Strange Jewish reference of the day

From the New York Times coverage of Governor Patterson's swearing-in ceremony

He and Mr. Silver got together before last year’s State of the State speech. Mr. Paterson was to bang the gavel, and he said Mr. Silver “brought me in here so I didn’t destroy anything in our first year.”

“But in our second year, I said, don’t bother, I know how to do this,” he continued. “And apparently, I was about to bring the gavel down on a glass, like this one.”

He held up the kind of water glass found at lecterns everywhere.

“The speaker, at the last second, grabbed the gavel away from me and told me in his own inimitable way, as only Shelly can” — here Mr. Paterson dropped his voice to sound like Mr. Silver — “I would not allow you to turn the State of the State into a Jewish wedding.”