At an Interfaith Wedding, Some of Us Skip the Chuppah

When friends heard that our daughter was marrying a non-Jew, some of them assumed that she would include some Jewish traditions in her wedding. After all, my wife and I are observant Jews, and I was a pulpit rabbi for 35 years. Surely, they may have thought, even if our daughter was marrying outside the fold, we would take every opportunity to make her wedding as traditional as possible. They were surprised, then, to hear that her wedding ceremony was secular, devoid of Judaism. “Why wasn’t there a hora?” they asked. “No breaking the glass?” “You didn’t want a chuppah?” “Why didn’t you do the ceremony?”

I am sure the queries, which started coming as soon as our daughter was engaged, were well meaning. But the very fact that these types of questions come up at all is telling. The inclusion of Jewish rituals of kiddushin (marriage sanctification) into mixed-marriage ceremonies has been a growing trend in American Judaism. Some would expect that a rabbi might be the first to try to import something—anything—Jewish into his child’s mixed-faith wedding. And I am not judging those who decide to bring Judaism into mixed ceremonies; no one size fits all. But the size we chose for our daughter’s wedding, one without the trappings of Judaism, fit us very well, and I am here to tell you why.

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