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9 - Is a Truly Interfaith Ceremony Even Possible for Us? (Plus - Addressing Co-Officiation)
55 Plays1 year ago
Concerned that your "interfaith ceremony" will actually turn out to be a single-faith ceremony with a shoutout or two to the "second-tier" tradition?
Don't write off an interfaith ceremony just yet! Trust me, it's NOT impossible - it just takes a particularly conscious preparation. In this episode, we'll go over some things you should consider as a couple before getting in to the details of your interfaith ceremony, including:
- What are the most important parts of a wedding ceremony in your faith or culture? Which are non-negotiable?
- Is there a chance that your traditional prayers would include wording that excludes or invalidates your partner's faith?
- What are the barriers to your comfort with your partner's faith or cultural wedding traditions?
Don't forget - you can reach me any time at www.yourohiorabbi.com.
Fill out the contact form there if you'd like to work with me on your wedding.
IG: @yourohiorabbi
Send questions for me to answer on this podcast to:
Hope to see you next time! Remember - there is ALWAYS more learning to do!
<3 Rabbi LeighAnn
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Transcript
Understanding and Respecting Faiths
00:00:00
Speaker
because I know that this couple was so proud of the hard work they had done. And even though they were both very dissimilar in terms of their relationship to their faith, you could tell just by speaking to them that they sort of glowed
00:00:17
Speaker
with the knowledge that they were very secure, not only in their own faith and their own traditions, but the faith and tradition of their partner. And they had a roadmap, a very clear understanding based on really tough conversations about how that would look in their household.
Guidance for Interfaith Weddings
00:00:34
Speaker
Are you planning a Jewish or interfaith wedding? Are you lost on where to even begin planning the ceremony, let alone finding a rabbi to help you?
00:00:45
Speaker
Well, it doesn't matter whether one of you is Jewish or you're both Jewish. You deserve a guide. So take a deep breath. I promise it will all be okay. Welcome to Your Jewish Wedding with Rabbi Lian. Here, I can be everyone's rabbi. Yours too. My guests and I will share everything we know to help make your Jewish or interfaith wedding full of tradition and perfectly yours.
00:01:29
Speaker
Hello, everyone. I am so glad to have you here with me today. I am in the middle of cooking for Rosh Hashana, which is tomorrow. I'm recording this on September 14th, 2023, although it will probably be posted after Rosh Hashana.
00:01:46
Speaker
But I have to tell you, this year, no, I don't want to jinx anything, okay? So, Kanahara. But I'm feeling so chill and relaxed about just whatever food gets done will get done. And if it doesn't, and people have a complaint, they shouldn't tell me about it. And hopefully my kids will be too afraid to talk.
00:02:09
Speaker
to tell me all their complaints. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I got matzo balls done like last week, so they're in the freezer. My friend Erin, who I actually just recorded an episode of this podcast with, she is going to bring me soup that she makes from her Mother of Blessed Memories recipe so that
00:02:30
Speaker
her mom actually shows up at Rosh Hashanah at my house pretty regularly. Very excited about that. So maybe I shouldn't be chill, but I kind of am.
Creating Inclusive Ceremonies
00:02:39
Speaker
So that said, we are going to talk today about interfaith wedding ceremonies, how to create an interfaith wedding ceremony. Now, I know I spent the last two episodes talking about the conversation around interfaith marriage
00:02:55
Speaker
in the Jewish community all the way through history and some contemporary attitudes as well. If you didn't hear those episodes, those are episodes seven and eight, go back and take a listen if you're interested. But if you have already heard all the conversation about Jewish interfaith marriage and you are just like, yeah, yeah, I get it. I want to plan a ceremony. Can you help me? Well, of course, the answer is
00:03:19
Speaker
Yes, I can help you. And not only do I allow elements of other faiths or cultures in my ceremonies, I encourage them. Why? I think that those of you who have been listening all the way up through now will know by now that I'm a big believer in if your marriage will be equal parts you and your fiance, then as much as possible or as much as desired, your ceremony should reflect that as well.
00:03:45
Speaker
So a wedding ceremony does not have to be either Jewish or something else.
