Useful Metaphors

By Rabbi Brian Field

In my work I’m frequently translating concepts that are brand new to people into terms that are more familiar to them. I rely on metaphors in that interesting process. Here are two metaphors that guide my evolving ideas about Jewish identity and help me think afresh about the people I’m helping.

1st metaphor – the mountain:

I grew up on the North Shore of Vancouver, BC, which marks the beginning of a section of gorgeous coastal mountains. My family lived at an elevation of about 900 feet above sea level. Technically we lived on Mt. Hollyburn, though I couldn’t see its peak from our house. I could see other mountain peaks from our house. And I certainly knew that when we left the house we walked either up or down! Clearly, we lived on the side of a mountain. But it never occurred to us to think of ourselves as mountain-dwellers. From our perspective the actual mountain began somewhere higher up the mountain than where our house sat.

As a kid, I constantly puzzled over the question “where does the mountain actually begin?” Did it begin when the land’s slope went up more steeply? Did it begin where the houses stopped? Did it begin at the shore, right where the land started to rise out of the water? Or did it begin below the water, at the seabed?

Given this cluster of images, which I sometimes still ponder as a grown-up, I’m inclined to hear the Jewish identity question in a similar way. Not so much as “are you or aren’t you Jewish?” but as “where on the slope of selfhood does Jewish identity begin!?” A logical follow-up question is this: Where does Jewish identity end? Is there a limit to how much an identity can include and contain?

What do you think?

By Rabbi Brian Field

• An adult child of an interfaith marriage plans to marry someone with a nominal Christian background. In our meeting, the couple tells me that they deeply want some way of Jewishly invoking the sacred dimension of their marriage covenant
• An interfaith couple is pregnant with their first child and they want a naming ceremony for their baby. They haven’t figured out what their family’s spiritual orientation will be. They want to think this through with someone like me who plays on the Jewish team, and who also understands that they have stakes, loyalties and resources in more than one world.
• A man who was raised with a Jewish identity but no real connection to Judaism is marrying a Catholic woman. The woman contacts me requesting that I officiate at their wedding because she believes that having a rabbi at this key life event will help her future partner regain some kind of positive or nourishing connection to his Jewishness.

These are some people who have come to speak with me recently at Judaism Your Way.

As a rabbi, how should I respond to them? How should the Jewish community respond?

From a conventional perspective of Jewish identity, it would be inappropriate to offer a Jewish ceremony to these people. Their individual and/or collective identities are not exclusively Jewish. And by some definitions, they aren’t Jewish at all.

As I see it, the issue of Jewish identity is the intersection of two phenomena. The first is the matter of status - how a person is perceived by others, including rabbis. Status is about getting an affirmation of identity by a community or group. The driving question here is whether other people recognize someone as a Jew.

The second is the matter of personal identity: how a person perceives him or herself. Here the operative question is “do I feel Jewish?” Or, in the case of a child, the question is about the way in which the parents identify the child.

I recently attended the annual convention of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA). We discussed the rapidly evolving landscape of Jewish identity, and the fact that a growing number of people with a wide range of Jewish connections and identities are requesting some form of recognition from the Jewish people in general and rabbis in particular.

I was asked to speak at this conference about my perspectives on this trend through my work at Judaism Your Way. I’ll be continuing to blog about the ideas that I shared with my colleagues. I’d love you to read along and let me know what you think.

By Rabbi Brian Field

The RRA Connection: the monthly newsletter of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, January 2010

I always thought that I would be a congregational rabbi. Yet during my eight years in two pulpits following graduation, a part of me seemed to be holding back. I began to notice, however, that I became most rabbinically alive and creative when working with people who felt marginalized from the Jewish world and/or had an ambivalent relationship with Judaism and Jewishness.

In 2002 I left congregational work and became a hospital chaplain. I also began officiating at weddings of unaffiliated (including interfaith) couples. I was extending my rabbinic reach. But I had no idea what was next.

