Simple Moroccan Theme Centerpieces For A Jewish Henna Party
A Jewish Henna party? Yes indeed dear readers, Jews from places like North Africa/Morocco, Yemen, and even Iran do have the tradition of a henna ceremony sometime before the wedding. The main difference between the Jewish henna ceremony and the henna ceremonies I’ve seen from India is that the Jewish ceremony does not involve drawing designs, rather a large round mark is made on the hand with the henna, and there are even little round badges with ribbons that are used to tie the henna to the palm as it must be held in place for a while in order to leave a mark. The three hebrew letters that spell henna are chet, nun and hay, and those are the first letters in the words that spell the three mitzvot that are exclusive to women. These three mitzvot are Challah, Niddah and Haladkat Neros, meaning taking the challah portion (with a blessing), observing family purity, and lighting shabbat candles.
My neighbor’s daughter got engaged last week, so I was recruited to help with decorations for the Henna portion of the evening…….needless to say I had everything on hand and everyone was thrilled with my efforts, which I’ll be sharing with you here, well a few photos in any case. Before I realized that I needed a largish centerpiece as the tables at the hall are huge, I came up with the idea for this sweet centerpiece, and truthfully you can take this idea and use it for any theme you like. Let’s get started shall we?
You’ll Need:
- a cake stand, which is a DIY Ikea hack, read about it here.
- regular drinking glasses
- some plastic jeweled trim, mine is aqua
- floating candles, love the metallic gold ones!
- DIY spheres made from bracelets, tutorial here
- a bunch of little items that relate to the theme of your party. mine are moroccan shoes, moroccan filigree teapot, and a little plastic jewelry box
- fishing line and a sharp needle (optional but recommended for keeping all the little items in place)
How To:
This one is pretty self explanatory, and if I had actually made a bunch of these I would have sewn or tied all the little items together in case some curious children decided to for example collect all the shoe from the centerpieces, which could totally happen. It only takes one curious kid who is unsupervised to disassemble all your work……especially when you put irresistable little items on your centerpiece!
Have fun with this one!
Just thinking this idea could be perfect for a baby shower, just use little doll items, some pacifiers you name it. And if you don’t have any Henna parties coming up, you could certainly use this idea for Purim, that is if you live in Israel where all these little Moroccan goodies are easily purchased, for the rest of you, sorry I have no idea, you’ll just have to come to Israel. The Moroccan Jews are the largest group of Sephardic immigrants to Israel, so there is a strong Moroccan influence. These little items may in fact be Israeli inventions, I have no idea whether these things exist in Morocco, I’ll let you know when I get there sometime. It is true, you can get little leather Moroccan shoes in Morocco, I have a bunch, but the version that holds candy, no idea.
In conclusion, if you ever need to whip up some centerpieces, put a glass cup with a floating candle in the middle of a DIY cake stand, and then put little cute items, or even fruit, around the glass. Ta da, a centerpiece is born!