00:03:51
Speaker
at least according to me in my book. I don't know if you ask like officiants of other faiths, like especially like a Catholic priest. If you ask him, does it have to be either Catholic or something else? He also will say it depends, but I think can we have a wedding in the Catholic church and also have it be like half of something else? I think the answer is not quite so clear. But from my perspective,
00:04:16
Speaker
Not to talk so much about the Catholic Church, like I know what I'm talking about. I know like a small sliver of a fraction of stuff about Catholic weddings, okay? But from my perspective, no, it doesn't have to be an either or thing, right? Why is that? Go all the way back to our conversation about, but Rabbi, what if we're not religious? We talked all about Judaism is an ethno-religion, which means
00:04:45
Speaker
Do we have religious beliefs? Yeah, we've got a few. Is our religious practice also made up of tons of customs and little superstitions and symbolism and stuff that we picked up from other cultures? Also, definitely, definitely yes. So that means that any custom that is reflected in your Jewish ceremony
00:05:14
Speaker
can be just that. It can be just a custom. And as we get through this episode, we'll find out that actually a lot of Jewish customs are reflected in the customs of other faiths and cultural backgrounds as well. So lucky for us, it does not have to be either or one thing or another. We can actually really joyfully and a lot of times kind of easily combine both of your faiths and cultures into a beautiful ceremony that just feels
00:05:44
Speaker
right for both of you. So it could be that your, you know, your parents or grandparents are saying like, listen, it's a Jewish wedding. And if it's not a Jewish wedding, then there can't be anything Jewish about it. Or if there's anything Jewish in your wedding, then that means it excludes everything else. And, and that's not true these days. Okay. So I know 20 years ago, I got married just a little less than 19 years ago. We got married Sukkot 19 years ago.
00:06:11
Speaker
So then it was just about as difficult to find a rabbi or maybe even somebody religious to officiate your wedding back then. I remember we knew somebody who knew somebody and we had to give the big puppy dog eyes to get her to agree to officiate our wedding. We're very, very lucky. Actually, Rabbi Joan Friedman officiated our wedding. She is one of the OG female rabbis of America.
00:06:34
Speaker
big honor. And she did not officiate weddings regularly. However, she pretty much told us what was going to be in the wedding, which, you know, for us, we didn't care because we were just like so, so totally excited that Rabbi Friedman was officiating our wedding. And we were just pretty much down for whatever she wanted to do. I think that we asked for one reading to be included.
00:07:01
Speaker
And then she just basically like ran the show. I don't even think we had like a planning meeting. No shade either. It was a great wedding. I don't remember that much, that much of it, but she, she really did her thing and it was great.
00:07:12
Speaker
However, I'm pretty sure that the wedding we got is kind of the wedding that anybody would get from Rabbi Friedman. And that was just the way things sort of were going, I think, 19, 20 years ago. And so that might be the standard that your parents, grandparents are familiar with.
Personalizing Wedding Traditions
00:07:29
Speaker
There was this sense that a wedding ceremony was a standard thing. Again, this could have a lot to do with the rates of intermarriage still not being
00:07:38
Speaker
all that high in the 1980s and 1990s. And so there was a sensibility that like, okay, which wedding are you going to have? Jewish wedding, Christian wedding, Hindu wedding, you know, pick which one you're going to have. And so we also, if you wanted to learn about a Jewish wedding, so like, say you and your fiance decided together, like, we're going to have a Jewish wedding.
00:07:59
Speaker
almost like one person in that interfaith couple is capitulating almost. So the Jewish wedding then, you would say, okay, let's learn about what a Jewish wedding is like, as if all Jewish weddings have always been the same. But we did. We saw it as this monolithic thing. And something that supported that view of a Jewish wedding was that there was a book about the Jewish wedding.
00:08:23
Speaker
There was a book, a singular book available on the market for people getting married. Now, I do remember there was like a second row one that popped up in the early, early 2000s that people were very excited about because it meant it was the second book.
00:08:39
Speaker
Jewish weddings available that you could buy and read and learn about all Jewish weddings. So there was a book called The New Jewish Wedding by Anita Diamant. Anita Diamant is a giant and a legend and she helpfully and thankfully wrote this book The New Jewish Wedding so that we all could buy it and learn about what a Jewish wedding was like. Learn about the things that each individual element we needed to think about or she recommended we think about or even fun facts about like
00:09:06
Speaker
hey, did you know this about Jewish wedding invitations? Because Anita Diamant knew, even back then, that people were sort of falling out of this Jewish space where everybody just sort of went to Jewish weddings all the time and they knew all about them. She was like, listen, I know that you guys need a little primer on this, so I'm going to publish this book. It was a short book. I think it was maybe 200 pages long.
