The Charlotte Jewish News - October 2018 - Page 38
I Don’t Believe in God — But This Is Why I’m Having an Orthodox
Wedding
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Amsterdam (JTA) — My wife
and I were married roughly 5,000
diapers ago, and she’s still wait
ing for me to propose.
I know this because she re
minds me every armiversary.
To be clear, ours was no shot
gun wedding. Iris and I were
hitched in a civil marriage in Hol
land five years ago — a whole
some two years before our first
child arrived.
But issues persist with my mar
riage proposal in 2013. Iris claims
that I mumbled, over scrambled
eggs, “So, like, do you want to
get married or something?” But I
think we had pancakes that day.
What she’s owed, I guess, is
one of those orchestrated pro
ductions involving playful deceit,
an airplane baimer and a seaside
kneel to the sounds of saxophone
played by a hired musician who
pops out of nowhere at exact
ly the right time along with two
cameramen and a boom operator.
But for a fuss-averse pragma
tist like me, such affairs feel far
too mmatural.
Which is why it may seem a bit
strange that I am arranging (if you
can call it that: with less than a
week to go, I have no ring) a sec
ond wedding ceremony. This time
it’s with a rabbi, huppah, ketubah
— the whole shebang.
And it’s all at my insistence.
To be honest, it makes no sense
to be doing it now, when we al
ready have our hands full with
two small children. Or at all.
While we are both Jewish ac
cording to halachah. Orthodox
law, neither of us observe its
laws. We don’t even believe in
God, let alone what Orthodox
Judaism says are God’s rales
for matrimony.
But after some soul-search
ing over Rosh Hashanah, the
Jewish New Year, I realized
that my desire for a Jewish
wedding is rooted in a grow
ing uncertainty — that of be
longing to a persecuted people
whose own identity and place
in Europe, and Israel, are being
redefined rapidly.
Essentially, I want to have an
Orthodox wedding and a ketubah
— a Jewish religious marriage
contract — to guarantee our chil
dren’s eligibility for becoming
card-carrying members of any
stream of Judaism, and for re
maining Israeli citizens.
As things stand today, they al
ready qualify as both even though
their parents don’t have a ketu
bah, which in Judaism is optional
anyway. (In halachah, a man and
woman teclmically need neither
ketubah nor wedding ceremony
to be husband and wife - cohab
itation is enough to seal a mar
riage, although the practice was
discouraged by the rabbis.)
Our kids can obtain Israeli
passports because I am a citizen.
And because my wife is Jew
ish according to halachah (her
mother had an Orthodox conver-
Cnaan Liphshiz and wife Iris celebrating
their wedding in the Netherlands, July 2,
2013. (Courtesy of Liphshiz)
sion before my wife was bom),
our son and daughter meet the
definition of who is a Jew under a
matrilineal standard accepted by
all streams.
But amid radicalization in
Orthodox circles in Israel and
beyond, there seems to be little
guarantee that this will be the case
20 years from now. Our ketubah
may therefore shield our children
from scrutiny and complications.
In 2016, for example, an Or
thodox rabbinical court in the
Israeli city of Petach Tikvah
retroactively declared a woman
non-Jewish. She had undergone
an Orthodox conversion overseen
by Haskel Lookstein - one of the
most highly regarded Orthodox
rabbis in North America. Never
theless, the Chief Rabbinate has
begun to treat all conversions per
formed in America as suspect, as
JTA has reported.
Amid this war among Ortho
dox rabbis, can anyone guaran
tee that hardliners won’t move
to disqualify as Jews those who
were bom to converts? Or, for
that matter, a Dutch Jew whose
parents never bothered to get
married in a Jewish ceremony?
Consider the case of Yossi
Fackenheim, the 39-year-old
son of the late Holocaust sur
vivor and Reform rabbi Emil
Fackenheim. In 2009, an Or
thodox dayan, or rabbiiuc
judge, in Jerasalem retroac
tively declared null and void
the younger Fackenheim’s Or
thodox conversion to Judaism in
Canada at the age of 2. The stated
reason: The convert did not lead
an Orthodox observant lifestyle.
Fearing this radicalization, I
want to make sme our son and
daughter have documentation to
escape such injustice, for exam
ple, if and when they choose to
marry Jewishly.
Deeper under the surface,
though, there are other concerns
driving me to retie the knot.
In the eight years that have
passed since I moved to the
Netherlands, dark clouds have
gathered over Western Europe,
making it increasingly inhospita
ble to Jews. Against a backdrop
of anti-Semitic conspiracy theo
ries and smears, violence against
Jews is making a huge comeback
in this part of the world.
In Amsterdam, where we live
and emolled our children
m a
heavily guarded Jewish kinder
garten, a Syrian asylum seeker
last year vandalized a kosher
restaurant while waving a Pal-
estiiuan flag to protest President
Donald Tramp’s moving of the
U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerasa
lem.
In Antwerp, where I some
times spend Rosh Hashanah with
my relatives, an Arab driver is be
lieved to have tried to ran over a
Jew and his son while they were
walking to synagogue earlier this
year. In 2014, an Islamist alleged
ly murdered four people at the
Brussels Jewish museum.
In France, a jihadist killed a
rabbi and fom children at a Jew
ish school in 2012. Another Mus
lim fundamentalist murdered four
Jews at a kosher store in 2015.
And in 2014, gangs of rioters at
tacked at least rune synagogues in
that country as payback for Isra
el’s war on Hamas.
Even Britain, which many lo
cal Jews have long thought of as
a safe haven, is seeing the resur
gence of anti-Semitism, including
inside the Labour Party under its
populist far-left leader, Jeremy
Corbyn.
A futme here is becoming in
creasingly difficult to imagine for
our children, to whom I speak in
Hebrew and whom I often sing
to sleep by butchering Naomi
Shemer’s Zioiust song about Je
rasalem, “Yerashalaim Shel Za-
hav.”
(Continued on page 39)
B”H
Jewish
Education
begins
at birth
Jewish
Preschool
^Sardis
www.JPSKids.org | 704 364 8395
JPS is a project of Chabad of Chariotte