it is known today. Moses Isserles (1520–1572) notes that the portable marriage canopy was widely adopted by Ashkenazi Jews (as a symbol of the chamber within which marriages originally took place) in the generation before he composed his commentary to the Shulchan Aruch. In Biblical times, a couple consummated their marriage in a room or tent. In Talmudic times, the room where the marriage was consummated was called the chuppah. There is however a reference of a wedding canopy in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a: "It was the custom when a boy was born to plant a cedar tree and when a girl was born to plant a pine tree, and when they married, the tree was cut down and a canopy made of the branches". Jewish weddings consist of two separate parts: the betrothal ceremony, known as erusin or kiddushin, and the actual wedding ceremony, known as nisuin. The first ceremony (the betrothal, which is today accomplished when the groom gives a wedding ring to the bride) prohibits the bride to all other men and cannot be dissolved without a religious divorce (get). The second ceremony permits the bride to her husband. Originally, the two ceremonies usually took place separately. After the initial betrothal, the bride lived with her parents until the day the actual marriage ceremony arrived; the wedding ceremony would then take place in a room or tent that the groom had set up for her. After the ceremony the bride and groom would spend an hour together in an ordinary room, and then the bride would enter the chuppah and, after gaining her permission, the groom would join her. In the Middle Ages these two stages were increasingly combined into a single ceremony (which, from the 16th century, became the 'all but universal Jewish custom' and the chuppah lost its original meaning, with various other customs replacing it. Indeed, in post-talmudic times the use of the chuppa chamber ceased; the custom that became most common instead was to 'perform the whole combined ceremony under a canopy, to which the term chuppah was then applied, and to regard the bride's entry under the canopy as a symbol of the consummation of the marriage'. The canopy 'created the semblance of a room'. There are varying legal opinions as to how the chuppah ceremony is to be performed today. Major opinions include standing under the canopy, and secluding the