Q&A: Wedding Canopy for a Secular Couple
Wedding Canopy for a Secular Couple
Question
By profession I am a rabbi who officiates weddings for secular couples. Sometimes this creates a somewhat strange feeling—a religious ceremony, with all its halakhic details, is being conducted for people who themselves do not observe Torah and commandments.
If we get into specifics, for example: the wine over which the blessing is recited under the wedding canopy—the bride and groom themselves cannot open it, since it would be considered "libation wine" with respect to someone who publicly desecrates the Sabbath.
And the main issue: the witnesses for the betrothal. Jewish law requires testimony from at least someone who observes the Sabbath. In practice, the groom himself is disqualified from such testimony.
At the moment, these are mainly feelings that accompany me. But as a rabbi with innovative halakhic thinking, I’m interested in your view: would you try to find room to be lenient in these requirements? For example, regarding the religious level of the witness. Or is it rather the case that, from the couple’s standpoint, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” and since at this very specific point in life they asked for a religious ceremony, all the criteria must be met?
Answer
A. The bride and groom can open it, because it is unreasonable that the prohibition concerning their wine was said regarding the person himself (is a person who does not observe the Sabbath forbidden to open wine for himself?). There is no obligation to distance a person from himself. Unlike ordinary non-Jewish wine, with actual libation wine there is room to discuss it, since libation wine is an object-based prohibition, and the wine becomes prohibited as an object, so ostensibly it would be forbidden even to the idolater himself. And one could analyze this further.
B. The requirement that the witness be Sabbath-observant, even though the groom is not, does not seem problematic to me. This is a requirement for a valid witness (and as is known, this is testimony for the existence of the matter). There is no requirement that the groom be observant as a condition for his betrothal to take effect.
C. Therefore I would not be lenient in any binding halakhic requirement that is indispensable. In requirements that are custom, or something non-essential, there is room to be lenient even for religious people.
D. My view is that the commandments of a person who does not believe in God or in the revelation at Mount Sinai are not commandments, and his transgressions are not transgressions. People have asked me in the past how his betrothal is valid, and I answered that betrothal is a contract. Whoever signs the contract is bound by it (he says that he undertakes it according to the law of Moses and Israel, for everything that it says, even if he does not know exactly what that includes). The commandment of betrothal—if there even is such a commandment; in my opinion there is considerable doubt whether even according to Maimonides it is a commandment—such a groom of course does not have. But the contract is made and it is valid.
E. I would not preach to a secular couple to marry according to the law of Moses and Israel. I am not sure it has much value. But if they want to, there is no impediment to conducting such a ceremony, and it should be done with all its details and exactitudes.
F. On the other hand, sometimes such couples have demands for equality. Just this morning someone asked me about an additional signature by the bride on the ketubah. I told him that in my opinion there is no halakhic problem with that, but I do not understand this equality fashion (like the groom receiving a ring too, and circling the bride based on the secret of “a female shall court a man,” and the like). After all, the ketubah is an undertaking of the groom toward the bride, not the other way around. It is not equal. So if the bride also signs, will that make it equal? Equality depends on the substance, not on ceremonies. And on the other hand, the desire for the bride to give a ring too is also nonsense in my eyes. The act of betrothal is completely equal, since the consent of both sides is required. The form by which the legal act takes effect is that the man gives a ring. But that is ceremonial and not something essential, so I do not understand why it bothers anyone. Alternatively, if the bride also gives a ring, will that change anything? All these are muddled fashions devoid of any sense or substance.
In short, someone who wants a halakhic ceremony should accept it as it is and stop pestering. And from the standpoint of the officiating rabbi as well, in my opinion there is no reason and no justification to change anything. Jewish law is Jewish law, and whoever does not want it need not buy it.
As stated, there are requirements that should be discussed halakhically regardless of secular people: writing the ketubah in Aramaic, the various circling ceremonies, that only men recite the seven blessings, and so on. In all these there is room to be lenient even for religious people, and irrespective of secular people.
Regarding the witness’s level of religiosity, he is supposed to observe the Sabbath. There is room nowadays to validate a witness who does not observe the Sabbath, since today this is an accepted norm and it does not indicate that he is an unreliable witness (of course, assuming the problem with a Sabbath desecrator is his reliability). There are other reasons to validate him even if the issue is not reliability (for example, if the issue is giving legitimacy to an offender, today there is reason to say that the offenders are not a marginal minority but the majority of the public, and it is unreasonable that they may serve as prime minister and president of the Supreme Court but cannot serve as a witness for betrothal). And indeed, there are halakhic decisors who nowadays have validated secular people as witnesses. However, in betrothal testimony the practice is to be stringent, apparently because this is testimony for the existence of the matter and not testimony in religious court, which requires reliability. But I doubt whether there really is room to distinguish, since in the end testimony is required, and if he is a valid witness for testimony in religious court, there is no reason not to validate him for establishing a matter in betrothal.
Discussion on Answer
You write that when the groom says “according to the law of Moses and Israel,” it is a valid contract even if he does not know all the details. I wondered whether maybe that is true only with respect to a religious person, but with a secular person it is not clear that he even recognizes that there is a legal acquisition of marriage here, and ostensibly there is no intent of transfer and acquisition—just a religious ceremony for which he invites a rabbi because he is Jewish and that is the custom.
Someone once told me that the essence of betrothal is “she is forbidden to the whole world like consecrated property,” and that certainly exists among secular people too (unless there is prior intent for an open marriage), but I was not convinced, because it seems there also need to be laws of acquisition, and there is no intent for that here.
In betrothal there is indeed a contractual aspect, but also a legal/acquisitional aspect, and it is hard to see how that is fulfilled in the wedding canopy of secular people.
Your view?
What is called acquisition in betrothal is not ownership. It is an act that effects the betrothal. The groom accepts upon himself everything that this entails. By the way, the rabbi who officiates should explain to the couple what it is about.
I accept what you say, and still: a religious person assumes a metaphysical dimension(?) in which the betrothal takes effect, and although he does not know the details he accepts them in the sense of “according to the formula in my possession.” The claim is that the average secular groom does not necessarily recognize such a dimension, and from his standpoint this is merely a formal or traditional ceremony, with the rabbi there as a Jewish cultural ornament, similar to a priest at a Christian wedding. He wants to get married “the way Jews get married,” but from his standpoint this is a matter of folklore, tradition, etc., and not necessarily a legal effect.
There are many religious Jews who do not accept that betrothal has a metaphysical dimension. That is really not indispensable.
Thank you for the detailed answer.
Indeed, as you said, most couples ask for elements of “equality,” usually as a kind of critical feminist pouncing on the ceremony; most of the demands are based on ignorance of the nature and characteristics of the ceremony.