In the spring of 2004 I learned of a position with a new outreach organization in Denver, Colorado. Founded and funded by an interfaith couple who had been unable to find a local rabbi to marry them, they had approached the local Federation as well as the JCC, offering to fund the position of a rabbi who would work with interfaith couples. When both organizations declined, this couple formed an outreach organization themselves.

By July I was hired as rabbi, along with an executive director and administrator. Our analysis: Most Jews were not engaged or affiliated Jewishly because in one way or the other, they were hearing some kind of “no” from the Jewish world. Our mission: to find creative Jewish ways of saying “yes” to as many Jews and their loved ones as possible. We named our organization Judaism Your Way, and moved into a storefront office.

Judaism Your Way is a non-membership, pluralistic outreach organization with a mailing list of over 1600 households. Our programs are playful, a bit unusual, and accessible to non-Hebrew readers and non-Jews. We offer holiday gatherings, classes, life cycle services, and a bnai mitzvah program. We meet people with affirmation, encouragement and resources. When appropriate, we refer participants to area synagogues.

Judaism Your Way was first met with suspicion in some quarters of the Denver Jewish community. However, after six years, JYW now collaborates with many other organizations and congregations. I am very much a part of the rabbinic community and have excellent relationships with most of the local rabbis

I feel blessed. Our organization is growing. I have two great co-workers. I’ve found work that suits my creative, pastoral temperament as well as my radical, post-modern vision of what’s possible for Jews and the non-Jews in our lives. I am more connected to more people than I ever was as a congregational rabbi. The people I serve are not the people who decide my employment status. I rarely hear, “We’ve never done it that way before.” And, I’m happy to report that I’m no longer holding back.

By Rabbi Brian Field

JYW Newsletter, Spring 2010

There’s a witticism that boils down every (well almost every) Jewish holiday down to three sentences: “They tried to kill us. We won/survived. Let’s eat.”

One reason we smile at this reductionist take on Judaism is because we recognize the centrality of eating in Jewish celebration. Many Jewish holidays have a feast associated with them and even those that don’t are associated with particular foods.

This is more than tradition. From the very beginning of time, the Jewish people has believed that eating matters. Really matters — to history, to society, to the earth, to God. Whereas in Greek mythology, history begins when a human being, Prometheus, steals fire from the gods, according to the Torah, history begins when human beings violate a divine command regarding what to eat.

Eating matters so much that we have a wide-ranging set of practices and conversations around what’s fit to eat — called kashrut or keeping kosher. Like all vital Jewish practices, the meaning of keeping kosher continues to evolve. In the last generation we’ve witnessed the development of eco-kashrut — integrating Jewish principles of sustainability, justice, health and compassion with Jewish eating traditions — as well as the introduction of hechsher tzedek (kosher justice) — a standard for determining what is kosher by including among its criteria how the food producer treats its workers.

Under the leadership of a new national organization called Hazon, meaning “vision,” these and other concerns (evidenced in books such as Michael Pollen’s The Ominvore’s Dilemma) are coalescing into what’s being called The New Jewish Food Movement — in which Jewish farmers, rabbis, chefs, teachers, students and families are exploring how one can eat in a way that is both deeply Jewish, healthy and sustainable.

Locally, the Jewish food movement is taking root (pun intended) in the form of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). CSAs are where individuals pre-purchase a share of a farmer’s produce for an entire season. The CSA guarantees the farmer a secure market and gives members access to local, organic produce at competitive prices, while helping to preserve farmland and build community. A Boulder-based Jewish CSA called Tuv Ha’aretz (The Good of the Land) is now in its second year. In Denver, there are two Jewish CSAs currently forming.

Imagine the possibilities these CSAs bring to the Jewish community! Examples include holiday celebrations, Jewish education, addressing issues of hunger and malnutrition with Jewish community resources, and integrating Jewish food consciousness more deeply and easily into our lives.

Judaism Your Way will be bringing aspects of Jewish food consciousness into our programs starting with our 8th night Passover Seder.

By Rabbi Brian Field

JYW Newsletter, Fall 2009

Inclusion. It’s the core theme of Judaism Your Way.

