Daughter of the Bride

As Rabbi Sherre Zwelling Hirsch walked down the aisle last summer, dressed in her beaded white wedding gown, she passed her mother, Barbara, wearing a shimmery blue dress. She could not have imagined what lay ahead for her, her mother and their dresses.

Today, four months after that first wedding, a second wedding will take place. The proposal that led to the second wedding was made at the first. Hirsch’s mother, Barbara Zwelling, is getting married at 4 o’clock at a Beverly Hills hotel. She’ll wear her daughter the rabbi’s white gown; her daughter will officiate at the ceremony, wearing her mother’s blue dress.

In August, just after the new bride and groom swept past, Zwelling heard the words she had only dreamed of: “Why don’t we turn around and get married?” whispered Morton Scolnick, her companion of eight years.

“I thought Mort was having a senior moment,” says Zwelling, 56.

Not quite, says Scolnick, 62, who had been single for 20 years. He says marriage was not part of the conversation at that point, though they had discussed it earlier. Both had been married once before.

Zwelling said she once hoped her relationship with Scolnick would lead to marriage but had let go of the idea and “resigned myself to love him, spend my life with him and let that be it.”

At Thanksgiving, Zwelling and Scolnick exchanged a ring and promises to wed. All this was one year, exactly, after Zwelling’s daughter, Rabbi Hirsch, and her husband got engaged.

“At times I just want to be the daughter, other times I just want to be the rabbi,” says Hirsch, 31, who is on staff at Sinai Temple, a Conservative congregation in Los Angeles.

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One of the tricky things for the rabbi has been counseling the engaged couple.

During their meetings, Hirsch’s close relationship with her mother caused her to “respect the limits” of probing some personal details. Conversation centered on finances, family and how to live a religious life, all typical subjects. But Hirsch did discover a few surprises.

Like when Scolnick described his first date with Zwelling. “I thought she was fast,” he said. That night, she took his hand and would not let go.

As Hirsch sees it, “She knew he was the right man for her.”

Their discussions posed no threats to the groom. “I’ve been more comfortable here, talking with Sherre, than I would be with another rabbi,” he says. Hirsch and her father-in-law-to-be have grown close. She recently took a day off from work to be with him while he had minor surgery.

A few days ago, the bride-to-be went with friends and her daughter to the mikvah, the traditional Jewish ritual bath that represents rebirth and, for engaged women, the beginning of a new covenant.

The rabbi’s prayer for her mother: Release the past. “Some people say no family is as strong as the original one,” Hirsch says. “But the fact is, blended families can be stronger.”

Normally, Hirsch gives sermons and speaks without notes. But for the mikvah ceremony, she says, she wrote down every word. “I’ve married friends and never even felt close to losing my focus. But this is different.”

Seeing her mother and her fiance acting giddy and holding hands as she counseled them is an experience most rabbi’s can’t claim. But for Hirsch, the best part of the past year is what this courtship has meant for the whole family. Scolnick has two daughters from his first marriage. Zwelling has a son, as well as a daughter.

“Last year, when I got engaged, my mom and Mort embraced my fiance,” says Hirsch. “It was very assuring for me. Now, all of the children are embracing my mom and Mort.”