00:09:31
Speaker
So in the book, Anita Diamant writes so beautifully about all these things. She's tremendously knowledgeable. Those of you who have done focused education programs, though, are familiar with the phenomenon of the more studying you do, the more you realize you don't know, right? So if you're in your first year of medical school and you thought you were doing pretty well because you were pre-med and you knew so much stuff about everything and then you get to medical school and you're like,
00:09:59
Speaker
Wait a minute, we don't even know why people get hiccups? There's so much not only you personally in med school don't know about medicine, but there's so much that medicine doesn't know about people. So that's just one example. But anybody who is a professional and works in a professional field, especially if you've received higher education for it,
00:10:21
Speaker
It's kind of a general principle, like the more you learn, the more you learn that you don't know. So even she knew that that short book about Jewish weddings was really the point of it was to be exactly that, a primer. It was not meant
00:10:38
Speaker
to encompass every detail of every possible Jewish wedding or every historical Jewish wedding. It was a short book to get people familiar with Jewish weddings who had no familiarity with them. And when this book was written, I think it was first written in the 90s, maybe the 80s, there was not Google, there was not clicking and finding out information about stuff. It was just, thank goodness we can get a book.
00:11:05
Speaker
So I've heard Anita Diamant, the author of this book, which has now been updated at least twice, probably I think three times. I heard her on a podcast about Jewish weddings and she was actually saying exactly what I've just said, which is like, listen, it's a primer, it barely scratches the surface, but it gives you a good idea of what a Jewish wedding is like.
00:11:25
Speaker
I think the sentiment in that book was always, you know, Say Ummad, which is a famous quote from, I believe, Rabbi Hillel in the Talmud, that means go and learn. Meaning that this little bit of information should not represent all the information you have. It should be your motivation to go learn more, right? Which is kind of exactly that sentiment, I think, that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know and you go learn more. Say Ummad, go learn. Yeah.
00:11:55
Speaker
Second tangent of the episode, guys, I am on a roll. I assume if you're here at episode nine, you've gotten used to me by now and you're just sort of rolling your eyes and maybe clicking the fast forward button. You know, sorry, not sorry. Okay. So anyway, there's certainly not one way to do a Jewish wedding and there never has been. And we've talked about this a few times, right? This is not news to you. So another example, we're learning Kachubot and Dafyomi.
00:12:22
Speaker
Dafyomi is this idea that if all of us learn one page of Talmud every day, then we will finish learning the Talmud in seven years. So there is a worldwide schedule for learning Talmud. Right now we are in the section of Kidushin, which is all about, you guessed it,
00:12:45
Speaker
weddings. Okay, so even in this conversation about all these rabbis in the Talmud, this sort of ancient text, the conversations in this section of the Talmud about katubas, about marriage contract, make it really clear that Jewish weddings happen in all kinds of different ways. You know, different days to get married, different things to agree to in the katuba, different procedures for having the actual ceremony.
00:13:11
Speaker
We see that from all the way back, so there is no one way to do a Jewish wedding ceremony, even as far back as we can read. So anyway, all that is to say that even though different kinds of ceremonies existed, different communities
00:13:28
Speaker
knew about different kinds of ceremonies and there really was not a ton of communication about those or overlap and so this one Jewish wedding book, this short book about Jewish weddings, was kind of like the contemporary American standard and whatever was in there kind of represented what you would get from a rabbi if you were lucky enough to find one to officiate your wedding.
00:13:51
Speaker
So I know that a lot of people will talk a lot of trash about the wedding industry, quote unquote, the wedding industry. And there's this culture that goes along with it, right? Because everybody thinks, every couple thinks that they should have something about their wedding that is completely unique and completely them and completely custom. And a lot of people will ridicule this vibe of the wedding industry and saying, oh, nobody's happy with the status quo anymore.
