I recently read a post by the bride Diorable as she described how she was planning her interfaith wedding. She talked about how they were choosing the traditions they would have in her ceremony, to make it fit the personality and beliefs of her and her fiancé. As she described it: “This isn’t a sundown thing with a ketubah. We are absolutely cherry picking.”
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When you are planning an interfaith wedding, it’s a good idea to provide an explanation of the different traditions in your wedding program. This gives everyone the chance to understand the meanings behind the traditions you selected for your wedding. Plus, it makes both sides of the family feel welcome and included in the ceremony. One of my couples shared with me the text they used in their program:
Read more on How to decribe the ketubah in your wedding program…
During an interview, Star Trek (and Lost) director J.J. Abrams had this to say about interfaith marriage:
My wife is Irish Catholic and it’s a fascinating thing having married someone who’s of a different religion, because you get to understand and see and respect another way of growing up and believing. That to me is interesting and healthy.
Read more on Star Trek director J.J. Abrams on his interfaith marriage…
One thing I have learned is that every ketubah is unique. Each one takes on the personality of the couple who make it, through the design they select, the words they choose. Watching each couple craft a ketubah that reflects their personality is one of the things that make my job as a ketubah artist so interesting.
Read more on Making an interfaith ketubah with Hebrew, English, and Latin…
Interfaithfamily.com and Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben have put together a short video that gives interfaith couples some good basic advice when getting ready to plan their weddings. They say that this is the first in the series, so we look forward to seeing the rest.
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Kim and Matthew wrote to me to describe why they chose my Autumn Gold ketubah, and to describe how they customized their interfaith wedding ceremony to fit their personalities:
“One reason we chose your artwork is that my fiancé very much likes Japanese décor. We have created a “flower ceremony” within our ceremony during which we are exchanging five flowers with specific meanings to give each other for the recipe for a great marriage. Specifically, we are using the Lotus Flower because it blooms in tough times, the Lily of the Valley which means happiness, the Chrysanthemum which means love and longevity, the Yellow Rose which means friendship and finally Ivy which means Fidelity. The Japanese Maple Leaf that we found on your website was yet another aspect of the Japanese decor and fit our theme perfectly! The moment we found your website we knew it was perfect.”
Read more on choosing a ketubah as part of a ‘flower ceremony’…
Modern Ketubah is proud to now offer interfaith couples three new texts written specifically for them. I have written these new texts to honor how an interfaith marriage represents the coming together of two traditions, a merging of two different families into one new, stronger one. Here are a sample of what each new Interfaith text says:
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Modern Ketubah is proud to now offer interfaith couples new choices to better customize their ketubahs. Each of my ketubah features a large poetic verse incorporated into the design. These verses usually come from Jewish tradition, such as “Ani l’dodi v’dod li” (I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine), which a very popular phrase for Jewish weddings which comes from the Song of Solomon.
Read more on New poetic verses for interfaith couples…
For anyone who is orthodox, and is also in an interfaith relationship, I highly recommend the article “Orthodox Paradox” written by Noah Feldman for the New York Times Magazine this past weekend. He describes his love and connection to his community, and his sadness at their not being able to accept his choice for a wife. The Jewcy online magazine has an interesting Q&A follow-up with him. When asked why he was surprised that his yeshiva cropped him and his non-Jewish girlfriend out of a reunion photo, Feldman responded:
Read more on Orthodox and interfaith…
There’s an interesting article in the Jewish Week, called The Other Kind Of Mixed Marriage. In it, Abby Schachter talks about how every marriage can be classified as a mixed marriage, since no two people share the same religious background:
Read more on Every marriage is a mixed marriage…
