[source: Letter from Jacques Rieur to Mina Rieur Weiner, circa 1978]
... is the marriage of grandfather. They lived, that is his father,
Israel, and his family, by the river in a place which also served as an
Inn for Jewish wayfarers. It was in the days of Purim when a wedding
party came to cross the river going to a town on the other side. It was
a warm day, and the ice cracked and it was not safe to pass, so the party
stopped at the Inn to wait until the wood bridge would be fixed. So one
of the guests decided that God wanted it that way and he said: "There is
a girl in this house, let her be the bride." So they put up a "hupah"
and married off grandfather's sister, Sarah there and then. The river
subsided and the wooden bridge was repaired. The old folks sobered up
and they realized that they had left a "poor Kaleh (bride)" in despair,
so they crossed the river, fetched the bride and brought her to the home
of Israel (the Inn). And in the words of grandfather, "they pulled me
off the top of the oven, and they put a pair of 'pluderen' (pants) on me
and I became the bridegroom of your grandmother, Shifrah."
Grandmother Shifrah, when I remembered her, was blind for a period of 20
years before she died. She used to spin and thread wool, and knit with
four prongs our woolen socks and gloves. Grandmother was a scion of the
family of Reb Haim of Volozin, the head of the well-known Yeshivah of
Volozin near Viazin.