00:14:17
Speaker
you know, in my day, we all had a white cake and we stuck some flowers on it. And that was that. Or in my day, everybody just had Jordan almonds in
00:14:28
Speaker
see through bags and that was the favor and everybody was happy. We didn't have all this custom nonsense, right? But I want to like, say calm down a little bit and look, this is just not, this is not something that we only see with weddings. It's with kids birthday parties. They're really big and custom. You know, sometimes people will have a party to reveal the sex of the baby they're expecting. Custom party, everything is,
00:14:56
Speaker
Handmade, everything is tailored to each individual couple and family. That's just the way things have gotten, okay? So is all that sort of teetering on the edge of having the potential for ridiculousness? Sure, sure. I mean, I think anybody who demands complete customization in every aspect of anything they're planning, yeah, I mean, it could be a little silly and it could be worthy of ridicule. And I think that there is one area of your wedding
00:15:23
Speaker
that should always, always 100% without a doubt be personalized to the two of you. And that is your ceremony. Why? Because you as a couple are completely unique. Your wedding ceremony is there to remind everyone at your wedding why they are there rooting for you. It's to remind the two of you why you chose each other.
00:15:52
Speaker
To do that, each aspect of it should tie back into either one person in the couple or both of you. The ceremony itself reminds everyone there why they love you and why you're perfect together, okay? So the address to the couple aside, like, you know, some officiants will say, oh, like I tell your love story. Yes, I do that, but that's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about the religious slash cultural parts of the ceremony. We'll talk about that.
00:16:20
Speaker
love story retelling another time because it is an important part of your ceremony. But I think that that's not really what we're talking about right now. Today is about combining interfaiths, intercultural couples into one ceremony. Okay. So
00:16:36
Speaker
The wedding ceremony is not about generic Jewish couple, seven million and 76, right? It's about the two of you, it's about your story. The specific promises that the two of you are making to one another, what matters specifically to you. If anything about your wedding is tailored exactly to your preferences,
00:16:59
Speaker
to your personalities, to exactly what you want the vibe of the day to be. If there's anything about your wedding you should demand actually fits these requirements, it is your ceremony. That's what we're talking about today.
00:17:25
Speaker
Welcome back. So you are marrying a person who does not come from the same faith or cultural background as you do.
00:17:35
Speaker
I mean, you know this person, obviously. Your faiths and backgrounds and cultures are compatible enough that you've stayed together this long. I assume you've been together long enough to really examine these differences and wherever those differences cause a wrinkle, you've been able to iron it out or at least spray some fabric relaxer on it, okay?
Navigating Faith and Culture Differences
00:18:02
Speaker
So going back to the episode on premarital counseling, I do think that the counseling can actually be a great place for you to start before even planning the ceremony because those conversations can help you quote unquote see around corners.
00:18:18
Speaker
Okay, as I've said, your marriage is half of each of you. You each want the ceremony to represent parts of your religion and culture. If either of you is unwilling to make the ceremony half and half equal, even Steven, balanced representative of both of you, then I'm going to gently say that the two of you have some more internal work to do. In other words, if you are a Jewish person marrying
00:18:47
Speaker
a Hindu person and you love this person so much and you're so excited to marry her. And the idea of you personally taking part in a Hindu ceremony makes you want to scream, cry, hide your head in a pillow, makes you so embarrassed, makes your blood run cold. I want you to seriously consider
00:19:14
Speaker
If you are that worried about, scared, repulsed by, cautious of, that expression of your fiance's faith and culture, are you actually accepting of your fiance as a whole?
00:19:31
Speaker
because our faith and culture is such a large part of, even if it's not part of who we are currently, it's part of our backgrounds and what made us into who we are. We learned so many values growing up and so many customs and so many ways of being that it's almost impossible that those things would not stick with us into adulthood and as part of our relationships. So if you are Catholic and you are listening to this ceremony because you're marrying a Jewish person and
00:19:57
Speaker
you love your Jewish fiance so very much. And the idea of a Jewish wedding ceremony makes you cringe. I want you to pause and ask yourself exactly why that's making you cringe. Because I want you to figure out if there are some serious concerns
00:20:17
Speaker
worries, misgivings about the Jewish religion that you have not fully confronted in yourself yet because I know your Jewish fiance is so sweet and super hot and just loves you so much. And when you marry that person, you are marrying all of him, including his religious upbringing, his cultural background.