In this column I’ll be exploring Jewish identity, practice and expression when held up to the standard of full inclusion. That’s why, with a nod to classics such as The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh, I’m calling it “The Torah of Inclusion.”

In this issue, I’ll start to explore what I mean by the term “inclusion.” In my next column, I’ll discuss my understanding of the second term in the title, “Torah.”

Here are some of the questions I’ll be addressing: What does it take to create a Judaism that’s maximally inclusive? What are the challenges and risks? What are the benefits and possibilities? What stories need to be told of those among us who’ve not yet felt included in Judaism as it currently stands? And what pro-inclusion resources already exist within Judaism that we can use to move the project forward?

Here’s one resource to start: a passage in the Talmud, the great multi-century rabbinic exploration of Jewish values and practices. Two rival schools of Jewish learning – the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel – engaged in an ongoing conflict about Jewish practice, with neither giving way. Finally a heavenly voice intervened, saying, “Eilu v’eilu dvarim elohim hayim – These (the teachings of the school of Shammai) and these (the teachings of the school of Hillel) are the words of the living God.”

This teaching goes to the heart of an inclusive Judaism. Judaism has a “both-and” consciousness. Just like a magnet needs both a north and south pole to be a whole magnet, Judaism is not “my way” versus “your way” but, rather, “my way and your way,” religious and secular, traditional and revolutionary, outer-directed and inner-focused.

An inclusive Judaism is both exciting and challenging: exciting because it welcomes a potentially huge range of ideas, practices and identities, and challenging because it calls us to embrace what feel like contradictions, to go to a place that’s larger than any one of our individual perspectives.

One of the topics that the schools of Shammai and Hillel debated was the proper order to light the Hanukkah menorah. Shammai argued that we should begin on the first night with all 8 candles lit (corresponding to the full amount of oil on the first day) and light one less candle each night, and Hillel argued that we should end on the eighth night with all eight candles lit (it can be feel depressing to watch light diminish over the holiday rather than see it increase). To this day, many families, in the spirit of the Torah of Inclusion light one menorah in the custom of Hillel and another menorah in the teaching of Shammai.

I’ll be exploring the Torah of Inclusion more frequently than our quarterly newsletter, so look for new columns on our web site.

And please share your thoughts and responses. I’d love to know what you think.

By Rabbi Brian Field

Talk given at the inaugural event of the Interfaith Clergy Coalition, We Believe Colorado, Montview Presbyterian Church, June 12, 2008

This past Monday, 50 days after Passover, Jews celebrated the holiday of Shavuot. On Shavuot, Jews celebrate God’s revelation of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. And we read the Biblical story of Ruth.

What does the story of Ruth mean for us today?

Ruth is a foreigner, but not just any foreigner. She is a Moabite, and because Moabites had once refused to help the wandering Israelites, Moabites were forbidden to enter the Israelite community even to the tenth generation.¹ Yet that was not what happened here. Ruth was welcomed onto the fields of Boaz who made sure that even this suspect and illegal foreigner had a decent job at decent pay.

But — if Ruth came to the United States today, what would happen?

Would she be admitted at the border? Or would she be detained for months without a lawyer, no medical attention, no access to her mother-in-law Naomi?

Would Ruth have to show a “green card” before she could get a job gleaning at any farm, restaurant, or hospital? And if no green card was being offered would she be charged as a criminal for having no valid papers?

Today in the US, some of us are strangers like Ruth; some are prosperous, like Boaz. In biblical Israel everyone was entitled to decent work for a decent income. In biblical Israel everyone – even, especially, a suspect immigrant from a despised nation – had the right simply to walk onto a field and begin to work.

By the end of the story, Ruth and Boaz were married and ultimately became the great grandparents of King David who in turn is the ancestor of the Messiah. Listen to this biblical value: A stranger and a solid citizen got together and helped make the possibility of Messiah, helped bring the world of peace and justice. What do we learn from their story today?

