My Personal Cantor

Wedding Officiant -Debbi Ballard

Follow Me on Social Media

FB icon Twitter Icon Instagram Icon YouTube Icon Google+ Icon
  • About Me
  • Let Me Marry You
  • Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah
    • Bar Mitzvah in Israel with Cantor Debbi
  • LIFE’S PRECIOUS MOMENTS
  • Watch Me
  • Around The World

Planning your Interfaith Wedding ceremony

July 24, 2008 by Debbi Ballard Leave a Comment

I just stumbled on a great site – www.shebrew.com, and there I found an article by Leslie Hershman, a Reform Jewish bride, marrying a non practicing Catholic.

It was so great to read her post, because this is exactly what I do in my practice when planning an Interfaith wedding. I’m much more concerned about the joy and celebration of the union, than being slave to outdated traditions that really don’t apply anymore. The philosophy here is to make everyone comfortable – to focus on the joy of coming together, and the honor of each person’s faith and traditions. In this article, Leslie chose those rites which were important to her, enabling her to incorporate special mementos of her Jewish travels, yet making her husband to be and his family feel richly satisfied.

The article is posted below. Leslie – all the best in your wedding! I hope it’s everything you hope for it to be!

Planning an Interfaith Wedding- The Ceremony

By Lesly Hershman

Getting engaged to a non-Jew poses the following question: How do I take a traditional Jewish ceremony and modify it to suit all the people involved?

First there’s me, a practicing Reform Jew. Secondly, there’s my fiancé, a non-religious man who grew up Catholic. Third, there’s everyone attending the wedding, a mix of religious backgrounds. We want everyone to feel connected to the ceremony, but we don’t want to lose the essence of Judaism that lies within the traditional ceremony.

Before shaping the actual ceremony, I realized I had a lot to learn about the Jewish wedding ceremony itself. I’d seen many Jewish weddings, but I needed to know what it all meant. I bought a copy of the book The New Jewish Wedding by Anita Diamant to gain some perspective on the Jewish traditions. My friends cover to cover—and took notes! Understanding why each component of the Jewish ceremony existed was important to me, because I needed to explain it to my fiancé. I knew he would ask questions and look to me for the answers and I wanted to give him complete and correct information.

I learned that there are two main tenets of a Jewish wedding. The first is joy — because all of your friends and family come together to celebrate the union of two people. Everyone is there to relax, party, and have fun. It’s this essential part of a Jewish wedding that appealed to both my non-Jewish fiancé and me.

The second is unity; technically, the rabbi performing the ceremony isn’t even the one marrying the couple. The couple marries themselves through their vows. That is a pretty modern take for a ceremony with such longstanding history and tradition.

However, joy and unity weren’t always the focal points of a Jewish wedding. Not all of the aspects of the Jewish ceremony today started off with such a modern twist. Historically, the wedding was about the groom acquiring a wife, the notion of kinyan. Today, according to Diamant, most couples chose to make their wedding a, “sacred covenant between equal partners” or a brit.

Joy, personalization, and equality will be the key elements of our wedding ceremony. All three are rooted in Judaism, and yet can be easily explained to those with different religious backgrounds. From planning this phase, my fiancé and I moved onto planning the actual events of the ceremony.

We decided to remove references to Moses, since he’s only a key figure in my religion; we also decided against me encircling him seven times because the tradition felt very groom-centric. We’re planning on reciting the Sheva B’rachot or Seven Blessings as they were originally written in Hebrew, alongside an updated translation into English. The text we selected for our Ketubah (marriage contract) focuses on sharing a life together and building a home of mutual respect and appreciation rather the more traditional contract of vowing making a Jewish home and raise children Jewishly. We’ve even decided to add a brief Havdallah (ending of the Sabbath) service at the beginning of the ceremony because it’s my favorite time of the week; I’ve been saving a candle from Israel that we can use in it.

Personalizing our Jewish wedding will allow me to stay close to my traditions without excluding my fiancé. We’ll have a one-of-a-kind wedding ceremony because it will be about us, yet the same prayers that my great-grandparents uttered will be heard. It will be a perfect mix of something old and something new –now I just need to borrow something blue and I’ll be ready to walk down the aisle.

Filed Under: Debbi's Deep Thoughts and Musings, Weddings Tagged With: interfaith weddings, Jewish, planning, traditions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Watch an Interview with Debbi

Categories

  • About
  • Baby Namings
  • Bar/Bat Mitzvah Adventures
  • Debbi's Deep Thoughts and Musings
  • Destination Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah
  • Events
  • Featured Content
  • Funerals
  • GLBT
  • Holidays
  • Jewish
  • Jewish, Interfaith, LGBTQ Weddings
  • Judaism
  • Let's Eat!
  • Slider
  • Thoughts
  • Wedding Vendors
  • Weddings
  • worship

Contact Me

717 Shotgun Road,
Sunrise, FL 33326
954-646-1326



~ Officiating Jewish & Interfaith Weddings, Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, Funerals, and any other Jewish Lifecycle Services in Florida, USA – Destination Weddings in North America, Mexico, Caribbean & Worldwide ~

Follow Me On Twitter!

Tweets by @jewishweddings

What They Say

"Working with Cantor Debbi
made our event more amazing
than we hoped for! She is warm
and wonderful!"

Events Calendar

March 2021
MMonday TTuesday WWednesday TThursday FFriday SSaturday SSunday
1March 1, 2021 2March 2, 2021 3March 3, 2021 4March 4, 2021 5March 5, 2021 6March 6, 2021 7March 7, 2021
8March 8, 2021 9March 9, 2021 10March 10, 2021 11March 11, 2021 12March 12, 2021 13March 13, 2021 14March 14, 2021
15March 15, 2021 16March 16, 2021 17March 17, 2021 18March 18, 2021 19March 19, 2021 20March 20, 2021 21March 21, 2021
22March 22, 2021 23March 23, 2021 24March 24, 2021 25March 25, 2021 26March 26, 2021 27March 27, 2021 28March 28, 2021
29March 29, 2021 30March 30, 2021 31March 31, 2021 1April 1, 2021 2April 2, 2021 3April 3, 2021 4April 4, 2021

Upcoming Events

  • 10:00 am – 11:15 am, September 19, 2020 – High Holy Days with Cantor Debbi Ballard on ZOOM
  • 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm, September 27, 2020 – High Holy Days with Cantor Debbi Ballard on ZOOM
  • 10:00 am – 11:15 am, September 28, 2020 – High Holy Days with Cantor Debbi Ballard on ZOOM

Copyright © 2021 · Outreach Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in