their reasoning is the exact opposite of ours. Whereas we think of reincarnation as being wholly impossible, there, it is so commonplace that stories such as this are considered drab and boring. It’s insane to think that there is a whole group of countries that believe in reincarnation so readily that they never really talk about it at all.