00:20:39
Speaker
So do you remember when I was talking about interfaith counseling? And I talked about that couple that really sought out premarital counseling from both of their faiths. So we had one of them who was very strong in faith growing up and continued to be until this day. And another person who was Jewish and their faith and the tenets of their faith
00:21:05
Speaker
and their faith backgrounds and cultural backgrounds were so very important to them that they sought out premarital counseling from representatives of each of those faiths. So as part of that counseling, they had some really long and deep discussions about what their household would look like, their interfaith, intercultural household would look like once they'd been married.
00:21:25
Speaker
they came through that after having a lot of tough conversations. Because guess what? Each of them had some little internalized issues with elements of one another's faith. And sometimes that element turned out to be one of the most important elements to the other one. Guys, it was a lot of hard work. And if you are the couple listening, who I'm speaking about, you know who you are, and you'd like to come on the podcast and speak about your experience
00:21:53
Speaker
any part of your experience. I'm sure people would love that because I know that this couple was so proud of the hard work they had done. And even though they were both very dissimilar in terms of their relationship to their faith, you could tell just by speaking to them that they sort of glowed
00:22:14
Speaker
with the knowledge that they were very secure, not only in their own faith and their own traditions, but the faith and tradition of their partner. And they had a roadmap, a very clear understanding based on really tough conversations about how that would look in their household.
00:22:30
Speaker
So actually, I did not officially officiate that ceremony. I went and I contributed the seven wedding blessings for that couple and some explainers about other Jewish customs in the ceremony in like a beautiful, engaging way, obviously. And then I also managed their katuba and bedecken ceremony. If you don't know either of those words, don't worry about it. They're coming up in upcoming episodes and I will link back to them once they exist here.
00:22:59
Speaker
So an example of an issue that could come up, right? When you're talking about your interfaith ceremony, like, okay, babe, I'm Jewish, and you're Catholic, and we're just gonna figure out what stuff goes in a Jewish wedding and what stuff goes in a Catholic wedding, and then we're just gonna smash them together, and it's gonna be great.
00:23:15
Speaker
But will it? Unfortunately, there are some glaring conflicts that you will probably see right away. I know it can be difficult to hear, but it's the reality of the situation. So for example, in a Catholic wedding ceremony, there are standard road markers that go into each and every one of those ceremonies.
00:23:38
Speaker
in order for it to be considered a wedding ceremony according to the Catholic Church. And one of those things is the introduction to the wedding vows. And that's led by a priest, or sometimes a deacon, who is a non-priest, religious representative of the Church. So it's a layperson.
00:23:57
Speaker
a lot of times somebody who's married who's very knowledgeable about church stuff and can act as an officiant for life cycle events for sacraments. So this introduction to the wedding vows asks the couple, it asks both people in the couple whether they are willing to bring up their children according to quote, the law of Christ and the church with a capital C, church with a capital C.
00:24:22
Speaker
So a lot of times, especially if this Catholic partner is familiar with Catholic weddings and has been to a lot of celebrations, hearing this is just sort of, it's so normal and it's such a typical phrasing of the question, like, according to the law of Christ and the Church of the capital C. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we always have that. But when we go over it in service planning, and I've seen this happen more than once, the Jewish member of the couple, you can see it hit right in the gut.
00:24:50
Speaker
And you remember in, I think both of the two episodes before this, episode seven and eight about the interfaith marriage conversation, there's a gut feeling that like, oh, oh no, no. You know, a Jewish person you're married to might eat bacon.
00:25:05
Speaker
and might completely skip every single holiday and might not remember a single word of Hebrew from their Barbat Mitzvah training, but asking them, will you bring up your children according to the law of Christ in the Catholic Church? There is almost like
00:25:24
Speaker
an automatic pause that happens in that person's body and soul and they can't say it. So, interfaith couples especially, I really want you to do your homework around each and every element of the ceremony. What I don't want, my Jewish friends, is for you to be standing at your own wedding ceremony and to have offhandedly said, yes, of course,
00:25:45
Speaker
Father Bryce can do the introduction to the wedding vows. I don't know any Father Bryce. I was like trying to make up a normal name and then clearly failed miserably. Of course, Father Bryce can do the introduction to the wedding vows. Sounds really nice. Do you know what's in that introduction? Cause it's asking you to say you will not raise your children Jewish. So please make sure to go over all that before you are actually standing up at your ceremony. This may seem like a no brainer, but you wouldn't believe guys. Okay.
