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Wedding brings good news about future of Jewish life
RABBI BARTON LEE
Special to Jewish News
Recently I was invited to another state to officiate at the wedding of a former Arizona State University Hillel student. We had met 25 years ago, when I first came to the ASU campus. We became friends, and he was intensely involved in our Hillel program.
To my chagrin, he dropped out of ASU before graduation and married a non-Jewish girl. I had argued that Jewish identity was more important to him than he realized. I asserted that, over the long haul, the lack of a Jewish partner would cause him real sadness. But my words did not deter him. As happens so often with young people, the love of the moment seemed timeless. To youth, no problems seem unsolvable, especially those involving religion.
My friend thought religion was a private matter. He underestimated the cultural, social, and ethnic importance of Jewish identity. He did not realize how important Jewish communal ties were to him. My friend, like so many young people, could not project what would become important as he had a family, what sadness he would endure by not having his children be Jewish.
We remained in touch from time to time over the years, and my friend achieved great success in his career. In his home life, however, he endured great disappointment, much sadness, and, ultimately, a painful divorce. After many years alone, a year ago, through a Jewish community connection in the city where he now lived, my friend met and fell in love with a Jewish woman. She too had wandered far distant from her Jewish roots, had similarly experienced the sadness of a failed marriage and estrangement from Jewish life. Yet so many years later, their reconnection to Judaism proved a critical basis for the deepening of their relationship.
To my delight, I was invited to officiate at their wedding and help them celebrate their love and their commitments Jewishly. They told me they felt as if they were starting life anew. And this time, they insisted, they "wanted to do it right." Doing it right to them meant a traditional Jewish ceremony, including the signing of tanaim (marriage conditions) and breaking a plate, a traditional Aramaic ketubah (marriage contract), fasting before the ceremony, the groom wearing a kittel (as a symbol of teshuva, repentance), and finally the presence of four rabbis - two Orthodox rabbis from a neighboring community where the groom lived; the rabbi of the Conservative congregation to which they belonged; and me, the groom's old friend and Hillel rabbi.
This joyous wedding taught me three lessons. First, we can never know what will happen with individual Jews. No matter how far a young Jew wanders, we must never write him or her off. We simply can never know what life's experiences will bring, what will spark a return to Jewish community and Jewish commitment. We must not despair of our Jewish future, or of the Jewish future of any Jew.
The second lesson I learned was that, despite all the difficulties we read about, Orthodox and liberal rabbis can work together respectfully and amicably in religious settings. What a treat it was to share this wedding ceremony with two warm, bright and caring Orthodox colleagues. We carefully observed the halachic (Jewish law) proprieties. Together we explained the meaning of the rituals and rules. Mutual respect for each others' commitment, shared concern for the couple who were getting married, and shared dedication to helping the bride and groom celebrate their commitments in a warm, Jewish manner, allowed us to work together and led to an enjoyable and enlightening conversation throughout the wedding meal. Words of Torah were exchanged and friendship begun.
The third lesson I learned was that, though we may expect the liberals to be the innovators, it isn't necessarily so. My Orthodox rabbinic colleague who presided over the bedeken (when the groom places the veil on his bride) was himself a ritual innovator within the halachic framework. During the bedeken, the rabbi asked the parents of the bride and groom to give the couple their private and personal blessing. Each parent did so, and the moment proved exceptionally touching. This novel addition to our jointly performed ceremony will become a staple of weddings I will conduct in the future.
Rabbi Barton Lee is director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center at Arizona State University.
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