Where we last left off, both the mister and myself had our fair share of religious baggage, and we knew that we wanted a “Jewish-ish” wedding but we weren’t sure how Jewish we wanted it to be. After weeks of hemming, hawing, and phone tag, we found ourselves sitting on a cushy couch in the rabbi’s study.
Over the phone, I had told that rabbi that we had some questions about having an interfaith Jewish ceremony. It is important to note that said rabbi is a member of the Reform denomination of Judaism, which is historically progressive and believes that Judaism should change as it needs to. After offering us some tea, he asked us what our questions were.
I should mention that I babble when I’m nervous. I didn’t have one clear question. Somehow I went on a weird schpiel about all the various reasons I had left the Jewish community and all the various reasons I was coming back and blah blah blah politics and blah blah blah identity and blah blah blah I felt tied to my Jewishness but uncomfortable with the sexism and rigidity of many of the traditions.
“Well that’s not a problem, we do Rachel Adler’s egalitarian wedding ceremony*,” the rabbi replied.
Oh. Well that was easy. In my conservative upbringing I’d never known that Jews could just…change rituals to reflect their ideals a bit better. I’d thought you were stuck with what was there. I’d read about Adler’s ceremony thinking it was some radical notion or something, not a ceremony that a rabbi would choose to do and which would be mainstream in his congregation. I guess I’d underestimated folks.
My considerably less babbly and more concise mister piped up that he wasn’t sure about being a non-Jew participating in a Jewish community, and how our wedding and our involvement in the community would work–would his family feel alienated? Would he ever be an equal member?
The rabbi had strategies to include our families and told the mister that he believed that the best way to encourage the thriving of the Jewish community was to be as inclusive as possible. “You could be on the board of our temple if you’d like,” he told him, emphasizing that he is as welcome in the community as anyone else. No warnings about “finishing Hitler’s job” around here.
I asked him about the legality of it–how did he feel about performing wedding ceremonies that were basically heretical to mainstream Jewish law? He, a man that does not mince words, answered, “I don’t lose sleep over it–Orthodox rabbis don’t really recognize anything I do. This is no different.”
The wind was knocked out of our rebellious and skeptical sails. We were sitting across from a guy who felt way less conflicted about the weird politics of Jewish marriage than we did–he had literally just done away with anything that didn’t make sense for him and his community, and refused to apologize for it. Neither of us had really realized that rabbis like this existed. He had been performing gay marriages before they were legal in Canada, and was a passionate defender of the importance of including interfaith families in the community and welcoming them. He said that Adler’s book on feminism and Judaism was one of the most important books of Jewish theology published in the last decade. I had walked in with my hackles up, and in a few swift sentences, we were done. Dude was more politically in tune than we were.
And so it was decided. We booked the rabbi ASAP (being the only interfaith rabbi in town, he books up quickly! We are but one of his THREE weddings that he will be performing on our date.)
But it wasn’t over yet…The rabbi has two conditions on his marrying interfaith couples. The first was that we become members of his temple. Done–we were so energized by our glimpse into this Jewish community that so reflected our values that we were happy to join and explore it together.The second was that we agree to raise our children Jewish (also done!) but as part of that process, we had to take a 13 week course on Judaism offered by our temple as a way of getting started, and making sure that both partners were educated on the basics of Judaism. What followed were some intense 13 weeks, which is what my next post on this topic will cover. Those were some long evenings, and even longer conversations afterwards, as we processed all the diverse feelings that learning about Judaism together brought up.
What felt really cool about this whole process was the way in which figuring out the religiosity of our wedding was a means of exploring our vision for our spiritual life together in general. The Jewish wedding stuff has started an important conversation in our relationship about our Jewishness, and what we wanted for our family. I am really pleased about that–once the wedding is over, and decisions about invitations and table linens and flowers seem like the distant past, these conversations will remain relevant and important. I am happy we’ve been having them. Has anyone else found that their wedding is a really useful time to work through big questions like religion?
*The quick summary of Adler’s ceremony is that it changes the ring exchange in a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony (which in a Jewish wedding is what makes a marriage “legal”) from being about the purchase of the bride (in very Orthodox weddings, the man himself does not even receive a ring during the ceremony), to it being a shared entry into a contract, or partnership. The name of the ceremony, Brit Ahuvim, means “lovers’ contract”.
If you ever want a sounding board on this drop me an email. We really sorted out most of this in the years before getting engaged, and we’ve had a long engagement to work on it, so we might be able to help with advice if you hit roadblocks.
Haha we thought we’d sorted it out, in that we’d had many conversations about our engagement in Judaism and having a Jewish family before we got engaged, but somehow the nitty gritty details of it all came out while dealing with the wedding. I have enjoyed reading your stuff about Judaism and I do think that this process is a really good time to have these discussions and figure out our comfort zone. I’m happy you guys sorted things out in a way that works for you!
Ah yes, but I don’t discuss the real stuff on that publically, period, at all. I discuss pretty huppahs and jewish wedding traditions. Different.
Being members of a shul for more than two years before we got engaged meant we’d REALLY worked and fought it out, in the every day nitty gritty way.
Ok yes, we definitely need to talk!
[...] Where we last left off, we had decided to be married by a rabbi with whom we were smitten. The next step was taking a 13 week course about Judaism that was one of the rabbi’s requirements for interfaith marrying couples. Both the Jewish and non-Jewish partner were expected to attend together, in the name of learning and discussing these questions as a couple. The way the course worked was like this: each session was approximately 3 hours long, and it was open to both interfaith couples and to people interested in converting to Judaism. Interfaith couples were only expected to attend the first hour and a half or so of the class, during which we would learn how to read Hebrew, as well as some of the basics of Jewish theology, culture, and history. People interested in converting were asked to stay for the remainder of the evening, during which there would be some more in depth learning about Jewish stuff, followed by a sort of “group therapy” session discussing issues related to becoming a Jew and starting a Jewish family (such as negotiating both sides of the family; dealing with anti-semitism; what to do about Christmas; etc.). [...]
[...] we both had our “eureka!” moment; as our wedding will be a version of Rachel Adler’s feminist/egalitarian Brit Ahuvim ceremony, why not look at her re-written ketubah text? It would certainly be consistent. And sure enough, [...]