I joined We Believe Colorado because we as a society have fallen away from the real biblical values – the values exemplified in the Biblical book of Ruth – lovingkindness, generosity, human dignity, the right to work for a living wage, the protection of the vulnerable – the stranger, the widow and the orphan. I stand with We Believe Colorado, because, like the ancient author of the Book of Ruth, I believe, whether we are Israelite or Moabite, Jewish, Christian or Muslims, religious or secular, that it is only when we cross our faith and cultural boundaries and join with each other for the common good – then we can be the ancestors of Messiah. We can bring a society and a world of peace and justice.

Shalom aleichem, salaam aleikum, peace and justice to you all.

Footnotes

¹ No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord; none of their descendants, even in the tenth generation, shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the Lord, 5 because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you left Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Aram- naharaim, to curse you. — (Deuteronomy 23:4-5)

Written and signatures gathered by Rabbi Field August 2010, submitted to but declined for publication by the InterMountain Jewish News and The Denver Post, August 2010

We have watched the conversation unfold around Park51, the proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan, with deep concern. We fully recognize the strong sentiments that have been aroused, and the passionate expressions of grief that are still raw for many families. As Jews and as rabbis, however, we want to state unambiguously our commitment to the principle of the free exercise of religion, a principle that has allowed Jewish Americans to flourish in this country.

Park51 is a project that seeks to emulate communal institutional expressions of other religious traditions like the YMCA and the JCC (Jewish Community Center) which not only provide for their respective faith communities to come together for social and educational offerings, but more importantly, are open to the larger neighborhood regardless of religious affiliation. We understand that Americans of all faiths live in two civilizations simultaneously and Park51 is an opportunity for American Muslims to celebrate their history, traditions and heritage in the embrace of one of the highest American ideals, that of freedom of religion.

We commend Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama for their support of this project and urge them both to be strong and of good courage in the face of rising hate speech and condemnation of the voices of tolerance. We call on Jews of all denominations to oppose the dangerous rise in these debates and protests. At this time on the Jewish calendar of moral introspection and teshuvah (returning and repenting), we call on all Jews to turn toward the kind of America we want to live in going forward, one whose deep commitment to religious pluralism will be strengthened, for Muslim Americans and for all of us.

Rabbi Brian Field, Denver

Rabbi Eliav Bock, Denver

Rabbi Shoshana Leis, Ft. Collins

Rabbi Ben Newman, Ft. Collins

Rabbi Lewis Bogage, Ohr Shalom, Grand Junction

Rabbi Eliot Baskin, Denver

Rabbi Joe Black, Temple Emanuel, Denver

Rabbi Joel Schwartzman, Morrison

Rabbi Anat Moskowitz, Denver

Rabbi Ted Stainman, Denver

Rabbi Debra Rappaport, Avon

Rabbi Deborah Ruth Bronstein, Boulder

Rabbi Hanoch Fields, Colorado Springs

Rabbi Steven Foster, Denver

Rabbi Jay TelRav, Denver

Rabbi Steven Booth-Nadav, Denver

Rabbi Sandra Cohen, Denver

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Nevei Kodesh, Boulder

Rabbi Evette Lutman, Bnai Havurah, Denver

Rabbi Adam Morris, Temple Micah, Denver

Rabbi Joe Goldman, Steamboat Springs

Rabbi Benjamin Arnold, Beth Evergreen, Evergreen

Rabbi Julian Cook, Denver

Rabbi Ori Har-DeGennaro, Boulder

All organizations are listed for purposes of identification only. There is no assumption of organizational endorsement of this statement.

By Rabbi Brian Field

Article for Interfaithfamily.com, May 2008, see published article here

Introduction

When I enrolled at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1988, I was opposed to officiating at interfaith marriages. At the time, I understood the sancta of Judaism to be applicable only to Jews. I was concerned that non-Jews would not value the spiritual context of Jewish rituals.