00:26:14
Speaker
Sometimes when this sort of thing happens, the Catholic member of the couple, or whatever the other faith is, obviously, the Catholic member of the couple will be shocked that the Jewish person has any problem with this.
Challenges in Interfaith Marriages
00:26:25
Speaker
Because they might have this idea that, yeah, it's just something you say. We always say that. It's not a big deal.
00:26:30
Speaker
But remember what I said about, you know, the generational trauma around the intermarriage conversation. Okay. A lot of people getting married like today in the next five years, growing up Jewish, they grew up hearing about how interfaith marriage meant we were going to be erased. And I'm sure that they had that idea within themselves that obviously that's not true. Nobody's trying to erase us.
00:26:54
Speaker
And then they're standing in front of a priest or deacon on their wedding day. And all of a sudden they're being asked like, Hey, by the way, are you willing to push your family the root of the Catholic church? You better say, yeah, it's your wedding day. And it can, I think it can feel like a little bit of eraser or a little bit of concern about that if you're caught off guard. Okay.
00:27:17
Speaker
So, by the way, in terms of raising your children whatever way, there's a whole episode planned about that. I know it's a big topic of conversation that always comes up around Jewish weddings. Don't worry, we'll talk about it. I'm not talking about the actual legal reality of what it means to promise to raise your children in a certain religion because that is irrelevant. What I'm talking about now is the feeling that happens when we are faced with this question, okay?
00:27:40
Speaker
Speaking of weddings that are interfaith or intercultural, especially interfaith, especially when both members of the couple have really deep and strong attachments to their faith in the way that is represented in the ceremony. A big, big, big question for your rabbi, maybe, are you willing to co-officiate
00:27:58
Speaker
a wedding ceremony. Co-officiate means equally split the task and the legal responsibilities of that marriage ceremony between myself and a clergy person of a separate faith. I should preface this by saying that technically, according to the movement under which I was ordained and remain a rabbi, it is still not permissible for me to co-officiate a ceremony with a member
00:28:28
Speaker
of another faith, with a clergy member of another faith. So, do I co-officiate? No, I do not co-officiate. However, do I invite clergy of other faiths to offer readings, prayers, or blessings as part of the ceremonies that I officiate?
00:28:49
Speaker
Yes. Do I also offer readings, prayers, or Jewish blessings as part of the ceremonies that other clergy is officiating?
00:29:02
Speaker
Yes. So going back to Father Bryce, who is fictional. And if your name is Father Bryce and you're listening to this, please email me. I would love to have you on the podcast because wouldn't that be a riot? Your Jewish wedding podcast at gmail.com. And actually, if you know Father Bryce, please email me also. I'm going to call him. Okay. Speaking of priests doing weddings, by the way,
00:29:24
Speaker
nuns officiate weddings. I mean, I'm sure that there's some like ecclesiastical answer that is really simple to give me, but gosh, I love nuns so much. It probably goes back to my childhood obsession with Sister Act. Does anybody else have that?
00:29:50
Speaker
Okay, none's aside. Let's say that Father Bryce is officiating your wedding. You are marrying a Jewish person, but you grew up with Father Bryce and he was so wonderful and warm and kind and accepting and loving. You've already asked him to officiate your wedding, but now it's getting closer to the ceremony and your Jewish fiance is feeling a little pushed to the side, left out, unrepresented in your wedding ceremony. Obviously that's not something that you want. If you call me,
00:30:20
Speaker
and say, can you please take part in our wedding ceremony? I will tell you, I can absolutely offer some readings, some prayers in Hebrew, some blessings, and even an address to the couple that will be similar in feeling and length to Father Bryce's homily. The answer is yes. Will I be technically co-officiating with Father Bryce? No. It's either his wedding or my wedding.
00:30:47
Speaker
And as long as he's willing, I'm happy to help him out. Or if it's my wedding, in other words, if you called me first, but the Catholic member of the couple is starting to feel a little pushed to the side, ignored, underrepresented, and you'd like to invite Father Bryce to come and give you the nuptial blessing and to hold the veil over your head and to make some comments about your grandmother's rosary. Is that okay? Yes.
