"Yede Kale Iz Shein"

Or: "Every bride is beautiful." This young bride that I photographed at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in O'ahu doesn't need the extra help.

But according to Howard Rheingold, "In every culture, there are many who do not fit the current standards of beauty, and this can cause a great deal of grief to the person who is considered homely...This matter of aesthetic standards once caused an ethical controversy among pious Jews, who considered it sinful to lie. If one is always to tell the truth, what do you tell the parents and groom of a homely bride? The great scholars whose judgments were collected in the Talmud addressed their efforts to this theological, ethical, and aesthetic question. A student of the great Rabbi Hillel wrote the line that became an established part of Talmudic doctrine: Every bride is beautiful and graceful."

According to Benjamin Blech, "An eligible young maiden is called a kale moid (a bride girl) and the bride proper is known as di kale. The word kale is part of many popular proverbs. If someone complains about something that is really positive--"But the house has five bedrooms and seven bathrooms"--the correct response is a rhetorical question: A khasoren di kale iz tzu shen?!--A failing that the bride is too beautiful?"

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Yiddish by Benjamin Blech and They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases by Howard Rheingold