After courting for six months Adele decided that she and Max belonged together and they were married. In a spectacular ceremony that stopped traffic –literally.

“Max and I married on January 20, 1937, I was attending public high school but I married four months before I would have graduated. I had wanted a June wedding but Max was afraid I would change my mind. I had a reputation for breaking engagements so Max bribed me with a honeymoon trip to visit my mother's grave in Russia. My father encouraged this because he felt that at 16 I would be an old maid!

“My father wanted a small wedding because he was not in the position to pay for a large one. But my father-in-law, Samuel Gass, wanted a wedding befitting the marriage of his son to the daughter of a grand rabbi, so he paid for it. Five thousand people came to the ceremony. I was the first grand rabbi's daughter to marry outside the family and there had never been another wedding like mine.
 

Bride and groom: Adele Korff and Max Gass

“People came from Israel, from England, from all over the world. They came out of respect for my mother, who had given her life to save them, and for my father their rebbe. The whole town of Dorchester stopped for that day. My wedding was front-page news. Roosevelt was inaugurated the same day and they gave me more publicity than they gave him. It was pages full. I was married by thirty-six rabbis and the wedding lasted seven days.

 “All the guests gave tzedakah in honor of our wedding. They gave chai ($18) or double chai ($36). The money went to the chevra kiddusha (burial society), the matzoh kitchen, to Jews in Russia, and to other organizations.

“Despite a guest list of 5000, I was not permitted to invite my friends to the wedding. However, I did have a dinner dance for all of my friends a couple of weeks before it. Max was permitted to invite two of his childhood friends to the ceremony. Our fathers invited whomever they wanted.

“Before the ceremony we followed the custom of veiling the bride. In a ritual called the badeken (the covering), Max lowered the bridal veil over my face. It took place in a room indoors. A rabbi accompanied by a fiddler sang Hasidic tunes as I was led outside to the ceremony.

“The wedding took place in Dorchester Plaza outside the Dorchester Morton Hebrew School. My sister Betty Berkowitz was fourteen that year and she remembers, the hordes of people. She had to push through the crowds to see me get married.

“Max and I married under a chupah (canopy) beneath the stars. Marrying beneath the nighttime sky symbolized the hope that our offspring would be as numerous as the stars. The chupah consisted of an embroidered cloth mounted on four wooden poles. Four disciples of my father held it up. The only light came from candles and from the stars.

“There had been a terrific ice storm so I had to cover my beautiful wedding gown and cape with an overcoat, and I wore galoshes so I could stand in the snow. People paid to watch the ceremony from a neighboring building. I think they were charged 75 cents. Morton Street was blocked off and there were police everywhere keeping order. Dozens of newspaper reporters covered the ceremony.
 

Click here to see the extensive newspaper coverage of Max and Adele’s wedding in Yiddish and English-language newspapers.

     
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