00:31:13
Speaker
Is that co-officiation? Technically, no, because I do not co-officiate weddings. However, sharing the privileges of offering prayers, readings, and reflections at a wedding ceremony is not the same as co-officiation.
00:31:29
Speaker
Do you all understand? Do you hear what I'm saying? If you have questions about what I mean by everything I just said, please contact me. Go to my website YourOhioRabbi.com or OurFavoriteRabbi.com. Go to the contact form. Ask me your question there. We'll have a lovely conversation and email. Don't worry about it. You guys hear my dogs barking? I think that was the mailman. So cliche. My dogs are ridiculous. Okay.
00:31:52
Speaker
Now you may be asking, okay, Father Bryce is officiating our wedding, Rabbi Leanne, and we asked him if we could have a rabbi come and offer some readings, Hebrew prayers, explanations, or comments on our relationship. And he said, oh, unfortunately, according to the regulations,
00:32:12
Speaker
of our parish, or according to the regulations that our bishop has set forth, unfortunately the answer is no. Rabbi Leanne cannot stand up at your wedding and offer any of those things. Okay, then what do you do? Are you stuck? Are you stuck having just a 100% representation of one person in the couple and 0% Jewish representation? No.
00:32:38
Speaker
I think we can work it out. Go to my website, drop me a contact, tell me your situation. I have never met a Catholic priest that was not accommodating, polite, and helpful when I asked him a question about the Jewish wedding ceremony. I have met Catholic priests who were different degrees of cooperative in terms of including me in the ceremony, but also Jewish elements.
00:33:08
Speaker
I know one Catholic priest who told me, and he can correct me if I'm misrepresenting it, but he told me that there is some sort of clergy privilege situation acknowledged in the Catholic Church, which means that I can actually offer traditional Catholic marriage prayers and it quote unquote counts. I don't know. If you know more about this, if you're a priest or if you
00:33:31
Speaker
are super Catholic and you can offer me more insight into this, please send me an email, yourjewishweddingpodcastatgmail.com.
Navigating Catholic Wedding Requirements
00:33:37
Speaker
So this can be tough though, right? There's a reason. It's not just because some priests are unfriendly and some priests are super friendly and chill and other ones are super uptight. That's not the reason. The Catholic Church is one of
00:33:51
Speaker
Anyhow, if you're talking about religions with very specific requirements about what has to take place for it to be considered a marriage ceremony in that faith, and you require the approval of your priest, your imam, your officiant of whatever faith, your pastor, any of those things,
00:34:14
Speaker
There are certain things that have to be in place, like I said. So, for example, if your priest really requires that your marriage happen inside the Catholic Church, which is a pretty common thing, if you invite a rabbi to offer prayers, the priest is the boss of that place.
00:34:30
Speaker
So first of all, the priest has to approve for your rabbi to come in and offer prayers, readings, commentary, whatever, and it will still be inside a Catholic church. So part of your conversation about an interfaith marriage is what is absolutely the most important thing to each of you that's represented at your interfaith or intercultural ceremony, and is that a deal breaker for the other person? This is something you're going to want to work out before you're on that phone call with your priest or rabbi before you're in that
00:34:58
Speaker
marriage prep session with whatever member of the clergy you're sitting with. Your officiant might even require you or strongly suggest or request that you say something to one another. Usually it's in the form of vows that may feel to you like it excludes your own faith or might explicitly exclude your faith, right? Like we talked about with promising to raise children inside of the Catholic Church.