Two experiences in rabbinical school changed my mind. The first was the large number of Jewishly oriented and participating interfaith couples I met and served in my student pulpits. The second was a seminary-wide conversation among professors, students and administrators about interfaith marriages, during which we discussed our thoughts and feelings about whether, how and under what circumstances to officiate. A formerly black-and-white issue became transformed for me into an evolving spectrum of practices, relationships, principles, experiments, conflicts and unsettled questions. My mind re-opened to an issue I thought I had settled. I noted with gratitude the heart-widening effect the possibility of officiating had on my sense of myself as a rabbi.

Of course, no one enters the rabbinate to say “no.” We become rabbis because we want to say “yes” to the people who come to us. We become rabbis because we all deeply desire to open doors for people to say yes to Judaism and to the Jewish people.

Since 2004, I have been the rabbi for Judaism Your Way, a Denver-based Jewish outreach organization. One of the ways that I open doors to Jewish living is by working with and officiating at the weddings of interfaith couples.

Here are the reasons that I am committed to this work:

1. I’m offering an affirming rabbinic response to couples seeking a way to engage Jewishly at a very vulnerable time in their lives. Frequently the couples with whom I work have met with rabbis who won’t officiate at their wedding. Irrespective of what these rabbis intend, many couples experience the boundary these rabbis are setting as a personal rejection.
2. By choosing to perform these ceremonies, I’m providing for couples a powerful entry point into Jewish life. Our work together helps them begin their married life with a public and shared Jewish experience. This experience empowers the couple to take full pride in their Jewish identities and connections, and sets the stage for their enthusiastic participation in Jewish life.
3. In preparing for these ceremonies, I work with the couple as a counselor and teacher. The couple engages directly with Jewish tradition to co-create their ceremony with me. In case after case couples with whom I work experience Judaism as being of them, reflecting and responding to whom they are and wish to become.
4. Many guests leave the ceremony with more appreciation for Judaism and more respect for the couple’s choice to identify as a Jewish couple. Non-Jews have an experience of a Judaism that is accessible and inclusive. Jews see our rituals lovingly supported and enthusiastically embraced by non-Jews. People experience Judaism as a generous host and a ground for Jews and non-Jews to connect.

What follows is my current thinking about officiating at interfaith marriages. I’ve divided this article into two parts:

1. my thinking about the context of how we feel about intermarriage and how these feelings affect what we choose to do as rabbis.
2. detailed considerations about how I work with interfaith couples.

Three Lenses

Humans get scared. Sometimes our fear is based on current reality and at other times our fear is based on a past experience that is no longer operative. Because of a collective experience of centuries of anti-Jewish oppression that culminated in the Holocaust, we Jews carry an understandable and easily-triggered fear of annihilation. Today assimilation is a major threat to Jewish survival, one manifestation of which we tend to see as intermarriage.

Accordingly, in his recent study “A Tale of Two Jewries: The Inconvenient Truth for American Jews,” sociologist Steven Cohen asserts the “axiomatic truth” that intermarriage constitutes a “grave threat to Jewish continuity.” Mr. Cohen is not alone in the use of this language or this stance. His is a widely held worldview — and word-choice — in the Jewish world.

There are three lenses through which we can look at how the Jewish community chooses to respond to intermarriage. One lens is psychological: How has fear about Jewish disappearance constrained the ways we approach the issue of intermarriage in the Jewish community and affected our ability even to see our possible options?

In my experience, people are less apt to think clearly when survival fears are triggered. Given how easy it is for Jews to default to fear, I’m wondering about the effect of the “threat” discourse on our ability to think flexibly and creatively as Jewish leaders. Deep down, if we’re supported to believe that the forces that work against Jewish survival are overpowering, how can we view our outreach work as anything more than the equivalent of putting a finger in the dike? It would be hard for me personally to sustain hope and creativity with this deadening and inaccurate view of my life’s work.

A second lens is discursive: how we are talking about intermarriage within the Jewish community, and how intermarried couples and families and their adult and growing children are hearing us. What is actually taken in when Jewish opinion leaders label intermarriage a grave threat? What do couples and families experience when a synagogue welcomes interfaith families to join but won’t host the marriage ceremony that covenants that family together? What is the effect of marketing Jewish education on the grounds that it will reduce the chance that one’s child will intermarry?

