MoH just called from work; she found a rabbi that not only does interfaith weddings, but "would be happy" to do mine. That's good, I guess. Um, yeah.
I think the wave of pseudo-religiosity and trying to reconnect with my upbringing and heritage is on the ebb right now, though, because at this point I'd be totally okay with a Unitarian or non-denominational minister performing the ceremony with just a couple of touches of Jewish (and other) ritual thrown in. But I hear he is young, and very progressive, and it'd be worth a call, I suppose (and at least now we have a name and number to start our search with).
Anyway it's a busy month (plus) coming up, so I'll probably give him a call in April and see if I think D and I should meet him. It will be good to get moving on the wedding planning train again.
Some people just want a performer - there are lots of these, both rabbis and not. Some have great voices and can carry a tune. Others are great on the content side. Others you wonder what they are doing in this field, since they obviously have no aptitude for it.
ReplyDeleteWe had a big problem leading up to my wedding. My hubs got religion all of a sudden and wanted a ketubah (Jewish wedding contract) just like the old days. So we went to a ketubah vendor online, intending to get one of those interfaith thingies.
He changed his mind halfway through and wanted to get a semi-traditional ketubah and make it legal, with all kinds of addenda and corollaries, register it with the town clerk, etc.
That was an oops! moment. Turned out our rabbi was just a performer. She didn't know Hebrew or Aramaic, the languages used in the ketubah. She also didn't know what a ketubah really was, and about the legal implications of making it a real contract.
It also turned out she wasn't really Jewish, but a Unitarian that got an interfaith rabbi's certificate from a "not really Jewish" seminary, the New Seminary, in NYC. So much for our performer.
We were in a bind and hubs didn't want to change his mind. We eventually found an *ORTHODOX* rabbi (of all things!) who did know his stuff, and essentially had the ketubah vendor custom rewrite our ketubah so it would work in our interfaith situation as a legal document.
He was also instrumental in getting my hubs to compromise with me in lots of other things.
It was getting real late in the process and we only had two months to find another officiant. I asked the rabbi if he would do our wedding: he said he would, but I would have to realize that he couldn't do a traditional Jewish wedding and that an interfaith wedding wasn't Jewish, but that he didn't see any reason why the two of us couldn't marry and being that he was licensed to do both religious and non-religious weddings, he'd be happy to help us out.
Anyway, he did a great job in bringing both sides of our very contentious families together on this one. I was really surprised, since everyone told me that Orthodox rabbis wouldn't even look at us. They were so very wrong. It turns out that they just have more stringent requirements, and you'll have to get a secular wedding ceremony.
Anon for now.
Wow, I didn't know orthodox rabbis could do interfaith weddings at all! I can just imagine asking the rabbi who is doing my mom's second wedding... he might spontaneously combust if we asked him. :)
ReplyDeleteI think, rather than a religious wedding, D and I both want a ceremony that pays homage to our diverse backgrounds and includes things that both of our families would recognize as "their own." So I suppose that opens things up a bit.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Anon.