00:35:26
Speaker
So that's something, you know, I really want you guys to look into. Be sure to ask questions about upfront, have those conversations upfront before you move forward, because it could be a real roadblock and cause you some real stress with regards to your ceremony. And it could be that if you're having these conversations and you do consult your priest, pastor, Imam, and you consult your rabbi,
00:35:49
Speaker
that the best advice for the two of you going forward may just be a civil ceremony. And so some other considerations are just because, you know, my mind's on Catholic weddings. I have a few couples right now where one person in the couple is Catholic. So I've done a lot of reading into this stuff. So if you are Catholic and you're marrying a Jewish person and you really want a priest to marry you inside the Catholic church, like inside of a Catholic church building,
00:36:14
Speaker
For example, a Catholic member of that couple has to go through a process of applying for specific permission from that region's bishop to marry a Jew. You have to apply, sign papers, and then, even then, it would not be considered the sacrament of marriage within the Catholic Church. And I do believe that usually that application also includes the promise to bring up your children within the Catholic Church. That conversation about
00:36:42
Speaker
whether that's something the two of you are willing to do as a couple, is very important to have before you start that process. If you ask a priest or a rabbi or anything about these requirements and he is sort of hedging or sort of secretive, find another priest, you know, I've listened to
00:37:01
Speaker
a podcast by priests. And one of the episodes was about Catholic weddings. One of the things that they were really encouraging that every couple does is go out of their way to find a parish, a home parish that suits them that they can see themselves living out their marriage and going for masses and whatever else they're planning to do. The point of having a parish is that each individual parish has its own priest.
00:37:29
Speaker
The job of that priest is to shepherd his, quote unquote, flock. It's to be a guide and an inspiration and a teacher to the members of that parish. This is a very Jewish sentiment in Pirke Avot, which is one of the earliest books of Jewish law that has a lot of great sayings that we can take with us to advise our day today. It says,
00:37:51
Speaker
find yourself a rabbi, make for yourself a friend, right? Which a lot of people interpret as meaning when you find a rabbi for yourself, that person will be a true friend for you in more ways than one, in more ways than just Jewish stuff. And I think that the idea is the same for any other member of the clergy that you as a couple decide to associate with.
00:38:14
Speaker
so ask around if you are i don't mean to like try and challenge the catholic church or to try and challenge that religion or whatever okay but you know what i mean like you will find a clergy member that really resonates with you and whose approach resonates with the one that you're looking for whether it's more traditional or whether it's more contemporary or
00:38:31
Speaker
more embracing of the other faith or whatever it is. People shop around for synagogues. People shop around for rabbis. And I really believe that you should do that with any person that is helping you upon your spiritual or religious life path. So if you meet a priest and you feel discouraged because you didn't really get along well with him, go meet another priest and keep going until you find somebody that you can really see being a part of your married life going forward. Okay. And obviously that's the same for rabbis.
00:39:00
Speaker
Even if you can't find a priest, there's usually a representative of the church. Let's say you live in a really small town and the priest there is really busy or the priest is on leave or whatever it is. There's usually somebody like a deacon who can come and also do those prayers like I mentioned. Once again, I wish nuns would do weddings.
00:39:19
Speaker
I know nuns do a lot of cool things. Somebody tell me, why don't nuns do weddings? Anyway, we have even found in our investigations, specifically on Catholic weddings, that according to some opinions, that say that the parent of the bride or the groom could act as a deacon.
00:39:38
Speaker
in the role of reading prayers and giving blessings because there is an understood hierarchy in the church of spiritual hierarchy, I guess, or authority, and within a family, the parents are considered spiritual authorities of the household.
00:39:56
Speaker
And so in that sense, according to some opinions, your father or even, I think, in very rare cases, your mother could offer those prayers or blessings, and it would still be, quote unquote, legit according to the church. So if you are here,
00:40:11
Speaker
because you want to hear like the finer details or some more examples of planning an interfaith or intercultural ceremony. I have some more examples and ideas for that in the next episode. We're going to get into more tips and tricks for reflecting both of your faith traditions in a ceremony that does not make your guests and especially your family members and especially especially the two of you uncomfortable in any way.
00:40:35
Speaker
Well everyone, I've had the best time being your rabbi for this episode. I'm so glad you joined me for another little bit of insight into planning your perfect Jewish or interfaith wedding. Until you can smash that glass on your big day, you might as well smash that subscribe button for this podcast. I don't want you to miss a single thing.
00:40:57
Speaker
Remember, you can always find me, Rabbi Lian, on Instagram. All one word for even more tips, tricks, recommendations, and wisdom on Jewish weddings.
00:41:13
Speaker
If you want to work with me on your wedding, you'll find all the info you need at YourOhioRabbi.com. Until next time, remember, you deserve the perfect wedding for you. Don't settle for anything less.