Covenanting: Marriage and Commitment
Emerging Torah of Same-Sex Marriage
29. ACHARAI MOT | Covenanting: Marriage and Commitment | Justice and Gender | Sexuality & SpiritualityRabbi Arthur Waskow
Twice in the Torah portion of "Acharei mot" we are told, "You shall not lie with a man as in lying with a woman." (Lev. 18: 22 and 20: 13). Today this has become perhaps the world's most contentious Torah teaching, far beyond the Jewish people.
Some have argued it prohibits all male-male sexuality. Others have argued that the verse must mean something else, for this "lying with" seems anatomically impossible. Is it only about casual or ritual homosexuality, not committed relationships? How did some of the greatest rabbis of the "Golden Age" in Spain write glowing erotic poems about male-male sex?
Responding in Prayer & Practice to Same-Sex Marriages
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentRabbi Phyllis Berman & Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 8/5/2003
The two of us, sometimes separately and sometimes together, officiate at a very few marriages each year — some of them same-sex marriages. We have worked out a number of practices we recommend or to or require of the couples, and for same-sex marriages these need some special emendations. (Some different-sex couples prefer some aspects of these as well.)
The three most important are:"tennai kiddushin," conditions especially regarding possible divorce, etc; a "real-life ketubah," commitments about the everyday aspects of a marriage -- money, sex, children, etc; the "sheva brachot," seven blessings that celebrate the marriage. Our notes on each are below.
A. For all marriages, we require tennai kedushin ["conditions" or addenda to the ketubah, the wedding contract] that contractually commit the couple to giving & receiving gittin (Jewish divorce agreements] if the marriage ends. (We have these signed on the wedding day just before the other part of the ketubah they have worked out.) For hetero couples, the tennaiim specify this be done within 30 days of a civil divorce. But for gay couples, this is so far mostly unworkable. So —
This is the text of the addendum [tennaim] to the Ketubah that we have worked out to act as nearly as possible in analogy to the language we use for tennaim providing for a gett after a civil divorce.
THE SONG OF SONGS AS A SACRED RECIPE: LOVE, "CHAROSET" & THE LIBERATION OF THE WORLD
Covenanting: Marriage and Commitment | Pesach | Sacred FoodsBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
We are going to approach this subject –- sacred food –- the way you approach a sacred temple: first the outskirts, where you may know the structure already, from afar; then some unexpected beauties in an anteroom; finally, an inner Mystery revealed not to your eyes but to your lips and tongue.
The inner mystery is the dish called charoset. Keep seeking till you find her!
In Jewish tradition, eating food is a sacred act – and there are a series of concentric circles in which the intensity of the attention paid to food and the sacredness felt in food increases.
Reb Zalman's Tennai Kiddushin (Conditions before Marriage)
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentBy Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
T'nai Kiddushin.
Conditions of Kiddushin and Nissu'in
[This document, intended to be adopted in both Hebrew and English at an impending wedding before acceptance of the ketubah, is an attempt in the context of traditional rabbinic halacha to prevent the danger that even though a marriage has in fact and ethics ended, one of the couple might remain unable under traditional Jewish law to be freed from the marriage so as to be able to remarry. It does this by providing that under certain conditions, the marriage will be deemed null and void from the start. (This has no effect on the status of children. -- AW]
"The Light of the Moon and the Sun": A Wedding Poem
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentJoel Rosenberg, 6/24/2005
This wedding poem was written by Joel Rosenberg for the wedding of Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman in 1986. They were married on a day that was both the summer solstice (June 22) and a full moon (15 Sivan) and so in a mome
Broken Glass
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentRabbi Arthur Waskow, 4/14/2004
Dear Chevra,
I've got a "practice report" and then a question.
When Phyllis and/or I act as m'sadrim kiddushin for any couple, hetero or same-sex, we take the opportunity of the traditional breaking-of-the-glass at t
Light Old & New on Same-Sex Marriage
Covenanting: Marriage and Commitment | Sexuality & Spirituality | BlogRabbi Arthur Waskow 2/12/2004
Dear friends,
As the issue of same-sex marriage heats up, you may find you can bring more light into the discussion by drawing on old and new Jewish approaches to the theology and practice of sexual ethics.
A Covenant of Same-Sex Nisu'in and Kidushin
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentEyal Levinson
A Covenant of Same-Sex Nisu'in and Kidushin
By Eyal LevinsonAs part of my rabbinical studies my mentor Reb Daniel Siegel asked me to compose a kidushin ve'nisuin, a wedding, for same-sex couples grounded
Enlarging Sacred Space: K'dusha & Same-Sex Marriages
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentRabbi Daniel Siegel
Enlarging Sacred Space: K'dusha & Same-Sex Marriages
By Daniel SiegelThe attitude of the Jewish renewal community to same-sex relationships is rooted in our sense that holiness is not a closed and l
Exchanging Wedding Rings
Covenanting: Marriage and CommitmentRabbi Arthur Waskow
The Ring: A Shabbat Kavannah
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Once a Hassid came to the Rebbe of Tel-Avir. "Rebbe," he said, "every evening just before dinner my wife and I take off our wedding rings, before
