In his decades of serving as a rabbi at Harvard Hillel, Ben-Zion Gold officiated at many weddings. One of the earliest was the wedding of Hans Herda and Phyllis Goldman on July 4, 1962. As of the date of this blog post, Hans and Phyllis have been married 56 1/2 years.

Hans explained the photo as follows:

“The man and woman in the left foreground are Phyllis’s father Joseph Goldman and mother Ethel Goldman. The senior Goldmans lived in Medford and were members of this Temple Shalom. Rabbi Gold’s head (a bit to the left and partly obscured) is the head of Cantor Lew of the Medford Conservative shul. The date is July 4, 1962, which was the only suitable and free date. I am lifting Phyllis’s veil, and am bashful, but I do not know what part of the ceremony this is.”

“Rabbi Gold counseled me to quit reading Samson Raphael Hirsch and instead to read George Foot Moore’s Judaism in the year preceding our marriage. I knew Rabbi Gold from the time I was a student at Harvard in 1960–1961.”