In effect, the current discourse can be characterized as “yes, but:” “Yes, you’re welcome, but we can’t help but see you as a symptom or a problem. Yes, you’re welcome, but we wish you had married a Jew, or we wish that you would convert; yes, you’re welcome, but we wish you were different and more than you are.”¹

In other words, what is the effect of partially welcoming and not fully celebrating this growing constituency in our communities? What is the effect of speaking of interfaith families as a “them” and not as an “us?” Does it foster or undermine our sense of common peoplehood? Does it create the conditions for non-Jewish spouses to become effective and thoughtful allies or help marginalize and disempower them?

In my work, I’m asking what a “yes, and” approach would look like and how it would shape our choices. The understandable Jewish “no” is not the primary cause of low intermarried participation in the Jewish community but over the years it has become a significant co-factor. Judaism Your Way offers a Jewish “yes” because we’re seeing what can move forward for Jews and their beloveds when we do. We Jews have a generous, flexible tradition and we can afford to say “yes” far more than we had formerly imagined.

A third lens is midrashic. By midrashic I mean the way that the Jewish people understand what the sancta of Judaism –- liturgy, holidays and the Torah itself –- are communicating about who the Jewish people are meant to be.

A few years ago, Rabbi Janet Marder of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos, California called the non-Jewish spouses and parents in her congregation up to the bimah on Yom Kippur to honor them for their role in supporting Jewish life.² People wept as they were formally recognized for who they were: participants in and allies to the Jewish community. Since that time more communities are doing the same and I think this is a positive, healing and appropriate trend.

The Torah itself speaks about the potential contributions of interfaith marriage towards Jewish continuity. Here are two examples: Tzipporah, Moses’ Midianite wife, is the person who recognized the necessity of circumcising their son.³ Jacob blessed the children of his intermarried son Joseph, saying: “Through you may all Israel be blessed, saying – may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.”⁴

I’m suggesting that we approach intermarriage in the Jewish community by following Jacob’s example. Jacob is the patriarch whose name, Israel, is given to the Jewish people. In other words, through his life, we get our first sense of who we are meant to be. Through Jacob’s explicit blessing of his grandchildren, two products of an intermarriage, and his recognition of them as the conduits of blessing for all of the Jewish people, we are guided to the fundamental Torah perspective about intermarried Jews: not a source of dilution or discontinuity, but a blessing and resource open to cultivation.

How can we move ourselves to see intermarried Jews the way Jacob saw his grandchildren? We can examine our fears and their enormous if unintended effects. We can notice how we talk about each other. And we can turn again to our sacred sources which offer us surprising openings to help the Jewish people continue to evolve.

Tachlis of Officiation

What follows are ways I work with interfaith couples who approach me to officiate at their wedding

First Response

Whenever I respond to a couple’s first inquiry, regardless of whether I’m available or not, the first thing I say or write is Mazel tov. It’s a simple and cost-free courtesy that many of our colleagues forget or withhold. A mazel tov is not an endorsement nor a commitment to perform the ceremony. It’s an acknowledgement of the couple’s joy. First impressions are powerful. By leading with a Mazel tov, the couple receives an affirmative first impression from a representative of the Jewish people.

Who gets a Jewish wedding?

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan once described Judaism as “an exemplary way to be a human being.” In other words, Judaism is a particular expression of the universal human condition. I interpret this to mean that Judaism is for anyone who is Jewishly connected and engaged. That’s how I understand, for example, the Torah’s inclusion of the erev rav in the Passover story – the participation of non-Jews in the fundamental narrative of the birth of the Jewish people.

When I first meet with a mixed couple, I ask them two questions: 1) why they want a rabbi to officiate at their wedding; and 2) why they want Judaism to be the primary⁵ spirituality language of the ceremony that sanctifies their covenanting with each other. Their answer determines how I approach my work with them.

What rituals get included?

