Hashiduch Anniversary Bands

September 2024 
Palladium, 24 karat gold 

A friend of mine, with whom I've been fortunate enough to collaborate several times in the past, was approaching his 25th wedding anniversary and wanted matching anniversary bands for himself and his wife. He wanted the rings to say something in Hebrew, but to also somehow include the dates of his family's birthdays (day dates only, not months or years), because the numbers had become significant to each of them over time—especially his own. Bonus points would be awarded for including the wedding date.

After various discussions about Gematria (Jewish numerology) we decided that the best way to approach his ask was to convert their birth dates to Hebrew numbers (traditionally represented by specific letters of the Hebrew alphabet) and to see if I could find a word that contained all the letters. In birth order, he was born on the 14th (יד), his wife and their son were both born on the 6th (ו), and their daughter was born on the 20th (כ or ך). Again, for bonus points, their wedding was on the 5th (ה).

Sometimes, the Divine makes Its presence more overtly obvious in the design process than others—and this was one of those times. After some research and some okay options, a word presented itself that immediately compelled me to send a frantic message to my friend. The word was שידוך (shiduch).

Shiduch means match, as in a match between husband and wife. Prepend ה for the wedding date (the 5th), and the word becomes השידוך (hashiduch) which means "THE match." The only extra letter in either version of the word that doesn't appear in my friend's list of significant numbers is ש (shin), which by itself means God (shin is the first letter of Shaddai, or The Mighty). ה by itself also stands for God, but linguistically in the context of "hashiduch" means "the". So my friend and his wife and their children were arranged and then bound by God as The Match on their wedding day. Heck of a thing for a wedding anniversary band.

Importantly, not only are all of their birthdates together on the second side of the word, my friend's two-Hebrew-letter birthdate number is preserved in the correct order (יד) and then the rest of the family members are presented in birth order. Even God is presented in birth order, since the Divine existed before the family was born. Goose bumps.

To fully understand the weight of the word, it must also be emphasized that while shiduch is used casually as in "to make shiduch" or to be a matchmaker, in our culture this is considered to be the work of God. We say that one who makes a match is as though one has made the world, since God started with making a match between Adam and Eve, who begat the world (after Lilith didn't work out, but that's another story). The Mishna tells us in Bereshit Rabba 68:4 that Rabbi Yosi ben Halafta was asked by a Roman aristocrat about what God had been doing since resting on the seventh day, and his answer was "making shiduch." Derisively, she replied that this was easy and immediately matched and ordered the marriage of thousands of her slaves together. The next day, bedlam. None of the couples even liked each other; complaints and domestic violence ran rampant. The aristocrat summoned Rav Yosi and humbly admitted "truly your God is powerful." To be hashiduch, to be THE match, and to accomplish the feat of 25 years of marriage—this is truly divine.

My friend's son even got in on the process—when choosing fonts from a sample sheet I sent them, he chose one called "Dragon," as he's really into dragons (who isn't, right?). We decided to create two-tone rings with 24-karat gold inlaid into palladium bands, which was a technique I knew how to do in theory but had never actually executed until making these rings (surprise, CEF!)—I definitely wanted to something special for such a special project. Note also (see second photo) that because the descender of the final kaf (ך) goes so far below the baseline of the font, the inlay wraps around the rings' bottom edges to the inside of the ring.

May they wear them in health—here's to another 25 years!