Marriage Equality Leads Jews Back to Jewish Tradition

pjkip23
Aug 12, 2015
2 min read

Who would have believed that the arrival of marriage equality would return us to tradition? But it did, when a warm-hearted lesbian married couple welcomed their baby into the covenant between God and the Jewish people.

Naming a Baby

We were celebrating the

(covenant and naming ceremony) for the beautiful baby daughter of Or Ami congregants Cia and Elizabeth Jacobs. This couple, a pair of Jewishly committed moms, were married five years ago in a ceremony led by my mentor Rabbi Jim Kaufman. Now, they were celebrating their the birth of their Jewish girl.

At first, the naming service seemed pretty straightforward: Welcoming the guests and the baby, placing the baby on Elijah's chair, and illuminating the

t (covenant of candles ceremony). We learned about Olivia Wesley's names:

was after deceased Papa Wesley. Hebrew name

was chosen because, after years of fertility treatments, the moms consider her a "gift from God." We drank wine from the same kiddush cup that they used to celebrate their wedding five years ago.

Communal Blessing for the Baby

We teach that the most important blessings are those pronounced by those who will long be part of the baby's life. So I invited the gathered guests to repeat part of the traditional Hebrew blessing, along with an English ine'er predation of the words:

When Tradition Mocks Reality

A more literal translation would encourage the parents to lead their child to the

(the marriage canopy). Yet because two men or two women were forbidden by American law to marry, many rabbis have altered have the traditional phrase. Twenty five years ago, when I was ordained, I settled on words that were at once inclusive yet honest, and which recognized that while many would find love, the law forbid some from reaching the

to marry. I asked the Holy One to help them "find love worthy of God's blessing."

Chozer Ba-teshuvah: Returning to Tradition

But now, thanks to the ruling of the US Supreme Court, the law of our land embraces marriage equality. How fitting then that in naming a baby of these two married women, we could now reinsert the word

back into the blessing. So we did. We returned to Jewish tradition And then, with tears in our eyes at the multiple levels of meaning, we sang the

prayer! Thanking God for bringing us to this special moment. For all gathered, it was a double blessing; we celebrated the Jewish life of this child Olivia/Netanya AND we celebrated a new reality that lesbians and gay men can celebrate a marriage as Americans and as Jews.