L’hat-chilah, I withhold no traditional Jewish ritual from the ceremony. In the course of our work together, we may decide that some rituals or formulations are not appropriate or need to be reconstructed, but those decisions are always made with the input of the couple, in the context of our work together, and in the context of their relationship to Judaism.

After the wedding, the couple will be making further decisions about what to do Jewishly. With that in mind, my goal as a rabbi is to give the couple a positive and affirming Jewish experience: When the time comes to make other decisions (baby naming, pre-school, holiday celebration, affiliation), they won’t have a “no” from a rabbi as their primary memory about their encounter as a couple with the Jewish community. Rather, they’ll have the shared experience of a successfully worked-through Jewish wedding ceremony in which they were celebrated by their loved ones.

In addition, I give the couple as much decision-making power over the rituals as possible, in order for them to know that they can successfully make pro-Jewish decisions – because now they will already have. I tell the couple that it is their wedding and that they are responsible to choose the rituals of their wedding ceremony. I work with the couple, not as a gate-keeper, but as a teacher. I see the pre-wedding work as an opportunity for the couple to get experience making Jewish choices as a couple. It’s not just preparing for a ritual; it’s also a rehearsal for a lifetime of decisions they will be making later on.

The rituals

In my approach to Jewish ritual, I am guided less by the halachic boundaries and more by the mytho-poetic power of Jewish spirituality to speak to the human condition. I see Jewish wedding rituals as the Jewish ways of holding the sacred moment of two human beings covenanting with one another. From that perspective, there is virtually no ritual that is l’hat-chilah inappropriate for an interfaith wedding. I find that when couples are given permission to consider the Jewish wedding rituals, they are moved by them and see them as speaking to them and of them. Couples take the opportunity to explore the spiritual dimension of their relationship. The vocabulary for their conversations comes from Judaism. Judaism becomes the way they experience themselves.

Among the rituals in the wedding ceremony, there are two rituals where I guide couples away from the traditional formulation. The first is the harei aht. I explain to couples that the phrase k’dat moshe v’yisrael implies that the speaker is Jewish. In the interest of speaking from a place of personal truth and integrity, I invite the couple to create their own betrothal formulations, sometimes incorporating biblical passages as well as adapting phrases from their ketubah. Similarly, I guide couples away from traditionally worded ketubot. Happily there are many resources today for interfaith ketubot.

A favorite part of my work with the any couple is our discussion of the sheva brachot. Using the section in Anita Diamant’s The Jewish Wedding, I invite them to choose the translation. This often leads the couple to their first serious discussion of what they believe about God. It also opens them up to the refreshing insight that there are many ways in Judaism to approach God.

Rituals and practices from outside of Judaism

It is of utmost importance to me that the non-Jewish member of the couple has a voice in the ceremony. It is also very important that we pay attention to the connection that non-Jews and others not familiar with the Jewish wedding ceremony in particular and Jewish spirituality in general are able to make.

I ask the non-Jew if he or she can describe wedding traditions and other rituals or practices from his/her faith/cultural background that are meaningful. I then try to find ways of including/incorporating some aspect of that into the ceremony. I also often include one or more of the following:

• birkat cohanim (Numbers 6:24-26)
  When the wedding ceremony involves a Christian, I offer the couple the opportunity to receive this blessing. Used in both Christian and Jewish settings, I have come to see this blessing as fully Jewish and Christian at the same time. Often I invite a member of the Christian family to offer the blessing in English alongside my Hebrew.
• Ist Corinthians 13
  If the non-Jew wants a Biblical reading from the Christian Scriptures, I suggest this passage. It’s both thematically appropriate to the occasion and, because it has no explicitly Christological reference, Jewish sensibilities are not offended.
• unity candle
  Many couples wish to light a unity candle or some variant (such as sand) to symbolize the coming together of two families and two traditions. I often use the popular quotation attributed to the Baal Shem Tov. On Saturday evenings, I have used the havdalah candle for the dual purpose of symbolizing the transition from one state into another (single to married, Shabbat to week) as well as a Jewish version of the unity candle.
• huppah
  To facilitate the spiritual and emotional involvement of the non-Jewish family, I invite them to use a family heirloom such as a quilt or tablecloth to be the huppah cover. They will have the experience of seeing their child standing under a fabric that has so many more family resonances for them
• blessings
  Before the public ceremony, I invite parents to bless their children. The pre-wedding moments are often filled with anxiety and lots of last minute details. This ritual often gives parents an opportunity to have a final moment with their children and to let them go to the huppah with kavannah. A bonus for some religious non-Jewish parents is that they can provide the couple with a blessing from their faith tradition, without interfering with the Jewish integrity of the public ceremony.

