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Jewish Life & Celebrations

Wedding

A Wedding Celebration

Rabbi Judith Seid
Rabbi Seid describes the elements that comprise a Secular Humanistic Jewish wedding. Rabbi Seid is the author of We Rejoice in Our Heritage: Home Rituals for Secular and Humanistic Jews, and God-Optional Judaism: Alternatives for Cultural Jews who Love Their History, Heritage, and Community. Rabbi Seid is also the cultural leader at Tri-Valley Cultural Jews in Pleasanton, California. Visit Rabbi Seid at www.SecularJewishWeddings.com
Judith Seid, God-Optional Judaism, Citadel Press, 2001, pp165-179.

Your wedding should reflect your own cultures, heritages, traditions, and values and should honor the people who have been invited to witness and participate in it. There is only one rule for a truly authentic wedding of any sort: three people have to believe every word that is said – the speaker and the two who are marrying.

Finding an Officiator

If there’s a Secular Humanistic Jewish leader where you live, that will probably solve your problem. If not, you can find someone from the Leadership Conference of Secular Humanistic Jews by calling CSJO or SHJ and asking for the nearest officiator who is willing to travel. Secular Humanistic rabbis, leaders and senior leaders will officiate at intermarriages and at same-sex marriages. Some require the couple to write the entire ceremony (with adequate help, ideas and support, of course) and some will write the ceremony by themselves or accept input from the couple. Secular Humanistic clergy do not use god-language, but may, if they choose, allow others to do so at the wedding.

How do you make it Jewish?

A number of beautiful elements can signal the Jewish nature of the ceremony.

The chuppah

The chuppah can be freestanding or can be held by four friends or family members. The poles can be light material and can be covered with fabric and wrapped with foliage. The cover can be any flowers or any fabric.

A fabric top can be made of a family tallis, a shawl, or tablecloth brought over with an immigrant ancestor, a new cloth, tablecloth, or bedspread, or something made for the occasion. A lovely new tradition of quilt-chuppahs has emerged in the past several years. Send each invited guest a twelve- to fifteen-inch square of fabric and ask to have it decorated and returned by a month before the wedding. Our friends and family will create beautiful personalized squares that you or a friend can sew together into a chuppah. If it is large enough, it can become a bedspread. If not, it makes an interesting wall hanging.

Sharing wine

It is a Jewish tradition for the couple to drink out of one glass of wine. In some ceremonies, there are two occasions on which they drink. Some couples prefer to use two cups, pouring each other’s cup, but drinking out of their own.

Here are some things that can be said at that time:

We rejoice in our heritage, which has given us the cup of wine as the symbol of our happiness. May your lives be as sweet and full as this goblet of wine and may you always drink from a full cup.

Ketubah (Marriage Contract)

You can have a ketubah made by a calligrapher, use a preprinted one, or produce your own. You can write your own contract, or make up a certificate, instead, with your vows and a short poem or phrase on it, or not use one at all. If you use a ketubah, you can have it read at the ceremony or not. You can sign it before or during the ceremony. If you make a large one, you can ask all your guests to sign as witnesses. A beautiful ketubah is often framed and hung in the home.

Seven Benedictions

Sometimes friends and relatives are honored by being asked to recite one of the blessings. You can ask people to make statements or wishes for your future, or to read a piece of poetry. Or you can ignore this.

Here are some examples of several blessings, reworkings adapted from the religious blessings:

We rejoice in our heritage, which has given us the cup of wine as the symbol of our happiness.
We rejoice in humanity and in being part of the vast sister-and brotherhood that embraces us all.
We are thankful for (or we rejoice in) the joy and gladness in our lives, for mirth and exultation, pleasure and delight, love, friendship, peace, and fellowship.
We rejoice in our heritage, which teaches us to find inner happiness and to seek out and bring forth joy and happiness despite the troubles and difficulties that exist in the world.

Breaking the Glass

You can explain the symbolism in any way that makes sense to you. Since the origin was probably an ancient ritual to scare away evil spirits, all the other explanations were made up to explain something that people were already doing. Your own explanation is just as valid as any other. You or the officiator can say something like one of these statements:

May your years together be as many as the fragments of this glass.
May all your happiness be as great as the number of shattered pieces of this glass, and may all your troubles be as easily shattered.
The tradition tells us that the breaking of the glass reminds us of the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE and of the subsequent exile of the people of Israel. It reminds us that we have only today to rejoice and love each other, for our happiness may be destroyed by forces beyond our control at any time.

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