Negotiating Jewish Weddings – Part I

The discussion of religion and our wedding is going to be a long one. For those unfamiliar with Jewish practice, let’s just say that interfaith marriage is taboo. I can only speak for the community that I am in, and I know that in the U.S. a lot of Jewish communities are considerably more open-minded than here. But in our conservative community, let’s just say that we’ve heard it referred to, more than once, as “finishing Hitler’s job,” or as “the greatest threat to the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”  Now that’s a lot of weight to be carrying on one’s shoulders!

So let’s start this complicated story from the beginning:

Me: Raised Jewish in the above-mentioned extremely conservative Jewish community; my whole family are immigrants to Canada from Poland, and most of them are Holocaust survivors. So my sense of Jewish identity is LOADED, to say the least. As a young upstart, I felt extremely alienated by the conformity and lack of critical thought in the particular community I grew up in, and I wanted pretty much nothing to do with any of it. I couldn’t relate to its politics, and I also couldn’t relate to it spiritually. In the past few years (no coincidence that it was when I was living in the UK and thus far away from the community I grew up in), I did a lot of soul searching and started to try and find my place in the religion. I spend a lot of my academic time working with Holocaust survivors and I have taken to reading progressive Jewish theology and philosophy with gusto. There is so much I am attached to when it comes to Judaism, and I want to make it work so badly. I am getting into it, but still skeptical of the conservativism of many North American communities. Let me sum up this paragraph in one word: baggage.

Him: Raised totally without religion in a pretty conservative Christian area. Due to various negative experiences in his community, he grew up pretty anti-religion, to say the least. He got kind of interested in Judaism due to his penchant for philosophy and the great number of amazing Jewish thinkers out there, but he only really became personally interested in the religion when we got together. He is slowly coming around to the idea that maybe not all religion is stupid. He still struggles with the idea of actual faith.

Despite our varying backgrounds, we actually get along on these lines pretty well. We both come from the perspective of having been really skeptical of religion when we were younger, and now having come around to an extent, and trying to figure out how to make it all a meaningful part of our lives, and one that sits well with our consciences. I don’t care whether or not he converts (and that’s something that he’s still thinking a lot about and is a deeply personal decision), but we have agreed that we will raise our children Jewish. This was barely even a discussion–he has been amazing at understanding the importance of raising a Jewish family and was on board immediately; I also feel strongly about not falling into the trap that I feel happens to many blended Jewish families who prioritize their Jewishness–I really want our kids to identify with his family and his background as well, and I want his family to feel as included as possible, even if our kids are, primarily, Jewish.

Obviously this whole discussion came up with considerable fervour when we got engaged. I won’t go into this in a public space, but let’s just say that my family, who had previously always really liked and gotten along with the mister, were less than supportive. There were some hard words, and an even harder period of 2-3 weeks after our engagement when they wouldn’t speak to us at all. We’re on much better terms now, but all of this is still a constant negotiation, and I will stay that I am still dealing with the hurt that came with our engagement.

We started out knowing that we wanted a “Jewish-ish” wedding. We wanted the huppah, the breaking of the glass, the seven blessings and all that. We weren’t necessarily that invested in having a “real” Jewish wedding, and in fact, there is only one rabbi in this town that will marry interfaith couples. I was really uncomfortable myself with the sexist traditions involved in traditional Jewish weddings, especially that the ring exchange is basically a “purchase” of the bride. It has never bothered me at other people’s weddings, but as I think I’ve demonstrated in this space, I am a big sap and very invested in symbolism, and so I just couldn’t hack doing it. I started reading about the Brit Ahuvim ceremony, which is an egalitarian feminist ceremony written by Jewish theologian Rachel Adler, which seemed like an awesome alternative to the usual Jewish wedding, at least for folks like us who didn’t really care if our wedding was officially “kosher or not” (seeing as how the mister is not Jewish, the wedding wouldn’t be recognized by most Jews anyway!).

The cool thing is that in Quebec, anyone who is a Canadian citizen and has a clean criminal record can be nominated for a day to perform a wedding ceremony, so we considered asking a good friend of ours, who is currently completing her PhD in theology (and thus had “spiritual authority” according to us!) to perform a ceremony which we would write together, incorporating the above elements that we loved. She is sweet and brilliant and would have been awesome. We promised my parents, though, that we would at least sit down and talk to the one rabbi in town, just to see. He happened to have married my uncle and aunt about 15 years ago, so we knew who he was, and my uncle and aunt still love the guy. The rabbi and I played phone tag for about a million years until one day, he reached me at one of my jobs. I answered the phone, “oral history centre,” and he replied, “oral history centre? I love oral history!” and I was smitten.
To be continued, in the rabbi’s study…

Has the process of negotiating one’s religious participation been as heart-wrenching and complicated for anyone else?