Conversion

There is a fundamental principle that conversion to Judaism should not be undertaken for an ulterior motive. Yet many non-Jews convert to Judaism in order to marry a Jew. Some of these conversions express the person’s sincere commitment to being a Jew. But most are only undergone because they were told that was the only way to have a Jewish wedding and for a rabbi to officiate.

When the non-Jew in an interfaith couple asks me about conversion, I tell them that I’m happy to work with them towards this goal. I also tell them that they don’t need to convert for me to marry them. I tell them that marriage is an enormous transition, and that conversion to Judaism is an enormous transition, but that they aren’t the same transition. Each is life-changing and each needs careful attention. I ask them – if they couldn’t do both at the same time – what would they choose to do first. They invariably pick the wedding. I tell them that if they still want to convert after they are married, I’ll be delighted to work with them.

Sometimes they insist that they do want to move towards conversion while they are preparing for their wedding, in which case I move ahead with them. Sometimes, they come back soon after the wedding for the conversion (though more often that happens when they’re ready to start a family). And sometimes they don’t come back or perhaps approach a congregational rabbi.

Conclusion

Over the last fifteen years, I have officiated at the weddings of couples where both members are Jewish as well at the weddings of interfaith couples. I cannot know at the outset which of those couples will stay together, which will evolve into strong and resilient Jewish families, which of them will raise children who are Jewishly identified.

But what I count on is Judaism’s legacy as a deeply generous, inclusive and flexible spiritual tradition. Knowing this keeps me at the threshold of the very door I’m holding open for a wedding couple. I can’t imagine a more privileged and exciting place for a rabbi to stand.

Rabbi Brian Field
Judaism Your Way
Denver, Colorado
May, 2008

Footnotes

¹ This same dynamic plays out with born Jews, who often also feel that the Jewish community wishes they too were “more Jewish” or “knew more.” Many of us hear Jews expressing guilt or shame that they are “not Jewish enough.” This self-doubt makes it harder to feel good about being Jewish, and thus to affiliate. The same type of shift — from worry about insufficient Jewishness in an interfaith family to excitement about their Jewish possibilities — can also be applied to re-welcoming unaffiliated Jews.

² http://www.betham.org/sermons/marder040925bl.html

³ Exodus 4.24-5. Brit milah is the premier inter-generational covenantal act of Jewish continuity. Moses hadn’t circumcised his son and until he did, or, as it turned out, until his non-Jewish wife did it in his place, Moses could not be the person through whom God would respond covenantally to the suffering of the Israelites by redeeming them from slavery.

⁴ Genesis 48.20. Joseph had married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen 41.45)

⁵ There are cases where the couple does not intend Judaism to be their primary spiritual orientation, where Judaism will be part of who they are but not all of who they are. I discuss the inclusion and treatment of other faith traditions in the wedding ceremony in sections #5 and #6. The exploration of the couple’s understanding of the relationship between their faith traditions, particularly how the children will be raised, is the subject of extensive counseling. I do not require the children to be raised solely as Jews for me to participate in the wedding ceremony.

Rabbi Brian Field performs Weddings (Interfaith & same-gender ceremonies, Vow renewal ceremonies), Spiritual Counseling, Baby Namings, Interfaith Couples Group

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Weddings & Ceremonies

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Interfaith Couples Coaching

Adult Education

Bar/Bat Mitzvah

Baby Namings

Conversion to Judaism

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